Here is someone's response to me after they comment that they HATE Larry and I ask them if they like Tom Servo (one of the robots on Mystery Science Theater 3000). Larry is one of the mad scientists. Tom Servo declaring he's going to go Fuck Himself on local tv! - youtube vid
That's an out-take from episode 103 "Mad Monster" (just over 17 minutes in).
When Kevin Murphy began voicing Tom Servo, he got a huge banner in the mail that read "SERVO'S NEW VOICE SUCKS!" (or something similar). He was impressed that people actually cared about the show enough to take the time to make a banner, so he hung it up in his office.
He differentiated Dr. Laurence Erhardt and Tom Servo by using a squeaky, high pitched voice as Erhardt and a deep voice as Servo.
ha! back then the servo change pissed me off more than the switch to mike later would.ok good to hear. Larry is a character acted by the same person who acts Tom Servo. haha. Josh Weinstein. He started at 17 years old. He insisted on ad-libbing even after they wrote a script for the movie. So he was forced out at age 18. Also they probably didn't want to pay him as much or something. thanks (YES Josh confirms that he was only paid $200 a show for Comedy Central national channel and Jim Mallon insisted on keeping Josh as only an Intern!! He dropped out of the University after a year to do MST3K)
That's so hard to believe!Yep the person HATES Larry but LOVES Tom Servo... Or do they?
In the sixth KTMA episode, Tom Servo gets his new "mighty voice." What was the thinking behind that? Was Josh just sick of the voice he was using? Did it have anything to do with preparing the way for the arrival of Dr. Erhardt in the next episode?
Josh: I just didn't like the first voice I was doing. It was too hard to be expressive with and it kinda hurt to do. I had asked if I could change it and was pitching alternatives to Joel. One was: "How about the FM MIGHTY VOICE, THIS IS TOM SERVO, COMING TO YOU ON THE BIG Q105" Joel laughed and especially liked him giving himself the first name Tom. Servo's voice change didn't have anything to do with Erhardt, but I chose Ehrhardt's voice to sound different from Tom Servo.
Joel: It’s true, Josh wasn’t exactly satisfied with Servo’s voice, if you remember it sort of shifted from originally being a sort of an excited PeeWee Herman voice, to a Martin the Martian voice, and I think one day Josh just nailed it. Actually the character of Tom Servo is completely a fabrication of Josh’s, except for of course the way the robot looks, and the original name “Servo”. The mighty voice and the verbose know-it-all character of Tom Servo sort of crystallized that day. Josh also came up with the first name of “Tom”, he said he visualized it as a the way a top forty dj would give himself a nickname with “Tom” in quotation marks. Fortunately it worked because if fit Josh’s range so well (and later Kevin’s) and would become a great counterpoint to what Trace was getting going with Crow as a sort of naive character.
So then I send them the video that is an old news story covering Josh - when MST3K first premiered.
1989 - Josh is the same age as me. So he was going to U of MN and I was still finishing high school.
Actually Fall of 1989 I was at Hampshire College. And as that news story mentions Josh skipping 2nd grade.... Josh Weinstein born:
in Hennepin County, Minnesota, USA
So he was the first Servo. I like the one we have now, not him. I still don't like him.Ah - now we find out that she no longer LOVES Servo - now she doesn't like him.
Why? Because she HATES Larry and Josh is also Larry - so her LOVE of Servo has intermingled with her Hatred of Larry - thereby retroactivately causing her to NOT LIKE Servo....
Joel has said that regular riffing on the movies was a result of Trace and Josh's comedic talents. This also led to some changes to the bots. Most notably the inarticulate Beeper was replaced by Servo allowing Josh to have a larger speaking role."yeah I just noticed Josh co-wrote the theme song lyrics also. Josh wasn't just the first Servo - on the contrary, Servo was created BECAUSE of Josh. haha. http://www.mst3ktemple.com/prehistory.html
So now what is the person going to say?
