Ray Jay's Vacation Blog!!!

Day 1:

Dear Vacation Diary,

My vacation is going ever so swell!!! :D

Actually, I started celebrating Sunday! I got a text from my Gnomey-Goddess!!! (She loves me, by the way.) Then Sunday night, after I had woken up a bit, I continued the celebration in earnest with some RiffTrax Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope and Star Wars: Episode V: The Empire Strikes Back. Very funny stuff!

Then I woke up tonight (Monday night) as late as I please, and started in on some RiffTrax Jaws!!!

Brian got home and I chatted with him a bit, and now I have the option of finishing Jaws, watching Rifftrax take on Tron or watching their take on Jurassic Park!

Seriously, RIFFTRAX!!!

Okay, one superwonderfulamazing thing about RiffTrax is that you get the MST3K experience with big-budget movies!

Which is cool enough!!!

But another fantasticalicious aspect of the RiffTrax experience is that it takes those DVDs you've watched over and over again (until every scene you watch simply reminds you what's going to happen 3 scenes from now) and turns them into a new viewing experience!!!

I don't think I would ever listen to RiffTrax in a cinema, because it would be impossible for me to stifle my laughter at wildly inappropriate moments for the rest of the audience (who paid their money to watch the film as the filmmakers intended)! (Plus, the first 15, or so, times I watch a movie, I prefer to have the experience the filmmaker intended.)

But I think RiffTrax is an AMAZING way to get more use out of the movies you've already watched a bazillion times!

For instance, I read Jurassic Park back in 1991, not long after it came out. The buzz for the movie started a year or so before the flick was released; people who hadn't even read the book were going "Stephen Spielberg and dinosaurs?!! I'm so there!!!"

Then I saw the movie in the cinemas 3 or 5 times, because I just couldn't get enough of it! (Plus, this was back when movies stayed in cinemas for months and months if they were making decent money.)

Then, when the flick came out on VHS, I (and everyone else) snapped it up and watched it dozens of times. They produced so many copies of the VHS that after a couple of years, you could get a free copy in your breakfast cereal.

Then we switched over to DVD, and I distinctly remember that the major impetus for my finally (begrudgingly) buying a DVD player -- and rebuilding my considerable film library from scratch again -- was this specific set of Jurassic Park and Lost World: Jurassic Park that included the CD soundtracks to both films! (I had only recently bought my first CD player because you couldn't get Delerium's Karma on cassette.)

So that was another couple dozen viewings of Jurassic Park.

I ended up having to pawn $500 worth of DVDs in the early 2000s to make rent one month, and I lost that set. But then a few years ago they released another set, this one including Jurassic Park III (which I had missed when it was in the cinemas)!

So there's another 5 or 6 viewings of JP!

Now, when I want the Jurassic Park experience, I'll pretty much replay the movie in my mind or reread the book. (Although, I've read that book so many times I have it more or less memorized, too. But I still re-read it every year or so because it has scenes that haven't made it into any of the 3 films, yet.)

HOWEVER...

For a mere $3.99, I can download an MP3 that makes the movie a brand new thing for me!!!

How wicked-awesome is THAT?!! :D

AND...

If you've taken a couple of days off from work to relax and enjoy yourself (but you're not rich enough fly somewhere, or even go meet your friends fro dinner or a movie or something) (and, you know... you keep vampire hours and your day begins when your friends are settling down to dinner, and continues on while they're asleep), you can enjoy enjoy a fun double- or triple-feature with some of your MST3K friends!!!

Hmm...

I fear that last paragraph made me sound the slightest bit pathetic...

Anyway...

Okay, so that's what I'm going to do now. I think I'll finish Jaws, then probably move on to the dinosaurs, then wrap it up with Tron.

Sounds like a plan.

PARTY!!!

:D