AllThingsD » Andy Samberg

Still Looking for Gift Ideas? Wal-Mart Recommends a Box for Men.

Tricia Duryee — Wed, 21 Dec 2011 19:27:18 +0000

Still don’t know what to get your loved one for the holidays?

Well, you better decide fast. For many sites, today is the final day that orders can be placed to get guaranteed delivery by Christmas.

If you are having a hard time coming up with ideas, there are plenty of Facebook applications that will offer recommendations based on a gift recipient’s interests.

Late last month, Wal-Mart launched an application called Shopycat, which does just that.

To be helpful, I got a list of Shopycat’s 20 most-recommended gifts. At the very top of the list was an unexpected item called a “personalized keepsake box” for men. The box, which costs $24.76, is designed to hold a man’s watch, jewelry, money clip and/or other items.

It’s not clear what a person’s interests would have been for this to surface at the top of so many lists (maybe the popularity of the holiday-themed Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg music video “Dick in a Box” had something to do with it?) After all, many of the other items on the list are clearly based on someone’s favorite TV shows, movies or videogames. For instance, other fun items that made the list were action figures for “The Big Lebowski,” an Angry Birds beanie and “Star Wars” bathrobes.

As for the man box, it is sold out, so clearly some people agreed with Wal-Mart that it made for a good gift.

Not all of the items are recommendations for items sold on the Wal-Mart site. It also refers shoppers to other sites, such as ThinkGeek.com, Barnes & Noble, CBSstore.com and RedEnvelope.

Wal-Mart did not say how many people have used the app since it went live last month, but given that Wal-Mart has 11 million Facebook fans, it could represent big numbers.

Here is the entire list of most-recommended gifts for 2011:

Viral Video: "3-Way (The Golden Rule)"

Kara Swisher — Mon, 23 May 2011 07:15:48 +0000

The cycle is now complete, with this very funny final video check-in on Justin Timberlake and Andy Samberg, a Saturday Night Live Digital Short titled “3-Way (The Golden Rule).”

The first of these was the classic, “Dick in a Box,” followed by “Motherlover.” And now it has come to this, complete with Lady Gaga, natch.

Enjoy:

Seeing Triple Zuckerbergs (Including the Real One) on SNL

Liz Gannes — Sun, 30 Jan 2011 05:56:03 +0000

Good thing Mark Zuckerberg’s got that whole other career going, ’cause he can’t hold a straight face for a millisecond.

What he can successfully do is go on “Saturday Night Live” and be a good sport, appearing alongside two men who have played and parodied him: “The Social Network” actor Jesse Eisenberg and SNL’s Andy Samberg. Here’s the clip from tonight’s show:

Without Aaron Sorkin writing his dialogue, the real Zuckerberg is lacking in zingers. His review of “The Social Network”: “It was… interesting.”

“That guy’s like my evil twin and that’s just Andy Samberg,” Zuckerberg tells SNL creator Lorne Michaels while being mock-sequestered backstage. “Those guys are such nerds….C’mon, I invented poking.”

Meanwhile, Eisenberg admits, for all the sticklers in the room (and one of them in particular), “I wasn’t really ‘doing’ Mark Zuckerberg; I was interpreting a fictional character in a movie script.”

Please see the disclosure about Facebook in my ethics statement.

Remember When NBC Didn't Want You to Watch "Lazy Sunday" on the Web?

Peter Kafka — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 16:06:19 +0000

Speaking of YouTube…

Remember when NBC was befuddled by the success of “Lazy Sunday” on YouTube, and tried to pull down the first viral hit?

Eons ago, in Internet time. Since then–the original “Saturday Night Live” clip ran in December 2005–Google (GOOG) purchased YouTube for $1.6 billion, a host of would-be YouTubes rounded up venture money (and then ran through it), and the broadcast networks assembled Hulu in an attempt to create their own YouTube.

And now, of course, every TV program goes out of its way to create viral clips. Or at least, try to create viral clips. As NBC’s “Late Night With Jimmy Fallon” did last night when it got Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg to reprise “Lazy Sunday” live.

Give the duo credit for doing more than just dragging out the old chestnut–they at least got The Roots, Fallon’s awesome house band, to create a new medley based on classic hip-hop. But the original still works just fine for me.

Bonus clip: Some old-timey hip-hop backed by a live band that still holds up some two decades (!) later.

Almost Famous: Michael Gregory of Auto-Tune the News

Drake Martinet — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 07:25:19 +0000

A feature wherein All Things Digital looks at up-and-coming and innovative start-ups you should know about.

