[Season 9 Opening]
[The scene opens on the Satellite of Love's Bridge, which is
festively decorated with Christmas decorations. Tom, Crow,
and Mike stand behind the command console. All three are
wearing scarfs and stocking caps.]
Mike: Merry Christmas everyone, and welcome to the
Satellite of Love. I'm Mike Nelson, I'm trapped up
here, and it's Christmas Eve. So, [turning to the
bots] is everyone ready for our "Little Drummer Boy"
sketch?
Crow: Mike? Tom and I don't feel right about this sketch.
Mike: Really?
Tom: Well, sure. Think about it. We've done all of these
sketches about Christmas, but have we ever paid any
attention to the *other* holidays this time of year?
No! We should be doing something with Hanukkah or
Kwanza or something besides Christmas?
Mike: Hmm. Well, okay. I get your point. Well, let's do
something with Hanukkah then. Ready? Let's go!
[Silence. Tom and Crow shift uncomfortably.]
Mike: Guys?
Crow: We're thinking!
Mike: You don't really know anything about Hanukkah, do you?
Tom: I can sing Adam Sandler's "Hanukkah Song".
Mike: That's a start. Go ahead.
Tom: Okay. o/~ O.J. Simpson. Not a Jew. o/~ [pause] That's
all that I remember.
Mike: How about you, Crow? What do you know about Hanukkah?
Crow: It involves a draedel and a ball of yarn, right?
Mike: Let's move on to Kwanza. What can we do to celebrate it?
[Silence.]
Mike: Okay, how about Ramadan?
Crow: We could go to a Ramada Inn...
Mike: Yule?
[The bots bow their heads shamefully.]
Mike: Back to Christmas then?
[The bots nod.]
Mike: Okay, on three. One, two,
[The light on the console begins to flash.]
Mike: ...and Pearl. Hang on for a second, guys.
Let's see what Pearl wants.
[Mike hits the flashing light.]
[Castle Forrester]
[The Castle is also festively decorated. Pearl and Observer
are nowhere to be seen. A nervous looking Bobo stands
in front of the viewscreen.]
Bobo: Heh. Hi Mike.
[SoL]
Mike: Hey there Bobo. Where'd Mr. Potter and the Grinch go?
[Castle Forrester]
Bobo: Well, they, uh, they've sort of <softly> passed out.
[SoL]
Crow: Passed out?
[Castle Forrester]
Bobo: It seems that they drank just a bit too much
eggnog and, boom, they're went out like a light.
[SoL]
Tom: So, no experiment today?
[Castle Forrester]
Bobo: No, I'm afraid that the Lawgiver would get really
mad if I didn't show you something. Just let me
find something...
[Bobo walks out of the frame for a moment, then returns
with a large box full of tapes, books, disks, and more
that he begins to rummage through.]
Bobo: Let's see. "It's A Wonderful Life"? No. "A
Charlie Brown Christmas"? No. "Christmas on
the Planet of the Apes"? <snort> Yeah. Like I'd
show you a classic like that. Ah! Here's one!
[Bobo holds up a disk.]
Bobo: It's called "is santa clause dead?" and it's
apparently an expose on Santa. Have fun, Mike!
[SoL]
[The lights are flashing.]
All: AHHHHH!!!! WE'VE GOT RANTING SIGN!!!
[Mike hits the light and the door sequence begins.]
[6 . . . 5 . . . 4 . . . 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .]
[The bots and Mike enter the theater and sit down.]
>Date: Mon, 21 Dec 1998 20:45:42 -0800
>From: wiza...@juno.com (Shadow Walker)
Mike: o/~ Shadow Walking...
baby you do it right
Give me more,
drag me across the floor... o/~
>Subject: is santa clause dead?
>
Mike: I can only hope so. I hated that film.
Tom: Yes Virginia, there is a Santa Corpse.
>imagin this
>
Mike: o/~ Imagine no misspellings.
It's easy, you can see.
Well written fanfics.
And no one forgets an 'e'. o/~
>there are approximatley two billion children (persons under 18) in the
>world.
Tom: And all of them want Furbys! Do you have yours yet?
> However since santa does not visist children of muslim hindu
Mike: The Grinch seems to have stolen all the commas from Whoville too.
>jewish
Tom: That's Hannukah Harry's job.
> or buddhist (except maybe in japan)
Crow: Gift delivery in Japan is automated though.
Mike: FedEx got the contract last year.
> religions, this reduces the
>workload for christmas night to 15% of the toltal, or 378 million
>(according to teh population reference bureau).
Tom: TEH, suppling information to the internet since 1994!
> At an average (census)
>rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes,
>presuming there is at least one good child in each.
Mike: Santa will, of course, be skipping the Menendez household again.
> Santa has about 31
>hou8rs of christmas to work with.
Crow: Well, acutally Santa doesn't deliver all of the presents on
Christmas Eve. In Germany, he delivers gifts on December 6th,
and an angel delivers gifts on Christmas. The same is true in
Holland, I think. And since the Eastern Orthodox church uses
a different calendar than the west, Santa won't have to
deliver gifts to them until January...
