In 1990, Frank Conniff joined the staff of Mystery Science Theater 3000. First he was hired as a writer, then he was called upon to play TV's Frank, the bumbling yet lovable Mad Scientist henchman in Deep 13. And then he was given the sacred duty of finding the films that would be riffed on the show. Thus, because of his actions, the world now knows of Manos: The Hands of Fate, Monster A-Go-Go, The Brain That Wouldn't Die, Teenagers From Outer Space, and many other cheesy movies that the world would just as soon not know about. In these essays, TV's Frank focuses on twenty-five of the Mystery Science Theater 3000 films he found and riffed with his fellow MST3K writers and cast mates. It tells the story of how a comedian who was lucky enough to work on beloved Peabody Award winning TV show was transformed into a comedian who was lucky enough to work on a beloved Peabody Award winning TV show. It's a story that will stay with you for the rest of your life, if you happen to die just as you finish reading the book.

Had you tuned in to the small television station KTMA on Thanksgiving Day, 1988, you would have been one of the few witnesses to pop culture history being made. On that day, viewers in and around St. Paul, Minnesota, were treated to a genuine oddity, in which a man and his robots, trapped within a defiantly DIY sci-fi set, cracked jokes while watching a terrible movie. It was a cockeyed twist on the local TV programs of the past, in which a host would introduce old, cheaply licensed films. And though its origins may have been inauspicious, Mystery Science Theater 3000 captured the spirit of what had been a beloved pastime for generations of wags, wiseacres, and smartalecks, and would soon go on to inspire countless more. The Worst We Can Find is a comprehensive history of and guide to MST3K and its various offshoots—including Rifftrax, Cinematic Titanic, and The Mads Are Back—whose lean crew of writers, performers, and puppeteers have now been making fun of movies for over thirty years. It investigates how “riffing” of films evolved, recounts the history of these programs, and considers how a practice guaranteed to annoy real-life fellow moviegoers grew into such a beloved, long-lasting franchise. As author Dale Sherman explains, creative heckling has been around forever—but MST3K and its progeny managed to redirect that art into a style that was both affectionate and cutting, winning the devotion of countless fans and aspiring riffers.

SYNOPSES OF THE MORE THAN 120 EPISODES OF THE PEABODY AWARD-WINNING TV SHOW.

For Jackey Neyman Jones, who played Debbie in Manos: The Hands of Fate, the "worst movie ever made" is, at its heart, a home movie that just happens to be shared with the world. Equal parts memoir/family saga/film book, Growing Up with Manos: The Hands of Fate shares the behind-the-scenes story of the making of Manos: from creator Hal Warren's alleged bet with TV producer Stirling Silliphant that "anyone could make a movie," to the tragic suicide of John Reynolds (Torgo), right up through the newest Manos-related projects that are carrying the film into the digital age. Jackey's stories dispel much of the Manos mythology while crystallizing a unique time and place in America, where a crew of actors with a bad script and a rented camera set out to make a bad movie-and succeeded beyond their wildest dreams. Jackey Neyman Jones is a professional artist living in the Great Northwest. Laura Mazzuca Toops is a writer/editor with more than 30 years' experience in business and fiction writing. She is the author of three historical novels.

The Defendant: Frank Conniff.Comedian, writer, gout sufferer, and prolific tweeter, who understood that his incendiary social media posts might one day lead to calls for his head, but never suspected that the calls would be coming from inside his house. The Plaintiffs:Millie & Barney.Indoor cats. Eaters, sleepers, poppers, bladder emptiers. Frequent subjects of Conniff's Twitter, Facebook and Instagram timelines, until they finally decided that enough was enough and fought back against what they perceived as rank exploitation by the guy they had always assumed was working for them.The result was a bombshell Defamation of Character law suit, the repercussions of which were still being felt minutes after the trial ended.Now every sensational detail of the legal cage match that shocked the world can now be told. This volume contains the whole scandalous story of a precedent-setting judicial conflict that makes the O.J. Simpson trial look like a mere double murder.

Written by Barry Singer—one of contemporary musical theater's most authoritative chroniclers—Ever After was originally published in 2003 as a history of the previous twenty-five years in musical theater, on and off Broadway. This new edition extends the narrative, taking readers from 2004 to the present. The book revisits every new musical that has opened since the last edition, with Barry Singer once again as guide. Before Ever After appeared in 2003, no book had addressed the recent past in musical theater history—an era Singer describes as "ever after musical theater's many golden ages." Derived significantly from Singer's writings about musical theater for the New York Times, New York Magazine, and The New Yorker, Ever After captured that era in its entirety, from the opening of The Act on Broadway in October 1977 to the opening of Avenue Q Off-Broadway in March 2003. This new edition brings Ever After up to date, from Wicked, through The Book of Mormon, to Hamilton and beyond. Once again, this the first book to cover this new, pre-pandemic age of the Broadway musical. And, once again, utilizing his recent writing about musical theater for HuffPost and Playbill, Barry Singer's viewpoint is comprehensive and absolutely unique.

With the warmth and humor we've come to know, the creator and host of A Prairie Home Companion shares his own remarkable story. In That Time of Year, Garrison Keillor looks back on his life and recounts how a Brethren boy with writerly ambitions grew up in a small town on the Mississippi in the 1950s and, seeing three good friends die young, turned to comedy and radio. Through a series of unreasonable lucky breaks, he founded A Prairie Home Companion and put himself in line for a good life, including mistakes, regrets, and a few medical adventures. PHC lasted forty-two years, 1,557 shows, and enjoyed the freedom to do as it pleased for three or four million listeners every Saturday at 5 p.m. Central. He got to sing with Emmylou Harris and Renée Fleming and once sang two songs to the U.S. Supreme Court. He played a private eye and a cowboy, gave the news from his hometown, Lake Wobegon, and met Somali cabdrivers who’d learned English from listening to the show. He wrote bestselling novels, won a Grammy and a National Humanities Medal, and made a movie with Robert Altman with an alarming amount of improvisation. He says, “I was unemployable and managed to invent work for myself that I loved all my life, and on top of that I married well. That’s the secret, work and love. And I chose the right ancestors, impoverished Scots and Yorkshire farmers, good workers. I’m heading for eighty, and I still get up to write before dawn every day.”