When I was growing up one of the main things that my dad was vocal about in having in our house was cable TV. Having that box hooked up to our TV brought us countless hours of pure entertainment. It brought my dad and mom all the sports, news, and Spanish channels, my brother could stay up all night and watch the late night movies (USA and TNT were his choice late night fare) and HBO or Cinemax and my sister would come rushing from school and turn on  MTV.

My first interaction with the channel was when I was seven years old. I was home from morning kindergarten and was watching PBS ( for some reason I was really into British comedies when I was little) and I vividly remember watching “Are you being Served?” and just heard Mr. Humphries say: “I’m free!” when I noticed the channel have been changed on me to this image:

My sister said to me “I’m taking over the remote! You can stay if you want or go outside.” I decided to stay since going outside and being with nature was not really my thing (nor was running or jumping) . My sister was really into this one show called “Remote Control” I remember it kind of reminded me of a pop culture version of “Jeopardy” but with comfier looking sofas and

a way better set. This was her daily ritual after school was to torment me and then afterwards watch this show. After that show was done and the lack of motivation to move from my sofa I decided to continue watching MTV way after my sister left the room and started watching the music videos. That is where I was first introduce to early 90’s hip hop, alternative music and early grudge music. It was then and there that I started watching less PBS and more MTV.

It was not until I started getting older and becoming more of an impressionable youth. I did not fully get hooked onto this channel until I came across this show:

I would often stay up late and watch a lot of grow up cartoons without realizing it was not meant for children. But these segments were different, short and most of all weird!

One cartoon in the series that really caught my eye was a big guy, he was a bit of a loner and purple all over….

No it was NOT Barney it was THE MAXX

He was my favorite segment on Liquid Television and I thought he was as awesome as Swamp Thing!  A close second in my list of favorites in the Liquid Television world was Beavis and Butthead and Dangerous Puppets.

Watching MTV opened up a a whole new world of weird but entertaining cartoons. The Head was also a huge show for me.

After those shows were cancel I thought nothing would replace such awesomeness but then I found other series like Daria and Celebrity Deathmatch. Those two shows was a hot topic in middle school and early high school. It was hard to talk about anything else the morning after one of those  shows were on because it was just one of those things that made you cool. It became a middle school social status thing because you were allow to stay up late!

Fast forward to today I do not watch a lot of MTV, I feel like it does not have the appeal of what it had when the channel first started out. Or maybe I am just out of touch with the new MTV generation.

 

 

 

Until next time!