Larry is an unfunny, androgynous looking, excuse for a man, with a voice like nails on a chalkboard. I don't care how talented they claim Josh was. The sight of Larry makes my blood boil and I'm glad they got rid of him. I think I've seen most of the episodes here on YouTube and I took the time to go through them methodically, just to find the ones where he disappeared. I cant remember exactly which episode was his last, but I knew back then and I avoided all of his.So now we find out WHY she HATES Larry so much - this is very much a visceral - "to the bones" reaction.
So then I respond:
I think maybe the New Moon is getting to you. yes Josh named Servo "Tom" because Josh was mimicking an FM radio DJ. So that's why Tom had the deep male voice while Larry has the annoying falsetto puberty voice. haha. I'm a male yet my voice also still changes based on numerous factors - because I do energy healing. So I sometimes take in energy that makes my voice super lower. Sometimes I send out energy that makes my voice super high. haha. And when we are in deep dreamless sleep then none of us have a voice - not even an inner voice in our brains.
😄😄 On my, what are you going on about? I appreciate the insight you're trying to give me, but I will never like the Larry episodes. The crew we ended up with is the best. Full stop!OK if you're gonna HATE Larry - please make sure to hate the first 21 episodes as well.
"And that’s not including the show’s 21 “season 0” episodes on local Minneapolis TV station KTMA before getting picked up for the official “season 1” on The Comedy Channel/Comedy Central in 1989."Wow so Josh only made $25 a week for season zero and then only $200 a week for season 1 on national Comedy Channel!!
It is well reported that we each got $25 a week to work on the show. Joel got more because he had to make the props and stuff. $25 is not any money at all, but I did it because it was fun to do.
Josh: If you watch MST eps for the kick-ass movie riffing, there's no re ason to watch the KTMA shows. If you're interested in seeing how the concept of movie riffing, and MST3K, evolved, then they may be worth a look. We certainly never had posterity in mind when we were making them and for most of the UHF run, we treated it as little more than a hobby, spending a day a week on each show (writing and shooting combined) almost nothing was carefully considered, rewritten, or honed in any way. It was knee-jerk TV and it was very fun and lucky to have the venue for such a masturbatory endeavor. While those shows were crucial in the history, development, and sale of the show, I don't believe it's crucial that they be viewed by anyone but the most history-minded fans to fully enjoy later eps.
http://www.club-mst3k.com/ has the "season 0" episodes. That's when the show had NO SCRIPT and it is well-acknowledged that Josh was the best at riffing the movies - on the spot - in real time - without having seen them before - and his goal was to make Joel laugh (which Joel does in real time - he busts out laughing several times). I like these early episodes because they are very spontaneous like free jazz and it takes extreme focus to be able to get the timing right with jokes being funny - "out of the blue" as Joel described these sessions.
http://www.club-mst3k.com/episodes/0-pilot-the-green-slime
So that's the Pilot episode - very first show.
I haven't even watched it yet.
Before I do so - let's consider what a "vanishing mediator' is - it is Zizek's term and since there's a whole SCHOOL and academic journal that worships Zizek - then the term "vanishing mediator" is probably defined in some lexicon online.
A vanishing mediator is a concept that exists to mediate between two opposing ideas, as a transition occurs between them. ... Since, this concept has been adopted by Žižek in "For They Know Not What They Do: Enjoyment as a Political factor", where he uses it in a political sense, similar to Marx's Analysis of Revolution.
Just as I suspected there is a special Zizek dictionary.Zizek Dictionary. Debug data: [objectcache] The APCu extension is loaded and the apc.serializer INI setting is set to ...Jan 23, 2016 - Slavoj Žižek: The Vanishing Mediator Between the Symbolic and the Real ... Meaning gets started by a catastrophe that is also a ruining and ...
As long time readers of my posts and rants online know - I submitted my "concept" to Zizek - back in 1996 - as a critique of his work. I spent two years just reading ONLY Zizek and studying his work. By reading Zizek I was able to study Western philosophy and psychology and politics. But in 1996 I sent him my critique of his work! He sent me back a postcard stating "It looks very interesting. I will read it and get back to you." And he never got back to me except that his 1997 book, "Plague of Fantasies" was precisely focused on debunking my critique of him - it was against ecofeminism and against the New Age as the paranormal, etc. haha. It was a promotion of Platonic "Chora" music meaning, etc. And so I had exposed the ideological symbolic Kernel of Zizek himself - what he can not get past.
