Well, I've just come in from watching the Luddite orgy of destruction known as the Mojo's Annual TV Smash, Austin's own kickoff for TV Turnoff Week. In usual fashion, the first twenty minutes were the most exciting/entertaining, with all the breaking vaccuum tubes and glass screens. After that, the spectacle of people, a fairly even mix of hackers and crusty punks smashing progressively smaller bits of glass, plastic, and metal into even smaller bits, was entertaining more for the raw enthusiasm involved than for the actual destruction.

It is also ironic that the crowd included people who were very much interested in technology taking an even more active role in destroying the TVs than the other participants. Also on the list of ironies for the day was the sheer number of video cameras and still cameras possessed by the spectators. Perhaps next year they can set up a closed-circuit television system so that people can watch comfortably from an even safer distance.

It would be nice if I could believe that everyone who participated in the TV smash today would proceed to actually not watch TV for a week (or a month, or however long.) However, my gut tells me that those who don't watch TV now aren't going to start, and those who do will be home watching the Sopranos or Adult Swim later on. It's a good sentiment, the idea that you should not watch as much TV. But I think that providing regular alternatives to watching TV is a better way than unleashing the unfocused rage of a bunch of kids on some dumb pieces of glass, metal and plastic. At least last year, when Lynn Bender gave a speech on how he had no relationship with his father due to his father's obsession with watching TV, there was some heart to the smashing. The year before (and the year befor that,) when the DJ kicked the smashing off with the Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy's song"Television the Drug of a Nation", there was a political explanation for why turning off the TV is important. This year, there were several crappy punk bands of the if-we-turn-up-the-distortion-we-sound-good school (which hasn't sounded good since the early eighties,) and a surprisingly good (and supposedly Syrian) metal band called Malstrom. Despite the quality of the metal, it had no focus, and therefore lacked any kind of message to put behind the TV smash, other than raw anger.

Sigh.

Oh well, next year maybe they'll kick it off with an exploding teddy bear.