I Love YouTube: TV Carnage!

I dunno if you've ever heard of TV Carnage, but it's an undeniably fascinating and absolutely hilarious series of underground found-footage videos compiled by a Toronto-based collage-artist guy who mysteriously goes by the name 'Pinky.' Back in the '90s Pinky and friends would, for their own amusement, record hundreds of hours of unintentionally bad television programming with dozens of VCRs working 'round the clock. Eventually, Pinky compiled the cream of that weird crop into a 75 minute kaleidoscope of the strangest and most unbelieveably retarded video clips ever produced, forever changing the way stoners spend their Saturday nights (or Tuesday nights, depending on the stoner).

The subsequent TV Carnage compilations were masterfully edited together in a way that made some kind of statement about the absurdly synthetic reality being sold on TV 24 hours a day. They were also friggin hilarious. As a continuous stream of bizarre video clips taken completely out of context and juxtaposed with other clips that were equally weird/bad/WTF, compilations like When Television Attacks and Casual Fridays became highly sought-out cult-favourites that caught the attention of VICE magazine and eventually The New York Times.

Even now, with an internet over-saturated with hipster irony and a multitude of YouTube copycats, TV Carnage still manages to stand out as something exceptional. Yes, the clips themselves are funny and weird, but it takes Pinky's keen curatorial eye and finely-tuned editing chops to deliver each stream-of-consciousness festival of weird TV moments in a way that is thematically and rhythmically cinematic.

We here at thesubstream.com have been fans for years, and we'd love to see Pinky release more compilations soon.  But for now, we're happy to watch our favourite clips as well as some of Pinky's latest work on TV Carnage's YouTube channel...

TV CARNAGE
Pinky explains TV Carnage in his own words in this clip from Media Television, filmed during the premiere of Casual Fridays at Toronto's super-scuzzy Metro Theatre on Bloor Street.

TV CARNAGE VS. ROMANCE
A classic TV Carnage sequence from A Sore for Sighted Eyes, stitched together with precision. Not only does Pinky arrange similarly themed clips in sequence, but he displays great comedic timing by abruptly cutting clips short and editorially injecting seemingly unrelated moments that underline everything that's horrifically wrong with tiny person beauty pageants and Carl Lewis trying to act. Watching a TV Carnage compilation is like aimlessly flipping channels late at night after eating a bag of mushrooms.

CURATOR OF THE HORRIBLE
It's been years since the last TV Carnage compilation, but Pinky's been updating his site with hilarious found-footage video clips like these ones, further proving that in this age of viral YouTube videos, some clips do have the power to hold their own. Especially if they offer some of the lamest self-defense training ever conceived.

RANDY'S HOT TONIGHT
In recent years, Pinky has found work directing music videos for artists who are attracted to the 'bad TV' aesthetic he's helped to make popular with his TV Carnage compilations. In this Electric Six video he creates from scratch images that could very well have been buried under the mountain of VHS tapes in his closet this whole time.

2010 TRAILER
New for 2010, Pinky offers this special message of hope and peace for the future, TV Carnage style.