MiSTing Repost: CGYC Upgraded To Buy

I'm finally getting back to reposting some of my old Mystery Science Theater stuff. It's not the Digimon thing that was my big thing from my fan version of the concept, but it's something. All I can say is that it's hardly my best entry on that front, but it does demonstrate why I switched to a fan-character version of the idea rather than full-on fanfic versions with the characters from the show as it was in the late 1990s.

This first went live on a site called Web Site Number Nine, which was an archive for things like this, in late 2000 or early 2001.

Otherwise, I think I'll just let this one speak for itself below the jump.

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[jump]

Title: CGYC Upgraded to Buy
Era: Season 9+
Category: SPAM/Advertising email
Original Author: MileHigh PR
MiSTing Author: Jesse Shearer; email: ambasosor_lardo@hotmail.com


[Season Nine opening titles]

[SOL waiting room; Mike and the Bots discuss investing]

MIKE: You know, guys, I was just thinking that mabey I should put some cash away into savings or something so that you two don't blow it all before we get back to Earth.
SERVO: Sounds like a good idea.  How about investing it in the stock market?
MIKE: I wouldn't even know where to begin.  Besides, I'd use a broker for that sorta thing, and I don't really want to pay commission.
CROW: Pearl showed me an email about a stock you could invest in all on your own.
MIKE: I don't know.  It sounds kinda risky, taking stock advice from Pearl...
SERVO: So's leaving your money to us, Mike.
MIKE: I guess it's worth a shot.  [Pushes Pearl's light] Pearl?
[Castle Forrester]
PEARL: I heard your little discussion.  I guess I could share one of my little stock secrets with you.  Here goes... [Sets down email message, just off screen]
[SOL, lights and buzzers going off]
MIKE: We've got investment sign!!!
[doors: 6...5...4...3...2...1...theater]

>From: "MileHigh PR (CGYC) Upgraded" <Milehighpr@aol.com>

CROW: Oh, oh!  He's "Upgraded!"

>To: <ambasosor_lardo@hotmail.com>
>Subject: CGYC Upgraded to Buy

SERVO: Well!  Good for them!
MIKE: It is, actually.

>Date: Mon, 10 Jul 2000 13:40:45
>
>Mile High PR of Westminster, CO has just found information out about this
>wonderful growing company.

SERVO: What is it?

>  This may be one of the greatest opportunities of a
>lifetime to get in early on.  Carnegie International Corporation (OTC BB CGYC)

CROW: What does that mean?
MIKE: It's the stock's market symbol, I think.

> is
>a Company to watch. Since its shares resumed trading on the 9th of May (the
>Company had been on a trading halt for just over one year which it claims was
>due to its former auditors Grant Thornton who it has sued in Maryland. We
>expect the Company to settle this with a winfall of at least $50 million dollars
>next year)

SERVO: What if they fail?

> the Company has announced the following very positive news that
>has not been recognized in its stock price yet.

MIKE: Well, if it's only just been announced, of course it hasn't!

> These significant developments
>should create shareholder value and long term recurring revenues.

MIKE: Well, that is sorta the point of investing.

> They report a
>44% increase in first quarter revenues, from 1999 of 3.5 million to 2000 first
>quarter revenue of over 5.1 million.  With the addition of two new outside Board
>Members, Steven R. Wood, a 14-year former veteran software architect at
>Microsoft and William M. Reffett, president of Reffett & Associates, LTD, a
>Seattle-based executive search and retail-consulting firm.

MIKE: Wow.  A sentence fragment in their advertising message.
SERVO:[sarcastically] I'm sold.

>  The completed
>acquisition of Federation of Associated Health Systems of San Antonio, TX,
>should add $1.5 million dollars in additional cash flow over the next 12 months.
>They have been named an authorized distributor of Ameritech in the Midwest,
>which should generate at least $1 million in revenue in the first year of the
>agreement. The Company also announced another agreement with RoomLinX for
>high-speed Wireless Internet access for Hotels and Hospitals where the
>Company provides billing and clearing services to over 150,000 hotel and
>hospital rooms.

