Tuesday, July 15, 2008

My Damn Channel

I've been reading a lot of articles lately and compiling a list of all the various original video content websites are out there. I have quickly discovered there are more than I ever thought there might be and to be honest, upon first view, there are a lot of strange ones out there!

The one I wanted to discuss quickly in this post is My Damn Channel. This site is home to an entertainment studio that allows artists free reign on how they create and produce their content. In their "about us" video, they stress the random celebrity artists (Coolio, Harry Shearer and David Wain to name the more notable) and the lack of a network presence. Well, you can tell! There seems to be no filter and some of this stuff is purely bizarre.

Featured on the homepage is an episode of Harry Shearer's "Found Objects" program. This particular episode is 9 minutes of footage of Laura Ingraham on her since canceled Fox News show called "Just In." I think the point was to show this right-wing political pundit as being a diva and rude. However, the video speaks more to her desire for things to be accurate and handled properly. Several of the comments on this page mention similar sentiments. In sum, the footage is actually really boring and hardly a scandalous exposé of any kind. Maybe I'm not getting it, but I just thought it was dumb.



Actually the clips I found to be the most humorous were in the "You Suck at Photoshop" series. It is part comedy, part instructional video. The instructional online video is very interesting because it usually involves novices or non-experts demonstrating how to do things. Obviously, it doesn't take a leap of the imagination to take these from serious to satire, but it does however take a bit to make it actually funny. This guy Donnie is so self-deprecating and angry, but yet you really do learn something when you watch it. This series was nominated for 7 Webby Awards - seems that this 'little' how-to video has made quite a splash. See what you think...



To be honest, I don't even know what to think about "Cookin' With Coolio" - it is truly bizarre and borderline surreal. He has women in hot pants in the kitchen while he's cooking egg rolls.

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