TV KILLIN TIME by Walter Agnew Moore II, Roving Correspondent

Austin, Texas, April 2001

So me and JTR3 and a dude named Byron who are both in the Up-And-Coming Austin band "Household Names" are all at Mojo's Coffee House today for the third annual "Kill Your Television" event where they unleash the sullen crowd on a bunch of hapless boob-tubes piled about the back parking lot and they smash em up with sledgehammers and axes and bats and chains until nothing moves.

It seems that the point of this is to show how cool you are, first off, cuz you're like hangin at Mojo's, right? And that must be cool. Also, to show rage, which is also cool when you're a suburban punker still bristling at the abusive feedings your parents gave you for 18 years. Another point to the exercise might have been to show that almost none of the people were very familiar with axes or sledgehammers, and barely missed killing each other instead of the TV's, but maybe I was the only one who noticed that.

The three of us also observed that none of the assembled sacrificial screens looked functional. I bet the crowd of 50 or so TV smashers could have brought some live TV's from their homes if they'd wanted to.

No wait-- I remember the point now-- it was to learn how to think for yourself and not be a sheep. So, the crowd milled about for a time while canned music was blared out of big speakers, then when they were told to attack, they did, and they smashed up precisely the things they had been told to smash. I was convinced one big guy was going to chop the toes off his own foot, but he kept missing by a few inches.

Nobody whacked the speakers, or the espresso machines, or the fence or walls or windows or the numerous SUV's all parked around, but I bet they would have if they had received orders to do so.

JTR3 and Byron shied away from me as I granted a personal interview to a camera crew, but they did come back to smack a "Household Names" sticker on my t-shirt (little publicity hounds). The caffeine had just kicked in and I got rolling about how these people had restored my faith in the Human Potential, because they were symbolically killing God --"Did you say they were killing GOD?!!"--yes God, I have had the opportunity to travel and as you know, God was first depicted as a rectangular stone carving in Sumeria and Egypt, and you sat and adored God, or piled him up to form pyramids just as these good people have done here today...

My personal goal was to make the grim 14-year-old girl with pink hair holding the boom mike laugh. Her eyes started crossing.

This is the paragraph where a lesser correspondent would bore you with a holy diatribe about replacing homogenous TV culture with homogenous faux-rebel coffee-house culture, but I know instead you want solid technical details for when you need to smash up YOUR television.

Simple choice: Sledgehammer. The Sledgehammer, of all the weapons, did the most bang for the swang. It took apart viewing stations large and small with a minimum of fuss. Of course, you can't swing it like no freakin fairy and expect results. However, I think that 90% of the adult American population could learn to use a sledgehammer well, especially if they have long arms. The key is to let the tool's own weight do the work.

The Axe: If I hadn't seen the smashing with my own eyes, I might have been tempted to go with the Axe. Problem is, you're not cutting down 100-year-old live-oak trees here, you're gutting old Quasars. The axes would sometimes get hung up on internal wiring and stuff, and you're stuck trying to jerk it out while you're kicking at the stricken TV. Hardly a good position to be in if another TV decides to attack.

The Aluminum Bat: One young amazon with rowing-team shoulders did some fine work early on with a bat, and quickly went through several small tv's and computer monitors. The light weight of the implement was offset by the greater speed of the blows that she was able to throw with it, and her facial expression spoke of a recent, badly-ended love affair that no doubt added zest to her attacks. However, when she came upon a 1960's model in a heavy wooden cabinet, she might as well have been chipping at a brick wall with an ice pick-- the damage was superficial. Also, her lack of a quick-kill on the hulking veteran of many an "I Love Lucy" episode put her in personal danger, as the sledge-hammerers moved in to help her out. As noted before, their swinging styles were rather free-form.

The Big Heavy Chain: This had to be the biggest let-down of the entire TV-smashing bag o' tricks. Two shaggy individuals took turns flailing ineffectively with a heavy chain of the type sometimes used in Texas to drag people behind trucks. This example was gold-plated, perhaps indicating high-caste warrior status for the owner. Though they went at it with a will, and wounded several sets, I never saw one TV actually *killed* by the Big Heavy Chain. I can only speculate that the gentleman who brought it must have spent many years in some sort of martial arts school being told that leaping and yelling and looking impressive are more effective than, say, hitting something extremely hard with a big hammer.

Just Heaving It Off the Roof: This also works.

There was a fraternity house on the other side of the alley and a half-dozen well-fed clean-cut cap-wearing young scholars were enjoying the show from their balcony, gaping in amused disbelief, various brands of light beer in their hands. I had to know what kind of party seemed too crazy for a frat boy, so I stopped and talked. We agreed that the whole thing looked like something we'd seen on MTV once.

When you left the alley and turned the corner, the only music you could hear was from a crowd of ZTA's on the porch of their sorority house clapping and singing to a sister. I peeled my sticker off my shirt, slapped it on the back of my car, and drove away.

© Walter Agnew Moore II 2001