Phosphorous is definitely the science lede of the movie, along with some sea volcano and diving bell history.
If this were an official episode, it would have to be padded with shorts because it is only an hour and seven, not even an hour and twenty minutes long.
I love your Celebrity Sour Dough starters idea because it is a little time capsule of the pandemic and it says that men are domestic too.
Having either Jonah or Max present it is a balance to the misogyny in the movie. Jonah feels kinda like Jake Gyllenhall with his starter on late night tv and is the most trapped person in quarantine, Max is all the more henpecked and would say that he’s up on current trends, and I think if it were a Deep 13 bit there’s that control freak competition with starters to make a product that is inherently uncontrollable and destined to blow up in your face.
I think this is a flexible idea and could lend itself to a longer, continuous episode arc about gender dynamics and science projects.
…
SEPERATELY! to @MyWy , @Ansible, and @DeepHurting who I think are heading this project?
Is there any problem from my taking of column C on @MyWy 's spreadsheet?
I thought I saw some alt riffs there but they disappeared. I sloemnly swear I did not delete anyone’s joke. Then I wrote for two hours on 00:10:00:00 through 00:20:00:00 and pasted my riffs in, didn’t see anyone else in that row.
I’m a bit concerned about what happens if more than 20 people work on this thing and we have 50-100 columns. I didn’t entirely understand the mentioned plan for writing directors. Claiming a column didn’t make sense last night but I did it successfully today.
I assume @Ansible is off doing something complicated and is coming back. I would love to hear his priorities.
Please let me know if anyone’s feelings were hurt. I am emotionally flexible and open to collaboration. Just glad somebody’s up for horror show writing practice again.
I think I see what you are saying. You added your riffs where there was empty space in column C, right? Seems to make sense. I don’t think we really need to keep track of who wrote what specific riffs. It could get confusing if you are editing at the same time, I suppose.
I like this separation. If I could, I’d make my own subforum for these things, but I have no such powers. @Lesley , what say you to a “forum games” forum? That’s always been a fun thing to have, in my opinion. Maybe a sub-forum from Off Topic?
I think fan riffing is probably going to become enough of a thing in the coming months that it deserves it’s own section between Artsy Crafty and Cheesy Movies.
But even if it’s a sub-forum, it would be nice if we could get admin support to have whatever project conversation is the active one pinned to the top.
I think we should just move this whole conversation to “The Extended World of Riffing” section. Seems to fit better there and would be a good way to start engagement in that section too.
You’re not wrong. With 5 host segments, fan mail, and an invention exchange, about 2.5 minutes each, 1 minute for start and end credits: bam. 1:27. That needs 10 minutes of filler to pull it out to the usual 1:37.
Not that it matters anymore, freed as we are from the shackles of cable TV formatting.
I think I feel another vote coming on.
My internal host voice is Joel’s, but they are all so easy-going, I think it makes them quite interchangeable. Even Jonah, who hasn’t done a black-and-white movie.
I’m not worried about “balance to the misogyny”. No one on the cast is going to approve of antiquated gender roles. Plus I’m trying to balance Joel and Mike’s attitudes with the accepted norms of the times. Just because Joel let a sexist comment slide in the '80s doesn’t mean he would do the same today. I mean, they renamed Gypsy, and I don’t even understand why, but they did it to make a social stand. Against… something. But don’t let my ignorance get in the way of my point. 
I believe it was twofold -
At least, those were my understanding. I could be wrong of course.
A few problems… Let’s fix them.
I thought Google Sheets gave a pop-up warning about that!Could have been me - I delete my lines when I’m not happy with them. The real question is, are you missing any lines?
If it’s empty and unprotected, I guess it’s up for grabs. Just make sure to put your name on it (row 2) and protect the column. I’d suggest sticking with column J. Message me if you need help doing that. I set up tab 1a to give you an idea how to set up the rest of the tabs/sheets.
20 people = 20 columns, at least in my spreadsheet.
We still need to discuss the selection process. I’m envisioning medals. Similar to a 5-star rating in function, but easier and more fun. You can only issue one medal type per row.
Comedy gold.
Silver: I love to laugh loud and long and hard.
Bronze: Pretty nice.
. . . No vote (default)
It stinks! (not really a medal, but more like a flag for inappropriate content, or anything that just gives you a negative feeling.
Chaos isn’t a plan? Honestly, this is why I’m spending most of my time in the Google Sheet. Too many concepts here. And the Discourse format doesn’t encourage break-off conversation.
I’ll think it’s a nice fit in The Extended World of Riffing category. Or right here is fine, too (MST3K Central). I think the not-so-evil overlords need to decide that, since they would have to set it up.
The question is, can we make subsections? If no, then I agree with @DeepHurting - a Fanficisode channel would be best for organization of multiple movies with multiple channels each.
We could arrange main posts as @griff17matt suggests, either nested (if subsections are possible) or with the movie name in the post title (like “TIPW: Host Segment Discussion”).
FYI, I am working on the code now for what I’m calling the “uRiff” program, but it’s going a bit slower than I expected, as all of the code that I’m used to having at my fingertips at work… well, since it’s proprietary I have to “recreate” it from scratch at home, the same way that Weird Al’s band has to recreate the original artist’s music by ear without using sheet music.
I’m working on developing all of the Core methods that I need, before I start working on the Object-oriented code:
No rush at all. A lot of discussion can happen outside of this program, and we have a couple of Google Sheets going to keep the riffers happy. I’ll be happy to work on the export/import with you, when the time comes.
