Congrats to Smiley Guy Studios!

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NEW VIDEO OVERLOAD

We must have had too much coffee this week. 

Tons of new videos invading My Damn Channel - we're giving you comedy, music, parties, animation, interviews and more.

Spärhusen Performances: Inga D.

Spärhusen Interview

Easy To Assemble with Ask a Ninja

Pilot Season

Kris Kristofferson: Closer to the Bone

Grace Crashers: Halloween II

Grace Crashers: How To Crash A Party

Grace Crashers: How To Make Your Party Count

Harry Shearer with Judith Owen: Bonus Baby

RAMP with Lady Gaga

Soda Copped

Daily Grace

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MY DAMN CHANNEL FLAUNTS "NEW FALL SEASON"

 

Those 3 tired words are decades old but Hollywood hopes they help you fall in love with new shows.

We put quotes around our "new fall season" - knowing we can't fool you into love - but hoping it feels just a little funnier that way.

In two years, we’ve birthed 25 channels of music and comedy…working with artists we love. We think you’ve taught us how to get talent and new series worthy of your evil eye.

Help us buy another bag of chips for lunch! Share the full press release. Share these links to our New Series:

 

Spärhusen

Easy To Assemble: Co-Worker of The Year

Knight Shift

RAMP (Radio And Music Pros)

Harry Shearer: Greed and Fear

Don Was: The Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music (Season 3)

Stella Live in Boston

Unwigged & Unplugged: An Evening with Christopher Guest, Michael McKean and Harry Shearer

Animation Block (Season 2)

Grace Crashers Presented by Southern Comfort

 

New Stars:

 

Illeana Douglas

Keanu Reeves

Ask A Ninja 

Sir Paul McCartney

Rob Mailhouse

Sir Sean Connery

Todd Spahr

Sir Richard Branson

Wallace Langham

Ryan Hunter

Taige Jensen

Sir Ben Kingsley

Jeff Goldblum

Stephen Hawking

Brad O’Farrell

Justine Bateman

Tom Arnold

Sir Elton John

Kevin Carter

Keith Berman

Steve Resnik

Prince William

The Queen

Ed Begley Jr.

Craig Bierko

Kevin Pollak

Sidney Poitier

Jane Lynch

Cheri Oteri

Ricki Lake

Tim Meadows

Dave Ahdoot

Daryl Sabara

Eric Lange

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Animation Block Party this Weekend

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ANOTHER CHEF IN THE KITCHEN

ANIMATION BLOCK is premiering new toonage every Monday.

Today's vid features Oregano (animated):

CHEF BARRY

If you're still in the mood, here's live action Coolio.

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Animation Block Party

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GO GONZO

If you experience a lack of inspiration, writer's block, anxiety about the boss, wars, lies, lost freedom, corruption, rejection, repression, fear and loathing...then write yourself a prescription and take it to the closest movie theatre showing "Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson," the new film directed by Oscar winner Alex Gibney. Here's the trailer.



Gibney puts accuracy above glory in his retelling of the life of the man once able to conjure up enough powerful wordplay to push millions to reconsider a sense of ourselves, our government, and our freedom. 



Here's Thompson documenting the last great wave of freedom - from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas: A Savage Journey to the Heart of the American Dream:

"Strange memories on this nervous night in Las Vegas. Five years later? Six? It seems like a lifetime, or at least a Main Era — the kind of peak that never comes again. San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. Maybe it meant something. Maybe not, in the long run . . . but no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. . . .

History is hard to know, because of all the hired bullshit, but even without being sure of “history” it seems entirely reasonable to think that every now and then the energy of a whole generation comes to a head in a long fine flash, for reasons that nobody really understands at the time — and which never explain, in retrospect, what actually happened.

My central memory of that time seems to hang on one or five or maybe forty nights — or very early mornings — when I left the Fillmore half-crazy and, instead of going home, aimed the big 650 Lightning across the Bay Bridge at a hundred miles an hour wearing L. L. Bean shorts and a Butte sheepherder's jacket . . . booming through the Treasure Island tunnel at the lights of Oakland and Berkeley and Richmond, not quite sure which turn-off to take when I got to the other end (always stalling at the toll-gate, too twisted to find neutral while I fumbled for change) . . . but being absolutely certain that no matter which way I went I would come to a place where people were just as high and wild as I was: No doubt at all about that. . . .

There was madness in any direction, at any hour. If not across the Bay, then up the Golden Gate or down 101 to Los Altos or La Honda. . . . You could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right, that we were winning. . . .

And that, I think, was the handle—that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of Old and Evil. Not in any mean or military sense; we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. There was no point in fighting — on our side or theirs. We had all the momentum; we were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave. . . .

So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back."

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ANNOUNCING "Music Nights"

 

For Release – Monday, 6/16/08 – 7a et

 

MY DAMN CHANNEL CLOSES MAJOR BRANDED ENTERTAINMENT DEAL
 
Southern Comfort Launches Partnership for Summer Music Campaign

 
New York, NY – June 16, 2008 – My Damn Channel (www.MyDamnChannel.com), the entertainment studio and new media platform today announced a major branded entertainment deal with Southern Comfort. The two companies are partnering to create twelve weeks of “My Damn Channel Music Nights” in music bars and clubs in New York and Los Angeles and on the SoCo Music Experience festival tour this summer. Tour dates feature Gnarls Barkley, Justice, The Roots, The Black Keys and more. Starting in July, original content will be produced for a customized, co-branded channel presented by Grace Helbig, host of My Damn Channel’s “Daily Grace.” Programming will appear on My Damn Channel and across its network of syndication partners.
 
