Space Ghost Coast to Coast

     Space Ghost Coast to Coast works well as a snapshot in time. A comedy that started a genre, Space Ghost Coast to Coast relied on its editors and writers to craft an absurdist story in post. 

     After Ted Turner purchased the rights to the Hannah-Barbara collection he asked a young writer, Mike Lazzo, to make him a cartoon for adults. However, Lazzo could only use the materials provided to him, namely a collection of old cartoons. Lazzo took Space Ghost from the show Space Ghost and Dino Boy and repurposed almost all the animation to make Space Ghost host a talk show. 

Lazzo wanted a show "people would pause on" and Space Ghost was the absurd, sometimes anti-comedy, that he wanted. The interviews with real 90's celebrities were recorded and then taken completely out of context. The writers would craft the show completely in post, changing the questions and moving around answers until the interview barely made sense or made the celebrity look bad. All this surround edby a B plot of Space Ghost's employee's; former villains Brak, Zorack, and Moltar all actively despise Space Ghost. 

The show's influence is widespread. It's popularity was at the height of late night talk shows, with the Tonight show being past to either Letterman or Leno and Conan doing more alternative comedy on the Late show. Coast to Coast didn't really fit into traditional programming and thus paved the way for Cartoon Network's late night half Adult Swim. From there shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force and Harvey Birdman were born. Space Ghost is also a huge influence on The Eric Andre Show another surrealist late night show now on Adult Swim with live actors and comedians.

Lazzo himself has said he's done with Space Ghost Coast to Coast and is now an Executive VP at Adult Swim. But the show has lived on in the alternative comedy community for being such a creative idea that changed so much. Space Ghost was ahead of it's time in terms of content manipulation, especially for animation. While the show is not always clear and direct, it is always entertaining watching a giant generic superhero talk to celebrities who don't really know what's going on.

COMEDYBANGBANG

     Comedy Bang! Bang! is a tv show on IFC featuring some of the most well known comedians of tv. The show is a parody of a talk show, the set obviously not completed and the host is consistently a poor interviewer. The show focuses on surreal and outlandish humor, often altering reality. In many episodes the furniture talks to the host openly. The characters are over the top, the celebrity guests are caricatures of themselves, and the whole show is a whacky 22 minute ride.

     Comedy Bang! Bang! is the brainchild of former Mr. Show writer Scott Aukerman. The road to the show was a long one, Aukerman started running the show live in 2002 as Comedy Death Ray. A Comedy Death Ray podcast was started in 2009 and in 2011 the name was changed to Comedy Bang! Bang! 

The television show on IFC was spun off from the podcast in 2012, Aukerman bringing on comedian and one man band Reggie Watts to cohost. The show features a similar brand of comedy as the podcast but with a television twist.

The podcast is a celebrity playing themselves and a comedian playing a character. The entire show is improvised on the spot and Aukerman releases everything recorded.

Comedy Bang! Bang! works so well because it's so original. There's nothing before like this, the most similar thing is Mr. Show which was purely a sketch show. The combination of improv and sketch creates something that comedy has never done before. The sketch's are weird, the guests are weird, but that's what they need to surprise the audience. It's also incredibly impressive, that we see these comedians develop these characters on the spot.

     It should be noted, for those looking at the television business, that many comedians featured on the show and podcast are getting series of their own. The Kroll Show, Review, No You Shut Up!, The Birthday Boys, and even Parks and Recreation feature Bang! Bang! regulars and continue to be reviewed highly by critics. 

     Each episode promises something new and original. If you're bored with comedy today you shouldn't be, the comedy revival started at improv and is moving up to tv. Networks have figured out how to package these weird and niche markets and thus create incredibly creative content.

    Scoot Fluxerman is gathering a bunch of his funny friends in a tv studio and making something truly unseen on tv before.

The Good, The Bad, The Ugly

And so we end up back on campus for another year at Ithaca. I must say, I am very excited for this class. Even the six word exercise got me excited because it was something I never would have thought to try and do in order to accomplish the task of telling a story. I was very interested in this because it was so out of the box. So yes, I am very excited for this class.

Anyway, the title of this blog post is in reference to internships. There are good ones, bad ones, and then just the plain ugly ones. I'm sure you can figure out which ones are good and the others, well, not so much. But I'm going to tell you anyway how my summer went:

I start my summer really excited because I got an internship at the Jeremy Kyle Show in Manhattan. I had to say, I was the most excited I could be because it was my first internship in college as a production intern. I got there super early because I was so excited because I knew that I would be able to take something away from it and have a great experience. Well, let me tell you: I got an experience alright, but not exactly the one you are thinking of. I ended up pretty much becoming a slave. I had to build cabinets, chairs, paint rooms that were rarely used, go on runs, go on extra runs to get a receipt, etc. The list goes on but I'm not going to get too into detail. So like I said before, I ended up a slave. I got nothing out of this internship that I was able to use in the future, except for the fact that I had to make approximately 1000 phone calls over the course of 2 months. So I guess that may have helped with the being on the phone fear that I never had.

It was possibly one of the worst experiences I have ever had. The part that made me the most angry was that I saw posts on Facebook about all of my friends interning elsewhere talking about how great their internships were and how they got to work in the control room and how they got to work on the set and work with someone that actually worked there. Yeah, not me; I had to build cabinets and go all the way to the other side of Manhattan to go buy a lamp.

So I would think that it is obvious that all of my friends got "The Good" internships and I got "The Bad" AND "The Ugly."

Hopefully, if I'm lucky that is, I will be able to intern at a place that will actually let me experience something worth while and help me in the future.