Oh, the things I miss out on when I a) don't live in Britain and b) don't have cable and thus completely forget about Adult Swim. Last week, my dear friends Rob and Kent showed me Garth Marenghi's Darkplace, a British sitcom from 2004 that's been airing in the US on the Cartoon Network. The show satirizes both sci-fi and doctor shows from the 80's, and oh, it's done so well. Here's the first episode. And! Bonus! It features both Richard Ayoade and Matt Berry, two people I love in The IT Crowd.

Here's the first Darkplace episode:

Hey! Here's a video I made with Rob:

Last week was ridiculous. I have a new part-time job (more on that later), and in addition to that, Rob and I probably put in 40 or 50 hours each getting our show together. The payoff was worth it—the shows have been great so far (you should come to one of our upcoming performances). But I'd like to take this opportunity to thank a few of the things that got me through last week:

1. My Bicycle
   
   A couple of years ago, Chris turned the bike my parents bought me in middle school into an awesome frankenbike. It's been a wonderful little citywide transport, and last week it saved me a lot of time by getting me places faster than public transport could.

2. Accidentally Amazing Brownies
   
   I started making he recipe on the back of the Nestle cocoa powder box, but I ended up with this:

   Ingredients

   • 2/3 cup white sugar
   • 1 cup light brown sugar
   • 3/4 cup butter, melted
   • 2 T water
   • 2 large eggs
   • 2 tsp. vanilla extract
   • 1-1/3 cups white whole-wheat flour
   • 3/4 cup baking cocoa
   • 1/2 tsp baking powder
   • 1/4 tsp salt
   • 3/4 cup butterscotch chips

   Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9" x 9" pan. Combine sugar, butter, and water in a large bowl. Stir in eggs and vanilla. Dump blower, cooca, baking powder, and salt on top of liquid mixture and mix the dry ingredients while they float precariously on top of the wet. Then mix them with the wet. Stir in chips. Put in pan. Bake for approximately 25 minutes, or until your desired brownie doneness.

3. The "Day Man" Song from It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia

   More than anything else, this tiny video clip made me maniacally happy last week. Rob and I kept stopping practice to watch it:

Tags: me comedy video recipe megandrob

My dear friend Rob already posted this video, but it's too good not to share. This is "Numberwang" from the British show That Mitchell & Webb Look. I first heard about the group when David Mitchell was on The Sound of Young America. During the interview Jesse Thorn describes the Numberwang sketch as "an example of just absolutely...high silliness." Pretty accurate.

Hey, I don't know if there are any teenage-type folks who read this blog, but if you're out there, listen: When I was in high school, we didn't have YouTube! If I wanted to download a grainy, eight-megabyte video of the Foo Fighters’ "Everlong," I had to be connected to the internet for four hours! And if I wanted to watch They Might Be Giants' TV appearances, I had to send cash to a strange man who would send me a bootleg VHS tape! Now, you might be thinking that only a strange man would deal in VHS in the first place, but that's still how things were done back then! We had morals! We had low gas prices! We had to go to more effort than typing "TMBG" into a search bar to get our video content!

Yes, I loved They Might Be Giants, so I ordered not one, but two of these bootleg tapes. And on one of them there was a video of They Might Be Giants performing on the show Viva Variety. At the time, however, I had no idea that Viva Variety was a comedy show, or that it was comprised of members of the fantastic comedy troupe The State. Although I was a budding comedy fan, as far as I was concerned, the only good comedy shows that existed were Mystery Science Theater 3000 and The Kids in the Hall. I didn’t bother looking for anything else; I thought that most comedy out there was tripe. Worse off, the people who made other comedy shows just didn't get it. They didn’t understand.

Recently, however, I was listening to the Sound of Young America's interview with Kerry Kinney-Silver, Ben Garant, and Thomas Lennon, who were members of The State and creators of both Reno 911! and Viva Variety. During the interview the folks started discussing Viva Variety, and I quickly realized that I missed a gem in high school. Not only did the show seem fantastically hilarious, it sounded like what I would make if I was given a show. From Wikipedia:

Viva Variety was a television show on Comedy Central satirizing European variety shows with characters from the Eastern Bloc. The show starred Thomas Lennon as Meredith Laupin, Kerri Kenney as the former Mrs. Laupin, and Michael Ian Black as "your cool-ass pal" Johnny Blue Jeans.

Fakey accents? Check. Ability to make up fake history and products? Check. Not surprisingly, I've been watching a lot of clips of the show on YouTube recently, and a couple of days ago, I found the one that was on my They Might Be Giants bootleg VHS. I'm not much for unnecessary nostalgia (seriously: please shut up about the 80's), but watching this video gave me a warm, full-circle sort of feeling:

Recently Adam over at The Amateur Gourmet posted episodes of Posh Nosh, a BBC comedy that skewers upscale cooking shows. It's amazing:

Hey! I have a new piece up on 23/6: Senator Obama, I Have Your Vice President.

Also, my mention of The Hills in that piece (a show which I haven't actually seen, shhh), reminded me of this clip I enjoyed a while back that features elderly performers recreating clips from the notoriously shallow show:

I have a new piece up on The Smart Set! This one is about seeing Gallagher and trying to figure out why he's popular. Check it out.

And as a bonus, here's the giant couch video I reference in the article:

First, a mash-up of old Fred Astaire clips with Michael Jackson's "Smooth Criminal." The guy who made the mash-up said this about it:

I love both Astaire and Michael Jackson. I want young people to know Astaire stuff, that is why I made this.

