Totally New Site and Totally LIVE Show

We've rebirthed!

My Damn Channel has a totally new site with HUGE thanks to everyone on our team who worked 'round the clock for months. And eternal thanks as always to my Co-Founder/COO Warren Chao, without whom life would hold far fewer smiles for us all.

We wanted to give you a better experience with My Damn Channel.

Please take a full tour of your new home. We've got a totally new design. You can log in with Facebook and share and comment much easier than before. We will be launching a totally new mobile site in the days ahead. And we've got more new sites launching in the My Damn Channel Blog Network.

We made a mondo announcement today with all the details about MY DAMN CHANNEL LIVE.

We're taking some of the best ingredients of late night TV andbringing them kicking and streaming onto the Internet.

MY DAMN CHANNEL LIVE is the first, daily, live comedy channel on YouTube and here on our site every weekday at 4 PM Eastern.

Our shows start next Wednesday, 3/28/12.

We're counting on you to be there with us. We'll be here for you every afternoon with celebrity guests, live interaction, and the premieres of more than 30 new My Damn Channel original series!  (not kidding)

Here's our host and the newest member of the My Damn Channel family: MEET BETH HOYT!
 
We love Beth and love every one you of who have helped us build My Damn Channel since 2007. The real world doesn't seem to get much easier out there, but we're in love with the idea of giving you as many happy good times as possible.

Today it all begins again.

Yours,

Rob Barnett
Founder/CEO, My Damn Channel

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Be our social media intern.

This is his "excited" face.

Meet Matt The Intern.

Look at how excited Matt The Intern is to be one of the very first people holding the brand-new Wainy Days DVD.

If you were our intern you would be as lucky as he is, too. In FACT, today IS your lucky day because we need social media and graphics interns.

Here's the deal:

• *We are located in New York City, so you must be, too. Or you must be willing at least to commute into New York City on a regular basis.
• *You can receive college credit! If this is of interest to you we can do this... however...
• *Being a student is not a prerequisite. Just know that.

Here are the skills we're looking for:

• *You should be familiar with our content. Some of it. All of it. Take your pick. But you should know something about us.
• *You should have strong writing skills. Please send us links to your Twitter and Tumblr and blog. But not your Pinterest. We don't care about that...YET.
• *You should have basic Photoshop and HTML skills. Have you ever created an image for a meme? Have you posted said image to your blog without the benefit of a blog editor? Do you sometimes wish you could just hold up an animated gif in real-life situations? Fantastic. You're who we want.
• *Basic Final Cut Pro or other video editing skills are wonderful and we could definitely figure out how to use your skills effectively and creatively, but they are not necessary.

Here's what you'd be doing:

• *Hanging out on Tumblr all day.
• *Creating gifs of our content.
• *Helping us think of hashtags.
• *Photoshopping Mary Lynn Rajskub's head onto Jeremy Lin's body just because we think saying "Mary Lynn-sanity" is funny.
• *Helping to optimize all of our social media outlets aesthetically and strategically.
• *Not all of it is fun. Sometimes there is data entry. Sometimes there is heavy lifting. Sometimes there is a coffee run that needs running.

BUT you would definitely get a Wainy Days DVD. Well, probably.

Please send all inquiries to Maria [at] MyDamnChannel [dot] com.

Thanks! And may the odds be ever in your favor! (But not in a BAD Hunger Games sort of way!)

(PS: We have several videos starring Elizabeth Banks!)

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Coolio In A Cook-Off

Did you watch Coolio on The Food Network's Rachael vs. Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off? You wouldn't be alone. The Food Network posted the highest ratings in its history last month.

We'd like to think that The Food Network's dramatic increase in viewership is directly related to the Ghetto Gourmet. After, all, who can resist chicken so good it falls off the bone or a caprese salad so tasty it makes your drawers drop?

