The following is a circuitous tale that doesn't fit into any of the ongoing blog stuff. To paraphrase God, think of it as a blogging aberration. I'll get back to tending my ego and etc etc no one is going to get this reference later. Oh, and Donna gets a boyfriend.

AAAAAnyway. So, tonight I'm talking to Leslie, and she is telling me about this god awful movie called Teenage Caveman, starring 10 Things I hate about You's Andrew Keegan, and in the process expressing her utter disappointment at the fact that rationally speaking the movie features zero cavemen between the ages of 13 and 19.

That's right, good ole Andrew Keegan, or as I like to call him, That Guy in 10 Things I hate about You who wasn't Heath Ledger or the Kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, and therefore nobody gives a Flying Acorn Turd about him. Guy. I decided for the duration of this paragraph to just let the capital letters have free love, and not be kept down by "the man" and his "rules."

Due to her hillarious description of it, I got to thinking I'd like to see this godawful crime against cinema, and I maintain that this desire is only partially because it is apparently overflowing with nudity.

Then, hours later, and in a completely unrelated vein, I am reconnected with this movie, though I have learned it was in a less compelling way than I initially thought. Relax, I'm going to explain. Or better yet, stop reading, because this is a dumb story.

So, I pop in a Transformers DVD, and seeing all the un-skippable Rhino Home Video crap makes me decide to check what they've released in the cartoon "Selling your childhood back to you at today's prices" marketing trend that is sweeping DVD publishers such as Rhino and Time-Life. (If anyone doubts my read on this, they just released Land of the Lost season 2 on DVD. I win.)

In the course of looking over their offerings, I finally decide to see what is actually -on- the Mystery Science Theater 3000 DVD sets they've been putting out. I long ago considered buying some of the individual episode/movie DVDs, and I've been thinking maybe they did the multi-disc sets up right, but the prohibitive cost has kept me from even looking. Anyway, I finally did, and while Pod People is on one of the sets (and is available as an individual DVD) there is sadly, as of this writing, no way to get Prince of Space on DVD. Well, an official copy, anyway. There's a guy on Ebay offering custom DVDs for 6 bucks an episode. I dunno bout all that though.

Anyway, the mix-and-match, not seasonal nature of the MST3k boxed sets got me curious and trigger happy with my "New Browser Window" command, as I am wont to do when faced with insomnia and an interesting line of inquiry, and so I decided to see which season Prince of Space was part of. (8, by the way. Also, in an unrelated editorial note/old school MSTie crack, Joel rules, bah on Mike forever.)

And so I went to this episode guide, and started scanning. And there, in the middle of season 3, lay the following.

315-TEENAGE CAVEMAN with shorts: AQUATIC WIZARDS and CATCHING TROUBLE

Now, I should have realized at the time that this episode would have been made in like 1991, and Andrew Keegan was probably still playing with Hot Wheels then. But for a brief moment, I had this eerie confluence of whatever with the cosmic such and so forth, and it was cool.

Afterwards, and a visit to IMDB later, I realized that this could still be an amusing story. The Andrew Keegan version I was told about is in fact a REMAKE. A remake of the movie featured in the 15th episode of season 3 of Mystery Science Theater 3000.

Yes. They took an awful movie from the 50s, one that had been branded by the highest stamp of "God Awful Movie" in the land, by Best Brains Inc, and decided, "You know what, guys, Let's give it another go." And then, at least in my imagination, one of them said "Also, let's make another Blade movie. And for the love of Jebus, can we put Kirsten Dunst in some more things? Oh, and another thing, where's that Air Bud 13 script?" And then they all did a bunch of coke and renewed their loyalty to Satan.

Okay, so perhaps my insomnia is fading and tiredness is making me a bit harsh.

Anyway, I've decided to see both versions. I'm sure you're all immeasurably pleased to posess this information.

To make it up to you, and reward you for reading this far, I will let you know that "Quest of the Delta Knights" is also an excellent MST3k episode. Some kid and Leonardo Da Vinci go up against evil David Warner to prevent him from using secret doomsday weaponry developed by Archimedes. Yes, you read that right. The buoyancy guy. It's basically Star Wars, but with an almost Pocahontas-level historical butchering.

Also, I say "evil" David Warner because he plays the Obi-Wan good guy and the Darth Vader bad guy, and also narrates the film. Which he can do, because he's David fucking Warner. It's just, he has a crappy agent, and also suffers from Jeremy Irons/Patrick Stewart/Ian McKellen/Guy who played the Commandant in Police Academy syndrome, wherein being a classically trained British stage actor means you have to play crappy villain/idiot roles in horrible or demeaning-for-Shakespearean-stars American movies for a while.

I'm just saying, David Warner rules, he just keeps doing crap.

I really can't believe anyone's reading at this point.

[i didn't say it was a good story]