Paranoimia - Art of Noise featuring Max Headroom
It was the twenty-second of November, 1987. Matt Olson was turning eleven years old, and gaining wisdom at an alarming rate. The Shadow Government had been in charge of our country officially for twenty-four years - unofficially, much longer. The New England Patriots celebrated this fact by destroying Indianapolis in a shut-out, 24 to naught. The world was rocking out to the sounds of the artist known then as Prince, Samantha Fox, Huey Lewis, and the blossoming music career of Bruce Willis. And one of the most popular celebrities in the world was actor Matt Frewer, wearing latex and fiberglass, stuttering in front of an animated background and pretending to be an artificial intelligence. I speak, of course, of the great Max Headroom.
I loved Max Headroom. The show. I could have done fuck all with the commercials and the other stuff, but the English TV movie we got here and the subsequent short-lived TV show were wonderful to me in 1987. I still have a book, somewhere. Of the show. Dude, Channel 23, blipverts, body hacking - the spirit of the thing was chaotically bucking the system, being odd and strange and different and even - yes,illegal - just for the hell of it. Which is where we arrive at the reason for this entry.
On November 22nd, 1987, somebody took control of two separate Chicago TV broadcasts while wearing a Max Headroom mask. The hackers, or as they were then known, pirates, busted in on Chicago Bears footage, then got kicked off. Later that night, they broke in on PBS (perhaps sensing they were more vulnerable than a major affiliate), interrupting Dr. Who to broadcast, among other things, a bare-ass spanking, humming of crappy cartoon theme songs, and lampooning of various Chicago institutions and the then new Coke ads. All in all, less than two minutes of sheer random bullshit. It was national news, it was completely nuts, and (my favorite line in any story) no one was ever identified or caught.
More laws and tighter sanctions always = less fun.
Anybody else wish it was 20 years ago, in spite of everything?