How many sheets do we have again? 
I am seeing this one:
and am not missing riffs. 
You sounded like you moved my column but you didn’t? I can totally move these to D if you are writing over riffs you erased. I didn’t see a name in the column, sorry.
Should it be Deep Hurting, MyWy Euphoriafish in that sheet and nobody else claimed a row yet?
And are we joking or did you think I was trying to control your and Ansible’s project? Because I sincerely do not want to. I just want to make sure that lines I’m writing are going to the place where they will be read and perhaps even medaled in that emoji trophy system you just proposed. 
Or is there another sheet where you named a row for me and I must do a walk of shame down to row J? 
(I have my riffs in a separate spreadsheet and can paste them wherever you like.)
I don’t know if there is one or more than one file. If more than one, could we click the plus sign at the bottom and compile them just pasting into additional tabbed sheets? 
I like that voting system. I guess that is an additional unprotected row range above Riffer names row?
Love the voting system.
Since the Significant Other fell asleep early tonight, and I had time to kill, I took this idea, expanded it a bit, and turned it into an ERD on Lucidchart. Let me know what you think of it. For any of you that don’t know “crow’s feet notation”, the slashes and lines tell you how the two tables are related to each other. If it’s a “one to one” relationship, both sides of the line will have a single line going across them. If it’s a “one to many” relationship, one of the sides will have the “crows feet” mark on the “many” table.
Most of the tables I think are self explanatory, but here’s some explanations for the non-obvious ones:
RiffSegment - I thought it just made sense to “merge” the idea of a host segment with the concept of a segment of the movie, as they both represent a “time slice” of the show. This table represents that slice. The SegmentOrder denotes which position this segment takes in the show, so Host Segment 1 would probably have SegmentOrder 1, Movie Segment 1 would probably have a SegmentOrder of 2, etc. etc. That way we can keep them all in order. The MovieStartTime and MovieEndTime fields will obviously only have a value if it’s a movie segment (not a host segment), and for the Host Segments, I created a special field that’s a “BLOB”, or a Binary Large Object, where can be stored, either a text file with the content of the Host Segment, or perhaps an MSPaint storyboard, or even maybe an audio clip of people mocking it up. I even consider the “Stinger” to be a HostSegment that’s just put at the very end of the RiffProject. It might make more sense to push this out to its own table, if users are going to want to upload multiple pieces of media for each host segment. We’ll see.
RiffProjectUsers - mostly self explanatory, but each RiffProject will only have a single “Executive Producer” who acts as final say on everything (in the case the Directors can’t come to a consensus or to break a tie). This Executive Producer is the one that’s coordinating everyone else, sort of shaping the production if you will. The Director(s) decide together what will and will not be included in the final Fanficisode™©, by using their ability to mark things as “Canon”. They also have final say over what gets put into the HostSegments.
Comments - I wanted people to essentially have the ability to “chat” back and forth, so this table will act as that data container. Comments can be made my ANY user, whether they are a Director/Executive Producer, or NOT, on ANY content, either RiffSegment or Riff. I will have a place in my UI where all comments for either the RiffSegment or Riff will be visible, sorted by newest to oldest.
I’m thinking the center of it all will be the RiffProject itself. Everything will “bind” via that, except comments, which will be attached to RiffSegments and Riffs.
Can anyone think of anything major that I might have missed before I go too deep into the construction of the actual User Interface and Objects/Methods? Any big aspects of MST3K that I didn’t think of?
I think all the Google Doc files will be merged eventually, once Ansible finishes his database.
I can’t seem to find the link to MyWu’s doc anywhere in the thread (the search feature on the forums here leaves a lot to be desired) so for now, I’ll keep writing in my own doc, you can write wherever you please, and we’ll all meet up at the end of the road.
We’re still building infrastructure for the moment so this first “pilot” is going to be pretty disorganized, but once we figure it out, subsequent attempts should be a little more streamlined.
My suggestion for assigned “segments” is that we keep it pretty loose and don’t worry too much about linking in the host segments to begin with. Those really should be written last after most of us (or at least those with high pain thresholds) have watched the movie in intimate detail multiple times through. Once you dive deep into the movie, weird things start to stand out.
Having focused heavily on riffing the first segment, for some reason the finger sandwiches that everybody’s eating during the diving bell fundraising event seems absolutely hilarious. I have no idea what to do with it, but I’m pretty sure that anything I end up writing for host segment #1 is going to have to involve Jonah/Emily and the Bots consuming vast quantities of finger sandwiches.
I didn’t link. I just requested people contact me via direct message with a Google account, and I clicked share in the Google Sheet.
Will do. Options are good.
That’s what seems right to me, too.
The tininess of the finger food? The mandatory one-per-customer, pinched in everyone’s fingers? The way they seem to just hold them up for no reason? Yeah, there’s a lot of weird in those sandwiches.
What do you have for people who can insert a battery correctly, half the time?
Calling all cars. I’ve made a few observations in my hecklings, and I’d like to check them against all your notes to make sure I haven’t made a huge tiny mistake. Fact checkers, go!
14:24 Matheny calls Hank Nate (disproved!)
19:19 Two men and woman exit the bell, leaving one man still inside (disproved!)
33:02 Komodo dragon? (disproved! Australian Goanna, possibly a Perentie)
41:21 I stole “Cave Torgo” from someone, and fully intend to credit them if the riff is used (found! EBK)
