PROCRAST-ERRIFIC

Dobrow's Procrast-errific Web Video Destination

Media Reviews for Media People: My Damn Channel

By Larry Dobrow

Published: May 08, 2008

I spend 37 hours per day in front of the computer and have the attention span of a sugared-up first-grader, so it shouldn't come as a surprise that I inhale a staggering amount of online video. Indeed, as I craft my masterworks of Western thought and struggle to locate that elusive mot juste ("luftmensch"? "jecoral"?), web video serves as the default procrastination apparatus. Mostly my wanderings lead to Springsteen clips, which I then forward to my similarly Jer-Z-fied pals. We've wasted 7,250 hours on low-res 1978 versions of "Prove It All Night" alone.



So no, I don't have a single regular supplier for my video fix, and I'm probably like the vast majority of web monkeys in that regard. For texty information and illumination and whatnot, there are 15 or so sites I'll check out every day. For video, I unthinkingly go wherever my idiot friends point me.


Happily, I've found a procrast-errific web-video destination in My Damn Channel, a better-realized version of the astronomically hyped, Ferrell-and-Apatow-backed Funny or Die. That's not a slap at Funny or Die, so much as an endorsement of the more comically consistent My Damn Channel. It's all well and good that the Ian Zierings and John Mayers of the world have chosen Funny or Die as their preferred venue for gentle image-tweaking, but such lazy bits pale next to the goodies tucked away in each of My Damn Channel's, uh, channels.


Where Funny or Die throws up a bunch of clips and calls it an afternoon, My Damn Channel showcases a range of distinct personalities. Funnyfolk like David Wain, Harry Shearer and Andy Milonakis get online mini-laboratories to call their own, and use them for everything from low-concept weirdness to wry political commentary. No one channel is like the next, though each shares a twitchy, absurdist comic sensibility that should resonate with fans of Andy Samberg's SNL Digital Shorts, "Tim and Eric Awesome Show, Great Job!" and anything involving alumni from MTV's "The State."


My Damn Channel has justly been lauded for the passive-aggressive (and educational!) comic gold that is "You Suck at Photoshop" series and Wain's vigorously quirky "Wainy Days" quest to find his fictional self a gal. The site's less-hyped content -- especially the soap opera spoof "Horrible People" and the self-explanatory "Cookin' With Coolio" -- similarly revels in its own silliness, especially the former's asides about how "a waxed ***hole is a window to the soul."


I also dig Grace, the gal who, for lack of a better way to put it, serves as My Damn Channel's hostess and hype woman. She has the Sarah Silverman I'm-adorable-so-I-can-get-away-with-saying-stuff-about-Hitler-and-weed thing down pat, but doesn't overplay the gimmick -- which makes it all the more rewarding when she sweetly intones "be nice to your mother, because you f*cked up her baby hole." Her presence keeps My Damn Channel from feeling like a guys-only clubhouse, a fate that Funny or Die hasn't been able to avoid.


My Damn Channel even pulls off the nifty trick of being entertaining in its advertising. Don Was' music channel boasts Lincoln as a primary sponsor, for example, but also tapes performances in the grungy "grand showroom of our sponsor, The Furniture Outlet, located in North Hollywood, California, at 13054 Sherman Way ... c'mon down for some great music and some great bargains on love seats and bedroom sets!" A bunch of brands that appeal to homebound drones like me -- iTunes, Wolfgang's Vault, National Geographic Channel -- have been in heavy ad rotation of late, as have web mainstays like Match.com and Peapod. They're all easy fits, just as cellphone tchotchkes and other portable media devices would be. Ads for new movies or records would probably get lost amid all the content, though.


The two potential worries here for marketers? One, that few of the clips are safe for work; and two, that almost none of the humor here is linear, meaning that devotees of Jay Leno and "Two and a Half Men" will furrow their brows in a futile attempt to grasp the punch lines.


In the end, you can easily lose yourself for 45 minutes at a time at My Damn Channel -- in fact, I kinda just now did, courtesy of the Lori McKenna and Jackshit clips on the Don Was channel. I've yet to feel a comparable pull to any other web-video destination not named YouTube, and YouTube's clip quality and smallish viewing window seem primitive nowadays when compared to MDC, Funny or Die, Hulu and the like. If you can visit My Damn Channel without meandering around for awhile, I applaud your self-discipline.

