I would never want to be a member of a group whose symbol was a guy nailed to two pieces of wood. George Carlin
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Max Headroom
Since Bizclown is about funny stuff, today we bring you a funny television phenomenon of the 80's, whom you may know as Max Headroom. The character was created by George Stone, Annabel Jankel and Rocky Morton and portrayed by Matt Frewer. Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future is a 1985 television movie which acts as backbone storyline for Max Headroom, developped for Britain's Channel 4. The movie was created by Chrysalis Visual Programming Ltd. Channel 4 wanted to add a computer generated character host, as such, Max Headroom was born Video Jockey in 1985 and became a humurous success. At first, Max would add in comments to fill space between videos. It wasn't long before he had his own show and his own video.
As technology goes, the effects were far from computer generated. Max was the image of actor Matt Frewer with latex and foam prosthetic makeup. A fiberglass suit was then superimposed over a moving geometric background. Still it was clever and won the BAFTA award for graphics. Credit goes to Peter Litten and John Humphreys of Coast to Coast Productions in the UK.
We would paralell the spot today, like a genre of MTV show. Max headroom went on to interview celebrities such as Sting, Boy Beorge, Michael Caine, Vidal Sassoon and countless more. Filling talkshow spots in both Britain and United States on Terry Wogan and David Letterman, Max Headroom was an international icon, appealing to the young generation for it's cyberpunk influence and to the mature audience for its originality. Something refreshing for everyone.
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So what made all of these things funny? The over exaggerated stuttering, the wit, the sometimes unexpected humour. The beginning of the in your face world changing attitude of the 80's. The daring commentaries. It wasn't overkill. You needed to see more to get enough. You waited for what else Max would come with.
Max Headroom became a star! How big was he? Well, in 1986, Coca Cola made a move to replace Bill Cosby as their spokesperson with Max Headroom! That's big! As history tells the story New Coke was a failure. Still today you can Catch the Wave on Youtube. The Coca Cola failure fits right into the Bizclown type a story but since it is widely documented I think we'll just let it go!
Yes Max Headroom also had his own Music Video: Paranoimia. It wasn't actually his video, it was a song by the English group Art of Noise. Paranoimia rolled in on the UK top 40 charts circa June 1986 and peaked at it's highest ranking at number 12. It was on the charts for a total of 9 weeks.
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The next big gig for Max Headroom was the ABC American television series. Using the original Max Headroom: 20 Minutes into the Future, as a base, ABC reproduced the original episode. Only 3 original cast members returned: Matt Frewer (Max Headroom, Edison Carter), Amanda Pays (Theora Jones) and W. Morgan Sheppard (Blank Reg). The 14 episode series' plot was based on the idea that, in a post apocolipse future, television rules. To such a degree that network ratings are the foundation of crime and violence. Anything goes to bring the ratings up. Network 23's roving reporter, Edison Carter, and his computer-generated witty, alterego, Max Headroom head out every week to right the wrongs of this media society.
Of course the show had it's real ups and downs. A little ironic really, speaking of ratings. A started mid season and got canned half way through the next season. To this day, Max Headroom still has a following and still has work. Max Headroom is currently working as a spokesperson for Sirius Radio 80's station!
What's up with 2010? Well, pre-Internet say 1992, This website was a Bulletin Board called Jokes and Humour. In 1995 the Internet started changing the shape of things for everyone. I studied a little bit of html and managed to put up a few funnies on line. Soon with the a piece of software called HotDog, I managed to put up a rather graphical site for the times, Jokes and Humour.
Allowing search engines to easily find Jokes and Humour even though no domain as such existed. As the internet grew to what it is today, the name had already been snitched. Hence Bizclown hosting Jokes and Humour. With more sophisticated tools such as Dreamweaver and Fireworks, I did the 2nd setup.
I've since dropped some of the other ventures that came along Bizclown, but I've continued my home made Website. This is the third re-design of Jokes and Humour on the net and when I started piddling with Joomla! , I knew I'd found a good solution for a CMS (Content Management System).
Some things have been dropped, some things I've been added. The biggest change, is that it will not be full static content. I'll be able to add and devellop as I go along.
What this site isn't is a complete site on anything, there are always more complete works than what I present, hence I do state my sources. Instead I prefer bringing you a little bit of everything and I intend to entertain you.
If you tripped on this website accidentally and this post is still on the front page, I am still in devellopment and it's still not 2010.
I invite you to drop in periodically and snicker and laugh with me. Have fun!