Coolio came in second to Lou Diamond Phillips despite breaking out the big guns like Soul Rolls and a newer, Guy Fieri-approved version of his Cool-A-Cado, winning a more-than-respectable $10,000 for Music Saves Lives. To which we say, Shaka, Coolio. Shaka forever.

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Wainy Days Are Here Again!

It's back! It's back! Wainy Days is back with all new episodes! Here are some reasons we're jumping up and down right now (Really. We are. Right now. We promise.):

1. David Wain knows how to bring the hot girls.
It's true. David Wain's past adventures have included Rashida Jones, Elizabeth Banks, Amanda Peet and Megan Mullally. If there's one thing we've been missing in our lives, it's a reliable source of HOT GIRLS.

2. Erinn Hayes and Lizzy Caplan.
Two ridiculously hot girls. This is different from number one because we're being specific. Okay, so maybe it's a subdivision of number one. What are you our English teacher? (Seriously, is that you, Mrs. O'Neil?!)

3. Jorma Taccone.
A member of The Lonely Island, director of MacGruber, and probably one of the few men on the planet who can make this face in a song called "J--z In My Pants" and have millions of women think it's adorable:

4. David Wain.
We're so happy that between writing and shooting Childrens Hospital and making a movie with Paul Rudd and Jennifer Aniston and touring the country in honor of Wet Hot American Summer, David could find the time to get himself into a Fiat and drive around with old friends like Ken Marino, Thomas Lennon, Zandy Hartig and Steven Weber to entertain us and make us laugh and give us new videos to watch every Monday when we're supposed to be doing something else at work.

Thanks, David Wain. This Wain's for you:

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That Ain't Right

It's time for another edition of That Ain't Right, a semi-regular feature in which we acknowledge that there are people in the world who may not know that My Damn Channel is a proper noun and complain a LOT about what's happening on/to/with their TV.

To which the only reply is, "That Ain't Right":

That Ain’t Right, @KissMy_Tweetinq sounds like your father is on a bit of a power trip. Sure, the bible says to respect your parents but I’m sure he would make an exemption for someone who is at risk of having their damn channel changed. Mr. KissMy_Tweetinq, That Ain’t Right.



That Ain’t Right, @DaTFIn3sTKiNg and myself are kindred spirits.
We both hate it when people come nd change my damn channel like ine been watchin tv,
Does it look like ine been watchin TV?!?!
Get your facts straight ppl.



Yet another victim falls at the hands of the lethal combination of Rain and Comcast. That Ain’t Right Comcast, That Ain’t Right. @Barbranicole1 just wanted to watch her damn channel guide. When will this madness end!
Damn you rain, Damn you satellite and damn you comcast. That Ain’t Right.



That Ain’t Right, Imagine searching for buried treasure for years and years. You have lost your family, lost your friends and lost the will to think about anything else besides for the buried treasure.
Now imagine after all those years you finally find it. You open the treasure box, take out the gold, raise it triumphantly in the sky and then BAM! Someone changes the damn channel!
@_RealLongHair finally found an episode of True Life that he liked and you change the channel! That Ain’t Right. That Just Ain’t Right.

That's all for this edition of That Ain't Right! Until next time, may nothing on this My Damn Channel be as stressful as when someone else has your remote control, Twitterland.

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Meet "Dicki".

Everyone's so uptight about what they can put on the Internet. It's like, "Come ON, everybody!"

Meet Dicki.

She's 40. She lives with her parents. In the middle of nowhere. She makes a living doing...uh... something... we think. And in Episode One she's trying to get her Facebook profile picture juuuuuuuust right, which we totally understand since we've all held the camera at arm's length in a weirdly lit hallway, trying to make it look like it's a candid shot of us out at some ridiculous party having extraordinary fun, instead of just standing in our parents' hallway hoping they don't ask us what we're doing.

If we were Dicki, we'd probably just take a photo that made us look as much like Mary Lynn Rajskub as possible, since most people who know her work as "Chloe O'Brian" or "Gail the Snail" are pretty enamored of her.

