The genius of Good Morning World lies in its simplicity. The online series created by Toronto improv comedians Pat Kelly and Peter Oldring isn’t online anymore (the Canadian Comey Network picked it up for television broadcast), but cult followers will remember its spartan set and brazen (referring both to the level of its mockery and the fake-and-bake skin color of its stars) satire of traditional morning talk shows.

It reduced the hackneyed genre to its core elements. Rabidly optimistic and painfully cheery hosts, folksy incorporative language, and blithe, insubstantial side segments. Check out this bootlegged episode to see it in action:

Today, IFC launched its take on the early morning timeslot, Good Morning Internet. The creators would’ve done well to pay attention to Good Morning World’s art of reduction.

###Produced by POYKPAC, the talented Brooklyn-based comedy group responsible for Hipster Olympics, Mario: Game Over, and (my favorite title in their catalog) The Amazingly True Story of Christopher Cringle, Good Morning Internet is the latest release of IFC’s The Internet Is Always On! campaign.

The show covers the same ground as its Canadian predecessor and then some. The cast is comprised of happy-go-lucky anchors with an excellent rapport, Quinn Morgan and Colby Honeycutt; gregarious correspondents, Chip Stockley and Alvin Cooley; and Pat-like producer Devin. Together they tackle man-on-the-street interviews, falling special effects, and a makeovers gone predictably mediocre.

It’s all a bit too much. The morning talk show provides a cornucopia of material from which to parody and, in its premiere episode, Good Morning Internet has suffered from picking too much content ripe for comedy.

The anchors are entertaining, and the segments are watchable (the one on depression moreso than the makeover), but everything needs trimming.  The show should focus on those morning talk show fundamentals that Good Morning World employs so well.  It’s only the first episode, so the series certainly has time to improve.  I’m sure POYPACK and IFC will find some flow.

Get your daily dose of Good Morning Internet anytime you want at IFC.com.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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David Wain’s comedic pedigree is one of the most venerated of the Best Week Ever generation. A original member of The State and one third of the irreverent triumvirate of awesome that is Stella – the other two guys are Michael Ian Black and Michael Showalter, who also stars in his own eponymous online series – Wain’s busied himself since last fall with bringing his brand of humor to the web in the form of awkward romantic hijinks on the MyDamnChannel series, Wainy Days.

Each installment documents David’s misadventures at finding a lady inside a zany world derived from classic American sitcoms whose conceits are impulsively butchered, debased, and exaggerated for the benefit of amusing an ADD-audience in love with non-sequitur. The script and premise are funny, but David’s acting is funnier.  He exudes a “prepubescent glee at playing ‘himself,’ living a life of frustrated romance and absurd heartbreak in brownstone Brooklyn.”

To the delight of anyone who likes to laugh, a third six-episode season of the series launched today. It picks up right where the series left off, though David seems to have become desirable in the off-season.

I also caught up with David at the Red Carpet outside the Webby Film and Video Awards last week. He promised exciting, if disturbing revelations for the new Wainy Days season. Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Like Stuff White People Like, Things Younger than McCain is a simple, ongoing, whimsical list of exactly what the name implies: things (ideas, theories, inventions, people, places, etc.) younger than the August 29, 1936-born Arizona senator and Republican Presidential hopeful, John McCain.

Ageism aside it’s a fun site, a silly lens though which to look back on the past 71 years that focuses on random snippets of info you’d otherwise only hear on trivia night. My favorites are zip code, nachos, and penicillin, though Chroma Key should also be added to the list.

It’s a film editing technique first used on Thief of Bagdad in 1940, which mixes two images together by replacing a color in one image with something else. McCain made the gaffe of delivering an enervating speech in front of what I’m sure aides thought was an eco-friendly backdrop, but turned out to be the perfect Green Screen, making it easy for Photoshop- savvy viewers to swap out his “A Leader We Can Believe In” banner for things more interesting.

Stephen Colbert smelled blood in the water. Following the success of his first Green Screen Challenge – where he solicited fans to submit special effected versions of his Star Wars Kid impression – the tyrannic leader of Colbert Nation asked his rabid following if it was possible to Make McCain Exciting. His people answered.

A few dozen submissions have been uploaded over the past two weeks. There’s the obvious Imperial March theme, the Aaron Carter flashback, and the homemade roller coaster footage that are all easy to like, but the Cavewoman Cat Fight is the most awesome. Like Things Younger than McCain, its sudden, unpredictable, and gives you insight into what life was like when McCain was a kid. Zing!

