Director / Writer / Lighting
John Garside is widely recognized in the cable access community
as the only cable television director with five individually
named personalities (Chet St. Hyena,
MC Carl of Beaverton, Mindy Sue Pinkntasty, Captain Endomorph IV, and John
Garstyle), each
of whom have won various industry awards, including, most
recently, The Reuben H. Rueben Certificate Of Exaltedness,
which MC Carl of Beaverton won for his live coverage of the Walnut City
Council Riots of 2008.
In the days before his personalities split, John attended the East Iowa Environmental Institution, Osceola (EIEIO), on an athletic scholarship. He prospered intellectually. He grew four inches. He fell in love. He euthanized two friends. He graduated from EIEIO with distinction.
He returned to California and took a job as a security guard at Leisure World in Seal Beach. Following a particularly harrowing break-up with his Iowa sweetheart John began to unravel. He was eventually caught trying to force-feed Alka Seltzer tablets to the Leisure World residents, and when confronted with the charges, John claimed, "Woo wooo! We got too many gosh danged seagulls. I was trying to make 'em explode, your highness. Now get off my happy sack." He was immediately shuffled into the LA County mental health bureaucracy, and there he squandered for the next three years in a system he described in his memoir, Janet Janet Janet, as a combination of "One Flew Over The Cuckoo's Nest , a little bit of the extended Thriller video, and Xanadu cubed."
Following a round of county-wide budget cuts, John was turned loose on the streets. To survive, his doctors believe, John developed his other personalities who each took separate part-time jobs: Chet at Mervyn's, Captain Endomorph at Handsome Chuck's Bail Bonds, MC Carl at a Mormon-run steak house, Mindy Sue at a hobby shop, thus allowing John Garstyle to pursue John Garside's dream of working in television.
1994. John was interning Lewinski-style at KCAT 20. One fateful night a camera operator called in sick and John was asked to fill in. John ran that camera with distinction for show #16 of something called Marty's Corner (with a name like that, John figured it was a puppet show--a fact later confirmed to be true).
Within a year John was the host of his own show, "Rhinovirus Pirate Pockets Television." Though he wanted the puppet show atmosphere of Marty's Corner, he traded down that dream for a show based on Captain Endomorph's simple premise: "What if Jacques Derrida had been born a tree sloth with the ability to see exactly a half second into the future but he moves too slow to do anything about it? What would that show look like? Would it be a creamy soup?"
During RPPT's 4 year run the ratings competition with Marty's Corner became more and more fierce, finally climaxing in a bloody turf war that left hundreds dead or divorced. As part of the peace treaty brokered by Jimmy Carter and Anson Williams, John took over as Technical Director for Marty's Corner and handed over the reigns of RPPT to Tina Yothers (who quickly got the show canceled by showing nothing but wedding night videos of the morbidly hideous). Soon after, when Matt "Trousers" Pantera, the Director for Marty's Corner, was assassinated by his own crew, John took over that job, a position he has retained with an iron fist ever since.
He is currently undergoing a mental health regimen that includes electro-convulsive therapy, warm baths, dangerously spicy chili, Yugo repair workshops, and autoerotism.
John is a Pisces who writes longhand. He knows all the letters of the alphabet (capitals AND lower case, ladies!), a talent that frequently comes in handy at staff meetings. On a dare, he once stripped for the orangutans at the San Diego Zoo. He has never lost a tickle fight, except against Susanna Hoffs. Following in the footsteps of Jerry Renek, he too sends his hair clippings to JAG's Catherine Bell. He is presently under investigation for impersonating an Otolaryngologist (see link).
