Liquid Television: Crude Flashes of Brilliance From an Old School TV
The lights are off, and I'm in bed watching television. The year is 1992. I'm supposed to be sleeping -- I have school in the morning, but I can't stop watching Liquid Television . Images are flashing across the screen, a kaleidoscope of colors and mangled drawings. The characters are unbelievable -- Crazy Daisy Ed, Aeon Flux, Beavis and Butthead, Dogboy. The scenarios are even wilder -- "Cut-up Camera,"" Invisible Hands," "Stick Figure Theatre, The Art School Girls of Doom" -- each escalating in delicious promise and craziness. When the TV is off, these images swarm through my mind. Odd music, odder scenarios, forming memories, re-routing synapses, shocking parents across the greater USA. At the time, I was unaware that many of these short vignettes were from the minds of underground cartoonists who were just trying to make a buck beyond book covers and advertising. MTV transformed a few of these into later series that didn't retain the...