CROW: Oh, nice.  Stiff `em twice. Once for either hospital service or hotel room and then for `Net access.

> The Company expects $15 million in revenue during the first 2
>years of this agreement. We have also leaned that the Company is now beta
>testing its newest release of its voice activated auto-attendant and voice mail
>product with unified messaging called MAVIS.

MIKE: Hey, one of the characters from MTV's MAVIS AND MUTTHEAD show!
CROW and SERVO:[forced laugh]

> This product is the answer to the
>push-button nightmare of business phone systems.

CROW: Is it, now?

> We believe that Steve
>Wood will have very positive impact on this release with his Microsoft
>background. The product, as the speech market grows should have a great
>impact on the Companies revenue and earnings.  We feel this stock is very under
>valued compared to similar companies in the same field.  We wouldn't be surprised
>to see this stock at $3.75 by December of 2000.  Very rarely do we see such a
>strong value in a fast growing company.

MIKE: Boy, they're really hawking those strong points, aren't they?
SERVO: Yeah.
CROW: I'd say.

>  Now you understand why I wanted to
>share this with everybody I could find.

MIKE: Uh, no.  I don't.  But then, fancy words and big numbers never really have impressed me.

>  This pick could make your Christmas a
>Jolly one.  Hey if you don't believe anything you just read, wait a few months
>and watch the stock start to grow.

ALL:[Three Stooges "Men In Black" style] We Will!

>
>
>Slade Laner

CROW: Now *there's* a name I'd trust.

>Research Investor Specialist

SERVO: OK, so how's that different from a "Stock Analyist?"

>Mile High PR
>Westmister, CO
>
>

CROW: And that's all there is.
MIKE:[picking up Servo so they can leave] I guess.
[All exit theater]
[doors: 1...2...3...4...5...6...waiting room]
CROW: So, what did you think, Mike?
MIKE: I think I'll just pass on this one.  And the whole stock market thing altogether.
SERVO: That's what I'd do.
MIKE: Yeah, I was just thinking a savings account or a certificate of deposit.
CROW: Well, those are good options, too, if you can get the right interest rates, I guess.
[Pearl's light flashes]
MIKE: Pearl's calling. [taps light]
[Castle Forrester]
PEARL:[becoming visibly hurt and then angry as she speaks] So, opting out, are you?  Fine.  Fine!  There goes my commission.  I guess I won't be able to afford better experiments for you.  And there go Bobo's visits to the animal clinic.  But have it your way, Mike.  Don't buy in.  I'll just have to find more SPAM for you.  Have it your way.
[SOL]
MIKE: Sorry, Pearl.  It's just that some other form of savings or investment would be better for me, that's all...
[scene fades to a second of black, then the Season 9 end credits.]

Email Credits:
Original author: MileHigh PR
Email copyright: MileHigh PR
MiST Author: Jesse Shearer
Author's email contact: ambasosor_lardo@hotmail.com
Mystery Science Theater 3000 copyright Best Brains Inc. and Sci Fi Channel.  No copyright infractions are intended or should be infered as a result of this document.  It is intended as entertainment only.


STRINGER:
With the addition of two new outside Board Members, Steven R. Wood, a 14-year former veteran software architect at Microsoft and William M. Reffett, president of Reffett & Associates, LDT, a Seattle-based executive search and retail-consulting firm.

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So yeah, not my best work on this front, but still trying to get some content out here. Have a good rest of your weekend.

MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders: Episode 6, Part Two

After the first part of this one, I suspect it's obvious why I'd forgotten about it for six months after starting it. I'm afraid this part isn't much better, but at least I'm getting it up in a more reasonable amount of time, if you can call a month and a half or so more reasonable.

This time, we're starting right off with a South Park joke and a half-missed Mystery Science Theater reference. The South Park bit hasn't aged well, because if I'm not mistaken, the show and its creators have fallen out of favor, but I'll be damned if I can remember just why. If I'd gone just a bit farther with the “bite me” line, I would have been quoting the toaster strudel sketch from the Devil Doll episode of Mystery Science Theater.

But missed opportunities aside, this is a mercifully short part, so I'll just get on with it and say more at the end.

