MetaTalk posts tagged with marathon

7th Annual MST Club Holiday Video Marathon Social Distancing Edition

JHarris — Tue, 22 Dec 2020 16:48:58 -0800

It's time again for that weird thing we do, which is program 72 hours of specials, bad Christmas movies, MST3K episodes and other things. It's MST Club's 2020 Holiday Video Marathon! We usually put this in for intermittent yuletide jollies and destress, to help people relax at an often frustrating time of year. This year, with so many people sensibly staying home for the holidays, it promises both to be less and more stressful than usual. Anyone can come by and watch weird stuff with us, members or not! Our show runs from December 23 through to midnight December 25. Details inside! Previous years: 2019 - 2018 - 2017 - 2016 - 2015 - 2014 We have a chat room attached so people can joke along with the show, but it's fine to lurk or have us on in the background! We do this by the seats of our collective pants, but we have a vague sort of theme schedule. We are open to reading the crowd to see what people would like though. Our plans (times are Eastern) are: DEC 23: Morning: specials, riffing Afternoon: Rankin-Bass Evening-Night: MST3K and other riffing, miscellaneous DEC 24: Morning: more specials Early afternoon: Christmas episodes of old TV shows -- Jack Benny, Burns & Allen Evening-Night: MST3K and other riffing, our favorite specials DEC 25: Morning: Quiet time -- Yule logs, specials Afternoon: Our standards -- classic riffing Evening-Night: Winding down, non-holiday fare Our moderator list this year is TheSnakeOfArgument, valkane, StarkRoads, Satri and TV's Ilana. oneswellfoop might be helping too but has been having computer issues lately. Some of our items are from the Rifftrax catalog. While we have a terrific hodge-podge of material from them, we try to make sure that everything we have is bought and paid for. Please give them your support!

6th Annual MST Club Christmas Marathon

JHarris — Mon, 23 Dec 2019 14:18:01 -0800

Hey all! The Christmas Marathon for this year is up and running! We have MST episodes, other riffing, specials and other bits of weirdness! Over 48 hours of stuff awaits you, for as long, where and when as you can stand it, at our cytu.be room at https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub. We'll be showing things through Christmas Eve and Christmas Day, and we've even got some weird movies set up for the rest of today, so come on out if you want or need it! More details inside.... This is what I call a "no-stress" marathon. We're here if you want some fun with silly internet people, or if you need to take a break from dinner preparation or family, or if you want mildly entertaining background stuff going on during these short days or long nights. Tune in at any time in the next two days and you'll find something ridiculous, and drop out whenever you want. That's our promise to you, the random visitor! Highlights are, as always, the malevolent Ice Cream Bunny, the Star Wars Holiday Special (is it better than Rise of Skywalker? no), Santa's House of Madness and more. We're always rotating in new things, too, and we're open to suggestions if we can find them on YouTube or other compatible video site. Early Christmas morning we have a yule log or two and some timeshifts of Fox Kids and Nick at Nite programming for that pleasant nostalgic irradiated-by-phosphors feeling. As always, our riff material is bought and paid for, but if you wish to express your own appreciation to the original creators, you can do so at rifftrax.com and mst3k.com. Thanks again, happy holidays, and as foop has been known to say I believe, good night and good gravy!

MST Club Christmas Video Marathon 2018!

JHarris — Fri, 21 Dec 2018 22:58:07 -0800

"That's a number five!" As in, this is the FIFTH YEAR MST Club's been doing this! I guess the secret's out that we show far more than just MST episodes there, we have a huge collection of old and new, good and bad specials, movies and Very Special Episodes, in addition to other videos and riffing of multiple flavors. This year we're doing it for THREE DAYS, staring Midnight (Eastern time) in the morning of December 23rd and going through to the end of Christmas Day. It's all taking place here. Previous threads: 2014 - 2015 - 2016 - 2017 We do this not just for our own amusement but to help provide a yuletide mood evener. Some people have tense family situations, or a need to escape for a while, or something to have on in the background while the turkey's cooking, or want something Christmassy to do in the absence of family, or just want some laffs for the holidays. I call it a "no stress" marathon 'cause no one really expects anyone (including ourselves!) to try to be there for every moment of the thing. cytube has a pretty good automation system to keep things rolling even when modless, although usually one of us will be there, unless we're all passed out or hopped up on nog. In our second or third year we tried strictly scheduling it, but it ended up being far more more trouble that it was worth. We do try to show certain kinds of things at certain times though: DEC 23 and 24: Mornings - Bad and Weird Christmas Episodes & Specials Evenings/Nights - Riffing, mostly Christmas themed with some wildcards thrown in DEC 25: Morning - Good Christmas Specials & Yule Logs Afternoon - Our best riffing, culminating in our year long gaze-in-horror at the Star Wars Holiday Special Evening/Night - Marathon wind-down time, showing things that are pointedly not Christmas-related. Helping me out this year, as usual, is TheSnakeOfArgument, valkane and oneswellfoop. Snake particularly has been very helpful in getting this organized this year. We do show riffing from places like Rifftrax and Cinematic Titanic, but all of our riffs are bought and paid for. If it makes you feel guilty to watch on our dime, you can shoot them a dollar or two (Rifftrax has a donations page). Or buy something from them, I'm sure they wouldn't mind that. We have some interesting surprised this year. I found on a random site a large collection of computer graphics demos! Snake's made us some custom bumpers with marathon info and silly Christmas music backgrounds! We've got even more weird stuff than previous years! And we'll just have to see what else there is in store.

