Foursquare of Thrones

…Because if they haven’t already, someone was going to do it.

Originally, I was going to do the entire plot, but then I decided the time/benefit was a little bit off there. Feel free to add your own “check-ins!” But don’t make this into a mummer’s farce, okay?

“Disgusting Foods With Alex Zalben” - Geoff shot me eating some gross-ish stuff on the downtime from shooting new @elephantlarry videos. This is that video!

Honestly, nothing was THAT disgusting. Just sayin’

“Hardly Working: Secret Society” - Check it out, here’s the sketch @elephantlarry did as part of @collegehumor’s All-Nighter! We got to wear robes, and punch people, so all in all, a good time was had.

“Elephant Larry’s Treehouse: What Your Mom Said” - Another @elephantlarry Treehouse episode! OMG! I directed and edited this one, and that’s all I’ve got to say about it!

“Got Milk?” - New @elephantlarry sketch, directed by me and Geoff, Edited by me. Also I’m in it or something.

Sesame Street: Upstairs, Downstairs

This is kind of my favorite thing ever.

“Con Air Rap” - Brand new @elephantlarry sketch! I edited and directed, @solomaniac laid down the phat beats, and Con Air continued to be awesome, as always.

Salty language in this one, so if you want a SFW version, you can watch that here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bcfbcHS8ePI

As the title says, @elephantlarry is on The Sound of Young America’s Best Comedy of 2010 special, which is totally flattering. Even more flattering, we’re on there with Paul F. Tompkins, The State, Aziz Ansari, and plenty more awesome comedians.

We’re on the episode at about 50 minutes, but you should really listen to the whole episode, because it is awesome.

Stuff Talks (via geniuscamp)

Before Comedy Thunder, there was Genius Camp, and this awesome little sketch came out of it.

Handjob, Bland Job, I Don’t Understand Job

I’ve mentioned before how you can create comedy by taking something dirty and making it clean, or vice versa. This is taking something dirty and making it clean(ish). Also, the song’s been stuck in my head for days.

(via FunnyorDie)

Because hey, why not, I thought I’d start posting some of my old/never performed/never to be performed again sketches online, with commentary about them. And I will call it, “Sketch Time Machine!” And it will be good. Hopefully.

Year Written: May, 2004

In general, I don’t think the tone of this is terrible - it’s just not a very funny sketch. Part of the problem - or a large part of the problem, actually - is the storytelling format. Because stories are designed to be a little sing-songy, and pleasant to hear, they don’t lend themselves very well to comedy. The main thing most people do is, they take the story format, and do something dirty with it: make it violent, or sexual, or inject cursing into the sketch.

That’s one way to go, I guess, and I certainly fell into that trap at the end of this sketch, but I do think there’s a better way to do this, and that’s just make a story that’s funny on it’s own, and then sketchify it. You’ll still have those elements of story theater, but without relying on the crutch of dirtying it up. I’d also suggest, in general, you probably want to throw something like this in the middle of the show, to vary things up. People are more likely to remember a sweet story when it’s buffeted by lots of things contrasting in tone, rather than kicking off the show on a low energy point, or worse, ending on one.

NOTES:

• Man, the ending of this is bad. If I ever approached this sketch again, I would cut it off after the VO finds out what’s wrong. I think now, I’d be less afraid of having an actual, sweet ending, and have the VO and Camel be friends. I think.
• My favorite comment I wrote down from the group on this one is: “Don’t make it a camel?”

Here’s the sketch:

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Know Your: Ages of Consent! (Full Version)

As part of Comedy Thunder, we’ve been releasing videos every week with seven other comedy groups, each on a theme. I’ve been trolling back through the group’s catalogs, and though I’ve always like P0YKPAC’s output, I missed this one before, which is pretty darn well done. Yay production values!

(via P0YKPAC)

“God Invents Sex” - I Directed and Edited this one, and everybody did an awesome job, so that’s cool. John Phillips from Trophy Dad and Chris O’Connor from Fearsome subbed in for Stefan and Me, respectively, as I was behind the camera, and Stefan was off at “Acting Like a Giraffe Camp,” I think.

In particular, I love the stuff Jeff did for… The character… Who shows up at the end.

Because hey, why not, I thought I’d start posting some of my old/never performed/never to be performed again sketches online, with commentary about them. And I will call it, “Sketch Time Machine!” And it will be good. Hopefully.

Year Written: June, 2003

This is another sketch Jeff and I wrote, and it’s actually been performed on stage a bunch of times, even as recently as a few years ago. I will cop to this: I don’t know that I’ve ever done a particularly good job in the straight man role in this. It may be the way we wrote the lines, but I’ve never felt 100% comfortable performing it. Maybe I should have recast the role, I gue— NEVER!!!

NOTES:

Jeff read everything in this happy, upbeat monotone, with the words turning up at the wrong times. So, you know, do that when you read it.

This starts off with one of my favorite pieces of stage business we’ve ever done, which is: lights come up, and there’s someone mid-way through exiting the stage. They never say anything or face the audience, they just walk out. I think it starts things off on the right, off-kilter element.

Far be it from me to remember how we came up with this idea. Probably talking about Ikea? Or venus fly traps? I don’t know. I will say I used to keep venus fly traps as pets when I was a kid, I’d get a new one every time I went to a science museum. So there’s that.

Here’s the sketch:

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Because hey, why not, I thought I’d start posting some of my old/never performed/never to be performed again sketches online, with commentary about them. And I will call it, “Sketch Time Machine!” And it will be good. Hopefully.

Year Written: June, 2003

I like sketches that eat themselves, and this one does it nicely. It fizzles a little towards the end, but for the most part, it hits the right notes for the idea. Whether you like the idea or not, of course, is up to you.

Here’s the sketch:

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