Joss Whedon's 'Dr. Horrible' is a site-crashing success

Dr. Horrible, played by Neil Patrick Harris, is up to no good in his Horrible lab. (Photo credit: Amy Opoka.)

Dr. Horrible is good!

And that’s exactly his problem. The title character of the landmark new Web musical, “Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog,” played by the lovable and unmenacing Neil Patrick Harris, dreams of gaining admission to the vaunted Evil League of Evil, home of the baddest baddies in the land. But he’s kidding himself. Dr. H. is too skittish to harm innocents or wreak much havoc. The ray guns he invents never seem to work that well, and his cackle is so wimpy he’s hired a voice coach.

Plus, what kind of criminal mastermind has a blog?

Ask Joss Whedon. He’s the guy who’s built a career on bending genres. In “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” he dreamed up a 16-year-old girl who sent vampires back to hell. And “Firefly,” Whedon’s short-lived 2002 TV show, was a Western, except, in space.

So it’s only fitting that Whedon would create a show like “Dr. Horrible.” He makes bad guys into good guys and good into bad, writes a superhero epic where every three minutes the characters break out in song, and most death defying of all, he puts the whole thing on the Internet.

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Cucumber trumpet? Ball bearing beats?  Toccata et Fugue in D Minor on a Bottle Organ? Check out this fantabulous YouTube playlist of strange and unusual instruments, courtesy of YouTube's music maven, Michele Flannery. The only thing it doesn't have is Cat Playing Theremin. 

Here is the true brilliance of YouTube -- a cornucopia of curios, an index of oddities, a roll call of the really cool.  People do the darnedest things...

Here for a lot more!

Digging further into the surprisingly diverse world of video game-based Web series, I found Jon Graham's "Arby 'n' the Chief," a highly amusing blend of machinima and live action whose two main characters are plastic action figurines from the "Halo" game series.  (Can't link because there's cursing, etc.) 

In a Toy Story-slash-Garfield sort of way, Arby and Master Chief come alive when their human owner Jon leaves for the day. The toys are bound by their passion for video games; Arby, the more mature and cerebral of the two, enjoys playing a variety of titles and prizes strategy and analysis over wanton violence. Chief just likes to blow dudes up.  In the show's funniest touch, the voices of both characters come from the '80s-era voice simulator built in to early versions of Microsoft Windows. Whereas Arby speaks in well-formed, thoughtful sentences, Chief speaks in 'l33t' -- the orthographic shorthand gamers use to type hasty messages while playing. So when Chief surprises a terrified in-game opponent who screams, "What are you?!" Chief replies triumphantly, "i r guy who gon t33ch u less0n." 

What the show gets at best is the way live, multiplayer games like Halo bring together disparate demographics, uniting pre-teens and 40-year-old bachelors in an uneasy alliance of mindless fun. 

As with a lot of other YouTube content, this works best for the very niche it tries to capture, which in this case is males who play video games.  "Arby 'n' the Chief" has consistently pulled in over 1.5 million views over its 11 episodes -- more evidence that the gaming subculture might be graduating from "sub"-hood as we sp33k.

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth watching: Pes' 'Western Spaghetti' animation

If you're not familiar with Pes, best check out the video below. This is some of the best stop-motion animation going right now. Adam Pesapane's signature aesthetic is to replicate the real world with kitschy household and kitchen items. Below is a bravura rendition of cooking spaghetti.  On other end of the spectrum, this video depicts the destruction of a city (the atom bomb is a marshmallow peanut, and the explosion is one of Christmas tree ornaments).  This third video reprises classic video games.  Warning: The videos are loud, so keep your thumb on the volume.

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Cucumber trumpet? Ball bearing beats?  Toccata et Fugue in D Minor on a Bottle Organ? Check out this fantabulous YouTube playlist of strange and unusual instruments, courtesy of YouTube's music maven, Michele Flannery. The only thing it doesn't have is Cat Playing Theremin. 

Here is the true brilliance of YouTube -- a cornucopia of curios, an index of oddities, a roll call of the really cool.  People do the darnedest things...

Here for a lot more!

Digging further into the surprisingly diverse world of video game-based Web series, I found Jon Graham's "Arby 'n' the Chief," a highly amusing blend of machinima and live action whose two main characters are plastic action figurines from the "Halo" game series.  (Can't link because there's cursing, etc.) 

In a Toy Story-slash-Garfield sort of way, Arby and Master Chief come alive when their human owner Jon leaves for the day. The toys are bound by their passion for video games; Arby, the more mature and cerebral of the two, enjoys playing a variety of titles and prizes strategy and analysis over wanton violence. Chief just likes to blow dudes up.  In the show's funniest touch, the voices of both characters come from the '80s-era voice simulator built in to early versions of Microsoft Windows. Whereas Arby speaks in well-formed, thoughtful sentences, Chief speaks in 'l33t' -- the orthographic shorthand gamers use to type hasty messages while playing. So when Chief surprises a terrified in-game opponent who screams, "What are you?!" Chief replies triumphantly, "i r guy who gon t33ch u less0n." 

