TVSquad

You may not have gotten the day off for this momentous day in American history (damn you, socialist government!), but today marks a very special anniversary: the first ever episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

The show officially hit the airwaves on a local Minneapolis station, KTMA, on Thanksgiving Day in 1988 by a young, fresh-faced Joel Hodgson. The rest, as people who rely on cheap cliches to heighten the dramatic effect with their weak words, is history. You can read the rest at the Satellite News site, the most exhaustive and interesting MST3K site on the Internet.

Every fan of the show and even occasional glancers remembers where they were when they first discovered this kind of cult comedy classics. For me, I discovered it with my old man who hates it when I call him my old man during the hilarious Pod People episode, arguably the funniest episode for the show and the worst movie the show has ever skewered.

Somehow, those little bite-sized Snickers and Milky Ways you got as Halloween Trick or Treat candy always seemed to taste better than the bigger ones you can snag in any store.

That's kind of the effect you get from watching a new pair of laugh-out-loud Shorts DVDs from Rifftrax -- Wide World of Shorts and Shorts-Tacular Shorts-Stravaganza.

The commentary of Mystery Science Theater 3000 alums Michael J. Nelson, Bill Corbett and Kevin Murphy can usually make any movie funny. But, the riffs you buy off their website for major feature films can sometimes come with a cost.

For example, the problem with buying the riffs for Twilight or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen is you then have to sit there and watch Twilight or Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. That's a razor's edge trade-off for a few laughs.

Rifftrax, the Mystery Science Theater 3000 descendant written and performed by Michael J. Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, is taking its show live to the nation's movie theaters on August 20.

In a move sure to draw desperate MST3K fans from out of their parents' basements (this reporter among them -- though my folks' old house only has a washer/dryer downstairs), Fathom Events will present the Rifftrax trio live in theaters via vid-cast up on the big screen.

They'll take on Ed Wood's classically inept Plan 9 from Outer Space, a movie they've wrestled with on DVD and in past live shows.

It seems no movie is safe from Kevin Murphy and his former Mystery Science Theater 3000 comrades as they mock flicks full-time for Rifftrax.

Murphy, RiffTrax writer/commentator and forever Tom Servo on the Satellite of Love of the original movie-mocking show famous for tackling B-movies, regularly joins fellow MST3K alums Bill Corbett and Michael J. Nelson to record a series of commentaries on classic and significantly less than classic flicks. Their targets range from The Happening and Twilight to Raiders of the Lost Ark and Star Wars - all available for $4.

The site just released perhaps the most challenging riff, deliberately taking on what many people consider the greatest film of all time, Casablanca.

Many movie fans -- even those who enjoy Rifftrax -- object to mockery of such iconic work, but Murphy points to the sites' motto: "We don't make movies. We make them funny."