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A Note On The Upcoming MiSTing Repost

Have I mentioned the bad page layout and formatting in the Mystery Science Theater stuff I've been reposting lately?

MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders: Episode 6, Part One

Editor's Note: These endcaps were written in July of 2022, when I had intended to have these come out in July and August of last year. While that didn't happen for various reasons, what is said in them still applies. --JMS

So this is probably not the best followup to the previous episode in this series, either in terms of the main feature or the retrospective for it. There's really not much to say about this one. It's short enough that I'll be doing this in two parts rather than three.

This is also a farily middle of the road entry in the series. The story itself features another one of the kids getting their solo adventure. The host segments and jokes are pretty much what would be standard for what would be my own solo work on these. I'll try to say more about this at the very end of this episode in a week or two, but we're at a point where there's only three, maybe four episode of this left, and it's starting to show that it was coming up on time to stop.

Anyway, I'd better just get to this so you can see what I mean.

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MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders Episode 5, Part Three

After a bit more of a delay than I had intended, it's time to wrap this chapter up so I can move on to the next chapter in the series. Hopefully, it won't be so long before I get there.

In the meantime, let's get to finishing this one, shall we? In going over this part one last time, it seems I didn't put in any further mostly direct pulls from the Red Green Show, which is probably for the best. The host segments in this part are some of my favorites, at least from my own work, and I still say the first one here is my all-time favorite of them, though the lodge meeting ending is pretty good, too.

There's also what I'd call my personal favorite riff from my own work here, too. It's the “I'm an idiot” one from almost the end. For as much amusement as I still get from that line, it also makes me kind of sad that it seems at least as true, if not moreso, now than it was when I first wrote it more or less twenty years ago.

There's some historical notes to go along with the sense of nostalgia I get from writing these wraparounds, but I'll save those for the end. For now, we've got moviesign!

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MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders Episode 5, Part Two

I'm going to start this one off with an apology. There's been a bigger gap between the first part of this one and this second part than I had intended, on account of real-life issues coming up over the last couple months. The good news is that it's not as big a gap as I had feared when I rediscovered the hard copy I was working from on my desk during a recent mini-fit of cleaning I was doing, which I talk about in this post from not too long ago. Never the less, it happened, and I do apologize for that.

Because there was that gap, here's a link to part one of this chapter, for anyone who might want to have a look at it before moving on with this one. A lot of what I was saying there is a good place to start here, too.

As for this part specifically, upon reviewing the previous part and the part I'm putting up now, I've come to think I may have done both the more or less verbatum jokes from the Red Green Show in the previous part. I say this on account of not finding them here, and it's been a good couple months since the last part. This is not to say there won't be more almost direct pulls from one of my favorite shows in the last part. It's just been awhile, and I need to reread that last part again.

This part is mostly setup for what comes in part three, at least in terms of the part I wrote. The big running gag in this part is my own real-life poor vision. I've needed, and worn, glasses since the sixth grade, and by the time I wrote this in the early 2000s, I really couldn't see worth a damn without them. The fifteen-plus years since then haven't exactly improved that situation.

There's more to say about this, of course, but that'll be for the endcap to this. See you there!

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MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders Episode 5 Part 1

Well, here we are, episode five of that Mystery Science Theater thing for that Digimon fan series I've been putting up here every so often. As I'm sure I've mentioned a time or two, there was meant to be a storyline in my MST3K fan series, mostly aparent in the Digimon series, but also in a few others that I've also reposted along the way. This time around, I had Leomon and my character dress up as Dalton Humphrey and Red Green, respectively, as a way to make us look different, even though there really wasn't much need, all things considered.

The specific reason, in this case, was because the guys behind The Red Green Show had made a movie called Duct Tape Forever and I was looking for a way to work it into what I was writing at the time. Of course, being a fan of Red Green kinda helped either way, and I'm sure I've done something like it eventually.

It might be of interest that this was certainly not my first bit of more or less Red Green fan fiction. A few years before I'd written a pair of “fan-script” style stories where Red and the gang wound up having adventures with the casts of cartoon shows I was watching at the time. I'm sure I'll mention where I've got those posted at some point, if I haven't already.