Tom: Thank you, Crow.
> thanks to the different time zones and
>the rotattion of the earth, assuming east ot west (wich seems logincal).
Crow: Yes. If it were north to south, it would be latical.
> this works out to 967.7 visits per second.
Mike: If only he wouldn't wait until the last minute like that.
Tom: He probably picked up that "make a moment last forever" trick
from those aliens in _Insurrection_.
> this is to say that for each
>christian housre hold with a good child,
Mike: ...there are thousands of heathen households with evil children.
Bots: Mike!
Mike: What?
> stanta has around 1/1000th of a
>second to park the sleigh,
Tom: It takes more time in The City, naturally.
> hop out,
Crow: Ow!
Mike: Open the door first, Santa.
> jump down the chimney,
Tom: Santa's ex-airborne.
> fill teh
>stocking,
Mike: [Santa] Coal, coal, coal. Damn! I'm getting black lung. I hate
these households that have been on Springer.
> distrubute the remaining presents under teh tree,
Crow: Taking a few seconds to exchange those really cool presents
that your aunt gives you with socks and a sweater.
Mike: Santa sells the cool toys on the black market.
> eat whatever
>snacks have been left for him,
Tom: [Santa] Damn it! Why are all of these kids leaving me ham this yeaar?
> get back up the chimney, jump into the
>sleigh and get onto the next house.
Tom: So, he get down the chimney, then he gets back up again?
Crow: You ain't never going to keep him down.
> Assuming that each of theses 108
>million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (witch of course, we
>know to be false,
Mike: As 10 million of those children are Osmonds and another million
are either Kennedies or Sheens.
> but will accept for the purposes of our calculations),
>we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5
>million miles not counting bathroom stops or breaks.
Mike: Good luck on the bathroom stops. There's nothing open on
Christmas Eve.
> this lmeans santa's
>sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second 3,000 times the speed of sound
>for purposes of comparison ,
Tom: That can't be right. If they were moving that fast, then when they
hit grandma, they would have left a crater the size of Wisconsin.
> the fastest man made evhicle, the ulysses
>space probve, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional
>reindeer can reun (at best) 15 miles per hour,
Crow: Thankfully, Santa uses nitro-burning funnyreindeers.
Mike: And Frosty has those monster trucks.
Tom: This Christmas! Christmas! Christmas!
> teh payload of teh sleigh
>adds anothber interestiong element.
Tom: Plutonium. Santa's packing a brace of 50 Megaton nukes.
Crow: Gack. We need a spellchecker on aisle 5!
> Assuming that each child gets
>nothing more then a meduim sizwed lego set (two pounds),
Tom: And Furbies! Don't forget the Furbies?
Mike: Two pounds. That's about seven bucks, right?
Crow: Yep. The EC heavily subsidizes the Legos in the European Market.
> the sleight is
>carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting santa himself.
Tom: With Santa, it'd be over 600 thousand tons.
> On land, a
>conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.
Mike: An unconventional reindeer tends to pull pranks.
> Even granting
>that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount,
Crow: So they're reinants then?
> the job
>cant be done with eight or even nine of them--- santa would need 360,000
>of them.
Mike: But since Santa *is* only using nine of them, that's a sure
sign of heavy steroid use in those reindeer games.
> this increases teh payload, not counting the wight of the
>sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or eroughly sever nime
Mike: Sever nime?
Crow: Maybe he's writing in Esperanto.
> the weight of the
>Queen Elizaveth (the ship)
Tom: Actually, the Queen is getting a bit chubby...
> 6000,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per
>second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer
>int eh same fashion as a spacecraft erentering tehg earth's atmosphere.
Crow: Just agree with him here, folks.
>the lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 14.3 quintilloion joiles of energy
>per second each.
Crow: If only we knew what a "joile" is.
Tom: It's that Alaskan singer. You know, the "Pieces of You"
person.
Crow: Oh. [pause] She doesn't seem that energetic.
Tom: Well, with 14.3 quintillion of her, the reindeer will probably
just want to go for a walk.
> in short, they would burest ainto flames almost
>instantaneously,
Mike: Actually, they'd probably just vaporize.
> explosing the reindeer behind them and creating
>deafening sonic booms itn thie rake.
Tom: MAVERICK!
> teh enitre reindeer tema would be
>vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time
>santa reaches teh fisfthe house on his trip.
All: "fisfthe"?
Tom: First? Fifth? Four Hundreth? You be the judge.
> NBot theat it matters,
>however, since santa, as a result of acceleration from a dead stop to
>650mph in .001 seconds,
Mike: Nice acceleration. Santa must be filling the reindeer up with
premium.
> would be subjected to acceleration forces of
>17,000 b's.
[The trio groans.]
Crow: Those bees will surely force Santa to give them all of his pollen!
