Mystery Science Theater 3000 (aka MST3K) was something I started watching when I was in college, forever ago. For anyone who has never come to appreciate or even seen MST3K, I'm literally weeping for you. It's hilarious. The gist of it is this guy who was a janitor is selected by scientists to be sent into space. Then the mad scientists perform this experiment on him just to see how much he can take before he cracks. They make him sit with these robot friends (that the janitor built) and watch horrible movies. In order for him to endure these movies he and his friends make witty/super sarcastic comments the entire time. This is the place I picked up rare phrases like "the elusive male camel toe" and I honestly believe it was a big part of what prompted my rapid slide into a long life of sarcasm.
Okay, so what could one show, with so little redeeming value possibly teach anyone?
1. You have to be able to think on your feet. You can't walk around with your every thought and comment mapped out on a power point presentation. Hello?? Life will happen and screw up your whole master plan. You have to be able to process things fast. MST3K taught me this, because that one guy and his robots were coming up with comments pretty fast. Sure they were probably well scripted, but I'm just going to ignore that fact.
2. Quick wit is not something that a humorous person can be without. I've met a lot of people that took a long time to get a joke, and/or rarely had a comeback. If you are lacking in the area of wit, I highly recommend at least learning to appreciate it in others. If you are doing something that is causing your wit to run slow, please please please get a tune up. Nothing worse than a day that just drags by with witty remarks that enter your brain too late and thus are wasted.
3. You have to continue to learn. Okay, I might be stretching a little bit here, but humor me on this one. So, if you have a running commentary about a movie and one of the most "prominent" parts of the movie is the main character's seemingly painted on pants, you are going to have to come up with new ways to describe the nut hugging jeans or else your audience will get bored. Expand that vocabulary!! You don't have to use big words that no one has ever heard of to sound intelligent, but you do need to use a variety or else you start sounding like a toddler. Also, I don't believe you can ever know too much. The moment you stop learning, you stop growing.
4. If you are stuck in a crappy place where you don't want to be and no way to change your situation, you might as well make the best of it. Hello!! Here was a guy who just wanted to mop the floors at the mad scientists' factory, and instead he was sent into space to watch horrible movies!! He found that he could joke around about how bad the movies were. So can't we all try to find the good in our situations too?
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