This will be another three-parter, since it breaks up well enough for that. This will also be the second time I've posted it here as well. The last time, I'd found a copy of it by itself on an old flopy, not expecting to find the rest of the series. Since I have, this will be more about the history and context around it than I may have previously. That last time, I mentioned before that my all-time favorite joke and favorite host segment are in this one. Both are closer to the end, though. For now, however, let's get started, shall we?

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MiSTing: DigiDefenters Episode 4, Part 3

Here we are, the third and final part of this one. It's mostly host segments, but that's kind of how it fell. I may have mentioned a time or two in the course of these that I tend to put the host segments in at what seem like natural breaks in the story. I bring that up again here because that's also kind of how I decided where to put the breaks between parts here, too. Kind of made for a lot of host segments in this one, but I think that may be for the best. Most of the previous part was fight scene, and a lot of this one is as well.

It also has a bit of a weak ending, but I can't say my part is all that great, either. Between these and the “standard” fiction I've written, I know firsthand how hard it can be to make good endings for these things. All in all, though, it's a good character episode for the Eli character.

With that in mind, let's finish this off, shall we?

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MiSTing: DigiDefenders: Episode 4, Part 2

When I sat down to do the bookends for this part, I came to realize that it's kind of a good thing that this episode was technically long enough to split into three parts. That's in no small part to there being a lot of fight scene in this part, and I'm sure I'm not the only one who would have needed a break afterward.

Funny thing here is that this is the middle part of the story at hand, and also the middle one in length. The first part was the longest, and the last one will be short, relatively speaking.

Beyond that, there's really not much I can say about this part, so I may as well just get on with it.

* * * * * * * * * *

MiSTing: DigiDefenders Episode 4, Part One

It's been awhile since I've done one of these, and there are a few hopefully good reasons for that. One is that I've been busy with real world stuff and haven't had much time for it. For the moment, that's been resolved to a point where I can work on it for a bit. From here, it's just a matter of setting up the auto-posts.

Another is that there was the better part of a month where I was down on this episode in particular because I thought it wasn't a very good one. I still think that's kind of right, but having worked on some of my really old work, I've started to feel a little better about it. I even managed to get a post about that up in late May.

Of note in this episode are the brief cameo by the “mom” character, who I'm pretty sure only shows up in this one; and the “intro video”, which was meant as kind of a take on the opening to Quantum Leap, which was still in reruns on the Sci-Fi Channel at the time.

There are also a good number of dated references in there to watch for, in all three parts of this. First one in a while that's been that long. May as well get on with it, since that's the case.

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MiSTing: Digimon: DigiDefenders Episode 3, Part 2

Here we are again, for the second half of Episode 3 of the DigiDefenders MiSTing series. We're leading off with the host segment I was mentioning last time. The whole point of this segment and the riffs leading up to it was that I was trying to show at least a tiny bit of self awareness of where I could have gone with this and that I was making something like an effort to avoid it. By the time I wrote this, I'd seen a couple instances, at least, of fan writers, usually male, building out their fantasies regarding their favorite characters and/or franchises, only to have it all come crumbling down on them in an unfortunate way. I was hoping to avoid being one of them, and I'd like to think I've had a fair amount of success on that front. I'm not sure if I actually did or not, but this is one of those things where self assessment is difficult at best. It's something I don't remember ever feeling compelled to address quite this way in the years between first writing the “episode” and these endcaps.

Of course, there are a few somewhat related things that came up later in the continuity I was going for, but I think I delt with those in a reasonably acceptable manner. I think I already shared the one of these I did where it was just my character and the “other Renamon” character that was more or less his companion. There's more to that coming, but the way I've been getting these out, there's a very real chance of that being a good ways out still. We'll get to them in due time, though.

As always, there's more I want to say about this thing, but I'll save that for the bottom endcap. Until then, let's get on with the main event.

