Ben Folds Five

RifftraxTonight I saw the live RiffTrax show at the San Rafael theater. It was the awesomest, which is lucky for me, since I’m going to be seeing it again tomorrow night in the city.

A year or so after I graduated college, the MST3K guys did a Comedy Central-sponsored tour where they’d show one of their episodes (“Zombie Nightmare”) to a live audience. It was a blast; watching the show was always funnier with other people around, even if it’s just one other person.

This show is even better, because the guys do the whole show live, sitting on stage in front of the movie. Even though they were reading from scripts, the whole thing felt spontaneous, and they did a great job of gauging the audience’s reaction (and recovering from missed cues). And there wasn’t a single joke in the entire movie that didn’t work; there was no reference too obscure for at least a couple of people in the audience to get. For a long-time MST3K fan, there’s just no better way to see the show.

The guys (Kevin Murphy, Bill Corbett, and Mike Nelson) did a Q&A session after the show. Not too much of interest was revealed, but it was just a relief the fawning crowd didn’t get out of hand. I’ve been to plenty of comic book convention panels and other forums where obsessive geeks (like myself) are given free rein to make everyone wince and cringe uncomfortably, but the gang did a good job of fielding questions.

Now I’m going to go to Netflix and move Roadhouse higher up in my queue…