Splicing, dicing the craziest clips to create 'TV Carnage'

Derrick Beckles was not particularly happy working in the television industry.

"I would just come home and want to brush my teeth with a shotgun," Beckles said.

To abate thoughts of dental hygiene-by-firearm, Beckles would transform himself into Pinky Carnage, the mad, splicing scientist behind "TV Carnage," a series of DVD mix-tapes culling the most wacked-out clips from all corners of the television landscape.

" 'TV Carnage' is like a head enema," Beckles said.

Tonight he's bringing the live iteration of "TV Carnage" to International House.

"I'm Gallagher with a VCR," he said about his live show, referencing the fruit-splattering comedian, but the quip also represents his artistic approach.

Watching "TV Carnage," which gained a cult cache in dorm rooms and cramped, smoke-filled apartments around the world, is a hypnotic experience. Videotaped TV clips are edited and looped together. Linking two unrelated scenes creates a new context. Shots of Rosie O'Donnell pretending to be developmentally disabled in the CBS weeper "Riding the Bus with My Sister" is juxtaposed with a horrified John Ritter wearing a toga. The two clips have nothing to do with each other, but Beckles links them, giving them new, absurd meaning.

"I put a lot of time and love into these psychotic connections. . . . There's always some sort of connective tissue," said Beckles, who will show his new workout mash-up - "Let's Work it Out" - tonight, along with other examples of his work. The show "keeps going like a run-on sentence, but the sentence keeps going for an hour and 10 minutes."

Beckles started "TV Carnage" as a bored teenager in Scarborough, Ontario, syncing up weird cartoons with Stooges songs and trading the results with his buddies. He didn't start making hourlong "TV Carnage" episodes until 1996, when a surgical procedure forced him into bed rest and a painkiller-induced haze.

What separates Beckles from other subversive editors with a YouTube account is his insane attention to detail. "I don't go for the massive 'zings!' I like more subtle things like the way somebody says something or how they decorated their home," Beckles said.