Announcing: New Channels for My Damn Channel!
Would you like to read the longest press release ever written since it describes in detail each and every one of the shows we're launching today?
Would you like to read it since it describes shows from pop culture performance artist Mark Malkoff, Sopranos star Will Janowitz, former MTV VJ Matt Pinfield, as well as more about our Childrens Hospital and Dinner For Schmucks channels?
So do you want to read it or what?
"YES."
Really?
"The answer is YES. Of COURSE I would like to read the longest press release ever written. I woke up at 6am eastern time today, waiting with bated breath for all of these big announcements of all of the new channels and shows that you've been promising me for more than a week so YES. JUST GIVE ME THE DAMN PRESS RELEASE ALREADY. You're such a g**damn tease sometimes, My Damn Channel. Next time you make a big announcement, do us all a favor and just have a live televised show on ESPN or something. Sheesh."
Oh.
Fine. Here. Read it. And stop saying "sheesh." And, yes, we bolded the names of all the new shows for all of the TL;DR whiners out there. Assholes.
Posted in
My Damn Channel with tags
My Damn Channel,
Big Fat Brain,
The Landlord,
Harry Shearer,
Don Was,
David Wain,
Wainy Days,
Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music,
Jill Sobule,
San Francisco,
Elizabeth Banks,
Troy Hitch,
Matt Bledsoe,
Funny or Die,
Dick Cheney,
Scooter Libby on 6/29/2010 2:29:48 AM by Rob Barnett
Good things come in 3's.
3 years ago, a small band of true believers were readying the launch of My Damn Channel: 7/31/07.
Here are the inaugural videos from the first 3 artists we signed.
David Wain came in with the world's fastest pitch for Wainy Days: (paraphrasing) "I want to make out with the hottest women in the world and every date goes horribly wrong."
His first episode (a 3-parter) co-stars Elizabeth Banks as Shelly:
David Wain as David Wain, Elizabeth Banks as Shelly.
Harry Shearer was the first hero we signed. He sat in prosthetic makeup for over 4 hours to become Dick Cheney, singing sexy for Scooter Libby:
Harry Shearer as Dick Cheney.
We wanted music to marry comedy in our company from Day One. We turned to another brother and one of the best musicians and producers on the planet, Don Was.
Don's "Wasmopolitan Cavalcade of Recorded Music" is an earful of the best music you can't get anywhere else.
His first My Damn Channel production starred one of the smartest singer/songwriters we know, Jill Sobule:
Don Was, Rob Barnett, Jill Sobule, Warren Chao at the My Damn Channel west coast launch party, 2007.
Here's a rare, bonus video from the archives. Day one back on 7/31/07 also starred Big Fat Brain, the geniuses behind You Suck at Photoshop, and the web designers of all things DAMN. One of our only spoof vids looked 20 years into the FUTURE and poked our pals at Funny or Die, who had launched a few months earlier:
Matt Bledsoe, Troy Hitch
Posted in
Jimmy Kimmel with tags
Jimmy Kimmel Live,
Handsome Men's Club,
Oscars,
ABC,
Ben Affleck,
Lenny Kravitz,
Matthew McConaughey,
Ted Danson,
Sting,
Taye Diggs,
John Krasinski,
Patrick Dempsey,
Rob Lowe,
Ethan Hawke,
Matthew McConaughey,
Josh Hartnett,
Matt Damon,
Keith Urban,
Jennifer Garner,
Tony Romo on 3/8/2010 4:17:11 AM by Rob Barnett
And the Oscar goes to:
JIMMY KIMMEL.
Last night's Oscar special on Jimmy Kimmel Live featured Robert Downey Jr and the premiere of the trailer from Iron Man 2.
But the video that must be seen now - over any Monday morning work priority - is the HANDOME MEN's CLUB, starring its President Mr. Kimmel and the most A-list cast to ever grace video virality.
Prepare to be Handsome:
Halloween marked the season 2 finale of YOU SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP.
Over 400,000 views so far - close to 1000 comments webwide debating the appearance of Dane Cook, whether Donnie is Dane, if both are dead, what David Cross has to do with the whole thing, and if YSAP is really gone (again?).
Feels like months since 10/31: we elected OBAMA - the economy turned the clocks back to 1933 - and Jetsons' flying cars still seem another thousand years away.
