Now that Nicole Richie’s a full-time baby mama, Paris Hilton is left sans best friend. Not to waste a photo op, the 27-year-old hotel heiress is starting her own reality series in order to find one. I Wanna Be Paris’ New Best Friend! will begin shooting in May to air on MTV later this year, and have contestants “live in a house together and compete in a series of competitions that will simulate life as a celebrity’s best friend.” I assume that’ll include DUI field tests ad DP work, but I digresss…

Execs will cast most of the 20 contestants but a few spots of wannabe celebrity will go to those with the best profiles and most votes at ParisBFF.com. Chocolate Rain sensation Tay Zonday has a profile. He’s currently in third place.

Not sure if he’s met all the requirements of the eight-week contest, but don’t concern yourself with that just yet. This man needs some votes.

Zonday’s a stubborn intellectual, a Martian, a doctoral student of American Studies who found happenstance, internet-famo relevance through his baritone voice, baby face, enigmatic lyrics, and a poppy, synth sound. Giving him the opportunity to be Paris’ BFF could be the most awesome collision of pop culture ever.

If teh internets can Rickroll the New York Mets, I think getting Tay Zonday on MTV shouldn’t be a problem. Plus, this BenjyBenjy guy in first place looks soooooooo not entertaining.

Tay’s only a couple hundred thousand votes behind, so vote here, and vote often.

Big whattup to Jay Dubs for the tip.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Calling it New Wave Masculism implies there were waves before it. Saying it’s a Masculine Mystique would be an exaggeration, an affront to Betty Friedan and middle-class, suburban women who, before 1963, didn’t know any alternative to homemaking malaise. But just ‘cause the phenomenon lacks a name doesn’t mean it’s not going on. I’m no daddy or Gender Studies major; still, I can see that the notion of fatherhood in America is a changing.

Nurturing father/child relationships and actively participating in parenting’s heavy lifting, now more than ever falls equally under the domain of Dad. And while men-with-child are figuring out how to navigate this new parenthood, they’re realizing their fathers don’t have to be their guides.

Books like Neal Pollack’s Alternadad articulate the idea that it’s okay not to let the standard, stereotypical role of “Father” subsume your identity, that you can be you and be Dad. And shows like DadLabs are showing you how it’s done.

In a sea of online programming geared towards Moms, Brad Powell, Clay Nichols and Troy Lanier started DadLabs to give a much needed male perspective on the theories, methods, issues, lighter sides, gizmos, and gadgets of parenting.

Soon after the series launched, the Austin-based trio recruited author and comedian Owen Egerton to make “funny videos,” including raps about building bicycles (winner of a Yahoo Video Award) and drinking with Elmo.  Recently at the For Your Imagination studios, I chatted with Owen about DadLabs, empathy suits, his strange affinity for men with facial hair, and why the show is making people better parents.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Bugs Bunny has got nothing on Rabbit Bites, the popular series that gives a whole new meaning to the term “wise cracking rabbits.”

I know what you’re thinking: Rabbits? Are you serious? But before you pass off Rabbit Bites as some bush league, pet show, Easter fest, or any kind of cutesy homage to the furry creatures, you should know that this Internet series – on the Web since June 2006 and recently inked a sponsorship deal with Purina – is nothing of the kind. Rabbit Bites is a pop culture critique show with doses of acerbic wit hosted by two live, “talking” rabbits named Buns and Chou Chou.

Executive producer and creator Nicholas Quixote (who founded Quixote Broadcasting with Renaldo Quixote) “wanted a show with more intelligent hosts than the typical entertainment TV show. So, he enlisted his two pet rabbits,” one male and grey (Buns) and the other female and black and white (Chou Chou). Each episode, featured weekly on sites like salon.com, is a commentary on celebrities, pop culture, generational trends, or the current state of vlogging and Internet media. Buns, with his British accent, often heads up the rabbits’ biting, harsh style of critique, while Chou Chou (pronounced “shoe shoe”) complements their comically scornful banter.