Founder and CEO of My Damn Channel, Rob Barnett said, “We’ve started building a big audience and turning quality content into significant sponsorships. Southern Comfort made a major commitment to back branded entertainment and to put our channel and our fans together on the road. We love our jobs.”
 
Southern Comfort U.S. Brand Director Ken Rose said, "Music is a major part of the lives of our consumers.  Whether it's at a club or a music festival, they're going out with their friends to see live music.  Partnering with My Damn Channel allows us to speak to our consumer in a relevant and meaningful manner, as well as take the SoCo Music Experience to music fans that can't make it out to one of the six festivals."

About My Damn Channel
My Damn Channel is an entertainment studio and new media platform created to empower filmmakers, actors, comedians and musicians to co-produce, distribute and monetize original, episodic video. Artists create programming for the My Damn Channel site and for syndication on today’s most heavily-trafficked online communities and social networks. Co-conspirators include Big Fat Brain, Coolio, Grace Helbig, Steve Kerper, A.D. Miles, Andy Milonakis, Harry Shearer, David Wain and Don Was. The company is supported by advertising revenue and by licensing the studio’s entire portfolio of content across all forms of digital distribution.
 
About Southern Comfort
Southern Comfort®, a fruit, spice, and whiskey flavored liqueur, was founded in New Orleans by bartender M.W. Heron in 1874. Today, it is sold in over 90 countries around the world and continues to grow as an icon brand.  Please visit us at www.SouthernComfort.com.  For Southern Comfort press information, please visit www.socopressroom.com.

From Sound Check to Encore, Play It Safe.  Please Drink Responsibly.
Liqueur, 21-50% Alc. by Volume, Southern Comfort Company, Louisville, KY ©2008
 
Media Contact:

Maria Diokno

866.424.8864

Maria@MyDamnChannel.com

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HEADLINING VEGAS

Thanks to the NAB and especially to Ashley Howell, Chris Marlowe, and Rochelle Winters for inviting us to present in Vegas yesterday. Thanks to Jon Healey from the LA Times for moderating - and to Harry Shearer & Andy Milonakis for making the trip.

We filled a room of about 350-400 humans and started by showing a few of our original videos. Fun seeing hundreds LOL at YSAP - up on a huge megascreen - and cool to see a crowd feel the bass of music produced by Don Was.

Harry Shearer made news - announcing "THE ALPHAS" - a project he's been developing for 10 years - and the most ambitious new work making its way to My Damn Channel.

"THE ALPHAS" is motion-capture animation of the highest quality (Beowulf) - done in the fastest turnaround ever achieved (less than 5 day production cycles). Here's more:

Imagine seeing the best-known people in politics and the media, every week, in hilariously private situations. Not actors in makeup, but what looks and sounds like the real President, candidates, anchors, and the rest. That’s the idea behind “The Alphas”, a revolutionary new concept in topical sketch comedy. Written and performed by Harry Shearer, who’s notched more than two decades as a creator of topical satire on his weekly public radio broadcast, “Le Show”, along with two memorable seasons on “Saturday Night Live”, “The Alphas” includes no makeup, no celebrity cameos. Instead, utlizing a trio of cutting-edge motion-capture technologies--harnessed for the first time to a “week-of-air” production schedule, “The Alphas” features startlingly realistic computer-animated versions of the movers, shakers and yakkers. They’re not lifelike--thanks to the technology and Shearer’s performances, they’re alive. And every week, they’re deftly and drolly revealed for all their pretensions, resentments, jealousies and anxieties--all the good stuff, online just days after production.

Here's the first news coverage from the LA Times and the Digital Content Producer Magazine with thanks for the 'ink' & correction to Michael Goldman.

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THURSDAYS (NOT THURSDAYS)

(Averitt/Barnett/Was)

You can tell by the title I'm just not getting enough 07/08 sleep. Pathetic. But heading to 'church' tonight for kickoff of the next leg of the Springsteen tour. That & today's 2 new videos will keep me vertical. Every Thursday Don Was presents NEW music recorded & produced for you free of charge. Grab the MP3's & steal the music videos with thanks to a generous grant from our friends at LINCOLN. Today's new music premiere is just what the doctor ordered - reggae rock from the band COMMON SENSE. Their first My Damn Channel video is called "STRANGE ONE."



The band is based in a very important town for our new media mission - LAGUNA BEACH, CA. It's homebase for Okapi Ventures where Marc Averitt is a lead backer & board member at My Damn Channel. Surf's most definitely UP.

If comedy's your Thursday calling - head to one of newest channels: CARNIVAL of STUFF. Steve Kerper & the mighty men at Asterisk present our first animated series: "INVASION" - episode 3 - SQUIRRELS JUST WANNA HAVE FUN:

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