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MiSTing: Digimon: DigiDefenders Episode 3, Part 1

Well, here we are again, with another repost. I'd meant to get to this sooner than I did, but real life's been busier than one might expect, considering some of what's going on. Between health issues and working a fair bit of overtime at my day job since the first of the year, this wound up getting delayed a couple months I'm feeling a bit better now, and I've got a little more free time at the moment, so I may as well get on with this.

As for the episode itself, this is one I'd do a little differently if I were doing or redoing it today. The thing I'd at least change, if not get rid of completely is the “no swearing” bit towards the beginning. As I look at it now, it was kinda hypocritical of me to have done it just that way, because my own character may have toed that line a bit closely in the previous episodes, definitely does so in this one, and there's even an outright drug reference as we aproach the end of this part. So yeah, that's not exactly my proudest bit of writing there, but for now, anyway, I'm going to leave it as is for the sake of “historical accuracy”.

Another sketchy bit I'll at least point out now is the number of times where the Renamon character gets a little handsy with mine. For the moment, I'll admit that it's a little creepy in its own ways, and even then, I knew it, but there was, and still is, a good reason for all that to be the way it was, and I'd probably leave it the way it is. I'll get more into the why of it in the endcap for this one and in part two, simply because this part has gone on long enough and there's one last thing that needs to be said before we get to it.

That last note is that this is going to be another two-parter rather than three or four parts because at least one part would have been needlessly short otherwise. That said, her we go!

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MiSTing: DigiDefenders Episode 2, Part Two

There are a couple of things I left out of the end of part one. Like I was saying, I tended to put stuff from my real life in these things, for flavor. In this episode, I had my little brother “cameo” as the “Brains” character, who brought in his laptop for the map scene. He was still in school for computer science at the time. That's not the direction his life went in the end, but then again, my life went in a different direction from where I'd thought, too.

Another real life thing that found its way into this one is that I'm more than a little stubborn about taking medicine for things when I'm sick or in pain. Always have been, and still am to this day. The reason for why I tend to work on these things as late at night as I do is a combination of too much caffene and the fact that my legs, and my left leg, especially, have a fair bit of arthritis in them for a man my age, and I just can't bring myself to take anything for it to help myself sleep unless I really push myself to. I probably did the night I wrote this, but since then, well, I have my doubts. I'm hoping for some sort of improvement on that front going forward, but only time will tell.

In the meantime, let's wrap this up, shall we?

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MiSTing: DigiDefenders Episode 2, Part One

This one's only going to be two parts, due in part to that it kind of breaks weird. This first part's gonna be a good deal shorter than the second one, but if I'd tried to do this the way I would normally, I would have wound up breaking it into too many parts to be practical for anybody. It's already cumbersome enough without adding more work to it, and I'm the sort of guy who really doesn't like making things more difficult than they need to be if I don't have to.

That said, when I reflect on the number of these things I managed to do back in the day, I'm actually impressed. There's eight just in this one series, and that says nothing of however many of these I've done both before and since.

Why? Well, all the page formatting and whatnot was done manually, for the most part, at least on my end. There was a site that did some automatic reformatting for this kind of thing, but I didn't really use it enough to get the hang of it because I didn't discover it until almost the end of my main time doing this sort of thing. The hosting sites also did some of their own formatting, to fit with whatever the accepted style was at the time, which also accounts for some of the screwball line breaks and out of place characters. It also ties into some of the odd typeos here and there. I think I might have screwed some things up as I was doing the formatting work for the “scripts” and wound up doing jokes on that, simply because I was too dumb to notice that I'd messed up on my end. I'm just kinda surprised that I never got called on it along the way, or that I don't remember, if I did.

One other thing I want to mention before I get to the main thing here. I'm going to try a little experiment with this one in that I'm going to try having a specific day and time these things go live. In this case, it's going to be Saturdays at 5 PM, since that's when episodes aired on Sci-Fi back when I was watching on TV. I'm assuming the archived schedules I'm working with mean 5 PM US Eastern time, since that's the standard time zone they use here in the US. Since I'm posting from the US Central time zone, however, that's the 5 PM I'm going with.

That much out of the way, we've got movie sign on part one of Digimon: DigiDefenders, Episode 2: Go Gotsumon!

