Oh sweet nectar! Superjail from Augenblick Studios is 3 episodes into it’s crazy/beautiful first season Sundays on [AdultSwim]. It’s faster than meth, most episodes require at least 2 viewings and no less than probably 50 inmates and bystanders die in creative and painfully interesting ways.
Does anyone remember when MTV was really, really good. I mean, its fucking WORTHLESS now, but thats been common knowledge for nearly a decade. I think what made MTV brilliant “back-in-the-day” (I hate that term almost as much as “Old School”) was all of the fucked up/off the wall/surreal/nonsensical stuff that is now common place in places like [Adult Swim] and to an extent Comedy Central. I’ll rattle some of it off and as I do keep in mind that none of these things exist any longer so they are now a reason why mTV eats a big bag of assholes:
Liquid Television: the bastion of Sick and Twisted Animation’s Revival which was basically [Adult Swim]. It birthed Beavis and Butthead, Æon Flux, MTV’s Oddities The Head, and was later born into Cartoon Sushi. There is so much creativity collected into this series that you can’t turn on the tv without seeing a descendant in motion graphics that every network now uses or commercials trying to out-weird each other. Without this show there would be no Daria, King of the Hill, Mtv’s Oddities The Maxx, The Brothers Grunt (You don’t know what the fuck i’m talking about), Ren and Stimpy…
The Bumpers: “We’ve got Crab Legs, aaaah” Thankfully, YouTube is full of these old idents and promos. Bite Sized Brilliance. “I just blew my nose into the MTV logo, ya wanna see? … Well I didn’t want to show it to you anyway!”
The Characters: Aside from the VJs who were all pretty rad until Simon Rex and Idalis showed up. (But for some reason I like Simon Rex now.) Donal Logue and Toby Huss’ (genius!) characters still sit in little corners of my brain singing to each other. On Friday I was leaving a bar and a girl was karao-killing Alanis Morrissete’s “Ironic” and as always, it made me think of Jimmy the Cab Driver. Oddly enough, 10 minutes later I walk into the liquor store next to Spaceland and “Ironic” was playing there as well, i shit you not. “It’s like going crazy, when you’re already nuts.” Its pretty much the reason I decided to post this. And isn’t it ironic, dont you think?
The Sets: Watch this Alternative Nation clip of Kennedy and Tori Amos. I couldn’t keep my eyes off of the backgrounds. Very “Pee-Wee’s Playhouse” style of production design. I seriously wanted to live there. (Trivial Knowledge Diarrhea: Rob Zombie was a production designer for Pee-Wee)
The Shows: This is going to sound strange but until “The Real World” showed up, MTV had SCRIPTED ENTERTAINMENT! Egads. So this is another of those “so I was leaving a bar the other day” stories but… I met this guy named Chip the other day and when I hear the name Chip I think about the MTV show Austin Stories. I know, you’ve never heard of it. But through the pure coincidence of living in L.A. the guy I was talking to actually was THAT GUY from the show. Beyond that The Jon Stewart Show (yeah it was great, you missed it), Apartment 2F, The State, Remote Control, Idiot Savants were also too good to live. And I wont talk total shit about the real world, the original concept was great but it could only really work for 1 season. After that it seems they cast the same show over and over until it dissolved into a house full of drunken cunts and douchebags.
I know I must be forgetting tons but I think you get my point. I was glued to a TV set growing up and am now unable to connect with humanity. -No, wait, the point I was trying to make is there needs to be a place for creative entertainment like what MTV had to offer in the 80s up to the mid-90s. Society is really missing out on there not being an MTV classic channel right now. And no, I didn’t forget. MTV used to play Music Videos, then M2 used to play music videos, then MTV2 used to play videos. Well you know what? Video Killed the Video Star when MTV and the music industry stopped listening to the audience and tried to tell them what they should like. In a way, their plan seems to be working, but then again thats why we are stuck with American Idol.
, Æon Flux,
