Undead vaudevillian cineaste

How well I remember my rapturous adolescent discovery of MST3K on visits to Twin Cities-area relatives.

Ever since it went out of circulation, a void has yawned in the limited cortical space I reserve for thoughtful yet snotty entertainment with esoteric Minnesota references. (Using Pine City Vo-Tech as a punchline works for a really select crowd.) The Onion, good and Midwestern as it is, only takes me so far.

So once I had returned to Chicago it was a bewildering but pleasant surprise to stumble across a TV show airing - and skewering - shitty old movies with a joyously hokey and decidedly local slant.

All hail Svengoolie, scourge of Berwyn!

If your idea of mirth is a late-night pelting by cheesy jokes, rubber chickens, and overdubbed insults stolen from Looney Tunes and Simpsons episodes, you'll think you've died and been exhumed by the Friars Club's cryptkeeper. All you have to do is move to this side of Lake Michigan...