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NewTeeVee Endorses Amitabh Bachchan for Prime Minister
Apparently in Hindi, “badmash” roughly translates into “naughty,” while “dishoom” is the onomatopoeic equivalent to “pow” or “bang.” This dose of cross-cultural understanding comes thanks to a new campaign for the (non-existent) job of America’s Prime Minister by Bollywood legend Amitabh Bachchan. With a team spread from Berkeley to India, Badmash.tv’s Kayur Patel, Sandeep Sood and Nimesh Patel have created the best animated, bi-partisan, internationalist critique of the American political process you might not have seen yet.
With a silky delivery mellowed by liberal doses of Johnny Walker Blue Label, Bachchan makes for a refreshingly candid candidate. Sure, there’s no such thing as a prime minister in the Constitution of the United States, but then parliamentary democracies don’t suffer under the weight of a strictly two-party system like America’s, hence I’m happy to welcome the change.
Vid Picks: How to Make Sushi
From pre-packaged California rolls at supermarkets to high-end sushi restaurants where you can easily spend a week’s pay, the Japanese speciality has become popular worldwide and nearly ubiquitous in urban America. You can even get decent (if overpriced) sushi at many American ballparks! Many feel that sushi is an acquired taste, though for those who have acquired it, it can turn into a kind of madness — what was once a simple way to preserve fish has become incredibly complicated.
Sushi: Japanese Tradition, from Japanese comedy troupe Rahmen, made the rounds a while ago and pokes fun at the rules and manners of eating at a traditional sushi restaurant. Proper etiquette at a sushi bar can be intimidating, especially when dining out with a self-appointed expert who knows the difference between fake wasabi and real wasabi. Trevor Carson, author of The Zen of Fish, was featured in a short ABC news segment last year offering some handy tips.
Everything You Totes Didn’t Need to Know About The All-for-Nots
What do you get when you combine a horny bassist and his groupie girlfriend, a laconic drummer with impulse control issues, a keyboardist with a fallback career in contract law and a frontman with ego issues that rival Anton Newcombe’s? Potentiating two of Williamsburg, Brooklyn’s most important cultural exports — post-punk pop and ironic self-awareness — The All-for-Nots has a shot at becoming the first true breakout, must-see hit of the web video generation.
The show is financed by Vuguru, which also made the popular Prom Queen and represents Michael Eisner’s quest for personal reinvention after being ousted from the Mouse House. The production team, Dinosaur Diorama, is helmed by Thom Woodley and Kathleen Grace, who garnered New York media attention and accolades with their take on hipster hooliganism in The ‘Burg. And of course it’s socially networked to the hilt, with the inevitable MySpace page and a promotional agreement with the newly AOL-owned Bebo.
How To How-To With Wichita’s Ross Vorhees
I’m the first to come clean about my biases, and a tip that landed in the NewTeeVee inbox was like a perfect storm. An independent creator, about as far from a major media market as you can be, making thousands of dollars posting videos online — and not just any videos, but videos that use science! Science! I love science.
Long-time techie Ross Vorhees of Wichita, Kan., has to date made $11,080 through MetaCafe’s revenue-sharing program. And in a feel-good twist, the funds help him support his two children, who have developmental disabilities. A little Mr. Wizard, a little MAKE Magazine, he takes ordinary household junk and turns it into stuff that will astound and annoy your neighbors. And if there’s a higher calling for science than annoying your neighbors, I’d like to know what it is.
The Pirate Bay’s Unfulfilled Promises
The Pirate Bay’s Peter Sunde and Frederik Neij recently sat down for a lively and intimate three-part interview with Dayrobber, a Danish online video site. But if, like me, you’re looking forward to a big announcement or two from these merry pranksters, you might come away disappointed. (Part one is embedded below, and parts two and three were posted today thanks to a request by TorrentFreak’s Ernesto.)
They continued to shoot down the idea that the popular torrent tracker is making a profit — Sunde says his take so far has been “a couple of free drinks,” and what income he does get is from speaking engagements. They did discuss related businesses they’re working on, but we’ve been hearing about those for months and I’ve yet to see any progress on those fronts.