This week: We went all the way to Brooklyn to visit with, ask some questions of and gather a few pertinent stats about Michael Gregory and Auto-Tune the News, the viral video series featuring mainstream news personalities and hip-hop style singing.

Who: Michael Gregory

What: VP of Counter Melodies, Gregory Residence Productions

Why: In April 2009, the Gregory brothers began producing Auto-Tune the News, a musical satire of news programming using the ubiquitous Auto-Tune production software that enables spoken words to sound like singing (among other things). Every Auto-tune the News episode (nine so far) has gone viral, logging nearly 12 million views overall.

Where: thegregorybrothers.com (Web site); Brooklyn, NY (analog place).

Who else: Anyone with a Flip cam, a family of musical production wonks and 100 man-hours per episode.

Five Stats You Won’t Find in His Facebook Profile

Worst Job: I moved furniture for a while. I got a little too excited and strained my back.

Has a Geek Crush on: Charlie Chaplin. He was an actor, he was technically proficient–he could do everything. And Groucho Marx. He was the Picasso of 20th-century comedy.

Gadget of the Moment: I think we may need to get ourselves a new camera this year. [But] we don’t want to improve production value too much, you know, and get people’s hopes up.

Wishes There Was an App For: One that turns your phone into a Taser. Not that I’ve ever been physically harmed or anything. I just think it would be cool.

Spoiler Alert: The next Auto-Tune the News will be more rock-oriented and has something to do with turtles. We can’t say more.

A Taste of Auto-Tune the News

Bio in 140 Characters

Born & raised in Appalachia. Moved w/brothers to Brooklyn. Worked days in a recording studio, nights playing w/Auto-Tune. Went viral.

The Five Questions

Give me the step-by-step. How do you Auto-Tune the News?

Sometimes, it just kinda comes together. Normally, we start with the audio track that comes first. We kinda start with the hook and then lay down some kinda creepy arpeggio-sounding things, then lay down a sweet baseline.

It’s usually three or four stories news. Sometimes we’ll just see stories that we know are it. This last one, number 10, I probably watched the most news. Sometimes it’s because the story is boring, but sometimes it’s interesting, but the speaker is boring. It gets easier once you find your heavy hitters [news people who sound good auto-tuned].

What is your secret to making videos that are reliably viral?

I think it’s half crapshoot, half, uh…not crapshoot. No one is an island on the Internet; I’ve heard that said somewhere, maybe by Confucius. The perfect keywords for a viral hit these days are probably something like New Moon-Lady Gaga-Parody-Kanye. Something like that. Put those in all caps in your title and you’ll have a viral hit. Oh, and I forgot, cute cats.

Seriously, if you have things that are already popular in your video, it helps for sure. That’s why our “Charlie Bit Me” video [referring to the viral video of cute British kids] is probably our most viral to date. It took two already popular memes, the “Kanye interruption” [from this year's MTV Video Music Awards] and the “Charlie Bit Me” and remixed them in a style that is currently a meme. It created this, like, infinite feedback loop.

Early on, the strategy was releasing stuff parodying the [presidential] debates on the debate YouTube channel. I hate to admit it, but we used that really stupid but necessary formula of releasing something right after an event ended and titling it, “Kanye-Tiger Woods-Lady Gaga-Kittens.” I didn’t title it in all caps if that makes you feel better about me.

How has YouTube changed the world?

Well, in comedy at least, back in the vaudeville days, it was easy to steal from everyone and just use the material and not get in trouble. Back in those days, people weren’t taping your every move and saying, like, “Oh, you stole that from Sammy the ventriloquist.” Now, YouTube is sort of the new vaudeville. People can watch and say, “Oh, you’re stealing that from Steve Carell, and that’s from Andy Samberg, and that’s from Tina Fey.”

How has this turned into a viable business?

So right now, the brothers and me have left other jobs to do this full time. We’re trying to be smart businesswise, which has always been hard for me. I’ve been doing other [production] stuff…freelancing. But I was also doing stuff like tutoring SATs. We get lots of inquiries that we can’t realistically do, like: “Auto-Tune our business conference.” People don’t really understand how much effort it is. We did a video for the Webbies, and we did something for Sony (SNE). Those bring in the bread.

Internet fame is a fickle temptress. What will you do if and when Auto-Tune the News loses popularity?

I think I would just to succumb to my heroin addiction. You know, curl up in a ball and cry–just get it over with. Memes certainly have a beginning and an end. I think the fad will certainly end, but I think what has been created is a new category of what some people call art and some people call a joke. I think it’s possible that, in 20 years, people will still be doing the Auto-Tune joke. It will just be, like, “Meghan McCain sings the debate with Malia Obama.”