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Last week, ahead of its new CSpot lineup, Crackle – Sony’s digital entertainment studio and video platform – introduced us to some new and, interestingly, rather disparate content.  Like other new media producers, Crackle has focused its efforts on the gold mine that is targeting well-defined demographics: gamers, comics, musicians and sad girls. 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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One of Runawaybox‘s web series, Elevator promises and delivers ninety seconds of weekly comedy trapped within the confines of four aluminum walls.

"We’re the closest thing the web has to a video comic strip," said writer-director-performer Woody Tondorf via e-mail. "There’s nothing flashy about Elevator. There are very few effects, there’s even less music, and editing is a four-letter word."

Despite working directly out of a tiny corner of HBO‘s West Coast office in Santa Monica, Runawaybox only makes vague allusion to parent company Home Box Offfice. "HBO funds everything we do, we’re an ongoing experiment, informing them about what works in the digital world, whether it’s talent, content creation, programming or marketing." 

###Rather than draw from slumming (or shining) TV performers for its first internet venture, HBO West Coast President chose Tondorf and the rest of the crew from already-established Internet work. "I came to Runawaybox straight from Boston College. I had just finished writing, starring, and producing a parody of Fox’s show The OC, called The BC."

When he signed on to Runawaybox, Tondorf wanted to create a series "impossibly simple" to produce, a locked-frame, one-take show that could deliver a fresh episode every day.  "I thought that something from an elevator security camera might be a fun idea, seeing as we’re all trapped in a small box with people we don’t know for an amount of time, often dropping in on their conversations and having no idea what they’re talking about." 

Like Roadents, Ask a Ninja, and Maria Bamford, the show’s boiled down to simple, core ingredients, and the resulting location and production limitations in no way confine its creativity. 

Elevator makes the most of a revolving cast of office drones, janitors and sometimes ninjas. In Bad Dream, the universal nightmare of showing up naked at work is given a new twist. While the series is good at capturing foibles of office life, there’s nothing too groundbreaking about using an out-of-context Ninja to get a laugh (but it’s still funny). Cellphone Miser lives up to its title. 

Tondorf explained because the show is so easy to film and requires little to no editing, they’re able to film about a dozen episodes per shoot day, possibly more if they feel like improving a few. "Writing is done 98% of the time by me over the span of a couple weeks, I call up the regulars about a week in advance, and we kick out the jams."

For the moment, Runawaybox is ambitiously growing its base instead of becoming an HBO farm league. Elevator feels like a training ground for a next generation of comedy with always cute and occasionally LOL-worthy results.  But Tondorf did admit that new media can be a scary place, and gaining an audience can be just as much luck as skill.  "The future will be full of new series, new one-offs, new music videos, etc. I’ve got a new short called The Great Office Nerf War coming out in June, and my new series, a college comedy called Hooking Up, starts filming in July with some really cool people in new media."

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Greg Rock
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The animation is also pretty cool, in a "modern design-y apple computer, good because it’s bad" kind of way.  Worth a watch for gamers and non-gamers alike.  

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Owen Roberts
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It’s finally over.  After an unnecessarily long election process, a field of qualified candidates was slowly narrowed down, and now we have a winner.  I am of course speaking of the search for the new host of Mahalo Daily.

So who’s the lucky girl?  Leah D’Emilio.  A former TV reporter from Toledo, Leah’s got skills, holds her Masters in Communications from Bowling Green State University, and she’s purty too.  She narrowly beat out fellow finalist Andrea Rene in the final challenge of making a viral video.  Andrea did well for herself too, scoring the job of part-time correspondent.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Reed Kavner
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Cast Tim Meadows alongside two white guys – in this instance it’s Marc Evan Jackson and Bob Dassie – call them all brothers, don’t do any explaining, and you’ve just established a race-based comedic trope that keeps on giving.

That’s what got my first laugh in the new 60Frames series Carpet Bros. Created by famed and former SNL writer Matt Piedmont and starring the above plus David Spade, Carpet Bros. kicks off circa 1975 as Brock Raylon, owner and founder of Carpet Galaxy – “Rancho Cucamonga’s home for discount carpets” – kicks the bucket. His death leaves his three sons in charge of the family business, trying to cope with their father’s loss while negotiating his massive debt.

It’s a mockumentary with mass appeal – every town has a wacko, cheapo carpet retailer – that’s beautifully produced – colors are fantastic and the miniature models used to establish locations are sweet – and doesn’t take itself too seriously. The latter is what got my second laugh.

Meadows plays oldest brother Skip Spence Raylon with an irreverent indifference that borders on out of character. At certain moments it looks like he’s thinking, “What am I, Tim Meadows, doing here, pretending to sell carpets in a show made for the web?” But it works, and the other bros. and Spade’s Raymond Davies Allen provide a good balance, moving the story back onto familiar comedic ground.

