The Burg: The Only Online Sitcom
By Cathy Erway
As Jed, a balding, Buddy Holly-spectacled hipster who moved to the ‘Burg “before you” knows, the fine line between what’s “cool, ironic . . . funny because it’s not” and just “not” is a constantly changing, vaguely discernable one. Therefore, he’s always on the fence about the tastes of his new roommate Ryan, a gung-ho stockbroker fresh off the boat from Hoboken. As he deepens the permanent wrinkles of his scowl at Ryan’s girlie posters and hides in his own version of online porn, the Suicide Girls, Jed has to wrestle back the demons which point to the reality that we’re all—gasp—somewhat alike. That is, as long as you don’t drink cosmos.
Such are the dilemmas of the five twenty-something characters on the only online-only sitcom of its kind, “The Burg.” Currently airing its first season on theburg.tv, the show satirizes the common episodic television comedy. Its schedule roughly follows a new full- length (15 minute) episode every other Friday, and short episodes in between. With a different local band for the soundtrack of each episode, and interactive features like a MySpace profile for each of the characters, “The Burg,” as one might guess, captures the changing landscape and characters of modern-day Williamsburg, Brooklyn. It would be interesting to see how James Joyce might have documented his love/hate relationship with Dublin and the fictional characters of it had he been plugged into the Internet. Then again, we’ll take our sitcom in stride.
You’d think a show poking fun at kids who live in Williamsburg wouldn’t quite go over too well among kids who live in Williamsburg. Some commentators on the show’s blog have voiced concern for “The Burg”’s falling prey to its own irony (that is, becoming unforgivably “not”). Others cite objection to touchy topics on gentrification overall, but where there’s live blogs involved, according to one commentator, “Anyone with an opinion gets to voice their two cents in public.” So far, the creators of “The Burg” aren’t worried. The first season carries its own with the help of meticulous writing, dead-on comedic acting, and subtle Saved by the Bell-inspired editing flairs. What also helps is the fact that the creators are very conscious of their viewers’ opinions, unlike the writers in Zach and Screech’s days, and read pretty much every comment.
“It’s one of the advantages of going online,” co-creator and producer Kathleen Grace explains.
“I think many theater people in the city have turned to the Internet for a lot of reasons,” actor and writer Matt Yeager adds.
Coming from a background in New York City street theater directing, Grace relates to the free, open-to-the-public arena of online TV. The cast and crew of “The Burg” carry a mix of theater, film, TV, and music performing experience under their belt. Grace decided she was going to make a sitcom for the Internet about a year ago, after watching some short comedy videos online. Matt Yeager’s video was one of them, and she eventually began collaborating with him and co-creator and director/writer Thom Woodley on a series.
“I was interested in episodic drama because of how the characters change, like in Friends, how Joey got dumber and dumber, because that’s what people wanted to see,” Grace says. “And also working with actors, seeing how they evolve and become better at what they do.”
So who will we get to see change? Money’s on the stock broker Ryan (played by Jeff Skowron), whose preppy naïveté has been in jeopardy since day one. Yeager’s character Xander, a trust fund hipster trying to you know, make documentaries and that kind of stuff, is perhaps the number one candidate for falling into the dumb set. Bob McClure’s Jed, a real purist, looks the most likely to kick your pants at Ms. Pac Man while never growing up. Then there’s the Midwestern aspiring actress Courtney (Kelly Giddish), and the obnoxiously hostile activist Spring (Lindsey Broad), who together seem to represent flip sides of any given coin found on Bedford Avenue.
The show aims to chronicle the ever-changing economics and atmosphere of the ‘Burg as they enter the next season at the end of this winter. They look forward to featuring more local musical acts like Takka Takka, Cavalier King, and Rogers Sisters, as well as locations such as McCarren Pool. Shooting on weekends to accommodate the weekly jobs of all those involved in the project, though, is enough to take on for the time being. Grace is able to maintain her creative distance by living in Harlem, but only because she’s priced out of the ‘Burg. In fact, only four of the ten or so core cast and crew currently reside in the neighborhood, but that’s beside the point—none are actual trust fund babies.
What is relevant is that for such a self-aware environment of rapid gentrification, we rarely see some smart, sincere projects made in and about Williamsburg that try and succeed in being cool, ironic, and most of all funny.
Likewise, Spring declares of a small growth of weeds in a short episode titled “Park”: “The ratio of concrete to nature is so skewed here that a patch of grass this size is proportionally equivalent to a park!” So why not have a picnic?
Check out “The Burg” at: www.theburg.tv
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Madrid in Brooklyn
“Echo” Dam Stuhltrager Gallery
It’s a good concept—take a few artists from Spain, and give them space in a Brooklyn gallery. The following month, take a few artists from Brooklyn, and expose them to an audience in Madrid. Make the equation even better that the project is sponsored and partially funded by the Spanish government. It’s a worthwhile use of public money, undoubtedly a huge undertaking, and there’s the welcome element of cross-cultural exchange. An impressive feat.