Oh, well, to each their own, we guess. And in Dicki's case, we don't think that will be a problem.

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Mary Lynn Rajskub Is Our Newest Series Star.

Meet "Dicki."

She's fortysomething. She lives at home with her parents. She's "artsy." She likes Double Gulp sodas. She's looking for love.

And she's played by Mary Lynn Rajskub, whom you might know from 24, It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia, Mr. Show with Bob and David and The Larry Sanders Show.

But Dicki is special. You'll get a chance to see HOW special she is this Thursday at www.MyDamnChannel.com/Dicki.

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David Wain is SEXY.

David Wain is a sex machine.
He dates the hottest women that you've ever seen.
It seems unlikely but it's totally true
If you don't understand it we'll explain it to you...

Way back in August of '11 we went to Just For Laughs in Montreal and did "Wainy Days LIVE" with David Wain, Rob Corddry, Reggie Watts and a bunch of their super-talented friends.

Two of those friends were Garfunkel and Oates aka Riki Lindhome and Kate Micucci, two of the sweetest, funniest, most talented, adorable people you could ever hope to meet in your entire life. In Montreal, they wrote a song about how sexy David Wain must be since in every episode of Wainy Days gorgeous women are falling over themselves to be with him. When we all returned home, everyone thought it would be a shame to keep the brilliance of that song limited to a few hundred people in French-Speaking Quebec, so we filmed it and are sharing it with the world.

Watch it and share it with your friends. It's like a little bit of joy right on your computer screen.

And Kate and Riki have both been on television and in film so they would know what sexy is, right? They're like comedic rock stars, right? The LA Times wrote a feature about them! They would know what would make a pretty girl want to lick an average 42 year old body!

Could it be they find David Wain that sexy because he told them that Season 5 of his groundbreaking web series Wainy Days is returning to My Damn Channel this Fall?! Yes. That's it. That's very much what it must be. For sure.

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Steve Jobs, 1955-2011

And that's really what it is, isn't it?

We're all sitting here, staring at our iPhones in disbelief. Finding comfort in one of the tens of thousands of songs on our iPod. Searching the internet to share in the mourning en masse on our MacBooks.

After we're done here, we'll edit some videos using Final Cut Pro. While we listen to a playlist we made on iTunes. When we get hungry later, we'll use an app on our iPhone to figure out a good place nearby to eat. When we get home, we'll iChat with our parents across the country and tell them what we've been up to. Hell, even one of our most popular videos took place in an Apple Store.

For so many of us who never even met the man, we can't imagine what our lives would have been like without him.

The real brilliance of Steve Jobs's vision is that he believed we all deserved to live the lives of our dreams, and he gave us as many tangible tools as possible to try and do just that. How many of us began vlogging because we were experimenting with our iSights? How many of us became interested in telling stories because of iMovie? How many of us now see the world refracted through Steve Jobs's lens?

We're not the first to post this video, but its message bears repeating, even on days when it isn't almost painfully poignant:

“Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”

Thanks for believing in all of us, Steve. You have to have known that you made a difference.

(Image via Jonathan Mak)

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How To Be An Intern

(Intern Josh, wondering forlornly how he ended up here)

EDITOR'S NOTE: It's Josh's last day as an intern for My Damn Channel! I asked him to write up a post telling you what it was like for him this summer!


Coming into My Damn Channel as an intern I thought all I was gonna learn was how to file papers and fill out reports. Boy was I wrong! Friday will be my last day and I still haven't correctly filled out a single report. My boss is always saying that it drives him crazy how long it's taking me to get the hang of the office duties, but I can tell he's just joking. How I treasure that agonized look he gets trying so hard to hold back laughter.

What I learned though was way more valuable than any college education. I would say it was worth about $230,000, a couple hundred more than four years' tuition at Wesleyan. What I learned was the value of making the effort to gain the respect of your peers.

