(1657) Almost evening all.

 

17. Taking another look at Max Headroom

Why? Answer: Because two or three suggested vids and vlogs came up on it on Youtube … so what does that say about my consumer habits? The power of suggestion.

Backstory: Chrysalis had a song to promote in the early to mid 80s, so I believe, they needed some kind of computer generated character, Matt Frewer appeared and looked the part as a model for the ad. There are various truths about it, including his own:

The computer graphic wasn’t, it was him with masses of prosthetic makeup … the computer generation was suggested by the artwork backdrops, plus the voice glitches, which were electronic. So they had this concept for a character … how to use it?

TV series of course … but it needed a backstory … good reporter (Frewer) finds out some deep truths about network TV, late night talk shows, the whole talking head thing. The Man wants him dead, there’s a chase, he crashes into one of those 80s road or building signs saying Max headroom, meaning vehicles needed to be lower than that. All good as an idea.

But what to get him to do? Here was the first glitch … those who’d created him were earning their money from The Man … and they were mocking, satirising, exposing it all … there was this ‘keep it safe’ thing … yes, he was rude, abrasive, nonWoke, embarrassing, all sorts … including witty, fast on the uptake … it was good for awhile … Elvis Costello had been doing it, the new Gen X were irreverent. One part of the joke was he looked vaguely pre WW2 Aryan … which was real irreverence towards the black nobility.

One disaster was New Coke, with them using MH to sell it … disaster. Plus technology was rapidly improving … it was an idea which, as one analyst put it … had had no major wins in the final analysis … the Sex Pistols had, others had … but there was only so much he could do on TV, for so long. The Letterman and Wogan “interviews” had gone off well enough:

… but where to next? And in this, I’m going to insult the arrogant Left which thinks it’s oh so clever, chortling over the latest joke played on the plebs. And the worst plebs to these people are those on “the joyless Right”, forever angry about this or that … about the oh so clever Left.

It’s a motif played out by the Demrats and Labour today … they hate the people of the land, think them lesser beings, real hicks. In short … exactly whom is Max going to satirise? He’d already offended Slebs, Leftists expecting to be feted, but MH instead played on their weak ego spots. Joke fell flat. Was the Right watching the show? Nope … just the Left, and these creators were mocking them.

The character, the shows, died a natural death. Everyone watching wanted MH satirical in his/her own way, never about them themselves … who lacked humour now?

Someone mentioned MH was very 80s … it had had its time, that was that.

16. Keeping it real

Operation Fortitude, the ingenious deception of WWII. In the build up to the 1944 Normandy landings, British and Allied forces assembled a phantom army to fool German reconnaissance units. Thousands of inflatable vehicles were deployed near Dover to make it look like a landing… pic.twitter.com/W7UWvEIze1

— Bobbie (@bo66ie29) June 5, 2025

15. Steve and war room at 1068

• 3,000 Deportations A Day: Steve Bannon Reacts To Momentum On Sealing Border
• Sen, Josh Hawley: Judges are issuing nationwide injunctions against Trump more than any other president combined
• Jack Posobiec: “If You Want To Keep Your Country You Need Mass Deportations”
• Sense of Urgency: Kevin Czinger Calls On Washington To Act On Industrialization Of A.I.