Atom Live! Is Web Video Better When it's Not on the Web?

Comedy Central’s original online video destination, Atom.com held a showcase last night to a packed house at the Comedy Central Stage (at the Hudson) in Hollywood in order to tout some of its top talent. Dubbed Atom.Com Live!, the event mixed stand-up comedy from the evening’s host, Jason Nash (of The Shaman) with sketch comedy, musical performances and of course screenings of the participants’ work on a screen a lot larger than your computer monitor.

Parodies and pastiches abound through the evening, and the mandatory question for the session had to be: Was it better live or Memorex?

Of all the acts, musical duo Riegel & Blatt seemed to kill the most, particularly with their standard Weekend Plans (‘With You and Your Husband’) – a ditty about suavely approaching the female half of a couple and asking if they’d like to hang out, picnic, play boardgames, and the like. It’s a hilarious ode to square coupledom, delivered with a perfect parodic pitch:

While musical satire isn’t my favorite cup of tea, these guys ooze talent both in their over-the-top singing and gestures and their sharp writing. While it didn’t always have me laughing out loud, it did have me impressed and even a little amazed.

And speaking of musical parodies, the Selwyn brothers’ (comprised of Zach and Jesse) video White People Problems also killed, with a few surprising turns that even had me elicit a few LOLs.

The song’s title pretty much says it all, but essentially it’s both a musical and much more aggressive send up of Stuff White People Like. The petty concerns of the upper middle class sung to a hip-hop beat with rap video clichés (keep an eye out for the white girl getting’ funky and Tilzy.TV’s very own Josh Cohen).

Zach, who co-stars in the video, closed the evening’s show dressed in multiple layers of denim (hat, shirt, vest, jacket, pants, guitar strap, thong), drinking a kiwi-tini, and performing some free-styling, country-rap jams.

Team Tiger Awesome performed a rather dada-ist extended bit mixing hard-boiled detective shtick with Robocop. Their new, unreleased video, Cramped Quarters – about young men living with a trio of adopted young women and waiting for them to turn 18 so they won’t get busted for hooking up with a minor – was a big hit and definitely worth keeping an eye out for.

EffinFunny’s Sandeep Parikh and Legend of Neil star Tony Janning introduced the first Legend of Neil episode (which surprisingly much of the audience hadn’t seen), along with a sharp Jurassic Park-meets-bad-boss-parody called The Raptor. Though the two didn’t really perform (as Parikh admitted, “we just live close by”), Parikh and his EffinFunny enterprise has thoroughly announced itself as a web presence to be reckoned with.

And finally, Jason Nash performed solid standup to lead off the show, but his latest turn as The Shaman – featuring the Sklar Brothers as a golden retriever’s pair of talking testicles – seems to have him in a perfect role.

All in all, Atom’s lineup really benefited from the live exposure and proved it’s fun to watch web video outside the confines of your laptop. At least every now and again.