New Waver’s Weblog

One of the unforeseen benefits of having to do thesis edits is that I have the opportunity and motivation to watch MST3K episodes on YouTube— not that I don’t have the opportunity and motivation anyway, just that watching MST3K episodes is sort of a study ritual with me that I’m glad to revive. Normally I’m annoyed at YouTube’s policy of only allowing 10 minute clips of things, but in this case it works out pretty well. Whenever I get a bit of reading or writing done I watch a 10 minute segment or two before continuing. In the course of just one B-movie I can get a surprising amount of work accomplished.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will say I’m primarily a Mike fan. That’s not a dig at Joel, it’s just due to the fact that I only started watching MST3K in season 6 or 7, when Joel had left the Satellite of Love for greener pastures, where, presumably, he wasn’t forced by mad scientists to watch low-budget horror films. Because of that, Mike’s the host I’m most familiar with. I have been getting more into the Joel-era episodes (The Pod People and Mitchell being particular favorites of mine), but I still have a lot of catching up to do.

I like MST3K because it’s a constant barrage of pop culture references, some high brow, some low, but all very cleverly done. If I’m lucky I’ll get most of the references in an episode, but usually not, which means I have to go and look a lot of things up. Obviously, that’s fine by me.

Anyway, today I finished watching that Italian B-Classico, Puma Man, starring Donald ‘So Basically He’s an Old Baby’ Pleasence as a pudgy, balding supervillian clad in castoffs from a SoHo S&M dungeon. There’s an Aztec, something about alien gods and a gold mask with a microprocessor in it, and a super hero wearing khaki slacks. Randomly, at the end of the episode in a host segment, Roger Whittaker shows up. It’s actuallly Kevin Murphy (the voice of Tom Servo) doing an impression, but I was intrigued. Since I’m not much of a mellow folkster I’m not really familiar with ‘mellow folk sensation’ Roger Whittaker’s work. So I googled it and thought I’d share with you, so you could have a fuller appreciation of the Roger Whittaker MST3K sketch. You’re welcome.

The sketch starts at around 2:30 in this clip:

And for comparison, here’s the real Roger Whittaker (who has a lovely, honeyed voice I have to say) singing ‘I Don’t Believe in ‘If’ Any More’:

Dig those trumpets! And that facial hair! All in all I can’t say this will convert me entirely over to the mellow folkster side, but I have been humming this tune all day long— so maybe it will, actually. Well played, Roger Whittaker. And well played to you, too, Mike and the ‘bots.