Hey it’s Memorial Day weekend filler time! Might as well introduce you to one of my favorite online content producers (besides, you know, the ones that make porn).
Pretty Thingsss produces some of the funniest videos I’ve seen on the net: a mix of drag, awkwardness, gentle comedy, crude drawings and bad synthesizers with the occasional visit from Kip from Napoleon Dynamite. You might also recognize Amanda as she’s one half of The Ditty Bops. If you get a chance check out their Youtube channel, especially the Popcorn and Mulberry Commons series. And don’t be an idiot like me and watch them out of order and then not get it for 6 months, then watch it again in order to realize they’re hysterical.
I’ve made it a policy to try to not talk to my idols if at all possible. There’s always the chance that they’ll end up being jerkfaces and then I won’t be able to enjoy what I had previously loved about them. So far, I’ve been pretty successful. I’ve given in to shaking Sam Beam’s hand before a show once (it’s okay, he’s totally nice), but other than that I have generally stayed away.However, I recently had the chance to talk to Comedian of Comedy Maria Bamford. I wasn’t that worried about talking to her because I thought (correctly) that she’d be sweet and funny. For the purposes of our interview, I asked her about her awesome SuperDeluxe.com series — The Maria Bamford Show. It’s a one-person sitcom where she plays all the parts — her mom, her dad, her friends, her love interest.
Here’s the first episode:
For all of youse guys in the DC area, she’ll be doing stand-up at the Arlington Cinema and Drafthouse this Friday and Saturday. You have no excuse to not go. I’ll give you a ride.
No, I won’t.
TiFaux: How did you get hooked up with the folks at Superdeluxe?
Maria Bamford: The guy Dan Pasternak, who’s the producer who decides about all the shows. My manager, Bruce Smith, is the manager for a lot of comics and [Dan] was meeting a lot of comics and hearing their ideas.
I had a one-person show that was a one person sitcom. Because I always wanted to have a sitcom, but I could never seem get on one. And so when I got on one, it was kind of not what I imagined it would be. So I made my own one person sitcom.
The premise was like that of a lot sitcoms where the person has a breakdown and then they move home and (adopts a bright, cheesy voice) they’re just themselves and they have a great time. And the meet their high school sweetheart where there’s a liiiiittle tension. And so this was my own version of it where I kind of had a meltdown or a psychotic break and I end up living in my parents’ attic. Doing my own sitcom.
TiFaux: A lot of the material is adapted from your stand-up routine, do you like the creative challenge of putting it on film?
MB: It kind of all mixes together. Sometimes I do something for the show and then think ‘okay I’ll put that in stand-up.’ A lot of times it works the other way around. My stand-up is already a lot of little scenes anyway.
Truth is, it’s a really fun experience for me and the guy who edited it, Damon Jones, and directed the whole thing. He really did a lot of the creative stuff for the Web. I wrote it, but decided where I would sit, which is half the beauty of it.
TiFaux: I really liked the musical episode. How did you decide to do that and what was that experience like?
MB: Well Damon is in the Groundlings, which is the big sketch group here [in Los Angeles]. It’s really competitive.
He does a lot of musical theater and both of us liked that song — Kermit the Frog’s “why are there so many songs about rainbows?” I kind of wanted to do that, but have it be about mental illness and other horrible things. I liked the idea that everyone has horrible, dark terrifying problems. Even if they don’t have mental illnesses, they have weird things that they’re doing (laughs) — I just liked the idea that you’re not really alone in the world. That’s why I wanted to do a musical.
(pauses)
Or we could’ve been bored (laughs). That could’ve been it.
TiFaux: I saw there was a Mother’s Day episode and your mom got a starring role. How’d she like that?
MB: Well, she got paid handsomely for it. She got paid three hundred bucks. She liked that part and she enjoys that people know about her. I think she enjoys the part where it seems like I’m a success (laughs). Like if people know about me, then it means she’s done a good job as a mom. I think that’s maybe part of it.
But she’s never watched it, she will not watch herself.
TiFaux: Why is that?
MB: She just doesn’t want to see herself. She gets nervous about it. I don’t know why.
TiFaux: Where do you film the show?
MB: In Damon’s house in Burbank. He also wrote and produced a show for Comedy Central called “Halfway Home.”
TiFaux: What’s the process for the show? Do you start with a premise and then shoot ideas off each other?
MB: I would write what the idea for it was and then I’d run it by him. A couple of times I didn’t run it by him, we just made something. But then I just write out a little script. It wasn’t anything too complicated.
Damon and I would talk about it for about ten minutes when I got there, then we shoot it. It didn’t take too long — we just get ideas as we go. It’s super fun. It wasn’t really hard at all — just really fun.
He had to think of all the shots and stuff. He had to do what I think would be the hard work — I just goofed around and looked into the camera.
In my Internet wanderings, I came across a little online TV show from the Netherlands called (Behind) Closed Doors. It’s from a network called 3VOOR12 and they basically shove bands into an elevator and have them perform.
I love gimmicks/concepts like this. It creates a strange, intimate atmosphere — especially since the performance are usually acoustic.
To have a taste, here’s one of my favorite new bands, Los Campesinos! performing “Don’t Tell Me To Do The Math(s).” If their Welsh accents aren’t enough to make you love them, their giddiness and their guitar-violin-glockenspiel-toy flute set up is.
I came across Thunderant a while ago on various hipster blogs, but never really felt compelled to write anything about them. Now, well… I do.
Thunderant is made up of SNL’s Fred Armisen and Carrie Brownstein of the now-defunct, legendary punk trio Sleater-Kinney. Their show is basically just eccentric sketch comedy in the vein of Kids in the Hall, only with hipster leanings. For instance, they had an episode centering around a feminist bookstore a while back (take a look, if only because the theme song is awesome and it’s not on the embedded clip below).
I have to say, though, they’ve really come into their own with their latest sketch — The Perfect Song. The sketch finds Armisen and exchanging snippets of songs via voicemail. Take a gander:
I’m really pleased to see Brownstein’s sharp comedic instincts — I love it when someone famous for one craft shows that it translates to another field.
In any case, to take a look at more of their stuff, click here.
Now I don’t know a lot about Mike Huckabee, but he strikes me as someone I will never vote for. That said, the man makes a funny political ad.
It reminds me of that time Bob Dole went on Letterman after he lost against Clinton. He was a humorless bore during the election but after he lost he was hilarious (creepy Viagra ads notwithstanding).
Is it possible for a serious contender (which Huckabee clearly is not) to stop being so serious during an election and still remain a serious contender?
I’ve been following the Lonelygirl15 story off and on since the wonderful Proving Science Wrong days. I stopped watching when it turned into the whole “save Bree from the cult” thing. But I was poking around on Wikipedia today and discovered that Bree—Lonelygirl15 herself!—was killed off in August.
Yet the show continues without her. I hope someone is enjoying this stuff.
I’ve made it a policy to try to not talk to my idols if at all possible. There’s always the chance that they’ll end up being jerkfaces and then I won’t be able to enjoy what I had previously loved about them. So far, I’ve been pretty successful. I’ve given in to shaking