In the exhibition the artists from Madrid were asked to refrain from submitting paintings. The curators felt that Spanish art had a long history of being associated with the form, and sought to exhibit more modern expressions from Spain. (Conversely, all the Brooklyn artists in Madrid next month will be showing paintings.) The front area of the gallery featured an installation by Esther Manas and Arash Moori, of twin turntables, crisscrossed with black, green, and yellow tape, the addition of which provided the rasping noises emitting from speakers when the needles traveled over the surfaces. The stripes of tape also adorned the walls and floor surrounding the turntables.
Next up was a series of mirrors affixed to the wall, in all shapes and sizes, some covered in wads of chewed-up gum. Further back sat a jar of un-chewed gum, and an exhortation from the artist, Rafael de Diego, to take some gum and “Chew it. Chew it, and chew it.” and then place it on a mirror.
The middle room contained two pieces by Javier Vivier. A projection of Katharine Hepburn’s image was halved and then fused together on a loop, her face turning away and in onto itself, so that it was never quite visible. Beside that was a photograph of Marilyn Monroe, again bisected, so that two halves of the same side of her face formed a new one, conveying nothing so much as the fact that she was, biologically speaking, almost perfectly symmetrical. Also featured was an extremely brief loop of Ruben Ramos Balsa’s Self-Portrait as a Mime By a Traveling Sunflower, which showed a surprised looking young man, painted mouth agog, staring directly into the jittery eye of the camera, which had been hooked up to a flower.
Yolanda del Amo’s two photographs are the high point in the show, exuding an understated melancholy. One appeared to be of an empty Chinese restaurant, with somewhat haphazard Valentine’s Day decorations on the wall. The other is of a man sitting in front of a table with a portable television. Although he is less than a foot from the screen, he holds a remote control, alone in the room.
Given the gallery’s location, it would be easy to chalk the overall feeling up to trendy Williamsburg fatuousness, but the show did not consist of Williamsburg artists, and the it’s not only the art associated with the area that’s given over to this type of affectation. Sometimes shows seem more of a public relations and confidence game, and less a measure of true, timeless talent.
Check out more at:
www.damstuhltrager.com
www.swapproject.com
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Killing Machines at McCaig-Welles
By David Cohn
It was an eerie scene at McCaig-Welles Gallery on September 9th. On the walls were 666 paintings of robots disemboweling themselves and each other, leaving little robot pieces strewed about the canvas.
It was the gallery's third showing of Nicholas Kuszyk, a Virginia-born artist who uses robots for inspiration to study human nature and classical art composition. For two months Kuszyk lived in isolation on an 80-acre vineyard in Luray, Virginai, to complete the 666 paintings.
The finished works mimic the compositions of classical artists like Goya and Paul Rubens or are obvious takes on Egyptian wall art and Greek statues like the Venus De Milo.
"It started seven years ago using [robots] as a vehicle to convey certain things," said Kuszyk, "but it's not about robots. I like making inexpensive art that people can put on their walls, I don't think about it too much," he confessed.
If robots aren't the subject matter of the paintings, as Kuszyk claims, they certainly are the form that his art takes. All of the paintings have whimsical black and silver robots that resemble Bender from Futurama, featured against bright colorful backgrounds. Although initially playful and intriguing, most of the paintings have a violent undertone, with robots tearing each other apart one metallic piece at a time. His paintings dance across the delicate line of dreary and inviting, similar to the aesthetic of Tim Burton's “A Nightmare Before Christmas.” It's a strange combination of Dr. Suess and Hieronymous Bosch.
Jonathan Kinsley, an architect who was drawn into the showing, bought one of the few paintings that didn't have a foreboding tone. "I didn't think I'd want to have something distressing on my wall and a lot of these have something distressing about them," said Kinsley. Although the battered robots are enough to cause bad dreams, Kinsley was struck by Kuszyk's wide imagination and use of color in the paintings.
Others read into the robots as small analogies for the human condition. "They are the embodiment of modern life, we are all mechanical these days and these express so much, they are like little people," said Liane Nikitovich, a long-time fan of Kuszyk's robot paintings.
Because of their size, quantity and the fact that most of his paintings are made from recycled wood and paint, it's not uncommon for a raggedy hipster to walk into one of Kuszyk's showings and leave with a painting for as little as $30. Part of the appeal of these little robot paintings is that you can almost picture them in your bathroom, distracting you during intimate moments of bowel trouble, and their price tag doesn't hinder that fantasy.
Mid-way through the showing a dozen Critical Mass bikers showed up to see if there was anything that would strike their fancy. "Who doesn't like robots?" said Ryan Kuonen. "His openings are so cool, cause you can come see art you like and you can buy it too," she continued.
Whatever isn't sold at McCraig-Welles will be shipped to Kuszyk's next show at the Blue Bottle Gallery in Seattle. After two months of intense solitude, perhaps a large influence on the dark nature of the robots, Kuszyk said he doesn't want to draw another robot for the next five months. Having grown a long sea-captain beard, Kuszyk's next plan is to move to Los Feliz, the Williamsburg of Los Angeles, where he will work on a book entitled "R Robot Saves Lunch."