MST Club Video Marathon 2017: Christmas In SPAAAACE

JHarris — Sat, 23 Dec 2017 05:56:01 -0800

This is MST Club announcing our 4^th annual "No Stress" Christmas Video Marathon! No Stress means it's pretty laid back as far as marathons go: feel free to have it going on in the background to cooking, sleeping, football or whatever, or exchange jokes with us in the chat window. The primary site of this thing is the MST Club Cytube page, with our Rabb.it room as a possible alternate if things go awry. The time is throughout December 24 and 25, from 6 AM Eastern/ 3 AM Pacific through to Midnight on the 25th. Come by with or without your favorite nog if you like! More details are in the extended description. Previous threads: 2014 - 2015 - 2016 The MST Club Christmas Marathon is intended to be a destress hangout spot for MeFi members and people just wanting to relax and laugh a bit during the holidays. Marathon contents include:

Riffing videos, including Mystery Science Theater 3000 episodes (with an emphasis on Christmas fare), RiffTrax and Cinematic Titanic (paid-for copies of those).
Christmas specials good, bad and just funny.
Short Christmas-related, generally humorous material.
Miscellaneous stuff, including some new material not seen in previous marathons that I'd like to keep as a surprise. Not everything is Christmas related, but currently most of it is. I'm testing the waters concerning how much non-Christmas material we should use.

Last year we tried a strict schedule kind of thing, but it chafed a bit, especially when technical issues prevented us from watching the thing scheduled for that moment. So this year we're keeping things flexible, and going with general themes for different times. Our room mods are free to choose what exactly is airing, from our library of yuletide wonderments and atrocities, or go their own way, or accept requests from the audience. (It helps if the video is on YouTube, Vimeo or Dailymotion, and if it's not blocked in many countries.) The main advice for watching that I have to offer is to try to watch from a Flash-capable browser. Most of the stuff should be viewable from plain HTML, but in the past we've had issues with some sites, especially Vimeo and Dailymotion. Dailymotion in particular has a wealth of Christmas specials and related videos. If you're on a Mac using Firefox or Chrome should be good enough. I don't think there are good solutions for iPads and most Android, unfortunately, but give it a try even if that's your only opinion. The alternate room, the Rabb.it one, won't see much use unless something drastic goes wrong with the cytu.be room, but there is one major thing watchable there that we can't at the moment see in the main room: the Christmas episode in MST3K Season 11. If we try to switch over to watch it there, it'll probably be towards the end on December 25. Further details, updates and last-second corrections will appear in this thread. We'll be meeting in the cytube room this evening (on the 23rd that is) for preparations if you want to drop by a bit early and say hello.

2016 MST3K Club No-Stress Christmas Video Marathon

JHarris — Wed, 21 Dec 2016 10:50:51 -0800

For the third year running, those of us in MST Club are planning a holiday marathon of video festialities. (Jonathan Harris voice: "That's not a word!") On the menu: MST3K Christmas movies, a few other riffing delicacies, a wide assortment of Christmas specials and episodes both good and bad, and some other short oddments thrown in. Once again, the purpose is to be the good-natured background radiation to your Christmas rituals, taking the edge off the hard moments and adding extra cheer to the soft ones. Come by whenever and however long you want. Official times: 6 AM Eastern Christmas Eve through to 6 AM December 26. As usual, the site of this madness is the MST Club cytube page. A lot of stuff is returning from last year, but we're aiming to have less repetition this time around. We are also planning to have a schedule, so you can see what's coming and catch your favorite things. We do reserve the right to switch things up though, if some item isn't working with the audience at that moment, or in the event of technical difficulties. As always, the motto of MST Club is "Doing things that we're surprised are even possible, with a minimum of backup failsafes." We're still working on getting everything encoded and set up, more information will appear in this thread as we get closer.