What the show gets at best is the way live, multiplayer games like Halo bring together disparate demographics, uniting pre-teens and 40-year-old bachelors in an uneasy alliance of mindless fun. 

As with a lot of other YouTube content, this works best for the very niche it tries to capture, which in this case is males who play video games.  "Arby 'n' the Chief" has consistently pulled in over 1.5 million views over its 11 episodes -- more evidence that the gaming subculture might be graduating from "sub"-hood as we sp33k.

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: Master of the Internet

This is the best mid-90s retro parody commercial I've ever seen.  They must've actually gotten out an old VHS camcorder and set up 15-year-old computers and software to increase verisimilitude... impressive.   

After digging around, it looks like these are the same guys that did this mid-90s retro soap opera parody, which has about the same aesthetic. 

Cucumber trumpet? Ball bearing beats?  Toccata et Fugue in D Minor on a Bottle Organ? Check out this fantabulous YouTube playlist of strange and unusual instruments, courtesy of YouTube's music maven, Michele Flannery. The only thing it doesn't have is Cat Playing Theremin. 

Here is the true brilliance of YouTube -- a cornucopia of curios, an index of oddities, a roll call of the really cool.  People do the darnedest things...

Here for a lot more!

Digging further into the surprisingly diverse world of video game-based Web series, I found Jon Graham's "Arby 'n' the Chief," a highly amusing blend of machinima and live action whose two main characters are plastic action figurines from the "Halo" game series.  (Can't link because there's cursing, etc.) 

In a Toy Story-slash-Garfield sort of way, Arby and Master Chief come alive when their human owner Jon leaves for the day. The toys are bound by their passion for video games; Arby, the more mature and cerebral of the two, enjoys playing a variety of titles and prizes strategy and analysis over wanton violence. Chief just likes to blow dudes up.  In the show's funniest touch, the voices of both characters come from the '80s-era voice simulator built in to early versions of Microsoft Windows. Whereas Arby speaks in well-formed, thoughtful sentences, Chief speaks in 'l33t' -- the orthographic shorthand gamers use to type hasty messages while playing. So when Chief surprises a terrified in-game opponent who screams, "What are you?!" Chief replies triumphantly, "i r guy who gon t33ch u less0n." 

What the show gets at best is the way live, multiplayer games like Halo bring together disparate demographics, uniting pre-teens and 40-year-old bachelors in an uneasy alliance of mindless fun. 

As with a lot of other YouTube content, this works best for the very niche it tries to capture, which in this case is males who play video games.  "Arby 'n' the Chief" has consistently pulled in over 1.5 million views over its 11 episodes -- more evidence that the gaming subculture might be graduating from "sub"-hood as we sp33k.

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: a parade of unusual instrument videos

Cucumber trumpet? Ball bearing beats?  Toccata et Fugue in D Minor on a Bottle Organ? Check out this fantabulous YouTube playlist of strange and unusual instruments, courtesy of YouTube's music maven, Michele Flannery. The only thing it doesn't have is Cat Playing Theremin. 

Here is the true brilliance of YouTube -- a cornucopia of curios, an index of oddities, a roll call of the really cool.  People do the darnedest things...

Here for a lot more!

Digging further into the surprisingly diverse world of video game-based Web series, I found Jon Graham's "Arby 'n' the Chief," a highly amusing blend of machinima and live action whose two main characters are plastic action figurines from the "Halo" game series.  (Can't link because there's cursing, etc.) 

In a Toy Story-slash-Garfield sort of way, Arby and Master Chief come alive when their human owner Jon leaves for the day. The toys are bound by their passion for video games; Arby, the more mature and cerebral of the two, enjoys playing a variety of titles and prizes strategy and analysis over wanton violence. Chief just likes to blow dudes up.  In the show's funniest touch, the voices of both characters come from the '80s-era voice simulator built in to early versions of Microsoft Windows. Whereas Arby speaks in well-formed, thoughtful sentences, Chief speaks in 'l33t' -- the orthographic shorthand gamers use to type hasty messages while playing. So when Chief surprises a terrified in-game opponent who screams, "What are you?!" Chief replies triumphantly, "i r guy who gon t33ch u less0n." 

What the show gets at best is the way live, multiplayer games like Halo bring together disparate demographics, uniting pre-teens and 40-year-old bachelors in an uneasy alliance of mindless fun. 

As with a lot of other YouTube content, this works best for the very niche it tries to capture, which in this case is males who play video games.  "Arby 'n' the Chief" has consistently pulled in over 1.5 million views over its 11 episodes -- more evidence that the gaming subculture might be graduating from "sub"-hood as we sp33k.

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: 'Arby 'n' the Chief' -- 'Halo' machinima

Digging further into the surprisingly diverse world of video game-based Web series, I found Jon Graham's "Arby 'n' the Chief," a highly amusing blend of machinima and live action whose two main characters are plastic action figurines from the "Halo" game series.  (Can't link because there's cursing, etc.) 

