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.

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."

(S01E03) "I'm making my own medication in the lab." -- Walter Bishop

We've passed through the third episode of Fringe tonight, and I'm still grooving on the show. What I love best about it isn't the X-Files-type storylines -- as some of you have said, it's pretty much all been done before. But I love the characters, especially the talented John Noble. It will take a while for me to not see the image of Denethor, ravaging through a buffet of food in the King's Hall in Gondor, while Pippin the hobbit sings his lonesome song in the background. It's a really vivid image, and not one easily replaced!