Well, "Smooth Criminal" is my favorite Michael Jackson song, and I am totally sold on needing to watch more Fred Astaire films now. Via BoingBoing.

Second is the new Gnarles Barkley video, which was posted on Best Week Ever and probably about 5,000 other blogs.

Not only do I like the song quite a bit, but I enjoy the addition of Justin Timberlake. Justin is one of those entertainers I do not like for his music or his looks, but rather for doing things like this:

Look people: The Jerk is one of my favorite comedy movies. If comedy was nutrition, you could say I was weaned on this film. Now The Jerk is on Hulu in its entirety, so you have no excuse not to watch it. Well, unless you're my parents and still have a dial-up internet connection because the internet companies won't serve DSL to rural areas. Hi Mom, hi Dad!

A blog that switches the heads of kids and dads. Amazing. [Via Boing Boing]

How to Succeed in the Music Biz, by Erykah Badu. [TSOYA]

How to Eat a Cupcake. Moreover, how to cook one. The strawberry buttercream frosting recipe is incredible.

Thomas Doyle's Miniature Art. [Via CRAFT]

Cat Clowns. [From Nat]

I love this:

Wildly Popular 'Iron Man' Trailer To Be Adapted Into Full-Length Film

Ladies and gentlemen, your day is about to get much more ridiculous. Here is a man reciting poetry while playing an amplified cactus.

Maybe it's been like this for a while and I just didn't notice, but NBC.com has finally made its videos embedable. That's nice. I always thought it was idiotic that they pulled all of their clips off of YouTube before they had their own video system set up to embed.

To celebrate that fix, I would like to share this wonderful clip from SNL of Will Forte as third-party presidential candidate Tim Calhoun:

I also like that NBC insists on putting that little "Watch Full-Length Episodes" blurb underneath the video even though you cannot actually watch full-length episodes of SNL on their website. Thanks guys.

Thanks to Dave at Comic vs. Audience for the excellent video:

I'm also happy to announce that Rob and I are performing a brand-new sketch comedy show, These Modern Worlds, March 7 and 8 at The Shubin in Philadelphia. Tickets are $10, and half of ticket sales will go to support Project H.O.M.E.

Remember how I flipped my gourd over Picnicface's Powerthirst II? Now allow me to present their also amazing Super Bingo:

A lot of people have been yapping about the Tom Cruise Scientology video lately. Eh. I watched about 30 seconds of it, and it was exactly what I thought it would be: Tom Cruise spouting a bunch of stuff while looking eerily reminiscent of his character in Magnolia, Frank T.J. Mackey.

What I find much more interesting is the following video of one Mr. Jerry O'Connell. Now, after five years of "Sliders," we all know that Jerry O'Connell is The Man. But somehow, in this video, he manages to be even more The Man by simultaneously making fun of the Tom Cruise video and supporting the WGA. Now, if you haven't seen or read anything about the Tom Cruise video before watching this, but just keep in mind that pretty much everything Jerry is saying is based on something Tom actually said.

This has been all over Comedy Central Insider and Best Week Ever, but it's just too good to not repost:

"LOL08" is my friend's motto for 2008, and I like it a lot.

One of the things I did last night to celebrate LOL08 was finally see local hip-hop powerpoint duo Rowan and Hastings. They rap (and occasionally do yoga) in front of video/powerpoint presentations. The video below doesn't give you the full experience of seeing them live (which you should do, if you get a chance), but it's still pretty excellent:

Rob and I are performing two comedy shows this week:

1. December 19 with ZombieShark Improv at MilkBoy Coffee in Ardmore, PA. 8 p.m./free.
2. December 20, hosting Puppet Karaoke at the M-Room in Philadelphia. 9:30 p.m./$5. Features special celebrity guests Eva Spinspiller and Scooty Johnson!

Also, here's a video of us performing at Die Actor Die in November, courtesy of Comic vs. Audience:

I've been busy, and it's put me in a posting slump. Whoops! Now, from Bruce McCulloch, here's one of my favorite reminders that life is awesome:

This sketch was the brainchild of Rob and the fantastic Jeff Sutter:

Man oh man. This video from Picnicface was up on the Comedy Central Insider earlier, and I laughed so hard that I decided it's worth reposting EVERYWHERE THE INTERNET EXISTS. Or at least on this blog.

Here's one the monologues from our last show:

Here's a video Eugene Mirman made on getting to know Massachusetts:

I'd said I post something else about Kids in the Hall this week. Here's a PSA written by Bruce which a) is the only place I am currently aware of to see Bruce and Anthony Michael Hall acting together and b) remains a pertinent message for the times.

I swear I didn't intend on making this Kids in the Hall week, but here's a preview clip of Kevin McDonald's new one-man show, Hammy and the Kids, from the Just for Laughs Festival in Montreal (he's in the second half):

Hey! The trailer's out for The Brothers Solomon. You may remember that I was excited about this movie a little while back because there are so many awesome actors in it. I can't say all the jokes in the trailer are particularly amazing (a little too crowd pleasing, perhaps), but I'm still pretty excited:

My sir is working on a totally sweet webcam theremin. Look:

Oops, I meant to post this a little while ago. I spent the last Saturday in March dressed in an Easter Bunny costume for the 48 Hour Film Project. Take a peek:

Here's an excellent live clip of Kristen Wiig and Melinda Hill as tooth fairies:

Here's a video of Steve Martin doing the video for "Billie Jean" on The New Show. Make sure to watch all the way end to catch the show's credits; they're amazing.