Here, is your jonah ray

Mystery Scribble Theater Monday #16 - Problem Solving

Being a robot, Crow doesn’t quite understand how people work, especially this newest one.

Doing the right thing is important. Helping others in some way should just come naturally to everyone.

Fun Artist Fact: I drew the roughs for this in the airport, while waiting for my flight out for vacation. I’m honestly surprised at how good it looks finished. XD

I was lucky enough to be on two episodes of The Larry Sanders Show. I remember filming a take then Garry walked over. He had a performance note for me. He didn’t preface it with “this is what I want you to do.“ He prefaced it with “only try this if you think it’s funny.” I was floored. I barely had any acting experience and couldn’t believe he trusted me that much. I realized this is what made him the real deal. 

Sometime after filming the episodes I planned a trip back to LA. I think Sarah Silverman told him I was coming. Before I left there was a message on my answering machine: “Todd, it’s Garry Shandling. I heard you were coming to LA. Want to stop by the set? I think you should.”

So I went to Garry’s office and hung out for hours. I told him about my girlfriend at the time. After rattling off a list of her good qualities, he said “she sounds great.”

There was pause.

“Do you want to call her?’ I asked.

He smiled. “I was just about to ask.”

So here we are, two hundred feature films riffed. Haven’t counted the shorts, but man. Our nine-year anniversary and our seventeenth live show are coming up.

I mentioned in our last live show that we’ve now riffed more features than we did on Mystery Science Theater 3000. This is in no way meant to diminish the wonderfulness of MST3K or my time with it - on the contrary, it’s meant to honor it. It’s humbling, because MST was such a part of my life for so long, and still is in a lot of ways. I was involved with every single episode of the show, from pilot to finale. It comes up one way or another every day. It’s in my blood. And Hell, my blood is in it -  if you bought a piece of the set when we finished, you may very well have a drop or two of my blood on your chunk.

It’s humbling because I’m still riffing, two decades along. I love to see MSTie parents come to our shows with their kids,carrying home-built ‘bots and wearing Tommy Wiseau shirts. As MST is in my blood, so is Rifftrax. I guess riffing is in my DNA. It’s humbling, sure, and baffling, and joyful and life-giving.

So I find myself at this strange milestone overflowing with gratitude for my opportunities, for all the talented souls I have and continue to work with, but mostly I’m grateful for you, the people who watch, who laugh, who share, who reach out to me to say thank you, or even to say “Hey, I think you can do better.”

And whether you prefer MST to Rifftrax or Joel to Mike or Picard to Kirk or Gary Busey to Nick Nolte, whether you like all of it or some of it or none of it, it’s your preference and your preference is always totally cool. I’m immensely proud and thankful for it all, and it’s wonderful to me that you have liked, and continue to like, what it is we do.

So thanks, from deep within my heart, for allowing me to say funny things to bad movies for your entertainment.  Stick around because we have a helluva lot of fun stuff coming. And I hope you enjoy our latest release, Julie and Jack, which features a woman trapped in a virtual reality program and the marble-mouthed computer chip salesman who loves him.  

See, the great thing about my job?  We’ll never run short of supply.