We’re coming up on the final episode of Dick Tracy here at Inventing Situations. This very Wednesday (depending on how quickly you read this, that’s tomorrow, today or the past) at 6 PM eastern. I’d give you a recap, but frankly, I have no clue what’s going on in the series any more.

To celebrate, we’ve even got a special set of pictures from the serial over at Wasting Precious Time – go write a story with them now!

Of course, one serial ending means another one’s starting. And the winner of the vote I held with myself is….The Phantom Creeps, starring Bela Lugosi. All twelve episodes. Not just the three you’ve seen on mst and IS. The others will be coming to the catalog eventually. There’s also going to be a change of time – Thursdays at 4 PM, hopefully to catch more people capping from work. Not that we encourage that. Starting 4/26.

To mark the occassion and the 502nd item available for request, I’ve finally moved the catalog/request system out of beta and set the price at nothing! That’s right, zip, zero, zilch, nada. What the market would bear. Go ahead and make a request for the item of your choice to be capped at the time of your choice.

It’s almost time for the Round Robin sweet sixteen. If you’d like to join in this time around, we’ll start all the fun on Wednesday, February 28. There’s still plenty of time to sign up. Hope you’ll play along! – UnReality

Round Robins…remember those? Well, it’s been awhile, but it’s time yet again for another one. So if you’d like to participate, we’ll start all the fun on Wednesday, January 31. There’s still plenty of time to sign up. Hope you’ll play along! – UnReality

I just added two new picture sets at Wasting Precious Time. You may have noticed that I got so caught up in preparing for Turkey Week, that this is the first WPT update in over three weeks. I say “may have” because nobody commented on the absence to me, which reinforces my opinion that there’s not a lof of enthusiasm for this site. That’s not to say that just because you didn’t comment means you don’t care, but it’s just not a good sign. I’ll admit that my own neglect and the quality of the grabs has helped drain whatever interest there was. However it happened, it’s reached a point where it seems however much effort I put in, the best outcome is going to be maybe 3 stories written for the average set (that’s including the Round Robins run by UnReality, and UpSky2 before him). That’s not very good incentive for me to go back to serious work on the site.

I’m not going to shut it down all together. I am seriously considering cutting back to just one or two of the so-called ‘random’ picture sets gathered out of the Inventing Situations stock each week. Those are relatively easy for me to do. If anybody out there has some ideas on the future of WPT, let me hear them. Maybe somebody out there has a camera and can start staging photo dramas for us? Perhaps somebody can do a better job of culling images from old movies? Are there previously silent people who want ‘non-random’ sets badly enough to pay for them (thereby revitalizing my enthusiasm)? Maybe there’s some cartoonists out there who could contribute? Maybe you think it’s run its course? Anybody? Bueller?

November’s not even 24 hours old, so it’s time for me to start plugging our annual Thanksgiving marathon of films that were featured on mst3k. The first new to IS film for the year is Bloodlust! (1961), as featured in episode 607. It’s a heartfelt story of a fellow who likes to hunt – people. Since the people he hunts are mostly killers and Robert Reed, he could be a remotely sympathetic character, except for the fact that he’s thoroughly unsporting and not that great of a hunter. In addition to showing up on our schedule for the week of Thanksgiving, selected pictures are already available for riffing over at Wasting Precious Time, along with a random selection of grabs from films from the early seasons.

Random factoids:

• In the Amazing Colossal Episode Guide, Mary Jo notes that they agreed to limit themselves to one Brady Bunch joke for Robert Reed. I’m sure the cappers will exercise the same restraint. Just remember, the only funny thing about the Brady Bunch is that anybody over the age of ten ever watched it. And even that’s more ‘sad funny’ than ‘ha-ha funny.’
• This movie might feature one of the most sincere readings of the phrase “so long, suckers” in film history.
• Since we’ve already got Uncle Jim’s Dairy Farm this makes nine episodes we’ve got the short and the feature for.
• The jacket of the dollar bin DVD I picked up of this film lists Mike Nelson and Tom Servo in the cast. I can almost imagine getting Mike Nelson on there from some weird cut and paste, but I have to think their was a mstie having fun to get Tom on there.
• Rewatching this episode, it was nice to recall a simpler time when the notion of “Scooby Doo: The Movie” was still just an absurdist notion and the character of Pearl Forrester was still well motivated and remotely funny.

Running at Wednesday the 22nd, 1:05 PM and Friday the 24th, 7:35 PM.