Well, the San Francisco Sketchfest has come and gone and we had a great time performing at the beautiful Castro Theater, which, in a strange coincidence, is located on Castro Street. The show opened with a guy playing one of those gigantic Wurlitzer organs.  I didn’t catch the musician’s name, but I wish I had because he was phenomenal. And the selection of tunes was first rate: melodies by Gershwin, Porter, Rodgers and their ilk, played with magnificent grandeur on one of the mightiest musical instruments of them all.  I know these kinds of organs were mainly used to accompany silent movies, and talkies have been in vogue for at least two or three years now, but I wish every movie theater started its program with a swingin’ Wurlitzer recital like the one the audience was treated to at the Castro.

It was great being back in San Francisco.  When you walk around and immerse yourself in the urban upsidaisium of its cultural and geographical landscape, you can easily understand why the melancholy elegance and lyrical squalor of the town have long inspired artists, musicians and writers.  Could any other city in America have produced as classic an example of beat poetry as the Rice-a-Roni jingle? I think not.

Unfortunately, we were only in town for a short while, so I never got the chance to stay indoors all day and all night watching episode after episode of “The Streets Of San Francisco” without ever leaving my hotel room.  Alas, I had professional obligations, so I was unable to experience the city-by-the-bay through the all-encompassing transcendence of a Quinn Martin Production.

Devoted viewers might have already noticed that Quinn Martin has had a profound effect on all of us at MST3K and Cinematic Titanic.  Not so much the shows themselves, but the voice-over narrator in the opening credits, announcing the name of the show, and the pertinent info that it’s “a Quinn Martin production,” plus the names of the principal cast members, and most importantly, the title of “tonight’s episode…”

As in: “Tonight’s Episode: ‘Eeny Meeny Miney Murder.’”

Or, “Tonight’s Episode: ‘An Apple A Day Keeps The Murder Away.’”

Or, “Tonight’s Episode: “Four Score And Seven Kills Ago.’”

On MST3K and Cinematic Titanic, we’ve made this reference a million times because it always makes us laugh, but come on, let’s be honest, it’s really easy to come up with them.  All you have to do is take a catch phrase, a famous quotation, or a book, movie, or song title, and replace one word with, “murder,” or “kill,” and, just like that, you have yourself a “Quinn Martin Production, Tonight’s Episode…” title.  It’s that simple, although, not every title or phrase lends itself so easily to this method.  For instance:

“Tonight’s Episode: ‘The Snows of KILLimanjaro.”

That one doesn’t work very well, does it? I would also advise against using titles or phrases that already have the word “murder” in them. For instance:

“Tonight’s Episode: ‘Murder Most Murder!’”

Doesn’t really work either, and some titles don’t need to be enhanced to make them more murdery or killy.  For instance:

“Tonight’s Episode: “Faster Pussycat: Kill! Kill! …And Murder!”

Pointless.  But coming up with ‘A Quinn Martin Production, Tonight’s Episode…” titles is easy, so give it a try if you’re looking for something fun to do when you’re not lucky enough to be in a position to actually traverse the streets of San Francisco.

Today is October 3 and this date marks a major anniversary for me. Twenty-three years ago, on October 3, 1985, my family threw me a surprise party. Actually, the phrase they used was “intervention,” but the point is, my mother, my three brothers and my sister had a lot to say to me about what they perceived as my addiction to drugs and alcohol. Maybe there was some validity to what they were saying, but to tell you the truth I was too hung-over to comprehend any of it. I just wanted them to finish up so I could go have a cocktail. It was 9am after all.

But I never did have that next cocktail, not on that day, or on any day since. Instead, in a rare instance of common sense, I took the one-way ticket they gave me and boarded a nonstop flight from New York City to a mythical land called “Minneapolis,” which until that point I had only known as the location of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.” I had always assumed that I was incapable of functioning anywhere off the island of Manhattan, but it turns out that the state of Minnesota, with its plethora of rehab centers, is a great place to send someone in a state of drug and alcohol dependency, which was the general consensus about me, although I had always been too drunk and/or stoned to develop my own opinion about this. I ended up living in that mythical land for nine years. New York is where I was born and raised; Los Angeles is where I currently reside, but Minneapolis is the place where my life was saved.

I am tempted to give you all the sordid details about my addiction and recovery, but in the time it’s taken me to type this sentence, several thousand books have been written and published about somebody else’s addiction and recovery, so I will spare you. But I will say that every good thing that has happened to be in the twenty-three years since that particular October 3 I owe to sobriety (like, for instance, just off the top of my head, the fact that I continued to be alive all these twenty-three years).

The move to Minneapolis and the sobriety that came with it resulted in a ton of great things happening to me, not the least of which was being “TV’s Frank” on MST3K. Here is a partial list of some of those great moments in my life that recovery made possible:

Dressing in a Joe Besser / Stinky / Little Lord Fauntleroy outfit and licking a giant lollipop while skipping across Deep 13.

Getting placed inside a giant “Operation” game and having my body repeatedly “bonked” while I repeatedly said “Thank you!”

Announcing on national television that I was going to throw a “Hat Party” and predicting that my hat would be “The grandest of them all!”

Screaming at the top of my lungs, “WHO IS MERRIT STONE!!!”

Singing “Nummy Muffin Kookle Butter.”

Parading around in a grandma dress as “Auntie McFrank.”

Wearing a unitard and doing a goofy interpretive dance in front of thousands of people at a live Mystery Science Theater 3000 show.

Spending my 40th birthday in a giant crib and making gurgling infant noises as part of my portrayal of a full-grown baby on an episode of “Sabrina The Teenage Witch.”

Yes, sobriety has given me so much, but more than anything else, it’s given me back my dignity.