MST3K Club: 2015 Christmas Marathon Discussion

December 21, 2015 12:21 AM

Planning thread for MeFi MST3K Christmas Marathon 2015.

Like last year, we're planning a Christmas marathon of video treats and weirdnesses, most MST-related, most Christmas-related, but a few things of side interest thrown in as well.

This time I'm trying to organize this a bit better. I've got 1.4 GB of video material lined up, in addition to stuff just found on YouTube. Riffing material of several origins, Christmas specials, old cartoons, bad movies and unexpected surprises.

The general theme is the same as last time: the marathon should be a place where people can feel free to drop by, for a few minutes or for hours, and find something interesting and humorous to help them through the holidays. An extremely non-demanding marathon.

But by the same token, I'd like this to be non-demanding for us too! Last year I tried to be in the room as much as I couldn't, but sometimes I fell asleep, and sometimes I left for my own family events, and while I was gone sometimes the stream would crash in that way that sync-video often does.

So this time, how about we split it up into shifts? Who is interested in helping keep this continuous and running? When you can make it, and for how long? It's now only three days until Christmas Eve, so we should get going on this soon....

posted by JHarris to Mystery Science Theater Club (21 comments total)

I'm going to make a post to MetaTalk about it tomorrow, which is about the same timing we had last year, so that gives us about a day to make plans. I'm going to post a link to this thread in the most recent episode to help people find it (it's surprisingly hard to find Club Talk posts.)
posted by JHarris at 12:27 AM on December 21, 2015

Wow, assigning a FanFare post to a club specifically seems to make it nearly invisible!
posted by JHarris at 2:06 PM on December 21, 2015

I'm wide open. Eyes wide shut. I need a few hours between 8:oo and 11:00 on the twenty-fifth, but other than that, I can man the walls. Winter is coming. Direct me, milord. You have my sword.
posted by valkane at 1:59 PM on December 22, 2015

Oh, wait, this is mst3k? I meant, hi-keeba! (Every third word).
posted by valkane at 2:01 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

But seriously, at what hour are you thinking about kicking this thing off? Tomorrow? What time?

I mean, wouldn't it make more sense to kick off on the 24th? Or are you thinking going from midnight 23 thru midnight 25?
posted by valkane at 2:05 PM on December 22, 2015

I think the best way to do this might be to just handle it as it comes. I mean, many of us are already going to be in the stream a lot of the time, I expect. So long as at least one of us (at the moment, me, foop and valkane) are around, we can make sure the stream keeps running.

I've given you two my username and password at sync-video for the purpose of resuming the feed if it should stall.

I'm aiming for maybe 6 AM ET Dec 23 (tomorrow) through to midnight at the end of Christmas Day.

This year, because of the trouble with sync-video and long playlists, I've set everything up into multiple, shorter playlists. When you're logged in as me you'll be able to see them by clicking "My Playlists" beneath the current playlist. Each playlists its approximate running time. Note, the longest by far is the YouTube one, it contains both the MST episodes and lots of YouTube material. It should be the one you resort to if you have to leave and none of the others are around.

I really do have a lot of book work left to do in the coming nine days, so I'm likely to be quiet a lot of the time this year. I'll try to pipe up sometimes though.

I've noticed, if you're not playing video well, that reloading the sync-video page can help. But if you just reload the page you won't be able to chat! The best way to refresh the page is to copy the URL, close the window, then paste it into a new page and go. (Or, alternatively, you could click a bookmark set to the page after closing it. If you still use bookmarks, it's like 2015 after all.)
posted by JHarris at 2:42 PM on December 22, 2015

Hmm, maybe the 23rd is a bit early. I've already announced that day in the MeTalk thread though. We can probably afford to be a bit lax on being around continuously that day.
posted by JHarris at 2:44 PM on December 22, 2015

If nothing else, you are ambitious. Cya in the morning.
posted by valkane at 3:51 PM on December 22, 2015

Also, I suggest that if you need to log out, then you actually log out (all of us). I mean, no stepping on toes. I know you can assign second in command status (the exclamation point) and I think that's a good idea, but I don't think we want any confusion as far as using the primary log in. I know we can coordinate all this within the stream, but I'm just saying.....
posted by valkane at 3:59 PM on December 22, 2015

....and I'll bring the rootbeer.
posted by valkane at 4:00 PM on December 22, 2015

And i see where you're going with this. This is an experiment.
posted by valkane at 4:08 PM on December 22, 2015

Please don't consider this a spoiler for the content of the Holiday Stream, but here is something that you maybe should watch first: "In Defense Of The Star Wars Holiday Special" by CRACKED Staff
posted by oneswellfoop at 6:23 PM on December 22, 2015 [1 favorite]

Spoiler!
posted by valkane at 6:45 PM on December 22, 2015

Notes 5:18 Dec 23 --

1. I've scattered valkane's little bumpers in a few places around the playlist. I think I used them all, but am not sure. Might double up on them later, they're very sparse right now.
2. Discovered that videos 21-23 of the Star Wars Holiday Special are corrupted and should be reuploaded. I've sent you a MeMail about it foop.

posted by JHarris at 2:20 AM on December 23, 2015 [1 favorite]

Very sparse is probably best.
posted by valkane at 4:22 AM on December 23, 2015

Don't be afraid to switch playlists by the way, they're split up like that for a reason.

The "YouTube" playlist is the longest one, and contains the MST episodes, by the way.
posted by JHarris at 9:32 AM on December 23, 2015

valkane, I exited and reentered, and now you're gone? Are we in separate "instances" so to speak?
posted by JHarris at 1:42 PM on December 23, 2015

Being in separate instances makes us timelords, right? Right? RIGHT!?
posted by valkane at 4:30 PM on December 23, 2015

So, cytu.be kinda works on my ipad. Video plays but no audio.
posted by valkane at 11:02 AM on December 24, 2015

Interesting. I don't know if cytu.be requires Flash.
posted by JHarris at 12:18 PM on December 24, 2015

This is a reminder that MST3K Club is officially taking the weekend off because of New Years and the Christmas Marathon we had last week.

Unofficially, though, we yet be doing something. Whatever it is that we do, it will NOT be in the sync-video room. Instead, we are trialing the use of cytu.be. The MST3K Club room there will be: https://cytu.be/r/Metafilter_MST3KClub.

An interesting thing about cytu.be is you can leave a playlist running pretty much 24/7, and it'll keep going even if no one's there! I may leave it running, between shows, with a sequence of MST episodes.
posted by JHarris at 1:23 AM on December 31, 2015 [1 favorite]