My mom talks constantly, sometimes about the plot and characters, but often about medical conditions she perceives in the actors: “She looks like she has a goiter, I wonder if she knows”.
My grandmother has “TV-triggered ADHD”. In a theater she can sit still and watch. At home, no way. It can be her home, a relative’s home, whatever. If the TV is on (even if it’s a concert or something like that, providing music but no actual plot), she flits in and out of the room, goes to the kitchen, comes back, goes to a bedroom, yells “what are they laughing about?” when the TV laughs, comes back, asks “what’s this song, it sounds familiar”, leaves before we can reach the D in “the Blue Danube”… she’s even started doing it in restaurants a couple times!
Of course, since she’s 93 and gets taken by a “mere” eighty-something, she can get away with it.
My latest GF would do that. Constantly.
But most of the times, people I watch movies with are pretty decent. One notable exception: A woman I dated back in the 90s and I were watching Dogfight. It was a movie that I’d wanted to see for a long time.
A brief plot summary for those of you who haven’t seen it: A bunch of marines who are about to be shipped off to some unknown southeast Asian country – Viet somethingorother – decide to have a dogfight. The point is to pick up a woman and bring her to a party. The marine who brings the ugliest woman wins. The big twist comes when the protagonist discovers that beauty is more than just skin deep.
But we never got to the big twist. GF kept talking over the dialog, saying that the movie was stupid and misogynist and horrible and “leave it to a man to make such a sexist movie.” I tried to explain that it was directed by a woman, and give the plot time to develop. She would have none of it. It was stupid and misogynist and horrible and “leave it to a man to make such a sexist movie.”
About 20 minutes into it, I reached for the remote and turned it off. GF got mad. “Hey, I was watching that! Why did you turn it off?!?” Uh, because I can’t enjoy it with you trash talking it ceaselessly?
"I was trying to show my parents how witty and entertaining MST3K could be. Twenty minutes into the movie (Manos I think), my mother exclaims “It is really annoying how they keep talking, I can’t follow the plot with the distraction! How long until they stop so I can watch the movie?”
It took a lot of willpower to not chuck the remote at her (figuratively of course)."
This mystifies me each and every time I see it. And I see it a lot.
I have no idea what “MST3K” means.
None. And I promise, I’m not the only one.
Do you seriously expect all the members of this board, diverse as they are, to understand this reference?
How many times do you have to read a thread where someone has used an abbreviation only to be asked, like 10 posts later, “What does this mean?”, before you figure it out?
Damn people, please assume we don’t know what you mean.
Spell it out already. It’s only a few more key strokes to make yourself understood.
(Sorry for the hijack, but grrrr.)
Or you could just pick one of the million search results that come up when you google the term MST3K - you only need do it once, then you won’t be confused every time you see it.
I just did that and I still have no idea what it IS. Yes, I know I can click on any of the links, butttttttt…
If the second link from Google’s results doesn’t explain it adequately, give up.
It’s an abbreviation for Mystery Science Theater 3000, which is a hell of a long name to type each time.
Have you and your friends ever watched a movie for the sole purpose of mocking it at every step? It can be great fun. It works especially well with cheesy old sci fi movies.
MST3K is exactly that, but characters in the movie are poking fun at the movie within the movie.
But why should I have to google up a cryptic reference someone makes?
They can’t be bothered to use a few extra key stokes to make themselves clear but I’m supposed to google and decipher?
Isn’t the idea of posting about expressing yourself? Don’t you want people to understand your references?
Whenever I see unexplained abbreviations I always think, “Yeah, I’m sure your peeps all understand this when you text message them, but you’re not text messaging here. You have the entire keyboard in front of you, use it.”
We are not your ‘in the know’ peeps, we are a large, diverse, international audience if you want us to understand your points and references don’t be so lazy!
Thanks for clearing that up, I hope you know it wasn’t just you I was complaining about.
Each time? It was referenced and would have required typing only once in that post!
Everyone abides in a world teaming with abbreviations that are clear to them. But when interacting with others it behooves you to revert back to english, in my opinion.
Dunno; when I don’t understand a term, I look it up. YMMV.
Would Mystery Science Theater 3000 (more than a few more keystrokes) have been any less confusing? If you’ve never heard of the abbreviation, It’s a dead cert you’ll have never heard of the show either.
Why should we have to type posts that look like this?:
So what did everyone think of 24, a realtime action adventure TV series starring Keifer Sutherland and Mary Lynn Rajskub, Mondays at 9pm on Fox, last night? Do you think Logan, the former president who is now under house arrest for trying to kill Jack, the protagonist who is played by Keifer Sutherland, is on the up and up? And it sucked that Larry Biscuit, which is my pet name for Tom Lennox, played by Peter MacNicol, who plays Larry Fleinhardt on Numb3ers, a show starring Rob Morrow and David Krumholtz, who plays a math genius that helps the FBI solve crimes, Fridays at 10pm on NBC, and formerly John “The Biscuit” Cage on the now defunct Ali McBeal, a David E. Kelly show about a quirky Boston law firm, caved in to the veep, which is short for Vice President of the United States, a largish country in the western hemisphere.
Seriously, MST3K is not all that obscure.
Thing is, though, MST3K is not, in my opinion, a “cryptic” reference in a movie thread. Searching for the term on the SDMB gives 590 different threads in Cafe Society alone. It comes up frequently.
I’m not saying that everyone knows about it—your confusion is proof that they don’t—but most people do, and it’s common enough that people shouldn’t feel the need to define it every time they use it.
If i use a term like NAACP or ACLU in a political thread, i dno’t give an extended definition of what those organizations are and what their mission is. I think it’s reasonable to expect that most people will know what i mean, and that those who don’t will find out for themselves. Same with MST3K in a movie thread.
Exactly. I haven’t seen “The Departed” so I have no idea what any references to it mean. Is someone supposed to explain them in every post just so I don’t have to look it up?
I’m sorry, you had me until here. Did you mean the United States of America, or some other United States?
What do you mean by the terms '‘FBI’, ‘NBC’, ‘10pm’ and ‘Fridays’?
My ex did something like this too. When we were watching a movie together that I’d seen but she hadn’t, she always wanted to know what was going to happen, in advance. Who dies, who survives, what’s the plot twist, do those two end up together. I started blankly at her the first couple of times, then I tried to explain that the point is to watch the movie and see what happens, then I gave up.
I bet she wouldn’t even understand the purpose of spoiler boxes if explained to her.
Sorry, I’ll try to elucidate things a bit more next time.
Flowers By Irving, The National Biscuit Corporation, 9:60 at night, and a national restaurant chain that serves really greasy food.
Ha! It’s on CBS! This casts doubt on your entire post. 