Fear not: the creators of YSAP open up a new chapter in the wonderful "WORLD of WEBNDER"
Adobe presents a BIG FAT BRAIN film
starring Troy Hitch & Matt Bledsoe
produced by Amy Austin
AGENCY OF RECORD is here
"I can't be objective about the music business. I know it hurt a lot of people; artists were often lied to, royalties weren't always paid, bad people sometimes got promoted while good ones were fired. Drugs, misogyny, and death stalked rock and roll. A lot of shlock was produced. A lot of pretense masked shallow, materialistic quests for fame and money. It's not like I don't know these things and it's not that I mind writing about them. It's just that the part of the music business I know best, the rock and roll business, also produced and popularized a lot of music that I love. And it gave me and a lot of my friends a place in the world."
Bumping Into Geniuses: My Life Inside The Rock and Roll Business is the new book by Danny Goldberg.
I bumped into Danny yesterday morning during a visit to 101.9 WRXP in NY. REAL rock radio is back on the dial and on the internetsss. Matt Pinfield and Leslie Fram host the morning show at RXP and showed their true colors by inviting guests including Danny Goldberg, Patrick Wilson from Weezer, and Ray LaMontagne.
BAD times are always GOOD for Rock & Roll. Maybe the new, great depression opens the door for earth-skakin' new sounds.
Yesterday reinforced the power of the music to bring songfilled souls together. And Danny Goldberg inspired me to go buy his book.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/books/review/Rosen-t.html?ref=books
Prepare to SUCK first thing tomorrow morning. The Right Reverend Donnie Hoyle will be back & we'd be excommunicated for telling you one simple secret about what's in store.
YOU SUCK AT PHOTOSHOP #12 is coming
WAINY DAYS #23 is coming MONDAY.
It'll be called "WATER COOLER" starring the core cast of .... sewers:
DAVID, ZANDY HARTIG, A.D. MILES, & MATT BALLARD.
Posted in
Wainy Days with tags
My Damn Channel,
David Wain,
Wainy Days,
Saffron Burrows,
Christine Lakin,
A.D. Miles,
Zandy Hartig,
Matt Ballard,
Mike Starr,
The Nottie,
Boston Legal,
The Bank Job,
Kerri Kenney-Silver on 6/12/2008 4:23:47 AM by Rob Barnett
Just got a first look at the all-new WAINY DAYS.
The first episode stars David dating Christine Lakin (on the left from The Hottie & The Nottie, Step by Step), and Saffron Burrows (on the right from Boston Legal, The Bank Job)
A.D. Miles, Zandy Hartig & Matt Ballard are all back!
And you'll recognize the character actor (Mike Starr) as the cabbie from every movie ever made.
We're premiering Monday, 6/16 at 7a et - unless we can't wait & sneak it to you early here.
Here's today's featured video - Grace's #2 fave episode -"Walking Tour" - starring David's co-con from The State and Reno 911, the amazing Kerri Kenney-Silver.
Big Fat Brains Matt & Troy prepare to spoon on the red carpet.
David Wain waxes philosophic with Josh Cohen from Tilzy.TV
I suck at Webby photography. Grace Helbig, Jon Stern, David Wain, Troy Hitch, Matt Bledsoe.
Big Fat Brain Matt Bledsoe & David Wain.
David's Wainy Days wins Best Comedy Series.
"The cat" wins 3 awards for You Suck at Photoshop.
Troy Hitch, Matt Bledsoe, Rob Barnett, Jon Stern for My Damn Channel at the Webby Awards.
Posted in
Big Fat Brain,
Donnie Hoyle,
Snatchbuckler,
You Suck at Photoshop with tags
You Suck at Photoshop,
YSAP,
Big Fat Brain,
Troy Hitch,
Matt Bledsoe,
Snatchbuckler,
Rob Barnett,
TIME Magazine,
MTV,
VH1,
CBS,
Peopleburg on 5/3/2008 2:08:44 AM by Rob Barnett
TIME 100 Most Influential People in the World
Technoculture
Fun with Photoshop
Thursday, May. 01, 2008 By JOSH QUITTNER
Troy Hitch, left, and Matt Bledsoe have just been revealed as the co-creators of the hit Web series You Suck at Photoshop.
