Nevertheless, Slashdot, Ain’t It Cool News, and doubtless thousands of other blogs are blowing up about it, and nobody’s asking any questions. Just fawning, ejaculatory cheerings-on.

The first thing you notice is how POORLY the page is designed. You even see a <meta name=“author” content=“John Stotler” /> in the source, that the domain is hosted at GoDaddy, and is registered through a privacy proxy. Okay, fine, so these people have hired an amateur designer. It’s possible.

But the announcement just resembles too closely every MST3K fan’s wet dream. They’re an easy target for a prank like this. They’ve been chanting Joel’s name continually for over ten years now, begging for him to come back. Pulling one over on people demonstrating such obnoxious behavior would be funny. What if it even made it on Slashdot? Or Wikipedia???

Besides the fact that it would be weird for all five of these people to be simultaneously inspired to beat that dead horse, Joel left the show because he wanted to distance himself from it. In a press release from 1993 he said,

It’s time for me to hang up my red jump suit and move behind the camera. Besides, there’s an old show business adage I once heard Adam West say: “Stay in the same costume and before you know it, you end up signing pictures at an R.V. show.” Maybe it was Clayton Moore, now that I think of it.

I want to become a behind-the-camera guy. I want to get on to the NEXT weird show. I want to be an idea man.

The new site itself is ugly, yes, but more than that, it’s very un-Joel-like through and through. Joel’s a smart, creative, funny guy. Would he really put his name behind such a stale, meaningless name as “Cinematic Titanic”? With this logo?:

Would he really say, “Our first release is at this time a total secret, however – I’m willing to say it makes ‘Manos the Hands of Fate’ look like ‘Santa Claus Conquers the Martians’ in a car wreck with ‘Eegah!’”? These are the words of a fan, naming his favorite episodes, not the words of a guy who wanted to move on with his life, fourteen years ago.

The site also reads, “I’ve just been interviewed by Lucasfilm online, in anticipation of Cinematic Titanic’s first live show and world premiere in San Francisco in December.” Lucasfilm online? Why haven’t they been talking about this? Wouldn’t an exclusive, rare interview with Joel Hodgson about his new project be something you might want to mention? Where in San Francisco is this premier? Why haven’t I gotten a confirmation email for signing up for the mailing list?

Today, reminded of DAP by this comment at Lifehacker, and aided by a search on Demonoid.com, I was led to this page at The Pirate Bay, with links to torrents for every known available episode, all high-quality and all fairly well-seeded.

When a KTMA-era mini-marathon was scheduled last weekend, I knew I had to “tape” it. I probably could have guessed that these episodes are readily available via various p2p outlets, but I also would have guessed (rightly) that the files are kept extremely large for the sake of quality. Ideally I wanted to save video from the stream in very low quality; nearly all of an MST3K episode is silhouettes and bad movies anyway, so this could hardly be considered “compromise.”

The only program I’d heard of that might be capable of capturing streaming video was StreamBox VCR, but from what I’d gathered it was riddled with legal issues and bugs. I’ve also had terrible luck with video software in general, so I wasn’t hopeful. But I quickly stumbled upon Net Transport, “a faster, exciting, and the most powerful downloading tool that you ever saw [sic, sic, sic],” lightweight and with no nags or spyware. I was amazed when within a few minutes I was recording KTMA episode 5 in ShoutCast’s 128kbps, meg-a-minute .nsv format.

Recording is still kind of a pain — it’s very manual so I inevitably lose a few seconds at the beginning of each episode if there’s a quick turn-around; I can’t know exactly when a particular episode will start, so scheduling is out of the question; memory shortages have broken the stream once or twice; and the support lifespan and editing capabilities of the .nsv format are both questionable.

When I’m not frantically configuring a recording session, I’m learning a lot about the show I ditched bitterly after Joel left, cursing my mom for taping over my Turkey Day collection, shaming the ungrateful 14-year-old who took the show so for granted, and trying to relive all the endearment and wonder that surrounded the show and its fans. I found out that the MST3K Info Club still kind of exists, and I finally became a member, for whatever that’s worth. Best Brains put out a “Scrapbook Tape” in 1995 that boasts the most in-depth look at the show ever composed. And in the first episode of the tenth season, when cancellation had been made official, Joel briefly returned to the SoL:

Eerie.

Some more links:

• The MST3K Reference Guide: Useful site includes photo gallery, articles, episode guides, etc. Great place to find images from the KTMA episodes if you’ve never seen them.
• The Almost But Not Quite Complete History of MST3K: Very, very, very thorough.
• MST3K DAP: the Digital Archive Project keeps non-Rhino-releases in digital circulation, at about 700 megs an episode for easy storage.

I still don’t get why Firefox is better and more popular than Mozilla ever was, but okay, I’ll play along. Especially given these enhancements:

• Cookie Button: one of the best features of Mozilla that inexplicably didn’t make it to Firefox.
• Flashblock: Only see Flash when you want to! This is a miracle.

Finally found a video player to be happy with: Media Player Classic. It’s also bundled with Real Alternative, which allows you to play Real format files without relying on the nightmarish RealOne player. This week I also discovered Net Transport, which does the best (i.e., quickest, easiest, and most free) job of saving streaming video I’ve seen so far. And finally, MST3K is still kicking: there’s this gigantic reference site, the still-existent info club, and a legally ambiguous ShoutCast video stream. Shhhhhhhh.