Friday, February 26, 2010

MST3K


Recently Kyle and I have taken to watching MST3K (or Mystery Science Theater 3000) in our spare time...what a neat find! For those of you who don't know, MST3K is a series that features a man (named Joel or Mike, depending on the season) and his robot sidekicks (Crow T. Robot and Tom Servo) who are trapped on a space station by evil scientists and tortured by being forced to watch a selection of bad movies, initially (but not especially limited to) science fiction B-movies. To keep sane, the man and his robots provide a running commentary on each film, making fun of its flaws and wisecracking their way through each reel in the style of a movie-theater peanut gallery. Each film is presented with the man and robots' silhouettes along the bottom of the screen.

Have I mentioned that the episodes are hilarious? We began by watching Cave Dwellers, a movie made in 1984 that borrowed props from other movies and had major continuity errors. I think it was supposed to take place in prehistoric times, but there were medieval castles, samurai swords, and hang gliders involved as well..
.fishy. Also, the villain's mustache was dreadfully fake, the lead woman wore a hubcap on her shirt, and the actors like to talk directly to the camera sometimes. There was no plot to speak of. We had a good time watching that one.


The next episode we watched was Santa Claus Conquers the Martians, which, unfortunately, is a movie my family owns in real life. This movie at least had a plot! Mars children are unhappy and watching Earth programs all the time and in the Mars' month of Septober ("Oh man...have I missed Septober Fest?"), an equivalent of Earth's December, Mars' old wise man tells the Martians that children need to be children again...and they need Santa Claus. So the Martians go to Earth, kidnap Santa Claus (by holding him up with something that looks like a hairdryer) and two stowaway children named Billy and Betty, bringing them to Mars. After they're there, they have to deal with one of the Martians trying to re-kidnap Santa Claus and get rid of him as well as trying to make toys for all the little Martian children. In the end, it doesn't work out well, so Santa appoints the laziest (and most intellectually challenged) man on Mars to be the Mars Santa Claus while he and the children return to Earth. It's probably got the cheesiest looking Martians. Ever. And we're all pretty convinced that Santa's not sober at all during this movie. It's labeled one of the worst 100 movies of all time.


And then of course after Santa Claus, we watched this awwwwful movie called Werewolf. Basically the plot of this one is that some archaeologists are digging around Flagstaff and they find a werewolf skeleton. And one of the archaeologists (whose hair style keeps changing in every scene) decides he just wants to make more werewolves so he can make money (which I don't know how he's connected that, but somehow it's supposed to work out), so he cuts people with the bones of the skeleton, and they turn into wrrrrrrrwolves! And eventually the whole town is wrrrrwolves! Check out the clip for yourself:

Sunday, February 21, 2010

Area Rugs, PS3s, and Paintings.

So we've finally started decorating our home, and I couldn't be happier...I feel like finally we're not JUST some college kids who are so poor that, while we can live in a house that we could afford (somehow) to remodel, we still can't afford to match our furniture. Wrong! We now have area rugs, and they look great in the living room! We also finally began hanging stuff up on the walls (pictures, our giant clock, and other home decor) and now some of our rooms have themes. I can't believe it! It makes me feel like this is a giant step toward the direction of permanency (maybe not necessarily the house, but the fact that Kyle and I are living together permanently) as opposed to just throwing things here for now and there for a little bit...

...I feel like a legit grown-up who owns their own Target area rugs.

And so maybe we splurged a little bit on them, but they're perfect for our living room, and Kyle and I are both proud of them. We're both getting used to the idea of building a home together, and it's just wonderful. Right now we're taking care of some of the bare places in on our living room walls--Kyle's painting a real-life painting to hang on the wall! I don't know exactly where I want to put it yet, but I'm pretty happy about the fact that he can generate home decor on his own--maybe I'll put him to work doing that for a few weeks and our house can look completely decorated!

On a side note, I've caved on allowing him to get a Playstation 3. He'll use the money deposited in his account next month and the birthday gift cards from his parents to pay for it, and then he'll finally quit asking me for it! Plus, we'll have a blu-ray player, which could be interesting...

All in all...good weekend!

Tuesday, February 16, 2010

No punch-backs!

So life's been a little bit tricky for Kyle and me lately and I've not had any time to update our blog! Yikes! It's crazy how quickly time can get away from you. Today I've decided to take a mental health day (which is code for skipping the rest of my classes) and catch up on homework that I should have had done already before I go to work! It seems like a fantastic idea to me. I've been pretty bogged down lately in class after class, workday after workday, meeting after meeting, and I think God gave me this day to take it off. I have a headache, but a very sunny outlook for the rest of the day. Hurray!

Kyle, however, has decided to be dutiful and finish going to class today...he has three more to go and I've offered to at least take a break from reading to drive him to his Honors class so he doesn't have to tromp in the snow. What kind of a wife would I be if I didn't offer? Answer: a bad one. And I can't be a bad one, because he's mentioned me in the memoir assignment that he has for his non-fiction class, and I think he's put me in a positive light. So I can't fail now!

On the bright side, I'd like to post some videos that I came across the other day (and by that I mean I came home from work and Kyle was screaming from the other room "You gotta come here and watch this!"). They're commercials about VWs and the slugging game. So here's some backstory as to why this is important:

I love to punch people--playfully, of course. The more I like you, the harder I punch! And I'd always play the slugging game with Kyle when I saw a beetle (I can't tell the other VWs because I'm not very good with cars--but beetles are DEFINITELY distinguishable, so there's generally no problem there!) and eventually he'd complain because I'd hit him too much. Naturally, because he was awful at the game. His eyes were not speedy enough to catch the beetles as they slunk along the road. So he made me stop hitting him and called an ultimate end to our game. Shoot!

But of course, this doesn't stop me from hitting others! So on the way back from my Michigan bridal shower, I began to play with Kelsey (I mean, I didn't announce it or anything, just began slugging) and we have had a wonderful ongoing game since August. She's getting better, and I'm getting older and slower. The downside is that since Kyle won't let me play with him, I'm not used to looking for them anymore! So she does have that advantage on me. So when I saw these videos, I immediately thought of the game. Do you play?

Here's the first one Kyle showed me:



Which led to these interesting videos of the guy who made up the game (I included all of them because there are actually rules to the game that are pretty interesting haha):







Happy punching!