The In Living Color Interview

[ See post to watch video ]

Not Coming to Hulu: Last Week's "Saturday Night Live" Highlight*

Peter Kafka — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:36:00 +0000

I didn’t see “Saturday Night Live” last week, but NewTeeVee informs me that there was one highlight: Former “Doogie Howser, M.D.” star Neil Patrick Harris and a cast of of dozens performing the theme song to “Doogie Howser, M.D.”

So why didn’t I embed a clip of the sketch from NBC.com or Hulu, the joint venture between GE’s (GE) NBC and News Corp.’s (NWS) Fox? Because NBC didn’t have permission from whoever actually owns the rights to the theme song, NBC confirms. (News Corp is the owner of Dow Jones and this Web site.)

Bummer! Especially since the clip was one of the show’s “Digital Shorts,” which are designed to be viewed on the Web, à la “Lazy Sunday.”

You can still find versions of it on Google’s (GOOG) YouTube, though NBC’s lawyers are busy hunting them down–don’t be surprised if the following clip doesn’t work by the time you get to it:

If you can’t see it, don’t despair: These music clearance issues have tripped up “Saturday Night Live”/NBC before, and the clip in question–Andy Samberg and the dude from Maroon 5 doing “Iran So Far”–eventually made it back on the official Web.* (Another reason not to despair, at least in my humble opinion: The Doogie clip isn’t going to make you laugh outloud, anyway.)

The bigger point: Even when TV/Hollywood “get it,” they still can’t always serve up their best stuff to Web viewers because copyright laws and digital distribution still don’t synch up.

And much more often, the people who make TV shows and movies aren’t interested in serving that stuff up–legally, for free–anyway. Hulu was only able to show one full episode of “Mad Men,” AMC’s much discussed but little watched show about advertising. And it’s only going to be able to show “It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia,” a cult sitcom from FX that owes some of its success to the video site, for a few more weeks.

So maybe that’s a cautionary tale for companies like Boxee that envision a future where you get all your TV shows and movies from the Web with the support of the TV networks and Hollywood. Or more likely, a cautionary tale for TV and Hollywood, which still aren’t ready to let their customers watch their stuff when and where they want to see it.

[UPDATE: As I'd hoped, NBC legal worked it out. See below]

Finally, Original Online Video Done Right: Andy Samberg's Lonely Island and "The Guild"

Kara Swisher — Wed, 17 Dec 2008 13:30:44 +0000

This week, “Saturday Night Live” comic and spoof video impresario Andy Samberg got some ink, because another one of his groin-focused rappish music videos–this one called “J**z in My Pants”–was racking up 6.7 million views on YouTube.

This, despite the fact that his work is supposed to mostly be on GE (GE) entertainment unit NBC Universal’s site (it owns SNL) and also the NBC-owned Hulu video site. But it is garnering fewer views in those spots, which is why Samberg’s production company–The Lonely Island–loaded it and more right up onto powerhouse YouTube.

But while “My Pants” is very funny in that overgrown teenaged boy sort of way that a lot of Samberg’s videos are, BoomTown is much more intrigued by the short episodic online comedy videos he is making with his longtime partners Akiva Schaffer and Jorma Taccone (the trio is pictured here).

Their efforts are one of the few times that I have seen professional entertainment folks truly understand the Internet medium and create new and interesting pieces of content for it.

While their work seems to be done cheaply and is definitely raw, there is no skimping on true talent and creativity here or its perfect online pacing.

There is a growing number of these kinds of examples out there, such as “The Guild,” sponsored by Microsoft (MSFT), which follows a group of dysfunctional gamers.

“The Guild” appears on Xbox Live, as well as on the Web. And it is headed for its second season–after getting nine million Web views for its first season.

So, it is indeed heartening to see that there can be a new format for original programming for the Web, well beyond short one-offs and badly repurposed television-like fare.

Here’s the first episode of Lonely Island’s delicious spoof of a TV soap like “Melrose Place,” which is called “The ‘Bu.”

It is described on the site as about: “Young, sexy people that live in Malibu call it The ‘Bu, because when you say the entire word, it takes time, and then you wouldn’t be young anymore.”

And below it is a holiday song from “The Guild,” which should give you a good idea of its infectiousness and involving intimacy with the quirky characters. (The quick shot of the dog in a Santa hat at the end is genius.)

The ‘Bu:

The Guild: