kpduty

Wait, Nelson? That 80s hair band? NO, ASS. MICHAEL J. NELSON. Trapped on the Satellite of Love. With the robots. Mystery Science Theater 3000? Just THE GREATEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER, EVEN MORE THAN THE X-FILES AND POSSIBLY HOUSE, BUT HOUSE HAS ONLY BEEN ON ONE SEASON SO IT COULD GET EVEN BETTER LIKE WHEN THEY HAVE THAT EPISODE WHERE HUGH LAURIE IS NAKED THROUGH THE WHOLE THING.

Close your eyes, Dear Reader, and let me take you back, back in time to 1993...Big K Kollege on Top of the Hill, where the men were men and the women wore patchouli. Well, the guys wore it too, but I digress. Friends of Kelmeister weren't exactly the most, shall we say, studious? We got our shit done, but it was a trial. Take for example, MST3K. Every weeknight, midnight. Comedy Central. All work stopped. No matter how many papers you had to do, how many exams you had the next day, everyone gathered around the TV as though it were the middle of a blizzard and Manos: The Hands of Fate was a roaring fire. And considering it was the Big K Kollege on Top of the Hill, that's pretty much the God's honest truth about the situation. Because winters sucked ass. K KOLLEGE IS A WALKING CAMPUS. Anyway, many an evening was spent laughing along with Mike and Tom and Crow, and sometimes Joel. And when it wasn't on TV, we'd recite snappy dialogue amongst ourselves like we were Hailing Mary. I even used this pithy exchange as my senior quote...

Joel: Okay, and what do you want for Christmas, Crow?
Crow: I want the power to decide who lives and who dies!
Joel: Oh, I don't know about that.

I still giggle when I read that. Hey, it was either that, or a quote from Kundera's The Farewell Party, or Faulkner's Light in August. I didn't want to seem too high brow.

Winter Break of 94, I stayed on campus. I had somehow managed to commandeer the dorm's TV/VCR combo, and I began what would become a dangerous trend: I would fall asleep watching tapes of MST3K.

So here it is, over ten years later. The Husband can attest to the fact that I've become somewhat of a chronic insomniac. It could be because of the massive amounts of Prozac I consume. It could be all the tea I drink. Most likely it's all the naps I take during the day...the heart of the matter is that I have a very difficult time getting to sleep at night. If I've got bad allergies I'll take a Benadryl and off to Sleepy Land I go. If it's been a few days and I've not slept at all to the point that my driving is impaired and I scrape the side of the car on a pole at the drive-up ATM, I'll take a Unisom. In every case, drugs or no drugs, I have to have MST3K playing in the background or I still can't get to sleep. I don't know if it's the flickering light from the TV, or the warm dulcet tones of Mike and the Bots bantering back and forth, but it always works like a charm. The Jack Frost episode is the best, followed by The Day the Earth Froze and the Magic Voyage of Sinbad. Also Time Chasers is really awesome. Pod People is my favorite episode to watch when not trying to go to sleep.

So anyway, this morning The Husband and I were getting ready to go to work when The Husband realized he'd forgotten to get his Important Paperwork. I waited in the car listening to NPR (Yes, I listen to NPR, fuck you.). And who is the hometown reporter interviewing but MICHAEL J. NELSON from MST3K!!! He's in town!! And performing live!!! And we missed the first performance but they've added a second show!!! I'M SO FUCKING GOING!!!

I called The Husband after I got to work to see if he'd want to go. Tickets are $30. THIRTY DOLLARS he says. Well, we could get the super special reserved seats for $300, and that includes a bottle of champagne and a picture with MIKE NELSON. We don't drink, The Husband reminds me. It's a picture with MIKE NELSON I stress, in case he missed it the first time. You didn't spend $300 to see Duran Duran even though you could, he reminds me. Yeah, I say, but we'll get our picture with MIKE NELSON. So, The Husband opts for the only true action available to him, which is to sigh and say "whatever." So I got three tickets, in case The Brother, who also Bows at the Altar of MIKE NELSON, would want to go. But he didn't so The Mother went instead.

So MIKE NELSON appeared with Shadowbox Cabaret at Easton. They performed a MIKE NELSON original, and at the end of the show he sang a song about me, called Sci Fi Girl, in which he compared my eyes to Agent Scully's which was CRAZY because X-files was like my all-time favorite show when I still had enough disposable income to waste on David Duchovny magazines. As you well know. MIKE NELSON also appeared in other sketches; one of which that he wasn't in was this awesome parody of the Maury Povich show, which is my Favorite Show of All Time, but only when they're doing the paternity test shows or the lie detector shows, because the shows where they have you guess if it's a man or a woman and the ones where the sexy secret crushes are revealed are really boring.

After the show we got a free poster to have autographed by MIKE NELSON, even though we didn't pay the $300 admission, which was awesome. The Mother had hers autographed for The Brother, and The Husband had his autographed for His Co-Worker Who Also Likes MST3K. I was all atwitter. I couldn't think of anything to say. I wanted to tell MIKE NELSON that I loved him, that The Best Friend and I had fantasized on dark stormy nights at K Kollege that we'd drive to Minnesota and apply to be interns with Best Brains, Inc., and they would love us and make us interns and then they'd realize how insane we were with the pop culture knowledge and we'd get writing jobs on the show and then eventually we'd be on TV and it would be the GREATEST JOB EVER. Because we'd be working with Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo and Gypsy, and they're like my imaginary best friends even though they're puppets. Or what about that time I had really incredibly bad food poisoning at school, and I was projectile vomiting, and I thought I was dying, but I didn't have the TV/VCR combo in my room so I couldn't watch my tapes, and in my delirium I called home and told my mom I wanted to watch TV because MST3K always made me feel better and she and my dad came to school to take me to the emergency but I totally never got to watch MST3K? Or how much The Husband hates having to put up with me falling asleep to the Sci Fi Channel years of the show, because when I taped them I would change the channels during the commercials, so it's like getting a view into my twisted psyche but at the same time it's really fucking annoying because you're watching a tape and you still have to suffer through me fucking with the remote?

But now. This is how the exchange went:

Me: Duh, uhh. Ummm, ah *Shoves poster at MIKE NELSON* Can I shake your hand? *Shakes hand (MIKE NELSON'S hand was sweaty with a firm grip)* Uh, I can't think of anything witty to say.

MIKE NELSON *impressed, points at me*: THAT was really good!!!

Me: Duh, uhh, ummm, ah. I wanted to tell you that I have chronic insomnia, and the only thing I can fall asleep to is MST3K.

MIKE NELSON: You're kidding?

Me: No, seriously, I have the 93 Turkey Day on tape, and I have to put it on a loop to play or else I can't get to sleep. Jack Frost is my favorite to fall asleep to.

MIKE NELSON: You've got to be kidding.

Me: No, really. Uhh, umm *shaking like a leaf, walks off*

So that was my meeting with MIKE NELSON. The Mother later said it looked like I'd made his night, and wondered why I just didn't take tea with him considering how long I was up there. The Husband teased me for tearing up. But it's been a long time since I've met anyone famous, ie someone on TV who makes shitloads more than me and whom people recognize on the street. I can't even remember the last famous person I met. Did I meet Nick Hornby? I don't think I did. I'm usually to scared to talk to them.

God, you know I'm totally like that Saturday Night Live skit with Chris Farley (God Bless Him) where he'd interview famous people and all the questions would be like, "Um, Mr. DeNiro, you remember in that movie TAXI DRIVER, where you were like, 'are you looking at me? are you looking at me?' That was awesome."

Although I did force my way back to meet Warren Zevon (God Bless Him) way back in the day. I was totally in love with this Asshole who was in love with Warren Zevon, so we went to see Zevon and Asshole was totally all over my friend the whole time at the show. And I promised the Asshole that I could get him back to meet Zevon and I did. And then I went to say hi to Zevon and I said, "Mr. Zevon, I've only been a fan of yours for like three months, but I think you're really awesome." And Zevon said, "Three months is a really long time."

And it is.

So it's now Midnight. I'm going to go wash my hand because unfortunately OCD trumps MIKE NELSON every time. I can hear The Husband snoring. So I'm off to bed.

No tapes for me tonight; I'll just replay the real thing in my head.