Free used vintage latimes.com desk clock to whomever can spot the gag (and comment on it) first!
UPDATE: Sadly, there was no winner. The one comment this post received was adjudged inscrutable, so the clock will stay in the possession of the L.A. Times' vintage 90's latimes.com clock museum on my desk. The answer, btw, was that all the videos on the Australian YouTube's front page redirected, temporarily, to "Never Gonna Give You Up." YouTube was perpetrating a mass April Fool's Day RickRoll.
Sony Pictures Television officially launched C-Spot today, a new web TV channel that will be home to a 13-week season of online comedy. There will be six new scripted shows, one "airing" each day of the week. Going along with the conventional wisdom about online audience-building, C-Spot will play on a variety of platforms, including Sony's Crackle, YouTube and Hulu, with revenue-sharing deals so Sony can get a piece of the advertising pie no matter where the shows get watched.
The shows represent, if not a giant leap forward for online television, at least a step in the right direction. They avoid the id-riddled blue humor that many Web comedy portals can't seem to get away from. In fact, there are so few curse words and blatant sexual references that even this blog can get away with embedding episodes. Check one out below.
There's a definite gamut here of funny to absurd. But all the shows are well-produced -- with budgets of about $10k/episode, according to Sony -- and they're all at least somewhat amusing, with the best managing to be downright chuckleworthy.
The Writers Room is one of the more dynamic and character-driven programs. It's a Larry Sanders-esque look at a group of writers putting together a late-night talk show, in this case "Super Late with Kevin Pollock." Except for a once-an-episode conference call cameo, Pollock never actually appears on the show. One of the in-jokes is that the cast is made up of real TV writers, including Bruce Kirschbaum ("Seinfeld," "Everybody Loves Raymond"), Jeff Kahn ("The Ben Stiller Show") and Frank Conniff (MST3000). More than that, the show's 10 short episodes were shot in five days, so in a way it's not inaccurate to say it's really just a camera pointed at a room full of writers riffing all day. Which turns out to be worth watching.
According to FishBowlNY, the NYT's piece on the Rickrolling of an Eastern Washington University hoops game a few weeks ago was apparently based on, er, some dubious evidence. In other words, some guy made it all up. I cited the NYT's story in my RickRoll piece from yesterday, and even watched the video, so no fair playing the neener game, but ...
If the video was really the only source for the story, that might be classified as a bit of an oopsie, not just because everything on the Internet is a hoax until proven otherwise, but because the video indeed looks like it was heavily edited, set to music, etc -- not a document but a piece of entertainment.
I have to share of few of the comments on the Digg entry for yesterday's Rickrolling story. (Ethical spidey sense says it's no good to link to a Digg of my own story, so I'll just excerpt.) For whatever reason, though, this story seemed to bring out the funny in people:
If I were Rick Astley, I would run up behind random people in the street and rickroll them live........You could use it in so many different ways!!!
I spent about 5 minutes just debating if I was going to click the link [to the interview] or not. I finally went for it - with my wife watching me like I was trying to defuse a grenade.
-- I wish i could defuse a grenade....
--- i wish i had a wife......
---- Lets start with a girlfriend first. ---- Or goldfish.
-- The only time I'll digg this up is for this article.
The absolute end-all be-all RickRoll.... Have Mr Astley himself stop the SuperBowl halftime show with an authentic performance of the song. That would be it. No one could ever top it. It would be the best ever.
-- What if everyone tries to raise enough money to buy ad time for the Super Bowl to rick roll millions of people at the same time.It could be the biggest waste of money ever!
--- Jesus Christ...we need to make this happen!
-- Someone register a website for donations!
--- I'm not even kidding, we need to get on this.
--- I'm totally down for it. Get 30 million people to donate $1 or 15 million $2 or 6 million $5. I think it could happen! Super Bowl commercial was about what 29.5 million? Although an actual Rick Roll during the half time would top a commercial.
--- Dear god, we should start a movement!
-- That is quite possibly the most epic idea I've ever heard.
Astley in London in November 2007. (Photo courtesy of TD Promotions)
Astley talks about discovering the "Rickroll"
On a frosty Canadian morning, a masked crusader tromps across a parking lot, over a snow bank and onto the sidewalk. He has a loudspeaker strapped ominously to his chest.
He halts, aiming the speaker toward the building across the street. “This is a song by some dead guy,” he says. And then, music booms forth:
“Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down, never gonna run around and desert you.”
“It’s a bit spooky, innit?” said Rick Astley, the singer who made the song famous in 1987 and who is not dead. With considerable help, including assists from RCA Records, the webmaster of Astley’s U.K. fan site, and his manager at Sony BMG, I tracked down Astley at his home in London last weekend. He spoke for the first time about the phenomenon called Rickrolling, best described by example: You are reading your favorite Hollywood gossip blog and arrive at a link urging you to “Click here for exclusive video of Britney’s latest freakout!!” Click you do, but instead of Britney, it’s a dashing 21-year-old Briton that pops onto the screen. You, sir, have been Rickroll’d.
Over the last year or so, Astley has watched with puzzled amazement as “Never Gonna Give You Up” has been mocked, celebrated, remixed and reprised, its original music video viewed millions of times on YouTube, all by a generation that could barely swallow its Gerber carrots when the song first topped the pop charts.
“I think it’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it,” Astley said. “But that’s what's brilliant about the Internet.”
Saying he thought "Anonymous" Rickrolling Scientology was "hilarious"
Craig Bierko scored a heck of a "get" when John Malkovich agreed to appear on the first episode of his bathtime talk show "Bathing with Bierko" (below, from SuperDeluxe). Bierko grills Malkovich (as he shampoos the actor's scalp) on such tough topics as John's childhood pudginess and the way the word "Portugal" loses its meaning if you keep repeating it over and over. The pair finish up the interview with a bit of drive-through improv, in which they do an accurate and convincing rendition of someone ordering from a McDonald's drive-through.