Now let's get back to Josh Weinstein. So Joel Hodgson was buddies with Jerry Seinfeld - and Joel Hodgson also trained Josh Weinstein. Joel notes that because Josh is young then he will do anything that you ask him to do - he has not "limited himself."
So Zizek in the Platonic sense - distinguishes the Jewish Primordially Repressed as the Shofar - the ram's horn Sound - as the primal power of Sound to create reality - that is the true voice of God - that Mose hears - before the 10 Commandments are written. So before the LAW we are controlled by the primordially repressed and we need to confront it.
So Josh being young - and a new man - he is riffing and Ad-libbing about his strong libido - and so Josh then commented...
Even though Trace was the only one with real improv experience, Josh thrived on it. Unfortunately, in his own words, improv "freaked" Joel out. He and Jim preferred more structure. Josh found that the scripted format was too confining and was certainly a factor in his leaving. Besides some people forget he was only 18 years old and had a whole career ahead of him.Josh Weinstein has worked as a writer/producer on a wide range of network TV comedy, including "Freaks and Geeks"
http://www.mst3ktemple.com/season1.html
So Josh Was the Monster or Freak of the Sci-Fi Horror movies that Joel was watching. Josh WAS the pure Shofar Sound - that switches from high falsetto screeching to deep profundo basss voice of an FM radio "jock rock" DJ.
Basso profondo (Italian: "deep bass"), sometimes basso profundo or contrabass, is the bass voice subtype with the lowest vocal range.And literally science has proven to us that "growing up" means to cut off neuron connections. When we are young - even babies - then we have our HEART spirit energy open and we learn holographically as a coherent biophoton holograph immersion experience. Western science thinks Babies are controlled by their Subconscious - but it's the other way around!! The reason babies can learn multiple languages at the same time is because their brains are totally open by the coherent laser holograph spirit energy of the heart. I know this since I lived with and helped raise a baby from the day it got home from the hospital to up to two years old! My family commented - how come the baby smiles when the baby seems (me)? Because we are having an open HEART to HEART spirit connection - the holographic Nondual source of Light is being experienced - DIRECTLY with the baby.
But then what happens? As qigong master Jim Nance http://guidingqi.com has emphasized - in the Westernized modern world the males do not get any proper initiation to become real men. So we do not train to transcend death and thereby re-enter the direct experience of reality of the Universe. This issue is well described in this Bioneer talk.
Womb at the Center of the Universe - youtube bioneers talk
Secrets of The Reverse SocietySo Freud was against meditation and yoga because he considered it to be egocentric. Indeed Master Nan, Huai-chin has pointed out to be successful in yoga meditation requires having the GREATEST ego and being the most selfish of them all. Why? Because a person needs to completely focus and build up their energy internally to be able to connect to the 5th dimension that hides in the external reality as well. So Joel noted that Josh could learn anything since he did not limit himself. But Joel was not able to TEACH Josh what Josh needed to learn. And so Joel and Jim (the controllers of MST3K - kicked Josh out or Josh left on his own, realizing he was not wanted)...
Josh Weinstein and I wrote the lyricsThat was to the theme song of MST3K.
On this view of things, secular capitalism came into being, then, not because religiosity was suppressed or theological thinking was negated, but for precisely the opposite reason: it was the very insistence on the strict letter of Protestant doctrine that brought about its undoing. This was not because the new Protestant doctrine effectively made life less religious or because it dismantled traditional religious structures and thereby paved the way to secular existence, as the vulgar Marxist position would have it. As Jameson explains, Weber’s brilliance was to show that the transition from medieval religious existence to modern secular existence came about because Protestantism made life more religious: “Calvin did not desacralize the world; on the contrary, he turned the entire world into a monastery” (Jameson 2008: 329). And in doing so, Protestantism drained its particular rites, rituals, practices and eventually beliefs too of their religious substance.So why did Joel Hodgson like SINGING during the episodes of MST3K? Josh Weinsten co-wrote the lyrics - and the films provide inspiration for songs as well.