In a Toy Story-slash-Garfield sort of way, Arby and Master Chief come alive when their human owner Jon leaves for the day. The toys are bound by their passion for video games; Arby, the more mature and cerebral of the two, enjoys playing a variety of titles and prizes strategy and analysis over wanton violence. Chief just likes to blow dudes up.  In the show's funniest touch, the voices of both characters come from the '80s-era voice simulator built in to early versions of Microsoft Windows. Whereas Arby speaks in well-formed, thoughtful sentences, Chief speaks in 'l33t' -- the orthographic shorthand gamers use to type hasty messages while playing. So when Chief surprises a terrified in-game opponent who screams, "What are you?!" Chief replies triumphantly, "i r guy who gon t33ch u less0n." 

What the show gets at best is the way live, multiplayer games like Halo bring together disparate demographics, uniting pre-teens and 40-year-old bachelors in an uneasy alliance of mindless fun. 

As with a lot of other YouTube content, this works best for the very niche it tries to capture, which in this case is males who play video games.  "Arby 'n' the Chief" has consistently pulled in over 1.5 million views over its 11 episodes -- more evidence that the gaming subculture might be graduating from "sub"-hood as we sp33k.

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: "Viralcom" from Warner Bros. Studio 2.0

"Viralcom." Now here's a smart, webby Web comedy. The show's premise alone is enough to earn it a few critical stars: It's the story of a  movie studio whose mission it is to make  professionally scripted "user-generated" viral videos.  In the world of the show, Viralcom is actually responsible for "Chocolate Rain," Baby Laughing and a hit Mentos prank vid.

Two of the show's starlets score an online smash with the "Wet T-shirt makeout" series— basically two girls getting it on at frat parties. Of course, the  clips in question were not candid cellphone videos at all — they were shot by a huge crew on a soundstage in front of a green screen. Ha!

One more layer of irony is that "Viralcom" itself is a production of Studio 2.0, the digital content lab that Warner Bros. put together last year. So the media giant is making a show about how media giants are bamboozling the public by faking user-generated content. A little self-effacement is always nice.

"Viralcom" hits a Web comedy sweet spot that I haven't quite seen yet: It has the snappy, slick feel of a Hollywood production, but also manages to be casual and Web-wise, so the comedy feels airy. The show's creators, Joey Manderino and David Young, are New York transplants (Manderino Young worked on "The Daily Show") and have shot 10 episodes for Studio 2.0. 

Can't link directly because there's (oooh) cursing and the L.A. Times is a family website, but the creators' Website, linked above, can get you there (or Google "Viralcom" and you'll find links right there at the top). 

(Photo of Tay Zonday taping "Chocolate Rain" at "Viralcom" studios, from Joey and David's website)

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: Charlie Rose interviews Charlie Rose

Charlie really outdoes himself this time.

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Worth Watching: Super sloooooow

There's little that can be added to this Wired video of a water balloon being popped in super slow-motion. Except that it has introduced me to the genre of super slow-motion, which is my favorite YouTube genre of the week. The trick is to get things that involve very high-speed objects and slow them down until they're very slow. It's a window into the zooming, flashing, exploding universe that our brains are just too sluggish to grok. 

If that's tickled your slo-fancy, here are a few more:

Billiard balls

Bitch slaps

Invisible octopi

And my favorite: Archery

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile

Sony's C-Spot: New Web comedy lineup surprisingly clean despite Ron Jeremy cameo

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.

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

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Worth Watching: John Malkovich's naked interview

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.

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

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Worth Watching: 'The Guild' mixes dorkdom with humor and cute chicks

A rare jewel in the Web TV world is "The Guild," written and produced by Felicia Day, a graduate of the Joss Whedon School for Gorgeous Nerd Actresses.

This show is an absolute, no-holds-barred dorkfest -- a soap opera about a group of social isolates who, having met and played together in the World of Warcraft (WoW for short -- that's the hugely successful fantasy MMORPG world with 10 million players), decide to see what it's like to . . . gulp . . . meet in real life. 

Day plays CodEx, the group's "Healer" -- a type of video game character who is too weak to fight monsters, and so is forced to weenily stand in the background and use her healing magic to help the stronger players. It's a video game nurse, basically. CodEx's in-game diffidence bleeds into her real life, where she's unable to rid herself of Zaboo (Sandeep Parikh), a hyper-geek from WoW world who shows up at her doorstep after she gives him too many in-game "winkies" -- (; (;. 

Another great character is Clara, the hefty mommy with a baby and two toddlers who is so obsessed with the game that she sometimes forgets to feed her kids.

The show makes heavy use of WoW jargon -- gold farming, rezzing, wizard staffs, manna pools, loot -- the show is funnier if you've ever actually --- er . . . journalistically investigated the game.  But non-players should be able to enjoy it too.

"The Guild" is one of several geek-oriented Web TV shows -- MyDamnChannel's You Suck at Photoshop being another -- that are capturing wide audiences and further hastening the demise of the geek stigma (a process always aided by the presence of good-looking women).

The Guild - Episode 1: Wake-Up Call

Technorati Profile