Now for two weeks of a Mystery Science Theater 3000 fan fiction I probably should have run back in December. Ah well. This is another advertisement reprinted on a now-defunct Modern Mechanics blog, offering just what the subject line suggests.
I set the host sketches for this MiSTing in Season 7 of the show — the Pearl-and-Dr-Forrester year — because there were almost none set then. I think there were more MiSTings where people came up with their own, post-season-6 “new settings” than that short season ever got.
The New Jersey Big Sea Day is something that I, a New Jersey native, never heard of before running across a mention in Walt Kelly’s Pogo. It’s this early-August festival in Manasquan, on the Shore, with sandcastle-building and stuff like that. Von Steuben Day is a late-September celebration of Friedrich von Steuben, the Prussian military officer who introduced General Washington’s Continental Army to “training”.
The riff about where fortune cookies came from reflected the best information I had on hand around a decade ago when I wrote this MiSTing. It’s also not any kind of joke, but what am I going to do with trivia, not shove it in front of people’s faces? That would be impossible.
Axiomatic to my riffing is the supposition that it’s a silly idea to have customized messages printed in fortune cookies. But it’s not that silly. It would definitely get people to talk about whatever you or your organization put in there. It’s just what they would say is, “Huh. Cute” and then stop. It probably would take more than ten minutes to make fortune cookies from scratch, but not that much longer. They only need, like, five minutes to bake, even if you have a 1962 oven.
[ SEASON SEVEN opening credits. ]
[ 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1… ]
[ SATELLITE OF LOVE. Desk. MIKE is reading the SATELLITE NEWS; CROW and TOM carrying bags slung over their shoulders enter. The bags are full of greeting cards. ]
TOM: [ Hesitantly ] Ahem?
CROW: [ Coughing ] Um … uh …
TOM: [ Nervous, once MIKE, perhaps unwisely, looks up ] Ah, good day or evening sir and/or ma’am?
CROW: [ Also as a frightened child ] And with the upcoming seasons of seasonal greetings with calling for celebrations of seasonal greetings to be given out around the holiday seasoning …
TOM: [ To CROW ] You’re skipping, let me! [ To MIKE ] And for only twenty cents per card on certain deals you can have a customized and personal message for convenient home delivery?
MIKE: [ Patiently putting down the newspaper ] Oh, let’s see. Tom? Crow? Trying to build an economy on me sending cards to you, Crow, and Gypsy for Christmas?
TOM: Not merely for Christmas mister and/or missus Mike but for any of the holidays you can send out cards for.
MIKE: So I could send my wishes to the three of you for any holiday that I felt like?
CROW: Our fine line of finely lined cards are open to many interpretative holiday acts.
MIKE: Ah-huh. So you’re actually getting me set for the New Jersey Big Sea Day, and not just, oh, running some thing where Doctor and Mrs Forrester get you to swipe my meager paycheck for a promise of delivery of cards about three months after I forget I ever wanted any at all?
[ DEEP 13. DR FORRESTER and PEARL FORRESTER are squinting into the camera. ]
DR.F: Mother, they’re on to us!
PEARL: Clayton, go deep, break left, watch for the long pass.
[ DR FORRESTER runs to the far end of Deep 13. ]
PEARL: All right, if we can’t get you on cards … [ She punches several miscellaneous buttons as DR FORRESTER prances back and forth in the background ] … We’ll get you *cookies*!
DR.F: I’m open!
[ PEARL grabs a piece of Deep 13-crusted camera gear and tosses it at DR FORRESTER, who catches it, knocking him over. ]
[ SATELLITE OF LOVE. MIKE is staring at the camera while TOM and CROW bump one another’s card bags. ]
MIKE: … the heck?
[ MOVIE SIGN starts up. ]
ALL: Aaaah! Movie sign!
TOM: I want cookies!
[ 6… 5… 4… 3… 2… 1.. ]
[ ALL enter the theater. ]
> Imagine!
TOM: Now stop imagining! Settle! Now rationalize your settling!
> Your Christmas Greeting Inside a Chinese Fortune
> Cooky!
MIKE: A `cooky’?
CROW: What a kookie idea.
>
> Your Friends will be Amazed and Delighted
TOM: You know, the way people are often amazed by fortune cookies.
> When They Open this
> Gay Attractive Package
CROW: What, in public?!
> And See Your Personalized Greeting
MIKE: Even now their eyes are rolling and they’re sighing patiently at your kookieness.
>
> Think of it!
TOM: Keep thinking of it, until you have a good idea instead.
> Just picture this scene, taking place in each of
> your friends’ homes!
CROW: OK, we have a place, now, we need professions.
TOM: Dentists!
CROW: OK, a bunch of dentists at a friend’s home and what are they there for?
MIKE: Elvis impersonations!
CROW: Elvis-impersonating dentists at a friend’s home, there’s our scene, let’s go!
>
> Approximately one or two weeks before Christmas this year,
> your friends’ doorbell rings!
TOM: Sure, like your friends even know people who *ring* doorbells.
MIKE: That doesn’t even mean anything, Tom.
TOM: Er … hush.
> There, in the hands of their postman,
CROW: It’s a letter in the bag for me!
> along with the usual run of ordinary Christmas cards, is something
> completely different
TOM: It’s a Christmas Belgian Waffle!