In the world of these two, no famous person or cultural phenomenon is off limits###: Britney Spears, Tom Cruise, Paris Hilton, American Idol, Project Runway, Alec Baldwin’s irate phone message to his daughter…the list goes on. Even the iPhone gets mocked. “I thought this would be sexy, hot, but all I see are a bunch of bloody nerds,” observes Buns outside an Apple store, where a long line of iPhone buyers are clamoring to get in.

When Buns and Chou Chou are not spoofing television shows, making fun of celebrities, or exposing the Overly Narcissistic Vlogger, they’re also dipping into other components on Rabbit Bites, like Coffee with Chou Chou, a talk show with real and amusingly doctored interviews. And there’re no end in sight: In the future, movie reviews may be added, and actors like Janeane Garofalo and YouTube stars like Barats and Bereta are slated to make an appearance.

Just how do Buns and Chou Chou get their chatter on? Quixote, who does their voices, reveals, “I know it’s going to sound like a joke, but believe it or not, good old carrots seem to work the best. They like them, and they are just hard enough to chew that it might take them five seconds to finish a bite,” during which time cameras are rolling to “capture” their next zinger.  Yes, it’s bizarre, it’s unconventional, it’s not what you’d ever expect.

This odd-ball, surrealist quality – and freedom to say anything about our culture when a human is not the star of the show – help to explain the appeal of the series. Like those animals in the classic book Charlotte’s Web, if you listen carefully, these two rabbits just might surprise you.

 

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Pearl Chen
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Half boxer/Luchadore, half irreverent Anne Landers, the masked, sarcastic dom of Homestar Runner’s Free Country, USA will star in his video game, Strong Bad’s Cool Game for Attractive People, to be released on WiiWare and PC this June:

Mike and Matt Chapman, the cartoon’s creators, had the opportunity last year to include Homestar Runner in Adult Swim’s line-up, but turned it down in favor of sticking with the internet and complete creative control. That means developer TellTale Games is working closely with The Brothers Chaps to make sure the title’s 3-D misadventures exude Strong Badness.

But this isn’t the only Homestar character to recently jump cross-platform. Originally borne from an animated e-mail, Strong Bad’s fave glam band, Limozeen performed a real-live show last week in Hotlanta, belting out classics like Trogdor, and my #1 jam, Fhqwhgads:

Including The All-For-Nots, this takes the tally of fake-internet-bands-performing-live-shows-so-not-sure-if-that-makes-them-fake-anymore up to two. Book ‘em with The Monkees, Dethklok, The Rutles, Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, and NWH and I think we’ll have the main stage set for next year’s ROFLCon-A-Palooza.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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If Ask a Ninja and Wallstrip are chortling, sipping on Dom and rolling on dubs at one end of new media’s spectrum of monetary success, Break a Leg is quietly nursing a bottle of Manishewitz – a couple steps up from Thunderbird – way on the other side. Yuri Baranovsky, his brother Vlad (happy belated!), and the rest of the creators, cast, and crew of the surreal sitdotocom haven’t struck it rich, at least not in a financial sense, at least not yet.

In a Gawker tell-all, Yuri admitted that in two years of producing the show – which uses pro-grade equipment and has other trappings of something made for broadcast TV, like said cast and crew, who work on pizza in lieu of a budget – he’s attracted around 3 million views and made a whopping $2,500.

But such a low sum doesn’t deter artists of the Baranovskys’ constitution, and self-purported April Fools’ rumors of the show’s cancellation were highly exaggerated (and had me totally fooled, e-mailing Yuri reflective sincerities). The Break a Leg team are in this for the long haul, with hopes of acquiring a television deal before being beckoned by “greener pastures – like porn and carpentry.”

