Frequently-Asked Questions
Who the hell are you?
Noah Antwiler as Tandem the Spoony - Noah is the terrifying result of a generation raised on MTV and films by Jean-Claude van Damme and Steven Seagal at the height of their popularity. Writer, director, editor, and star of The Spoony Experiment, Noah shares a love for the three things author Neal Stephenson writes are the things America does better than anyone else: music, movies, and microcode. He created the Experiment as an homage to Mystery Science Theater 3000, the first show to scream back at the culture that raised him. He's been a published poet in Seattle, and has acted in community productions of Grease, Our Town, Dags, Baby, The Importance of Being Earnest, and Interview With The Vampire. Most recently, he has appeared in an ASU Mainstage production of Stolen Children as Father Mandin.
Noah initially began on the Internet writing comedic movie reviews called Tandem's Movie Rants, which are film critiques, live movie recaps, or essays on recent trends in film or TV. With a viewpoint always controversial, Noah's rants are usually critical of both mainstream popular media culture and the detail-obsessive "fanboy" community. Over the years, these rants have evolved in form in the hopes of being entertaining but also to elevate moviegoer expectations. Thanks to the creative input and support (and a fair amount of harsh derision from some) of the Kenzerco Forumites, Noah has come to this new media to give back as much of the entertainment as possible that MST3K gave him. Now he currently writes the Gamer's Rant on the Movies column in Knights of the Dinner Table Magazine, a national monthly gamer magazine available at all fine friendly local game stores.
Where does the whole "Spoony" thing come from?
The story of the "Tandem the Spoony" mantle is, of course, an extraordinarily nerdy one that started at a Dungeons & Dragons table, where Noah played a swashbuckling (and often accident-prone) bard. While playing the game Final Fantasy 2, Noah came across a scene where the game's bard, Edward, was getting the crap beaten out of him by an old sage. During this Rodney King-esque beating, the sage howled in badly-translated Japanese rage "You spoony bard!!" Noah still doesn't know what the hell it means, but after some in-jokes exchanged at a Dungeons & Dragons session in reference to his bard character "Tandem," Tandem the Spoony was born. Today, spooniness indicates a devil-may-care swashbuckling spirit, where all men are equal and free and should be generally nice to each other, and embrace wine, women, and song. Now he carries the name as an Internet handle, because-- while silly-- it's infinitely more memorable and interesting than Noah Antwiler.
Later on, the site was originally launched to host comedic, MST3K-style commentaries for more-modern movies complete with host-segments where the Spoonster is subjected to "Experiments," hence the title. Due to fidgety technical details, time constraints on the part of all the people involved, and a generally "meh" public response, the project was largely dropped. Now the site is host to movie reviews and various other miscellany.