Five hundred Gazillion Web video channels and nothing good on? Google this: You Suck at Photoshop. Narrated by the fictional Donnie Hoyle--an angry, sarcastic, cuckolded Photoshop expert--it was launched in late December and ended 10 episodes later, in April, when Donnie mysteriously disappeared. Not that you ever saw him. In the videos, the camera remains centered on a computer desktop and follows Donnie's cursor as he conducts mock tutorials on how to use the photo-altering application. Sound obscure? Maybe not. With the explosion of blogging and do-it-yourself publishing, Photoshop has become one of the Web generation's indispensable tools. Accordingly, the Donnie series has been viewed nearly 8 million times and is up for two 2008 Webby Awards: Best Comedy and Best How-To Video.
How a goof became a phenomenon is a Web-age love story almost as sweet as Donnie is bitter. Many fans believed the video series had to have been made by a professional comedian; Dane Cook was a favorite suspect. But it turns out to be the work of Troy Hitch, 37, and Matt Bledsoe, 39, both of Covington, Ky.--two former ad-agency guys who met while recording a radio commercial in nearby Cincinnati, Ohio. They buddied up, started writing funny bits and launched a new-media-centric creative agency called Big Fat Institute in 2005.
That's where Rob Barnett discovered them. A show-biz guy who had worked at MTV and VH1 before spending two years at the helm of CBS Radio, Barnett had decided to become a Web-video impresario. He found Big Fat Institute while looking for someone to design his website. You Suck at Photoshop "was hysterical," Barnett recalled recently. "I was instantly engaged and e-mailed them: 'WHO are you?' In 38 seconds, I get a response: 'Who are YOU?' We started flirting." The e-mail led to phone calls and an invitation to visit Barnett in New Jersey. "A few days later, they jumped on a plane to Newark, and we fell in love," he says. Barnett signed the guys to build his video-entertainment website, MyDamnChannel.com and then produce comedy videos for it. You Suck at Photoshop was their first baby.
Hitch and Bledsoe had long nurtured an idea for a character they thought of as the Angry Photoshop Guy. Explains Bledsoe: "We had both been in the agency business so long that after a while we'd seen every kind of person in the advertising world." One of those stereotypes, he says, was the "insane designer, basically. He has horrible social skills and horrible things going on in his life, and the only thing he has going for him is he can out-Photoshop the guy in the cube next to him." It took 2 1/2 hours to complete Episode 1. "The vast majority is improvised by Troy," says Bledsoe. "I hate him for that." Hitch adds, "It was meant to be a one-off thing." But within a few weeks, the blogosphere discovered it, and the series began racking up page views.
In my favorite episode, Donnie shows viewers how to seamlessly remove the wedding band from a picture of his cheating wife's finger. "We actually really put the ring up for sale on eBay, and within four hours, 30,000 people had come by to look or bid on it," Hitch tells me. "The ring was bid up to $760." But eBay shut down the auction after discovering the performance art--a violation of the terms of service, apparently.
The team emerged from anonymity in April to launch a sequel, Snatchbuckler's Second Chance. It's filmed in a fictional, virtual world called Peopleburg.com Snatchbuckler, Donnie's erstwhile partner in the online game World of Warcraft, has gone there to shake off his Internet addiction. The video debuted on MyDamnChannel.com in late April, and it looks pretty cool. But I miss Donnie and wish I could Photoshop him back into my life.
Posted in
Big Fat Brain,
Donnie Hoyle,
Snatchbuckler,
You Suck at Photoshop with tags
Big Fat Brain,
Josh Quittner,
Matt Bledsoe,
My Damn Channel,
Snatchbuckler,
Time Magazine,
Troy Hitch,
You Suck at Photoshop on 4/25/2008 9:06:00 AM by Rob Barnett
Matt Bledsoe & Troy Hitch
We’re launching our newest MY DAMN CHANNEL series today from the men who brought you “You Suck at Photoshop” (YSAP). Big Fat Brain is: Matt (Bledsoe) & Troy (Hitch) - one vowel away from South Park and please add Amy Austin to your consciousness - since every male lobe needs a brilliant woman behind them...or something like that.
YSAP is nominated twice by the WEBBY AWARDS for Best Comedy Series and for Best How-To Series.
7 WEBBY nods in all, for our artists & our site.
From Genesis to Revelation & from “YSAP” to “Sn4tchbuck3r’s Second Chance”
Here’s the first exclusive interview with Big Fat Brain by TIME magazine’s Josh Quittner