The Pirate Review - Caption This!

Bored? Lonely? Frustrated comic? Smart aleck? Step right this way...

We'll send him cheesy movies
The worst we can find
(la la la)

He'll have to sit and watch them all
And we'll monitor his mind
(la la la)

--from the Mystery Science Theater 3000 theme song

Once upon a time, there was a guy named Joel (and later, a guy named Mike) who had the great misfortune to work for Gizmonics Institute. His evil bosses shot him into space and performed cruel experiments on him, forcing him to watch some of the worst movies ever made. To keep from going insane, Joel and his newly-made robot friends began to crack wise at the screen... and the rest is history (eleven or so years of it).

Hey, call it a cheesy puppet show, but Mystery Science Theater 3000 contained some nuggets of truly inspired humor—little muttered ripostes that left me howling with laughter. And apparently, it was catching. It's extremely difficult now for me to watch a Really Bad Movie in theaters or on video without subjecting it to some spontaneous MiSTie treatment.

But hey, why annoy your friends and fellow moviegoers when you can visit a site that ENCOURAGES you to mock the screen? That's what Caption This! is all about. Begun as a lark back when MST3K was still on the Sci-Fi Channel, CT! is an exercise in free-form humor. Every few seconds, the site pulls a screenshot from the current Sci-Fi Channel feed and allows you to write a goofy caption for it (a max of 3 short lines, so keep it pithy). If you're not quite ready to join the fray, you can just read and laugh at the contributions of others in the Caption Gallery, which contains the latest 12 captions submitted.

You do have to register at scifi.com to participate—but don't sweat it; they don't ask for much by way of identifying information. Once you've chosen your handle and received a confirmation email, you're on your way.

Keep in mind that this site is not for children or the easily offended—CT! is pretty much lawless and completely uncensored, and sometimes the humor can get uncomfortably raw. Also, it's frighteningly addictive—regulars can vouch for the fact that, even when the screengrabber gets stuck on one image or goes dark, there are always a few die-hard cappers who keep right on cracking jokes through the outage.

Speaking of outages, you'd better get used to them. Hardly a week goes by where the screengrabber equipment at Sci-Fi Central doesn't go on the fritz. The tech support people don't appear to have "fix the screengrabber" anywhere near the top of their To-Do List, ever, so if the screen appears to be stuck or has gone black, you can expect it to stay that way for a little while. Don't despair; things will eventually get back to normal, or what passes for normal on CT!.

One of the most amazing things I've discovered about CT!, more than the humor or the addictiveness, is the strong sense of community. Yes, I know "community" has been reduced to an annoying buzzword these days, but it doesn't take very long to pick up on the personalities of the regular cappers—how they behave, what they do, who your favorites are, who annoys the hell out of you. Little conversations can and often do erupt in the gallery between regulars. The CT! gallery is usually a very friendly and enjoyable place to be—and on days when your boss is driving you crazy and life is all-out annoying, it's a fun and creative way to keep from going postal.

So what-all are you standing around here for? Hie ye over there and get crackin'!