Before I ever set foot into that office, I had my work cut out for me. My future co-workers had already started gossiping that I only got the internship because of my family connections. After failing for three years to strike any gold, my great-great-grandfather started My Damn Channel during the California Gold Rush as a burlesque show designed to entertain entrepreneurs who had given up on trying to find gold and started companies catered to the needs of the gold miners. Grandpa Schmulie Meisel. I can't believe that was such a popular name back then — Grandpa.

My first day at work the guy sharing my cubicle got mad at me for unplugging his computer. "What do you need a blender for?!" he irrationally snarled. "How else are you gonna make computer smoothies silly? By hand?!" I chucked his computer into my oversized blender. He must've thought I was awfully spoiled, not making my computer smoothies by hand. I really had an uphill battle ahead of me if I wanted to gain anyone's respect.

A couple of days in I got the courage to pitch a show idea to the head of development. It was a parody of "Friends" called "Friends." He looked at me like I was an idiot. "You just handed me a bunch of "Friends" scripts. I think I know now why the printer's out of ink. Look, why don't you hold off for a bit before you make any more pitches." Apparently my scripts had gone right over his head. And "Friends" was a pretty accessible show. The guy I shared my cubicle was a rube, our head of development was dense as a neutron star, and my boss was an incorrigible prankster. My situation was less than ideal to say the least.

Halfway through the summer things had only gotten worse. I was miserable. My only friend was the janitor, and he was a Roomba! I'd cry myself to sleep every night, and when I wasn't feeling that sad I would get my butler to cry me to sleep. My job was a major disappointment. It wasn't at all like that show "The Office." We had TWO guys named Dwight, and the prettiest girl wasn't dating the most handsome guy (me), but instead this guy Jim who's so inexperienced with women that when I asked him to share some girlie stories he just laughed.

All I could do was trudge along until my five weeks were up, filing away papers wherever I could cram them (I may not get the job done pretty, but I'm damn fast). And just when I had given up on ever gaining a single ounce of respect from any My Damn Channel employee, a stroke of luck bolted me right in the face.

I'll always remember it like it was yesterday, even though it was only yesterday today. Jim's girlfriend (I think her name was Xamela) told him he needed to go somewhere to sign some forms. She couldn't give him a ride because she was busy. He asked if anyone else could take him, and I shot out of my chair like I was sitting on a lit match (which for the one of the first times I wasn't). Jim didn't see me at first; his eyes scanned the room for someone to drive him but everyone pretended to be hard at work because they were too lazy to take him. Finally he saw me and said "Fine let's go Josh." And fine it was. Everyone looked up at Jim and smiled at him. Their smiles seemed to say, "I'm really happy for you that you get to go on a fun/crazy/cool ride with Josh." But the smiles had a little menace behind them that signified jealousy.

When I got back my boss laughed with mirth, patted me on the back, and said, "Good job sonny." All I ever wanted was for my boss to think of me as a son, but life isn't easy. I had to put in my time to get what I wanted — let's just say I don't think I could've earned the luxury of being treated by my boss like his own flesh and blood if I hadn't given Jim that ride. And now, in these last couple of months before my summer ends and I have to go back to hitting the books trying to eventually earn my GED, I can look back at my time at My Damn Channel atop my pool float, computer smoothie in hand, and know that that one lesson I learned was well worth all my trifles. Plus it helped that I was making more than the rest of the office combined.


Thanks, Josh, er, Sonny! We will miss you! We know it will be tough going back to Stanford to get a world-class education, but it's better you than us!

We fully intend to continue stalking following you and your writing as @artsypriest and as a writer for The Stanford Chaparral.

PS: If any of you, dear readers, for some strange, maddening reason, would like to be an intern for My Damn Channel, please send an email to info@MyDamnChannel.com, and be sure to include links to your blog, Twitter and Tumblr accounts, or any other writing samples you might have! In the immortal words of the Jersey Shore kids in Italy, "Arrivederci, summer!"

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