Uncle Morty's Dub Shack
The Still Hiding Comedy Gem
by Nicholas Schlitt
Back in the year of 2004, or wait, maybe it was 2005? Hell, 2006 even! I can't really narrow it down much more than that! Regardless, my not so motley group of friends and I were young adults fresh out of our varying many years of High School. Nobody had a meaningful job or a future of any kind planned, but that didn't stop us from convening for drinks and medicinal herbs most nights to ponder the mysteries of the universe. On rare occasions we'd gather without drinks earlier in a day to melt our brains in other ways with television or video games. Or you know, just do nighttime activities during the day... this was one of those fine afternoons.
My friend's house (AKA friend's Mom's house) that we were at was equipped with the latest fancy schmancy digital cable there was to offer at the time. Hundreds of channels you'd never watch unless you were dumb and bored. Going back a few years my friend and I had made a habit of watching foreign television after school. Korean, Mexican, Indian, Japanese, whatever! We'd watch gameshows, soap operas, and just about anything while we frittered away on AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo! Chat, Napster, and the like. Ah, the good ol' days. Fast forward back to where the story started a couple years down the road and we were already so matured and beyond our years that we hadn't done that in some time. So inevitably the idea emerged again, as the dry Mojave Desert afternoon supplied us five that day with little to do. Cramped in a small bedroom my friend and our host took control of the TV remote surfing channels. Ah, I miss surfing channels, this was the era that kind of died off. Though I seem to recall my buddy as a channel UP surfer, I always preferred surfing DOWN channels. Anywho! Rather than skipping the foreign language channels he went to them for old school's sake.
The other three fellas with us had never witnessed the madness so it was truly a genius idea by itself. But little could my buddy know the glorious comedy television jackpot he was stumbling upon. In those days there existed a channel cleverly named ImaginAsian TV. Get it, imagination, imagine... ASIAN. Based out of NYC (we were getting the channel out of its second home in LA) it catered to many different Asian cultures and languages but also featured original programming and English language stuff as well. Uncle Morty's Dub Shack was the one-hundred pound golden nugget we pulled from the mines that day. Made in America by a bunch of goofballs and in English, for the most part anyway.
It was a simple idea for the show; Four friends, one of whom had a titular named Uncle Morty, were hired by ol' Morty to work in his dub shack where he dubbed Asian B-movies to English. Thing was, crotchety ol' Morty was hard of hearing, so the four fellas just dubbed the movies however they saw fit completely changing the plots of the movies. Morty was, of course, none the wiser. The format featured some cheeseball acting skits and adventures with intermixed clips of their dubbed project for the episode. Think Mystery Science Theater 3000 (MST3k) but with only Asian B-movies. But then, instead of commentating during the movie, they dubbed over it, cut it down, and changed the plot much like the dubbed parts of the movie Kung Pow! Enter the Fist. Mix in an original music number or two and all this with a zany ADHD speed to fit an episode within a thirty minute timeslot and the recipe was perfection.
The show was created by Jimbo Matison and Trevor Moore. If you're of my generation or older you know Jimbo Matison even though you don't know you know him. He was the voice that screamed SEGA!!!! in all the old SEGA commercials. He also is an artist, author, director and ignores me on Twitter. He's done a lot of behind the camera advertising work over the years. Trevor Moore is known for being a part of the classic Whitest Kids U Know comedy troupe. As well as countless standup albums, a few movies, and other random such funny things. He is one funny character. Rounding out the cast was Aladdin Ullah, Johnny Chou and Patrick Terance McGowan.
The episode we saw that fateful day featured Venom of the Ninja as the dubbed film. I can't even recall the skit parts of the episode but the dubbed movie parts have left a lasting impression. We all were laughing hysterically and absolutely dumbfounded by the absurdness. It may have been allergies but I was brought to tears of laughter by then end. TEARS I say! My buddy and I, that used to always watch the foreign channels back in the day, also happened to be Big McLargeHuge fans of MST3k and kept looking at each other in stunned excited silence every commercial break, not believing what we were witnessing. We were as giddy as school girls and cracked out on the sheer madness of it all. It definitely falls in to a category that isn't for everybody but for what we enjoyed, it was absolute perfection. The memory has probably faded for the other three there that day but my buddy and I were transfixed and needed more!
Instead of relying on our tried and true, but actually lacking, VCR abilities that we used to capture halves of episodes of MST3k back in the day, we relied on the not so reliable newer technology of DVR. Over the weeks and months we caught a spare few episodes when things went smooth. ImaginAsian TV itself wasn't the most reliable channel for broadcast quality in our market, much less showing what they had listed at the time it was listed on the digital guide. I even faintly recall the channel or DVR having like tracking issues like a VCR used to have back in the day, but that might be my 'imaginasian'. DVR wasn't reliable either way. And then we, our own selves, were not very reliable either. All things that still haunt me ten years later as there simply isn't very many sources nowadays for finding the short lived show. Between what we actually witnessed and what you can find online, I'd have to roughly guesstimate I've only gotten to witness eight to ten of the seventeen to twenty-one episodes that were made. This saddens me immensely.
From roughly 2006 to 2008 a YouTube Channel was maintained for the show as well as a MySpace page. Ahh, remember MySpace? The YouTube Channel still stands and is the biggest source for material you can find. It consists of mostly clips but has some of the “entire” dubbed movies from an episode spliced together in roughly nine minute clips that are well worth the effort. In fact take the time to enjoy Venom of the Ninja now! I DEMAND IT!
After a couple years of internet radio silence and the death of MySpace I discovered that one of the show's creators, Jimbo, had made a Vimeo page that served kind of as a portfolio for his work through the years. Within the mix of other stuff there was some Uncle Morty's videos. Even two full episodes with all the skits and such to enjoy as originally intended!
He has uploaded more videos sparingly through the years but rarely Uncle Morty's stuff and definitely not full new episodes.
Some time back when I found the Vimeo page I created an account and contacted Jimbo about Uncle Morty's and how I loved it and would murder entire villages for a DVD of all the episodes. He gave me an uncomfortable thanks and mentioned with little detail that he was trying to get the show on DVD. I replied once more gushing over his balls and hoping for anything else, but got no response. In his defense, I probably came off creepy or something. Either way, years later and still no DVD.
Then came the Twitterverse. I found Jimbo again and bothered him but to no avail. Then I found Trevor and Aladdin. I'm pretty sure Aladdin doesn't use twitter itself, it just links stuff he posts on facebook. And I may be creepy, but I'm not random add you on facebook creepy. Then when I bug Trevor every month or two about Uncle Morty's, I at least get a “favorite” out of it. Proof that the show existed damn it! It wasn't all just 'imaginasian'd'. But who even knows who has access to the videos. It was a short lived show on an obscure short lived channel. But somebody somewhere just has to have access to all the episodes! I've attempted a few other resources over the years hoping somebody has it all recorded but it has been a dead end. I don't even need a quality version! I haven't seen a VCR in almost a decade but I'd buy one just to watch somebody's old shitty recordings of the show. Then I'd buy a second one and a blank tape to make a copy! Someday, someway, I will complete this adventure a decade in the making and watch all the Uncle Morty's Dub Shack episodes. It will be so freakin' rad!!!
If it tickles your fancy, here is the brunt of the info the internet has to offer on this great forgotten show. Go get your Morty on folks:
iAtv web archived Morty's page
And now I leave you with the SEGA scream for an hour.
© 2015 by Taylor Hruby