On an romantically lit NYC set at For Your Imagination, I got a chance to talk with Yuri, Justin Morrison (who plays former-porn star Chas Cougar in the show), and Dashiell Reinhardt (who does the editing and visual effects) about how the series started and where they want it to go:

Click To Play

In the meantime, instead of paychecks and mainstream distribution, Break A Leg‘s (sometimes obsessive) fans and creative spirit are riches enough to continue…until Sumner Redstone comes a-knockin’.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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On one side, there are the effortless, homemade, happenstance, and slightly staged moments of ephemera that capture the attention of millions – dog riding skateboard, cat playing piano, Miss South Carolina. On the other, the arduous, meticulously planned work of amateurs and professionals that fail to gain such a sizeable audience – Break a Leg, Something to Be Desired, Dutchwest. Such is the dichotomy of entertainment.

But what if those Zapruderian, point-and-shoot clips are just as produced as sketches and shows shot by seasoned, online auteurs? Or maybe they’re even the work of movie moguls and multi-million dollar studios, all part of a warped Hollywood machine engineering viral videos for an industry that awards stardom on view counts instead of ticket sales.

Welcome to Viralcom.

If the production quality looks better than your average web series, that’s because it’s financed by Waner Bros. Studio 2.0 (who’s also behind the Jeannie Tate Show). And if the show looks more entertaining than your average web series, that’s because Joey and David created it.

Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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If you watched the CNN/YouTube Democratic Presidential Debate, you remember the grizzly voiced and emphatic “follow-the-money” accusations from one sprightly 77-year-old, former-Alaskan senator, Mike Gravel. He was the guy leaning on Congressman Dennis Kucinich all the way over on the far left that you wished was your batshit crazy uncle that livened up Thanksgiving dinners, not your president.

That may have been one of the last times you turned on your TV to see Gravel running in the same esteemed circles as Senator Obama and Senator Clinton. Like the equally “unelectable” Kucinich, the unconventional politico wasn’t invited to future debates and party functions. Mainstream media outlets and Democratic Party Chair, Howard Dean Machine didn’t deem the presidential hopeful a legitimate candidate.

So, what’s one to do when he’s lost access to old media and his own party doesn’t given him an opportunity for free speech? Easy. Make some sweet, sweet YouTube videos and become a Libertarian.

Before he lost the favor with the Dems, Gravel wasn’t a stranger to quaint online video propaganda. Rock features the former senator in uncharacteristic silence chucking a sizable stone into a Southern California lake (it makes ripples, get it?), and in power to the people vs. give peace a chance (above) he honestly addresses his broadcast media and party-imposed silence in front of School House Rock style cartoons.

Cool, I know, but it wasn’t until Gravel became a card-carrying Libertarian that his videos ascended into awesome. Read On…

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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Sometimes when I watch a scripted web vid, I wonder about its target audience. With Dorm Life, I’m still trying to figure it out, but I think I have an idea.

When I was a kid, I loved Saved by the Bell (I actually don’t know that I loved it, but when you’re a kid and it’s Saturday morning, you’ll pretty much watch whateve’s on and think it’s good). And, like most kids, I found something about the ensemble that made sense. The characters weren’t real people, but amalgams of types of people. And they were easily identifiable – the nerd, the overachiever, the stud, the goody-two-shoes, the wise guy. You knew who they were and what they would do in any given situation – the major curve ball, of course, being when Jessie Spano got hooked on speed.

That situation comedies rely heavily on characterization to drive plots is not a new concept, nor is it relegated to kids shows, though kids shows tend to have the most simplistic characters. If you describe Friends to a newbie, you’d probably start with, “There’s this spacey chick, Phoebe, and this whiney guy, Ross…”

Dorm Life, too, is an assortment of archetypes.  Produced by Attention Span Media – a group of current students and recently grads from UCLA – and sponsored by Campus Foods, the scripted series is meant to look like a reality show shot by handheld and web cams, giving an intimate look into a college dorm, depicting a group of students living on the floor. 

And guess what?  They are nothing like real people.  But that doesn’t mean the show’s bad.  Dorm Life is a fun little series about one of the biggest challenges of living in a college dormitory – trying to create your own unique experience, no matter how idiotic. 

