Rob Price
Gutbrain Records
rob + gutbrain.com = email

2012 April 04 • Wednesday

Mere months after hauling ourselves out to Newark to see Penn & Teller at the New Jersey Performing Arts Center, my brother and I made the same trip to the same venue last Saturday, this time for Cinematic Titanic: The Astral Factor.

It was great.

Before the show started Dave (Gruber) Allen, who's been one of my favorite actors ever since I saw him as Mr. Rosso on Freaks and Geeks, came out on stage and did some great dancing and lip-synching to the music playing in the house. (One of the songs he did was "Little Toy Gun" by honeyhoney.)

Then he introduced Mary Jo Pehl who came out and read an intentionally maladroit and funny greeting and introduction of Dave (Gruber) Allen.

J. Elvis Weinstein came out and did some of his stand up as well as accompanying Dave (Gruber) Allen on the bass while Allen sang a song to the audience about how they needn't freak out. It was to the tune of Monk's "Well You Needn't".

Then Weinstein said he would stick to the MST3K theme by being replaced by Frank Conniff. Frank came out and did some stand up, mostly divided between jokes about New Jersey governor Chris Christie and bits about tweets from famous historical figures (Abraham Lincoln, Anne Frank, etc.) He took requests from the audience and improvised tweets from Helen Keller and, uh, others. A request for a tweet from Torquemada had him baffled and he responded to somebody's shout of "Martin Luther King!" by saying, "Oh, right, that'll be funny!"

Then J. Elvis picked up the bass and Dave (Gruber) Allen played claves so Frank could sing a theme song for his proposed Saturday morning superhero cartoon Convulted Man.

Trace Beaulieu came out next, I think, and he and J. Elvis Weinstein took questions from the audience. Somebody asked if they still talk to Kevin and Mike and Trace replied, "Who?". But it seemed pretty clear that he was just trying to get a laugh and everybody's on good terms. Trace mentioned that they don't make any money from the DVD releases of Mystery Science Theatre 3000, which seemed strange to me.

Mary Jo came out again to plug her new book and read passages from it, which turned out to be not anything that she had written but enthusiastic blurbs about the book.

That might not have happened in exactly that sequence, but I do remember that Joel came out last and, after just a few words to the audience, began the show proper.

That pretty much sums it up. It also had Sue Lyon in it, as well as Elke Sommer, who picks up a guitar and sings Leadbelly's "In the Pines" at some point.

I've watched all of the Cinematic Titanic DVDs and seeing the live show is definitely more fun. The Astral Factor is one of their funniest performances. I would happily go see them again.