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MiSTing: Digimon: Digidefenders: Episode 1, Part 3

 Usually, I like to read things like this before I post them, if only to make sure I've got some interesting commentary to put in ahead of the jump or after the feature, but I've got a backlog of stuff I need to get going with, so I'm going in a little blind here. I still kinda remember some of this stuff, but as I've noted a few times now, this has been the better part of twenty years ago now, so I don't remember everything about it.

Anyway, this is the last bit of setup for the premise and the first “real” battle of the series. I think it takes place someplace in Canada. I remember there being one that happens at Mt. Rushmore, too, but I think that's still a couple parts out. We'll get to that soon enough. Here's the main event, folks:

* * * & & & * * * & & &

MiSTing: Digimon DigiDefenders, Episode 1, Part 2

 I had intended to get to this well before now, but I got distracted with other stuff. I'd like to get these parts up more quickly because monthly is just too slow for something like this. Hopefully, I'll be able to improve that soon.

Where we left off last time, five of the eight, I believe, primary human characters had been introduced in the main story, and I was starting to get more of a handle on my own character in these things. Part of the reason why things are coming out the way they are is that we were supposed to be shooting for a PG rating, tops, and this was my way of going for that in my mid 20s. Another part is that whole “mid 20s” thing. I hope I've changed at least a little since then.

Those poster things that I've been putting in were supposed to be reflective of the other MiSTings I'd done using my own character at the time. I'd had a few at the time, and I figured that since the setting I was using was a movie theater, I'd go the poster route.

At any rate, this whole first issue is mostly setting up the characters. There's a little proper excitement towards the very end, but for now, we need to get on with meeting the characters and setting up some of the mechanics. Let's continue, shall we?

* * * * * * * * * * * * * *

MiSTing: Digimon: DigiDefenders Episode 1, Part 1

This is going to be kind of a longer pre-jump intro, but it's worth it. Some of this stuff might have been better put in one of the prolouge bits I did last month, but I didn't think of it until it was too late, which is kind of typical of me, I'm afraid.

Like I was saying in the preface bits, I had intended for there to be sort of a continuity with these things, extending from the Rugrats movie thing I was mentioning before through the last of these, including a few spam emails and at the very least, the Samurai Pizza Cats fic I mention in this one.

First, though, we'll be starting with the user-generated headers most MiSTing authors like myself put in to help with categorizing on Web Site Number Nine and the newsgroups. Most of these are fairly self-explanitory: Story title, story author, MiSTing Author, and era. In this case, the “era” header is “nonstandard” because I was using characters other than the ones from the television show to make fun of the story.

From here, I think I'll let the actual thing speak for itself, and try to explain more at the end.

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MiSTing: Over Night Medication

This is going to be another one of those posts with a long above-the-jump intro, because it's the best way I can think of to do this.

This is one of the old Mystery Science Theater things I found on that old laptop I had with me on vacation back in October. I'm still planning on posting the rest of the finished stuff I found, and revisiting some of the base material, like I mentioned in my first post of the year.

The relevant bits of history here are that this piece, Over Night Medication, was originally intended to be used as a short before one of the longer pieces I was doing at the time, or as part of a compilation like the one my character mentions at the start of this one.  I'm pretty sure I wound up doing this one on its own like this is because there was this thing called the Dibs List, run by the same guy who ran a MST3K fan archive called Web Site Number Nine, and I'd had this one on the list for long enough that I needed to take it off regardless of if I'd done something with it.  Therefore, we wound up with something that's not my best work ever.

Perhaps more interesting is that this was meant to be in continuity with the Digimon fan series I was doing with another author at the time.  That continuity doesn't mean much anymore because quite a lot of the related material has been lost over the last fifteen years or so, and even if I had some idea of what I was doing with it back then, I've since forgotten what that might have been.

I'll be posting this before I get to the main part of the series I still have because it's short, and I can't exactly remember where it was supposed to fit in the continuity I was going for.  So, anyway, here's the main work:

=================================================================

Old Work Revisited

Because I’ve been having trouble coming up with new ideas.

Revisiting Old Channel Awesome Material

This will come after what I've got on hand is posted.