###Surprisingly, I have a vidid memory of my college dorm.  And, just like denizens of 5 South, I seem to recall that we too had a dorky, overzealous sophomore who preyed on unassuming first-year residents to join a lame game night, and a mousey freshman who still looked like she was dressed by her mom. Dorm Life’s characters are not particularly original, nor are they very realistic, but they are easily identified stereotypes that people will like. 

From the weird, arty guy to the super-hot sorority rush, the kids in Dorm Life will attract young viewers who can relate to playing ‘I Never’ (called ‘Ten Fingers’ in this incarnation) and pulling stupid pranks on each other.  Perhaps more accurately, it will speak to young viewers who hope to someday relate to the shenanigans in Dorm Life. 

Not nearly as benign as Saved by the Bell, but not quite as engaging as the ensemble in Dazed and Confused (which I would consider to be one of the better-scripted teenage romps), Dorm Life, with its cute storylines and cuter actors, is just edgy enough and plenty familiar enough to create some kind of following.  And I’m pretty sure that following isn’t comprised of campus coeds, but the day-dreaming kids in the high school computer lab.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Sarah Ricard
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Noel Hidalgo, aka "Noneck", is a tech-heavy, film-centric, free-spirited jack-of-all-trades. He’s an artist, a freelance business and lifestyle consultant whose interests include blogging, citizen journalism, activism, and political campaigns (i.e. he served as the technological coordinator for the 2004 Democratic national convention).  He’s a savvy guy with big, ambitious ideas.  So, for those that know him, it was probably little surprise that on July 7, 2007, he embarked on a worldwide trip he dubbed Luck of Seven.


On that day, after raising nearly $7,777 from family, friends, and benevolent persons, Noneck left New York to begin a seven-month anthropological, "open-source" journey traveling six continents to document free culture, social innovators and global change. 

He specifically explored "seven freedoms” (free culture; free and open-source software communities; couchsurfers, bloggers, fellow travelers and vloggers; agents of progressive social change; barcamp, coworking and meetups; happenstance; and climate change) and conveyed his findings and travels through video, blog posts, and pictures.  Through these focal points of thought and posterity, we get a glimpse of Noneck’s life on the road and the ways in which people around the world communicate in the digital age.

After charting mobile activism in Egypt, chatting with bloggers in Delhi, and interviewing locals (like Javier Sola, who trains computer teachers in Cambodia), Noneck returned to NYC in February 2008 and asked himself, "I’m home. I’m broke.  Now What?"  Well, what’s one to do after they’ve been everywhere, man?  Drive a New York City Taxi.  Duh. 


###Not content to get a part-time gig in a cubicle or behind a bar, and suffering from an "uncontrollable addiction to tell good stories," Noneck has set out to earn his own hack license and tell the tale that is the Big Apple from behind the wheel of a yellow cab.




For TaxiNYC.tv, Noneck partnered with licensed Medallion taxi fleet and garage, Team Systems and documents his progress from citizen to cabbie, when he’ll eventually drive one of their cars.  The series is basically a randomly updated videoblog with a purpose that’s more story than self-reflection. 

Noneck’s a knowledgeable, patient host.  He clearly explains his process and details relevant info, from required medical examinations to the education one receives in taxi school.  He’s also a talented editor, making sure to intercut enough NYC scenes and emotive sound tracks to break up what would be the monotony of his talking head. 



As a New Yorker, I find the series fascinating.  There are over 12,000 cabs in this city, but I rarely think about how the industry works, the idiosyncrasies and possible machinations involved in a $1.8+ billion chauffeur machine that serves over 240 million passengers per year.  It’s cool that Noel is popping the hood and giving us a look.


Pearl Chen totally helped out with this review and the photo credit of the taxi goes to Noel Hidalgo

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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We’re told that Western countries face an ideological battle with The Taliban, the Sunni Islamist and Pashtun nationalist movement that ruled most of Afghanistan from 1996 until 2001, and harbored Bin Laden and Al Qaida prior to the 9-11 terrorist attacks.  Some of us love freedom, the line goes, and others hate it; they want to destroy it. 