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FEEL LIKE SPOONING !?!?!?!

Snatchbuckler's Second Chance - 'part deux'

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WHERE GREATNESS LIES?

Ben Stiller praises Iron Man Robert Downey Jr. in TIME magazine & says, "he is not afraid to try something fully, knowing it could end in disaster but also understanding that that is where greatness lies."

If it stands alone, the quote is a bit out of context - it's not referring to IRON MAN but to an upcoming film directed by Ben & starring Robert - as a black man.

I grabbed hold of the quote thinking about an old rule to NEVER use the word "TRY." If you think "TRY" - you're thinking you may not actually get THERE.

DOING it - is better. Thanks to every co-con for a biggest week ever in Damnland.

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WEBBY AWARD WINNERS

We're totally blown away!

THANK YOU to the WEBBY AWARDS judges
and to all of YOU who voted for My Damn Channel.

7 Honors in All from the "Oscars of the Web."

We were stunned to be in any of these categories with all the nominees and we're shocked to have won so many. 

Congrats to all the winners & nominees in the WEBBY AWARDS. 

We're sharing MANHUGS with Big Fat Brain, David Wain, Harry Shearer & all the producers, crew and artists who make My Damn Channel's original videos.



Our business was built to respect the best talent in music & in comedy. We're incredibly honored and proud to support their work...  

& now....cue the music:

Webby Award Winner:
Best Comedy Series - Wainy Days (David Wain)

People's Voice Winner:
Best Comedy Series - You Suck at Photoshop (Big Fat Brain)

Webby Award Winner:
Best How-To & DIY - You Suck at Photoshop (Big Fat Brain)

People's Voice Winner:
Best How-To & DIY - You Suck at Photoshop (Big Fat Brain)

3 Honorees:

Official Honoree / Humor:
My Damn Channel

Official Honoree / Comedy: individual short or episode: Wainy Days - Season 1 - Episode #10 - The Future (guest starring: Rob Corddry, Zandy Hartig, A.D. Miles)

Official Honoree / Viral:
Harry Shearer's "Found Objects" - Katie Couric #1

Harry Shearer's "Waterboardin', USA" was nominated for Best Music Video and we congratulate Freestyle 101 from G4TV.com on their win - as well as Minilogue from Blink Productions as the People's Voice Winner for Music Video.

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THIS IS NOT PHOTOSHOP

Happy Jack tells the Wall Street Journal: The "good thing about Howard Stern leaving our station is that it already happened to us," he says.

http://online.wsj.com/public/article_print/SB120535527639031299.html

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TIME MAGAZINE on NEWSSTANDS

TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World

Technoculture

Fun with Photoshop

Thursday, May. 01, 2008 By JOSH QUITTNER



Troy Hitch, left, and Matt Bledsoe have just been revealed as the co-creators of the hit Web series You Suck at Photoshop.


Five hundred Gazillion Web video channels and nothing good on? Google this: You Suck at Photoshop. Narrated by the fictional Donnie Hoyle--an angry, sarcastic, cuckolded Photoshop expert--it was launched in late December and ended 10 episodes later, in April, when Donnie mysteriously disappeared. Not that you ever saw him. In the videos, the camera remains centered on a computer desktop and follows Donnie's cursor as he conducts mock tutorials on how to use the photo-altering application. Sound obscure? Maybe not. With the explosion of blogging and do-it-yourself publishing, Photoshop has become one of the Web generation's indispensable tools. Accordingly, the Donnie series has been viewed nearly 8 million times and is up for two 2008 Webby Awards: Best Comedy and Best How-To Video.

How a goof became a phenomenon is a Web-age love story almost as sweet as Donnie is bitter. Many fans believed the video series had to have been made by a professional comedian; Dane Cook was a favorite suspect. But it turns out to be the work of Troy Hitch, 37, and Matt Bledsoe, 39, both of Covington, Ky.--two former ad-agency guys who met while recording a radio commercial in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. They buddied up, started writing funny bits and launched a new-media-centric creative agency called Big Fat Institute in 2005.