This is the type of stuff I’ve been waiting for from 60Frames. When UTA announced plans to create the new media studio last year, they promised original series with prime Hollywood talent. Now they’re finally delivering.

You can tell Carpet Bros. is quality work from seasoned professionals. There are a number of punny, rug-related jokes in the first episode – my favorite is “Carpet Diem” – but none of them involve female genitalia. The same premiere in the production hands of lesser talents would’ve gone for cheap laughs with obvious depravity.

But that bushleague stuff doesn’t fly with these guys. Meadows, Spade, and Piedmont know comedy too well to tell jokes from amateur hour. That’s why I’m tuning in.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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What the hell is FunnyOrDie?  An internet-video production studio? An aggregator of “funny” videos?   A hollow offshoot of the Will Farrel brand?

The video company with a muddled mandate and a big name partner has managed to associate itself with some admittedly interesting content.  Now, the company’s apparent success – 3.2 million unique visitors per month – has enticed HBO, Variety reports.

HBO bought a “less than 10%” stake in FunnyorDie, and the two companies will collaborate long-term on wide-ranging projects from original programming to comedy tours. 

Says Dick Glover, CEO of FunnyorDie.com and Or Die Networks, “The goal is to leverage the best of what both parties bring to the table. We bring a brand and a voice, and access to a lot of new and unusual talent in comedy. HBO brings the premium TV channel and brand, great distribution and production resources.”

I’m still confused.  I thought the only thing that made FunnyOrDie popular was its access to established talent for web content.  Now, instead of dealing directly with, say, Judd Apatow or Will Ferrel, HBO will deal with their “internet” company? 

On the other hand, HBO does need a stronger presence in this whole internet-video thing – they’ve only dipped their frightened toe into the waters of open content – and Ferrel and co do have experience on the medium.  Perhaps their “spitballing” style and platform ripe with budding artists is just what HBO needs.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Having gone to a liberal arts college, I am quite familiar with the re-imagining of fairy tales in modern contexts, which is often thought provoking but occasionally vomit inducing (I was given a C on a paper sophomore year because my dislike for Angela Carter was too obvious, though I have since grown to like her).

Bedtime Stories, created for MyDamnChannel by Steve Kerper and starring Grace Helbig, presents it’s own foul-mouthed, testicle-injury obsessed, not-so-earnest brand of feminism.  Her version of Little Red Riding Hood is the most girl empowered:

The gag, one I’m familiar with, is the contrast of perverted humor with cute drawings and Grace’s bedtime story reading voice, and is effective because the ideas are original and the drawings are authentic to children’s literature.  Grace is faithful to the tone and Steve adheres to the narrative strategies of fairy tales, while injecting his own modern sensibilities, which range from drug use and mock-gangster violence, to internet porn and an old woman’s genitalia, making it often NSFW enough to be censored by DailyMotion.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Owen Roberts
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I once saw David Byrne in a gallery in Chelsea at a Jonas Mekas exhibit. Maybe it’s the white hair, maybe it was because I was experiencing a personal Talking Heads renaissance – dancing that Once in a Lifetime New Wave jig at parties, listening to Byrne’s Aguas De Marco cover on repeat – or maybe it’s because he’s #$%@ing David Byrne, but I swear as he watched Mekas’ vintage avante-garde films, he emanated a palpable aura of experimental awesome.

If you spend just a few minutes in the same room as him, it doesn’t come as such a surprise that he’s capable of creations like this:

Playing the Building is a sound installation in downtown NYC that’s converted the Battery-Maritime Building into one big musical instrument that anyone can play. If you’re in New York, check it out through August 10 free of charge at 10 South Street every Friday through Sunday, Noon – 6PM.

The video’s also a great example of how, after an average start, Boing Boing has found its flow and created an excellent video component, perfectly complimenting it’s “directory of wonderful things.”

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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TVWeek‘s Daisy Whitney recently filed a video report for KNTV in San Francisco about why celebrities increasingly choose the web over TV or film when the latter two offer so much more financial compensation.  (She says Josh’s piece on James Franco inspired the story.)

The answer, of course, is that celebs sometimes choose the web because it’s where they can do whatever the f*#% they want!  Cash can’t buy the rush of that creative freedom.  Ask Patrice O’Neal (NSFW) or Pauly Shore.

That reality doesn’t disparage the promise of the online video business.  Online video advertisers are already paying more per eyeball and seeing higher audience engagement than on traditional TV. 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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