Any thinking person recognizes the danger of such abstraction; after all, misunderstanding is the root of most conflict.  The truth is actually much too complex to articulate or even fully comprehend, but a thoughtful series from GlobeAndMail, Talking with the Taliban, helps us begin the process of discovery.



It’s a simply defined task with a harrowing execution marked by an earnest curiosity: "To find small groups of Taliban and try to speak with them individually."  



Journalist Graeme Smith was struck by a general ignorance that makes it tough to know "who to kill, who to talk to, and how to stem the flow of recruits to the insurgency" in Afghanistan, so he decided to create a survey: "I got a small video camera, gave it to a guy I’ve known for a long time here in Kandahar, and he went around to five districts here in the province and asked a standard list of twenty questions to ordinary fighters."

The result is fascinating, terrifying, reassuring, dumbfounding and eye-opening.  It certainly doesn’t leave me with a clearer understanding of the greater conflict, or with a moral imperative, but I guess that’s the risk of sincere conversation. 



This user-guided piece, that elegantly incorporates figures and charts with unprecedented video coverage, is a moving depiction of a very complicated reality.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Jamison Tilsner
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Late notice, but if you’re in New York City and want to catch a hot, young indie band with a “synth-pop, indie-electro-folk-emo-dance-gazer-punk-americana-pop, prog-rock-emo” sound, head on over to The Annex. At 9PM, Johnny Hamilton, the best TV-series-sponsored frontman since Davy Jones will take the mic backed up by some musical talent that’s far from fabricated.

In their third official public appearance since their formation, The All-For-Nots are putting on a concert. The band is kinda fake – all the musicians go by pseudonyms and it was created for a self-titled web series documenting the life of clichéd indie rockers on tour – but the music is legit. If you can swing it, you should go. I was at the first two and it’s most definitely a good time.

If you want to see what you might be getting into, listen to some tracks on their MySpace page and check out the latest installment of the series below, where we find out that Williamsburg American Apparel and Generic State School Abercrombie don’t mix.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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A full 8 years after Susan Lucci was no longer Susan Lucci, someone finally figured out it’s funny to make fun of soap operas. In fact, a lot of people did.

Soap opera spoofs are something of a mini-trend on the web, and these farces of the overly dramatic genre so perfectly imitate the originals that their creators should be embarrassed of how much SOAPnet they watched. There’s A.D. Mile’s Horrible People on MyDamnChannel, Jerry Zucker and Natioanl Banana’s Sands of Passion and General Elevator on Crackle, and now Endless Drama on ESPN. Wait…ESPN?!?!?

Yeah, ESPN. As a promo for their fledgling Fantasy Baseball League the “Worldwide Leader in Sports” released Endless Drama – an eight-part series that shows just how exciting draft deadlines, injury lists, RBIs, OBPs, WHIPs and setting up your roster over the ultra-marathon that is a 162-game baseball season can be.

###The casting director should be congratulated. They use real deal soap opera actors (John-Paul Lavoisier, Cameron Mathison, Rebecca Budig – all from ABC series, of course). And real life baseball players (Tori Hunter, Chase Utley, Jorge Posada).  Though it’s too late to sign up for a Fantasy league – the Red Sox beat the A’s on Opening Day a couple weeks ago – you should still give the series a watch.  It’s good.

Save the subject matter, it looks realistic enough to actually be endorsed by a cleaning product. Its serious, not slapstick, and the short episodes (none are over two-minutes) are delightful snacks of dramatic parody that don’t drag.

Seth Stevenson of Slate thinks it’s too-well executed. He’s got a point. As a marketing device, there’s not enough spoof and insider Baseball to attract Fantasy players. As pure entertainment, however, Endless Drama is a first round pick.

Thanks to David Title for pitching this tip.

Filed under: Tilzy.TV by Joshua Cohen
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