Election Destress Video Marathon

JHarris — Mon, 07 Nov 2016 13:21:25 -0800

Over in MST Club, oneswellfoop had the idea to show MST3K (especially Pod People, the one with Trumpy, a much less dangerous version of the one that currently afflicts our nation) in an election day marathon over on the MST3K Club video page, running all day November 8. Sounds good to me! Details below. It's the same "rules" as the Christmas shows, that is, we're here to decrease stress. Engage with us in chat and mock movies along with us, or have it running in the background all day long, or drop on for a few minutes here or there, or don't come by at all, or any combination of the preceding, or anything else. No guilt, no fuss, and that's for all of us, viewers and show maintainers alike. (Our viewing site is a lot more robust this year, over our old one, so technically I don't think we even need a channel op in during the whole thing.) We usually only do this for Christmas but this year I think we can handle a special showing. These are the prospective episodes being considered, list open to addition: MST3K: Pod People (Trumpy!), Rocket Attack USA and Invasion USA (good ol' cold war paranoia) and Parts: The Clonus Horror. (A US Senator secretly running a clone farm as an organ bank! Ripped [not] from today's headlines!) Other videos and stuff, like the Monty Python election special sketch and episodes of awful 60s cartoon Super President, will be interspersed among the others. And we're always up for throwing stuff in based on suggestions from the audience! Finally, please do not let our little show distract you from taking some time out from your day to vote! I voted several days ago so I can stick around. Be sure to vote some time tomorrow, so that you can say you did your best to ensure we only have to suffer through one day's worth of Trumpy instead of four years.

A Patrick Swayze Christmas: all day Mystery Science Theater 3000 stream

JHarris — Mon, 22 Dec 2014 05:39:41 -0800

Every week I put up a post about an episode of Mystery Science Theater 3000 over on FanFare. In conjunction with that, we've been having group watchings of the episodes online Thursday evenings through a stream syncing site. This year however, Thursday falls on Christmas Day. So instead, we're going to have an all-day marathon stream of MST-related Christmas artifacts. We have the newfound ability to stream things other than YouTube videos through sync-video, so some of the things we'll be showing are more out of the ordinary. So this time only, I'm also going to be offering many other MST-related items, in addition, of course, to the two MST Christmas episodes. These are not technically FanFare showings -- I am going through the Mystery Science Theater episodes in order, and we're not up to either of them yet. That's why I'm announcing it here rather than over there. The room will go up some time on Christmas Eve. I'll post a link to it here when it's ready to go. The whole thing will cycle, and a complete run will probably be many hours, so any time you drop by you should find something interesting. Of course this is Christmas Day, people will be busy (even I probably won't be in the room that much), but if you need some help getting through the day, we'll be there for you. No stress, no mess.

Another FPP subject drops by to say hello

Slarty Bartfast — Mon, 01 Jul 2013 00:44:47 -0800

So we learned about Eric Strand in this post as the crazy person who woke up at 3am to run the Grandma's Marathon course in Duluth backwards before turning around and running it forwards with his son and a friend. What made his video so post worthy is the gosh-darned cheery good time he was having as he did this. So, he dropped by to thank us and to let us know he's training for the Leadville 100.

Please, Someone; Start a New Marathon Thread

Curious Artificer — Thu, 18 Apr 2013 21:58:46 -0800

The existing Boston Marathon Thread has not only turned unwieldy, it's now become the go-to place to put anything that happens in the greater Boston area (c.f., M.I.T. policeman shot, which while tragic, has nothing to do with the thread itself). Given that there was a MAJOR change in the storyline with the release earlier today of the FBI's pictures and videos of the actual (not hypothetical, not crowd sourced) suspects #1 and #2, I'm going on record with a plea for someone to please make a new thread (which can stand on its own merits) about this, particular, new information so that this can be discussed and updated there (apart from the original thread, which was a thread about the bombing itself, not the search for the suspected bombers).

Thanks everyone

zarq — Mon, 15 Apr 2013 16:20:32 -0800

I just wanted to thank everyone in chat and the Explosions at the Boston Marathon finish line thread who have let us know that our friends and fellow mefites are okay, kept cool heads, provided amazing links to accurate information / feeds, and debunked false reports today. And also thank you to the mods who were on duty in both places as well, keeping everything running smoothly. This has been a terribly upsetting afternoon. The care, support and kindness in evidence has been calming and reassuring.

Would anyone care to join me in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk?

sequential — Sat, 08 Sep 2007 13:38:55 -0800

Would anyone care to join me in the Boston Marathon Jimmy Fund Walk? If yes, I'll organize a Metafilter team. There are four routes to choose from: 3, 5, 13.1 and 26.2 miles. Participation requires either a $200 donation or fundraising of an equal amount. Any local Runner+ and We Endure folks interested?

runner marathon

reklaw — Thu, 17 May 2007 05:09:37 -0800

Silly thing: I remember reading a thread on MeFi a while ago where people repeatedly used an insulting word for people who just join in marathons without officially entering. But what was the word?