As Žižek points out in For They Know Not What They Do, which is where he offers his most detailed account of Jameson’s concept, the really interesting problem concerning the vanishing mediator is its necessity:
In other words, the point not to be missed is that one cannot pass from medieval “closed” society to bourgeois society immediately, without the intercession of Protestantism as “vanishing mediator”: it is Protestantism which, by means of its universalization of Christianity, prepares the ground for its withdrawal into the sphere of privacy. (TK: 183)
So in the book "The Haunting Melody" it is described - by Theodore Reik - how Music is the Vanishing Mediator between our words and perception of waking reality - and our subconscious and dream state. So we FIRST get music into our heads and THEN we remember the lyrics.
So... when Josh is watching a movie - he is already in contact with the MUSIC that FIRST pops into his head and then he sings and THEN he remembers the lyrics. That is how the subconscious works...via music that then leads to the Superconsciousness. Josh being young without his neurons cuts off - still had that Music Vanishing Mediator Shofar connection from the Subconscious to the Superconsciousness. That's why they had to get rid of Josh - he insisted on Ad-Libbing and Ad-Libbing was too dangerous - too freaky - it could not be Commodified into a capitalist product....
I got together with John Weinstein and we wrote the lyrics. That’s where the concept really came together, that’s where the Mads came from and the idea they were showing these movies. After the third episode, I got together with my girlfriend’s cousin, a guy name Charlie Erickson who’s a great composer and musician. I kind of knew him well enough to sing to him what I thought it was and thought of it like “…in the Warm California Sun.” He just kind of transposed it right there on the keyboard and made it a better song. We tried to mimic Devo and the Replacements production-wise and I was doing my best to sing like Paul Westerberg
When I was in high school, the only reason I went to the library was to read Rolling Stone magazine. We all brought stuff to the table about music we liked and different skills. Also, we found ourselves singing along to the movies like “He Tried to Kill Me with a Forklift.” It’s such a natural thing to, instead of riffing, to sing along with the soundtrack of the movie and insert jokes there, and that lends itself to doing more in the host segment.https://www.villagevoice.com/2013/11/27/talking-mystery-science-theater-3000s-25th-anniversary-with-creator-joel-hodgson/
Wow the Village Voice can't even get Josh Weinstein's name correct!!
MST3K pilot - Green Slime
Green Slime pilot episode
deliver product on time" means a commodified sterilized dead objectified (No Ad-Libbing!) process
Joel: Yes, I do remembering that happening, Trace called it “runover” and at KTMA there was a bunch of it. But to answer your question, it could be frustrating, But really, even at seventeen, Josh was always quicker to the joke than I was, and I was all right with it as long as it made the show better. I’m pretty sure I wasn’t shushing Josh or anything because even if I covered my mic, the same noises would be picked up on Josh’s mic. To be fair, I need to mention, as an adult, Josh has much more finesse and doesn’t need to interrupt as often, except maybe when discussing seventies music trivia. I also want to say he’s since become probably one of the best joke writers walking the planet. So, in hindsight it was totally worth it to let him “roll over me” every now and then on camera – and then again after the show (wink).
the business producer cracked down on Josh Weinstein - interview - behind the scenes at early MST3K youtube vid
Josh: I have no problem believing things happened just as you perceive them. When improvising the riffing, you have to think and fire all at once and if someone else fires first, you lose that spot. I'm guessing I was being selfish about that on that day. I'm glad Joel called me on it and glad to hear I stopped once he did and it wasn't a totally pathological thing.
Weinstein elaborated on his experience at Best Brains, claiming that MST3K producer, Jim Mallon, was openly hostilehttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J._Elvis_Weinstein
https://billcorbettsfunhouse.libsyn.com/ep-27-funhouse-friend-focus-j-elvis-weinstein
Let's see what he says in detail.
