House of Jorob

MST3K is coming to Philadelphia June 12-13!

Joel Hodgson and original cast members Trace Beaulieu, Frank Conniff, Mary Jo Pehl and J. Elvis Weinstein have taken Mystery Science Theater 3000 on the road!

That's Crow, Dr. Forrester, TV's Frank, Pearl Forrester, Tom Servo, and Dr. Erhardt.

And Joel.

Cinematic Titanic is a live version of their Emmy-nominated television series.

Well, now it is.

Cinematic Titanic is better described as the resurrection of MST3k.

Begun in 2007, the original cast reunited and began putting out DVD's on their web site store.

Great titles, too.

Blood of the Vampires.

The Wasp Woman.

Frankenstein's Castle of Freaks.

Basic premise: Take the cheesiest movie you can find, air it, and riff hell out of it with one-liners thrown back at the screen.

Cinematic Titanic comes to Philly's Trocadero theatre Friday and Saturday evenings, June 12 and 13.

Doors open at 7.

Show starts at 8 pm.

Get tickets through this web site.

Battle of the Insurance Divas

Nothing like a Cage Match among insurance companies.

But unless you personalize an intangible, you can't sell it.

Once you do that, you don't even have to worry about the details of the product.

Just let the icons punch each other silly on the commercials.

There's Flo.

Who's tangling with the Geico Gekko.

And the Geico Money Stack. (technically, The Money You Could Be Saving)

Double-team.

She can always call on the Cave Guys.

They're on her side.

No wait, that used to be someone else's slogan.

I doubt she'll find them, anyway.

They've pretty much vanished.

Except in legacy YouTube clips.

Don't bother searching their host's website or Wikipedia page.

Too bad. It would have evened up the odds.

A little bit.

Because here comes the Blue Dot from one end of the arena.

And Dennis Haysbert from the other.

There's the Erin, the cartoon chick from E-surance.

She's going to be late to the fray.

She's busy running the promos for the upcoming Star Trek film.

SUVs will kill NFL Football

How automakers' pigging out on SUV sales for the last decade could cause the end of professional football as we know it:

After a summer of $4.50 a gallon gasoline wiped out roughly $100 a month in disposable income from every single American who owned a car, the fall months witness unprecedented numbers of new-car buyers staying home.

GM, Chrysler, and Ford collapse.

Bankruptcy or complete wipe-out. For this scenario it doesn' t matter.

All three are heavy, heavy advertisers on NFL football broadcasts.
That money is now gone, leaving huge holes to fill.
The holes don't get filled.
The broadcasting networks, standing on an already shakey pillar of revenue now shot full of holes during their last 8 weeks of the football season, have lost a large chunk of money that is supposed to pay for their NFL broadcasting rights. They can't fulfill their contracts.
The teams share of NFL broadcasting dollars is wiped out, cutting into team money that's supposed to pay player salaries, stadium operating costs, and expenses.

The lower third of the NFL franchises, now starving for money that can not be replaced by 40% increases in ticket prices since at least 30% of their ticket-buying base either worked directly for one of the now defunct automakers or for one of their suppliers and remain out of work, nor by  selling stadium advertising to non-existent auto manufacturers, go up for sale.

Unable to find buyers for a third of their franchises, the NFL is forced to contract for the first time in a bazillion years.

Staring in wide-eyed amazement.....

It's October!
There's a giant black hole swallowing half of Missouri! There's an electron-creature wire-walking across the St. Louis power grid! There's a black hole on the ground, swirling and sucking in buildings and monuments!
And Judd Nelson!
Must be Sci Fi Channel, land of incredibly bad one-shot horror and science fiction films!
Actually, I like Sci Fi channel. They carried Farscape, they continue with Stargate Atlantis, and they brought Battlestar Gallactica back to luxurious life. They're running Lost reruns for four hours a clip on Monday nights.
And every October, Sci Fi does a 31 Days of Halloween thing that brings gems like Black Hole to the air.
There's a fine art in appreciating bad movies.
I'm glad Sci Fi lets us indulge.