Give Malkovich a standing O for being ego-less enough to do this, and Bierko deserves a nice back-washing for coming up with the idea. The more A-listers who deign to get wet in the Internet bathwater, the more those waters will seem safe and hygienic.
The entire South Park oeuvre, all 12 seasons of it, is now online -- and legally so. Now you can watch Mecha-Streisand at your leisure. With all its young fans and its net-friendly themes, South Park seems like a good place to prove either that a) putting tons of free, sought-after content online is a good way to make money, or b) that it isn't. (via NewTeeVee)
Robert Scoble says the secret to Twitter is not being popular. Rather, it's being a good listener. While it may feed the ego to be 'followed' by 12,000 people, it's even better to actually follow 12,000--that way you get more good dirt and hear more voices. Scoble doesn't, of course, address the practical limitations of monitoring the minute-to-minute musings of a stadium full of tech geeks--that's for you to figure out.
Yesterday, Chris Lee detailed the viral marketing campaign for "The Dark Knight"--which includes a phony district attorney run--complete with phony defacings of phony campaign posters--for candidate/bad guy Harvey Dent. You sort of spot the baloney sandwich when you realize the guy's running for D.A. of Gotham City, but still and all, it's more creative than these things, which have been plastered all over L.A.
And not leastly, last week Stanford professor and Free Culturist Lawrence Lessig launched Change Congress, an online initiative aimed at ending PAC contributions and increasing congressional transparency. The site includes a Google mashup showing how much cash incumbent congresspeople take from PACs. Tsk, tsk!
Since the good people at YouTube didn't bother to declare an overall cross-category winner in this year's Tubies, I'll do it myself. We had a really excellent field of candidates this year--but as you know, there can be only one best. While Laughing Baby was truly nonpareil, it would be a disservice to online video to say it was the best one of the millions produced in 2007. The same goes for guys skateboarding among balloons, Rubik's cube solver, Human Tetris, and Harry Potter suicide bomber.
The true standout in this group is Felicia Day's "The Guild," perhaps the smartest (and definitely the funniest) webisodic series of the year. See my fawning post (and some of the funny comments) here.
"The Guild" revolves around a group of obsessive online video-game players who know each other through their characters, but not in real life. Even for the non-gamers among us (you dwindling demographic, you!), the tension between virtual relationships and real ones grows daily stronger, and "The Guild" is the first show to pick up on that theme. So congratulations to the First Annual Web Scout Best of the YouTube Video Awards Award Winner, "The Guild"!
(Jason Calacanis streaming live via cell phone, as streamed live by Robert Scoble)
Get ready for your close-up. Because pretty soon, we're all going to have video cameras in our cellphones.
Also known as cellular video cameras. Meaning anyone will be able to broadcast from anywhere. Live.
You don't have to be a starry-eyed technophile or a surly dystopian to see what this is going to look like. Just go to Qik.com.
The Silicon Valley Web startup has created a system that lets users
send live video directly from their Nokia phones to the Web. When the
broadcast is over, the clip is auto-saved for repeat (public) viewings.
Jason
Calacanis, a New York-bred, L.A-based entrepreneur and tech-world
celebrity, now regularly broadcasts ad-hoc "shows" from his cellphone
-- and anyone watching can beam him questions through Qik's chat
feature. Calacanis' programming varies in excitement: In one episode,
viewers watched him speed down the highway in his yellow Corvette, in
hot pursuit of a Tesla Roadster, the 100 mph electric sports car. Wow!
In another, fans looked on as Calacanis diddled around on the sidewalk
while his wife was inside shopping. Still, dozens or even hundreds of
his fans tune in when Calacanis goes live, hoping for a peek into the
life of a tech idol.
"Listen, I'm a nerd who builds websites,"
he said. "The fact that anybody cares to watch me at Starbucks, let
alone 100 people . . . I should be flattered right?"
...China released a video blacklist today that forced 25 sites to shut down and warned "dozens of others," about objectionable content, according to Reuters. The article recalls that Beijing decreed last year that "only state-owned or state-controlled companies can apply for licenses to broadcast or stream video online."
...LAist reported yesterday on the mastermind of the YouTube taco heist getting 30 days in jail. The quesadilla caper, videotaped and put online, included a lie about a bungled order. The word "salmonella" was even thrown in for good measure. All to score a free meal (including an extra large fries). Hope it was tasty.
...The Sydney Morning Herald has an interview with YouTube co-founder Steve Chen about the problem of violent clips finding their way onto the site--not just taco-stealing, but beatings, rape, and other kinds of sick behavior. Chen says at this point, there's not much they can do to filter it. The site gets 10 hours of new footage per minute. (via NewTeeVee)
...torrentfreak reports that p2p site Mininova plans to launch a feature that will allow users to stream bittorrents. English translation: Now instead of waiting hours to download large video files (of movies or TV, say), you can view them directly, the way you you would a YouTube clip. If you want to stay on the copyright side of the law, make sure everything you watch is in the public domain.
Bracketmaker's bonus:
...a statistician at Bracketscience.com says that according to his complex regression analysis, one of these four teams will probably win the NCAA championship:
North Carolina
Duke
Kansas
Tennessee
You've got a one-in-four shot to pick the winner now -- that's pretty good. There are a bunch of other ways to win your pool, too -- check it out. (via Wired)
David Sarno
is the Times' Internet culture and online entertainment writer. His Web Scout print column runs in the L.A. Times Calendar section on Wednesdays.
— Follow David on Twitter.
According to 
The entire South Park oeuvre, all 12 seasons of it, is now 