Bill Corbett is a writer and performer for RIFFTRAX.COM. He's also a former writer / actor for the cult TV show MYSTERY SCIENCE THEATER 3000, playing the robot Crow (v. 2.0) and the all-powerful but clueless alien The Observer (a.k.a. Brain Guy). Corbett is also an award-winning playwright, screenwriter, and voice actor. A native of Brooklyn, N.Y., Corbett currently lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife Virginia and their two children.https://thoughtspiral.libsyn.com/
Josh's podcast
J. Elvis tells the tale of his involuntary street fight on the mean streets of Minnesota.https://thoughtspiral.libsyn.com/test-show-1
33 minutes in
May 12, 2017
Wow Josh got taken in by the Freudian Psychiatry b.s.
Josh met Joel just across the street from my church.
So it was literally 2 blocks from the house I grew up in - on Lake of the Isles.
"his Bohemian friends" in Minneapolis....
Their Comedy Writer's Group was in the Uptown Library - that was my neighborhood Library. I was still going there for the last 10 years I lived in Minneapolis - up to 2009.
Towards the end we started looking at them [the films] a little bit.... we probably watched 10 minutes....Season Zero -
A bunch of people at the HaHa club were into EST - Werner cult - and that was the origin of Josh's Mad scientist name on the show! Wow.
EST (acronym for Erhard Seminar Training) was a popular self empowerment cult in the late eighties that was running rampant through the Minneapolis creative community at the time we started MST3k – All three of us had experiences with friends who had been involved with the group and who tried to get us each to join to no avail, and we basically all agreed it was all a bit “spooky”. So, I was thinking with the Mads names I wanted to evoke the image of 50’s monster movies and cult leaders.I had no idea there was a "The Forum" EST cult in minneapolis.
Erhard Seminars Training was an organization founded by Werner Erhard in 1971 that offered ... Some critics accused est of mind control and labeled it a cult. ... The seminars gave way to a gentler course called The Forum, which began in January 1985. .https://culteducation.com/group/1020-landmark-education/12479-drive-thru-deliverance.html
But Ross says he's heard from people who say they were well before participating in the Landmark Forum, and not so afterward. Like 60-year-old Nan Kolbinger of Minnesota, who found Ross' Web site after her Forum experience. She had signed up for the Forum at the suggestion of another teacher who informed her she could receive 40 hours of in-service credit toward renewing her teaching license. She walked out after two 15-hour days, feeling demeaned, controlled and browbeaten. Kolbinger says the breaking point came when the Forum leader exploded and yelled at the participants. Kolbinger says she cried all the way home.Wow it's still in minnesota!
She later met with a psychologist who she claims diagnosed her with posttraumatic stress disorder.
"I was depressed and hadn't been able to sleep for more than a few hours at a time, even after I did escape," Kolbinger says. "I said that I was okay, but then the tears would well up. I was denying how really traumatized I was. I was semi-paranoid."
Acclaimed author, Chuck Palahniuk of Fight Club and a dozen other novels. Shares about his writing inspirations and credits Landmark Worldwide for helping launch his writing career.Wow - no wonder I didn't like "Fight Club" - it's a recreation of an EST cult training seminar!
Landmark worldwide (formerly landmark education), or simply landmark, is a company ... the corporate successor of erhard seminars training - est or est), when it more ... in edina, mn --
Landmark Worldwide (formerly Landmark Education), or simply Landmark, is a company offering personal development programs, headquartered in San Francisco. The current company started with the licensing of rights to use intellectual property owned by Werner Erhard, author of the est (Erhard ...
Landmark Worldwide, the arts community and the big, bizarre business of personal development
https://www.csindy.com/coloradosprings/landmark-worldwide-the-arts-community-and-the-big-bizarre-business-of-personal-development/Content?oid=20065897
WeirdIt becomes apparent that the problem or deficiency that Landmark is identifying is you.
sharing insecurities about my life with strangers. Catastrophizing a “probable, almost certain future.” Accepting sole responsibility for problem
The story of Landmark starts with John Rosenberg, who in 1960 left his home in rural Pennsylvania, changed his name, Gatsby-like, to Werner Erhard, and began studying the burgeoning “human potential movement,” which included trends like Gestalt therapy and philosophers like Alan Watts and L. Ron Hubbard, founder of the Church of Scientology.
