SQUiRT TV made its debut in January of 1994 on Manhattan public access. The show featured Jake spouting off his opinions of music, film and television. Jake wrote, produced, directed and edited the entire series himself. The one-man show quickly became a cult success in Manhattan. His quirky style, sense of humor and edgy commentary attracted an A-list fan base of night owls including, The Beastie Boys, Janeane Garofalo and Eric Bogosian -- just to name a few.

In January of 1996 SQUiRT TV evolved from Public Access to the mass audience of MTV. Still recorded from Jake's bedroom, the show featured more celebrity guests including Adam Sandler, Beck and The Kids In The Hall -- some of whom had appeared on SQUiRT TV in its original Public Access carnation.

And that was just the beginning. Go check out what he's done since then--he's only 25 now. Jake's blog is here.

TalkLeft has been picking up some young, politically interested readers lately. Here's an email that came in last night from a 14 year old. I've deleted her name for her privacy. I hope she checks out Jake's blog.

Dear TalkLeft,
Hi. My name is ___________, and I am a 14 year old freshman from
________, Massachusetts. Originally I stumbled upon your site because I was
actually searching for the lyrics to "I-Feel-Like-I'm-Fixing-To-Die-Rag",
performed by Country Joe & The Fish at Woodstock, and stuck around to
explore the site. At 14, I feel like already I have a pretty sound idea of
what my values and political beiefs are, and so i was excited to find out
about this website and look around. I'm very interested in social studies in
general, and encountering your website was a great oppurtunity for me to
actually learn about current political events and important things that are
going on in the world today, instead of learning about the American
Revolutionary War for the hundredth time in school. It's difficult for
people my age and teenagers in general to form real individual opinions a
lot, because we are so bombarded with information from the media, or we just
follow our parents' standpoints on issues. I liked a lot some of the things
on the website about music, and musicians who connect to the younger
generation about politics throught their songs, because I am a huge music
fan, and it's definitely a great way to conneect to teenagers. In any case,
I just wanted to say hello and that I enjoyed looking around TalkLeft.com,
and we young'ns appreciate it a lot. Thanks a lot, _________.