Last Man on the Internet: The Sitdotcom

Sometimes I feel like my grandma on the Internet, the last to know anything and stunned by something like blinking banner ads.

I feel extra stupid for only now becoming aware of the sitdotcom, which as you can see there has it's own del.icio.us tag. (To give you an idea of how grandma I am on the Internet, I'm not even sure what del.icio.us does, except that it seems similar to Stumbleupon.)

Fortunately the term is new enough that Google thinks I misspelled listdotcom, but still. This is something that I should have known about, but I was only vaguely aware. I know about SuperDeluxe.com, Channel 101, and the various series bumping around the internet, but I wasn't aware that they had evolved to the level that they had.

Matt Kirsch, who I've also never heard of, has a pretty good primer on what they are and asks some good questions about where they might go. I came to his article after I Stumbled Upon its subject, Clark and Micheal, a dryly funny mockumentary style show in the mold of The Office about two young aspiring screenwriters that stars Michael Cera (George Micheal from Arrested Development) and his friend Clark Duke (from the upcoming Superbad.)

It might be obvious why I dig that show, and that means I fall into a category that Kirsch suggests, being someone who is interested in the media-or in this case specifically someone who works with another writer aspiring to be screenwriters.

But let me explain why it's so brilliantly funny, even though it still won't prove Kircsh wrong in any way.

The characters are all high ambition. The first episode has them showing up at a studio gate trying to sell the script to Ted Turner himself. They do manage a meeting with a head from an ABC Family clone channel (played by another Arrested Development alum).

Thing is, I know these guys. In fact, fear of actually being these guys has been a bit of a shackle around me and Sous Rature's ankles since the beginning. I've talked to former classmates about their ambitions, what they're working on, and it's not shorts, or crew positions. Well, not the ones who are working, anyway. They're working on pitching their own TV shows, and I shit you not, trying to start their own channels. When you look at the resources that they bring to such endeavors, the Rocket to Mars starts to become insignificant to explain the gap between ambition and ability to execute.

But how different are they from me? I no more know how to raise the money for my short than I know what to do with it once it's filmed. If I'm going to have an unachievable dream, why not have a fantastic one? Certainly, shorts get made every day, hell five a week are made on FOX's On the Lot) and even Paramount couldn't successfully mount a whole new channel. Maybe they've been talking about these new internet channels and I was just too much of a Luddite to know. Somehow, I doubt it.

But watching Clark and Michael go through their downs and downs, it's like watching a baby eat and re-eat a lemon and knowing exactly how that goes. Sort of a 'there but for the grace of god' type thing.

But even without that, it's a pretty funny show. So watch it. Eventually, after I've watched a few more of these things, I might have something more interesting to say about them.