> A 250 pund santa(wich seems ludicroulsy slim) would be pinned
>to the backof the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing
>his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Tom: So, all of the jello in the world is actually Santa?
Mike: Tom, could we spend one Christmas without having a pulped Santa
becoming involved, please?
> therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
>
Mike: Actually, he's in a state of quantum flux until we open the
sleigh.
Crow: Schroedenger's Sleigh. Coming soon from Robert Anton Wilson.
>merry christmas
>
>have a merry christmas y'all=appreviation for you all.
>
Crow: <sarcasm> Oh, thank you for that explanation. We could
have never figured that out without your help. <sarcasm>
Mike: Well, my Christmas spirit's gone.
Tom: Same here. Let's blow this pop stand.
[The trio exits.]
>________________________________________________________________
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>------------------------------
[1 . . . 2 . . . 3 . . . 4 . . . 5 . . . 6 . . .]
[The Bridge, still festively decorated. Mike and Tom
stand behind the console. Crow is nearby, staring out
a portal.]
Tom: Mike? What was the point of that post?
Mike: Well, Tom. Have you ever been at a magic show and
somebody near the stage starts shouting out how the
magician does the tricks?
Tom: No.
Mike: Oh. Well, have you ever been at a party and one of the
guests starts telling you what stores the hostess
bought the party platters from?
Tom: No.
Mike: How about, have you ever bought a book and someone
wanders up to you and starts telling you about the
factual errors in the book?
Tom: Wait, do you mean that it's like some guy in a movie
theater who keps telling you how the special effects
are done?
Mike: Yes! Yes, that's it...
Tom: ...Or a guy who sits behind you and makes sarcastic
comments about the film while you're trying to watch
it?
Mike: Um, well, that's actually kind of funny. [Mike
shakes his head.] Anyway, it's basically some
guy trying to ruin everyone else's good time.
Tom: Got it.
Mike: Crow? You've been kind of quiet. Is everything okay?
Crow: Hmm? Oh, I'm fine. I was just watching this flaming
thing below us.
Mike: What?
[Mike and Tom walk to the window.]
Tom: Hey! That looks like a sleigh!
Mike: Oh no! It's Santa! He's been vaporized!
Tom: Poor Santa!
Crow: Wait, I don't think that's Santa. [pause] It's Mir.
See? You can see a solar panel over on the right.
Mike: Hey! You're right!
Tom: Yeah, it's just Mir.
Mike: That's a relief. Say, let's see how Bobo's doing.
[Mike hits the light.]
[Castle Forrester]
[Bobo sits alone at a table.]
Bobo: <sniff> o/~ I wish me a Merry Christmas,
I wish me a Merry Christmas,
I wish me a Merry Christmas,
and...a...happy... o/~
[Bobo begins to sob. Suddenly, there's a huge sonic
boom, and a crash can be heard as a large cloud of
ash can be seen coming out of the fireplace. Bobo
looks towards the fireplace.]
Bobo: Wait! Can it be? Oh it is! It's Santa!
[Stepping out of the ash cloud is a red suited man,
carrying a large sack. It's Santa...Ortega.]
Ortega: Hrnerhphmph.
Bobo: Santa! Santa! You came! You really came!
Ortega: Mfheropadf?
Bobo: Oh, yes! I've been really good this year!
Ortega: Hwjaerhaerpmf.
Bobo: You've got a present? For me?
[Ortega nods and pulls something out of his bag.]
Bobo: An electron microscope? And a month's supply
of bannana pudding? Oh, Santa! This is the
best Christmas ever!
Ortega: Hrejhjkerhmhph.
Bobo: Oh yes, Santa! I will, I really will!
[Ortega nods, turns and walks back to the fireplace. He
places a finger beside his nose, and whoosh, he's gone.
Moments later, we hear another sonic boom. Bobo does
a dance of joy.]
[SoL]
Mike: Well, that was, sweet, I guess.
Crow: Yeah.
Tom: In a David Lynch sort of way.
Mike: Happy Holidays everyone, from all of us.
[Mike reaches over and pushes a button.]
\ | /
\ | /
--- * --- PWOOOOSH!
/ | \
/ | \
------------------------------------------------------------------------
"is santa clause dead?"
Written by Shadow Walker
Misting by: Matt Blackwell
Mystery Science Theater 3000 and its related characters and
situations are trademarks of and copyright of Best Brains, Inc.
All rights reserved.
Use of copyrighted and trademarked material is for non-commercial
parody, review, and commentary purposes only; no infringement
on the original copyrights or trademarks held by Best Brains,
Inc., Paramount Pictures Corporation, The Walt Disney Company or
anyone else, is intended or should be inferred.
No personal insults to author(s), character(s), or situation(s)
are or should be implied. All characters in this work are
fictional , and any resemblance to actual people, living or dead,
is purely coincidental.
12/24/98
Twang.
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> A 250 pund santa(wich seems ludicroulsy slim) would be pinned
>to the backof the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing
>his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
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