Forum graduates that has led some to call Landmark a cult, a claim which Landmark has vigorously disputed in numerous libel cases against magazines like Self, Elle and Now, among others.So Josh says Jim Mallon was gonna PAY Josh as an intern - and that Jim didn't like Josh very much.... even though Josh was a full-writer and helped create the show...
Josh Weinstein do his stand-up act at the University of Minnesota student union (he was still an undergrad there), and at the end of it, he revealed that talks were ongoing with HBO to bring Mystery Science Theater to cable tv. Our hopes to see the show again were dashed, however. Our cable company carried HA!, but MST’s new home was on The Comedy Channel, which they didn’t carry.
We missed the first season, but by the second the two rival comedy channels merged to become Comedy Central, and—more importantly—we got to see our favorite show again. By this time, Josh was off the show, replaced by a new guy, Frank “TV’s Frank” Conniff. And this is were things get a little weird.
At the time, we were living in the Whittier neighborhood in South Minneapolis. MST was a national show, but it was produced out in a Minneapolis suburb, Eden Prairie. But some of the guys on the show must have lived in our neighborhood because we started seeing them. https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/mst3k-tales-part-i-the-fandom-menace
There was some Nordic Chill there - a Passive Aggressive Place - and he's an "aggressive aggressive person."
Any emotions was a Squeaky Wheel. https://www.marksimonson.com/notebook/view/mst3k-tales-part-ii-the-wrath-of-mallon
in 1988 at the age of 17. ... UHF station KTMA-TV from 1988 to 1989, and its first season on Comedy Central (then called the Comedy Channel) from 1989 to 1990.So Josh ONLY got paid $200 a week during Season One while being nationally syndicated on Comedy Channel?
after Hodgson convinced HBO to carry 13 episodes of “Mystery Science Theater 3000,” execs from HBO sent Hodgson and the crew at Best Brains a list of old movies to be used.https://www.swnewsmedia.com/eden_prairie_news/news/community/turn-back-the-page-in-tv-s-outer-space-comedy/article_7de8b6b0-acde-53ac-9490-47f052a8f37e.html
“They’re really getting a lot better at it,” said Mallow, who left KTMA-TV to work for Best Brains.
Among the standards Best Brains must meet is the minimum six jokes-per-minute requirement in the script, Hodgson said.weird!!
http://www.mst3kinfo.com/satnews/brains/ktma.html
So Josh says he's still PISSED OFF about HOW he was treated by Jim Mallon - and the Nordic Chill - seriously! I am too.
OK I figured out what happened (Josh's youtube channel) - how you were only paid $200 a show for the national Comedy Central channel - even though you were the best at making the riff jokes! And also you met Joel just two blocks from my house. We are the SAME age. I grew up at 2697 E. Lake of the Isles Blvd. My church was across the street from that comedy club - next to the vietnamese restaurant. https://elixirfield.blogspot.com/2020/04/josh-weinstein-same-age-as-me-was.html I caught the show the first year on cable. Then I went out east for Hampshire College and I went to Alaska to live in the Wilderness then Madison WI to live in a hippy cult. It was not until my gf's uncle said he like the show - in Kentucky - and I said yeah I love that show - in 1995 or so. That's why I know for a fact that I had seen the first year on channel 23. haha. Because between that time I never watched t.v. thanks - scroll way down to see my Shofar Vanishing Mediator analysis of your role in creating MST3K. Sorry about the Nordic Chill.
yes - I have watched some of the "behind the scenes" filming of the later work. So the script is lined up with a clock - I think to the tenth of a second. Yes this becomes mechanical like working a factory assembly line of jokes! Why? Because time should not be defined by a symmetric geometry containment. Time is inherently syncopated - as noncommutative phase - so the early shows are better.
There is an openness in the silence. Joel Hodgson says he was influenced by Sun Ra - and Sun Ra knew the power of Silence. I quote him in my master's thesis. http://www.holeworld.com/stellar.html
at the E N D L E S S S P A C E of the COSMO-VOID. ...
The C O S M O - T I M E L E S S Realm of the Omni-Evolution-Immortalic Day."
-Sun Ra
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