Weekend Vid Picks: Tops on YouTube
After Andy Baio called “bulls**t” on CANSEI DE DER SEX Music is My Hot Hot Sex, there’s been renewed interest in stats-gaming on YouTube. The video is still online at 91,195,785 views and counting, but it’s no longer listed as the most viewed all time. Creator Clarus Bartel denies any shenanigans, but fair or foul, he should get a job offer or three out of it.
YouTube knows that tales of fraudulent stats can and will scare away advertisers. But hey, Google’s been battling click-fraud and link-spamming for years; the networks sell time based on numbers from sweeps months (when they trot out their best — and sleaziest); and more than a few fishwraps have been known to boost circulation in less-than-honorable ways. As John Lawrence explains to Roddy Piper in They Live, “It’s business, that’s all it is.”
What you will find atop the leaderboard is, well, advertising. “It’s like low-quality MTV from the days when they showed music videos,” Marshall Kirkpatrick pointed out on Read Write Web. What sneaked through the commercial cracks, and how (besides Evolution of Dance)? At number twelve, a C-Pop video with karaoke subtitles titled xxx! Click through for links to motivational posters! Wait a second, that’s just another commercial…
Q&A With Gravityland’s John Herman
Monday saw the debut of the weekly web series Gravityland by John Herman, a renaissance “media maker” of many talents. The serial show follows a number of characters in a small New Hampshire town, including a fictional pop star, Gabriella (Lauren Hill); a Herman Hesse-quoting, kleptomaniac radio DJ, Jake (Phil Kliger) and his sister, Joni (Emily Briand); and a schlubby bachelor, Richard (Chris Bujold) who has to put up with a torrent of unsolicited advice from his mother (Betsy Kimball).
What I find most interesting about the show is that it demonstrates the maturation of web-enabled, interactive, multimedia storytelling. Rather than just distribute video online, the audience is invited to remix Gabriella’s music video, ask Richard’s mother for advice via the blog, tune in to chat with the cast and crew live, get a glimpse behind the scenes and eventually write the script for an upcoming episode. A companion comic book, “The Old Man and the Whale,” will further flesh out the narrative world (not to mention generating merchandising revenue).
Of course, all of these tie-ins mean that Herman is going to be a busy, busy man. But he was nice enough to answer some questions I sent via email.
Tyler Perry and the Art of Promotion Online
Tyler Perry’s House of Payne will air two new episodes on TBS at 10pm on Wednesday, March 5th. Then at 11pm, cast members will be available for a live video chat on TBS.com. It’s the latest effort to promote the show by reaching beyond the TV box — last fall, the cable network aired 10, three-minute-long mobisodes on Verizon’s V Cast video service for mobile phones.
Perry’s own online efforts have been halting. After sending out a press release touting a new, online-only talk show starring the successful writer, producer and performer, only one full episode has been released on Perry’s site. I contacted technology provider Narrowstep and Perry’s publicist asking for information about new episodes, but have yet to receive a reply.
Maybe we’ll see a new episode once Perry has another television or movie project to promote.
Weekend Vid Picks: Kids Say the Darndest Things
Screen legend W.C. Fields is purported to have refused to work with children or animals, as they have a habit of stealing the show and upstaging the star. Will Ferrell, Adam McKay and his daughter Pearl proved Field’s caution is as relevant today as it was then, with The Landlord doing more to get Ferrell and McKay’s project in the public eye than a million press releases ever could.
This week, a cute-as-a-button toddler offering her surprisingly lucid plot synopsis of George Lucas’ classic space melodrama, Star Wars according to a 3-year-old piled up 3.8 million views and counting. For some perspective, that’s nearly as many people who tuned into Quarterlife’s prime-time debut on NBC. The clip makes this viral video thing look easy, but don’t be fooled — it’s been staged to perfection.
Could Obama Buy Lead to Local Ad Boom?
In what could prove a great test case of marketing effectiveness, the Obama campaign purchased premium ad space on 26 locally oriented web sites in Texas and Ohio ahead of the states’ primaries on March 4th. And in a first, the Flash-powered “sliding billboard” ads include video segments.
The sites selected include those run by local television and radio broadcasters and newspaper publishers, such as the Akron Beacon Journal’s Ohio.com (screenshot above). Clicking on a link from the Ohio ad brought me to a page that also features a video of Obama asking voters to see if they can vote ahead of election day on Tuesday.
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