That's where Rob Barnett discovered them. A show-biz guy who had worked at MTV and VH1 before spending two years at the helm of CBS Radio, Barnett had decided to become a Web-video impresario. He found Big Fat Institute while looking for someone to design his website. You Suck at Photoshop "was hysterical," Barnett recalled recently. "I was instantly engaged and e-mailed them: 'WHO are you?' In 38 seconds, I get a response: 'Who are YOU?' We started flirting." The e-mail led to phone calls and an invitation to visit Barnett in New Jersey. "A few days later, they jumped on a plane to Newark, and we fell in love," he says. Barnett signed the guys to build his video-entertainment website, MyDamnChannel.com and then produce comedy videos for it. You Suck at Photoshop was their first baby.

Hitch and Bledsoe had long nurtured an idea for a character they thought of as the Angry Photoshop Guy. Explains Bledsoe: "We had both been in the agency business so long that after a while we'd seen every kind of person in the advertising world." One of those stereotypes, he says, was the "insane designer, basically. He has horrible social skills and horrible things going on in his life, and the only thing he has going for him is he can out-Photoshop the guy in the cube next to him." It took 2 1/2 hours to complete Episode 1. "The vast majority is improvised by Troy," says Bledsoe. "I hate him for that." Hitch adds, "It was meant to be a one-off thing." But within a few weeks, the blogosphere discovered it, and the series began racking up page views.

In my favorite episode, Donnie shows viewers how to seamlessly remove the wedding band from a picture of his cheating wife's finger. "We actually really put the ring up for sale on eBay, and within four hours, 30,000 people had come by to look or bid on it," Hitch tells me. "The ring was bid up to $760." But eBay shut down the auction after discovering the performance art--a violation of the terms of service, apparently.

The team emerged from anonymity in April to launch a sequel, Snatchbuckler's Second Chance. It's filmed in a fictional, virtual world called Peopleburg.com Snatchbuckler, Donnie's erstwhile partner in the online game World of Warcraft, has gone there to shake off his Internet addiction. The video debuted on MyDamnChannel.com in late April, and it looks pretty cool. But I miss Donnie and wish I could Photoshop him back into my life.

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COMING UPs

First, let's clean up a rumor. As far as we know, Keith Richards was (not) at the Was (Not Was) gig last night. His 'people' were there. So was Paul McGuinness, manager of the little four piece rock band, U2.  

If you wuz not at the Blender Theatre in NYC, you missed one of the funkiest, tightest nights of dance grooves in a dog's age. Was (Not Was) is essential live music medicine. SEE THIS TOUR - BUY THIS ALBUM. Here's a clip from Wednesday night in Boston of their BADASS Temptations cover.


Here's what's in the My Damn Channel pipeline.


ANDY MILONAKIS shot a short film for us with JASON MEWES (Clerks & more) - premiering next week with a chance for you to create alternate endings to their oddly artful piece o' cinema.




HARRY SHEARER is about to shoot a new My Damn Channel video and stick another swift boot in the ass of the sitting President of the United States. More on this next week.




DAVID WAIN is about to start filming Season 3 of WAINY DAYS next week!!!  Debuting in June. Rumors that Elizabeth Banks is returning as "Shelly."

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VOTE WEBBYS - WIN PJ'S - GET RUMOR

The blog is 6 months old with a slightly new look - leaving Wordpress - now living inside My Damn Channel world.

Here's a quick hitlist of insider info:



VOTE:  Webby Award People's Voting ends at 9p pt / Midnight et - Tonight.

Help your brothers & sisters out.  Will ya?  We've got 4 nominations & 3 honors.  Winners will be announced this coming Tuesday.

You Suck at Photoshop leads people's voting in Best Comedy Series.  Wainy Days is not far behind.  We have 2 of the 5 nominees in Best Comedy!

Harry Shearer needs your vote NOW in the MUSIC category for "Waterboardin' USA."

You Suck at Photoshop is kicking ass in the HOW-TO category.

Go to http://pv.webbyawards.com/ - register - then go to ONLINE FILM & VIDEO - where you find our 3 categories above: COMEDY, MUSIC, HOW-TO.



- DAILY GRACE is gaining steam.  It's week 3 with our newest family member, Grace Helbig + we're sharing the love by auctioning off Grace's PJs worn in the "Bedtime Stories" series.



- DON WAS and WAS (NOT WAS) play NYC tonight at Blender Theatre at Gramercy.  We'll be there to see one of America's best bands from the Motor City do it oh so fine and funky.  There's a very hot rumor about certain rock royalty stopping by to catch this show tonight!!!

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