...is the core of its own pocket paradigm of popular culture and as such no less than a microcosm of all things kitschy and cool. It is On the Road...with robots. And The Naked Lunch with clothes on. Its devotees revel at the most arcane of sub-references and are far less predisposed to stress than, say, your average air traffic controller.  But then we also thrive upon Joe Don Baker movies and harbor the notion that Nicholas Cage's success owes less to that star's relation to Francis Ford Coppolla than to his weird resemblance to Dennis Ray Steckler.

As to the origin of this mixed-media phenomenon, one must consider its very title. Mystery Science Theater 3000. Those attempting to uncover the facts regarding the show's true beginnings soon find themselves seeped in the mystery of an intricately woven web of myth, misdirection, disinformation and plausible denial.

Among the most diligent students of its history, it is generally accepted that the program was originally created by Orson Welles in 1938 and covertly funded by William Randolph Hearst who was presented with the pilot episode the following year in a private televised broadcast at the New York World's Fair. It was there the publisher, in thrall of General Electric Company's "Electro the Mechanical Man" exhibit, suggested to the wunderkind that his—Welles'—silhouetted on-screen sidekicks, Ray Collins and George Colouris, be replaced with "cute little robots."

But what of the well-known public mutual animosity of the thespian and the media magnate? Upon close scrutiny this can be clearly seen as an artfully crafted deception put into place to mask their bizarre collaboration. No documentation yet found can substantiate this but based upon information said to be gathered from sources close to Welles himself, the show's creation was the result of a chilling three-word challenge from the notoriously humorless Hearst: "Make me laugh."

By all accounts, the Mercury Theater players' ripping sendup of Georges Méliès' 1902 classic Le Voyage dans la lune did just that to a theretofore unseen degree. Subsequent episodes—twelve all totalled—were commissioned for the sole amusement of the man who engineered the Spanish-American War and were produced annually up until the time of his death in 1951. Kinescopes of all save one were hidden at San Simeon and have yet to be uncovered. The thirteenth, having reportedly changed hands many times since its separation from the others around 1948, was last tracked to one Nels Mikkolsson of Kenosha, Wisconsin. But of its most recent whereabouts and custodianship, there can be very little doubt except in the minds of the most hardened skeptics.

Poppycock? Balderdash? Or quite simply a story just too strange to be false? In an effort to debunk the persistent notion that this revered award-winning series was actually the brainchild of an eccentric comedy stylist and some maverick local-television dabblers plying their respective trades somewhere in the Midwest sometime around the late 1980's, we hope to soon present an exhaustive essay exploring and conclusively supporting a theory of conspiracy so thickly veiled in controversy...no mention of it can be found in any—not one—print resource today.

While still in re-runs on The Sci-Fi Channel you'll find weekly experiments of the SF cult-classic variety such as The Revenge of the Creature, The Mole People and I Was a Teenage Werewolf ("Got milk? Throw it!"). And for the stout-hearted only...plenty of  Ben Murphy, Martin Sheen's brother and that guy with the big face!

The Official Mystery Science Theater 3000 Site  is rife with the kind of neat highly-polished material  one would expect from a big-time basic cable outfit.

It's the official online offspring of BBI's infamous long-running newsletter of  the same name!

The B-Movie Channel (MST3K2K?)
 A tantalizing prospect.  Hook up to BMC's mailing list to stay abreast of  news
 about the channel's negotiations with the Brains and the shape of MST-Future.

          TimmyBigHands.com
Live hard, love fast and leave 'em laughing in your wake. For one brief shining moment (about a year in cybertime) various and sundry Brains under the expert mind-control of  Michael J. Nelson did that thing they did to the Web and its schlockier components with all the Midwesternly aplomb of Lum & Abner explaining the implications of the Iron Empire conundrum as manifested in The Matrix.  So hit the place for as long as it's around and put your big hands together for them one last time. An actual humorous online humor magazine is a terrible thing to waste! For latecomers: Mr. Nelson's brilliant book, Mike Nelson's Mind Over Matters, offers a glimpse of what you missed in the form of observational vignettes from the Antikafka. Mike's partner-in-publishing-crime, Kevin Murphy likewise delivers the goods with A Year at the Movies: One Man's Filmgoing Odyssey.   Die, Corky Romano, die! Sure, they're bigtime jet-setting auteurs and all. But a 2003 Atlanta book-signing by the two—smack in the middle of a Dragoncon weekend, no less—proved them to be superlatively stand-up guys in every possible respect. Do catch them if you can.