> — a small, cardboard Christmas container, with
> their name and address on the front, but with no other
> identification!
MIKE: Immediately the bomb squad is called in.
>
> The ordinary cards are tossed aside!
TOM: The recipients panic, wrecking their home while fleeing!
> Eyes focus on this
> mysterious container as your friends slip it apart!
CROW: Your cookies are detonated at a secure facility in Utah!
> And just picture
> the expression on their faces when they draw out of that container a
> lovely Christmas Ornament Box
MIKE: A Box? Why, that’s even better than being *loved*!
> — with its brilliant red braided silk
> string to hang it on their tree
TOM: Murray, you’re supposed to hang it on the Christmas tree, not the diseased elm out back.
> — with the year 1962 in blazing red
> numerals on its face
CROW: The moldy, rotted remains of ancient cookies on the inside.
> — with its sides and bottom covered with gay
> white, red, yellow and brown Christmas figures
TOM: That certainly don’t reflect dopey old-time casual racist stereotypes so stop bracing for that shoe to drop.
> — and with its top
> printed with the command, in red letters, to “OPEN ME HERE”!
MIKE: OR SUFFER MY MIGHTY COOKIE WRATH!
> As
> your friends open that top, as they peer into the inside of that
> beautiful little Christmas box
CROW: .. as they free the unimaginable cookie spirits within …
> — what they see is a Chinese Fortune
> Cooky — the eternal symbol of good luck, good fortune and long-lived
> happiness!
TOM: That were invented around 1910.
CROW: By Japanese immigrants.
MIKE: To San Francisco.
TOM: That’s kind of eternal, right?
>
>
> ON YOUR TREE
MIKE: ON YOUR TREES, EVERYONE! This is *not* a cookie drill!
> — a Gift for Every Friend and Neighbor!
CROW: For up to four friends or neighbors.
> Hang your tree with colorful ornaments that become Gay
TOM: Wouldn’t a cookie drill just break?
MIKE: Huh?
> Greeting Gifts when neighbors and children drop in
> this Holiday Season.
CROW: But the holiday is Von Steuben Day.
TOM: I mean as soon as you tried drilling something with it. Cookies are fragile.
MIKE: Thanks for being on top of that, Tom.
>
> And when they break open that Fortune Cooky, there, inside,
CROW: Is the bomb!
> individually printed on colored Christmas paper, is your personal
> greeting — SIGNED BY YOUR OWN PRINTED NAME!
TOM: Oh, my stars.
MIKE: It’s like a Christmas card, only complicated!
>
> Yes! This Christmas, you can amaze your friends and loved
> ones
MIKE: Never before had they imagined such reasons to avoid you!
> with a completely different kind of Christmas Greeting Package —
TOM: A *box*!
> that gives them a thrilling surprise when they open it
CROW: Wait, you can *open* the box too? That changes everything!
> — that hangs
> as an attractive ornament on their Christmas tree after they open it
MIKE: Peeling the tree open with band saw and corkscrew.
> — that they’ll pick off that tree and show with pride to their
> friends for months to come
TOM: Your friends who leave their trees up for months after Christmas.
> — and yet, that costs you no more than a
> ordinary, good-quality Christmas Card that you buy in a store!
CROW: You know, the kinds of cards that people like.
>
> No wonder your phone will ring constantly the week before
> Christmas,
TOM: As your phone seeks revenge!
> congratulating you on this amazing Christmas greeting!
MIKE: It’s so amazing, you could buy something that takes nearly ten minutes to make from scratch!
> No
> wonder your friends will beg you to tell them where you got it!
CROW: And you’ll withhold the information, cackling with glee at your casual cruelty.
> No
> wonder they’ll hang it in a place of honor on their tree — take it
> off that tree to show to their friends.
TOM: Thereby defeating the point of hanging it on the tree.
>
> THE PERFECT GREETING FOR YOUR COMPANY OR ASSOCIATES
MIKE: “GREETINGS, COMPANY OR ASSOCIATES!”
TOM: Perfect!
> Wish your clients, customers and business associates
> Good Fortune and Good Luck for this Holiday Season
> and the New Year.
CROW: Their lucky numbers are 24, 33, and 33, and on the back are the Chinese words for “headache” and “potato”.
>
> And how much does all this fun cost you?
TOM: Remember to add the cost of lost dignity.
>
> As you know, regular good-quality Christmas Cards usually
> cost 50c — 75c—even $1
CROW: Two dollars!
TOM: Eighteen dollars!
MIKE: A million dollars!
> or more each!
TOM: Uphill! Both ways!
> But now, if you take
> advantage of this special offer, you can send your friends these
> personalized Chinese Fortune Cooky Christmas Packages — complete —
MIKE: What’s an incomplete fortune cookie?
CROW: That’s where they forget the little laminated bill for the buffet.
> for as little as 32c each!
TOM: That seems kind of pricey for a cookie for 1962.
[ To conclude … ]
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Another Blog, Meanwhile 
So basically Modern Mechanics predicted unboxing videos?
And no carefully worded fortune “cooky’ sent down the ambillicus to the Foresters?
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They kind of did! I’m hoping at least some issue provided a mechanism that would do away with boxes entirely.
And no, never thought to send a cooky back down to the Forresters. My host sketches always under-used the possibilities of the umbilicus (which, I guess, the show did too).
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