Dot-com Sitcoms

Before the Saturday Night Live December 17th episode was half over, NBC's switchboard was flooded with calls hailing Chris Parnell and Andy Samberg's white-boy rap video "Lazy Sunday" as the show's best bit in years (the bar, of course, hasn't been set too high lately). By 5 a.m., an MP3 of this ode to cupcakes and Narnia was online, and soon video-sharing sites were hosting clips. Downloaded more than 3 million times, it was an Internet phenomenon.

It also pointed to a quiet revolution that is transforming comedy. The primary breeding ground for fledgling comic talent is no longer the stand-up circuit or network television but the Web. "The Internet takes power away from big companies," says Jimmy Kimmel. "You no longer have to send a bag of coke to execs to get your stuff played."

No one knows the power of the Web better than the team behind "Lazy Sunday," Samberg and his writing partners Jorma Taccone and Akiva Schaffer. The childhood friends have posted homemade videos on Channel 101 and their own site, thelonelyisland.com, for several years. "If you make videos in a traditional way, passing around a VHS, no one sees it," says Schaffer. "When we started our site, the dream was that there would actually be an audience somewhere." The site now draws 30,000 viewers a day.

With the Net, comedy's playing field has been leveled, and anyone with a digital camera and a broadband connection can break out - and superstars can let their freak flags fly, free of Hollywood interference. Who' ll be next to follow the Lonely Island guys into prime time? The following sites are a good place to look:

CHANNEL101.COM
Created by Rob Schrab and Dan Harmon in 2003, this alt-TV network of five-minute shows, programmed by voters at monthly live screenings, has become one of comedy's top hot spots, where agents regularly troll for the next big thing. As Sarah Silverman, star of one series, says, "It's like community theater, but on video and with the exceptionally talented." Every month, Schrab and Harmon receive up to forty "pilots" for wanna-be shows, the best of which go head-to-head at 101's Hollywood screenings, where the audience votes on which shows get canceled and which five get "picked up" by the site.

Star Power Schrab and Harmon, whose comedy rep rests on the most famous TV show to never air: Heat Vision and Jack, a pilot created in 1999, starring Jack Black as a hyperintelligent astronaut and Owen Wilson as the voice of his talking motorcycle. "When that didn't happen, Dan and Rob said, 'Fuck you, we'll make our own network, assholes!'" says Silverman. "And they did." Other established stars on 101 include Kimmel and Drew Carey.

Highlights Samberg, Taccone and Schaffer's The 'Bu, a deadpan eleven-episode satire of The O.C., in which the Mischa Barton character was alternately portrayed by Scrubs' Sarah Chalke and a crude puppet. "It ended up being a huge calling card for us," says Samberg. Also: Yacht Rock, a behind-the-music mockumentary sending up the golden age of Seventies smooth music with Kenny Loggins and Michael McDonald as heroic rebels and Michael Jackson as a skirt-chasing thug.

ICEBOX.COM
One of the oldest comedy sites around, Icebox was founded in 1999 at the height of the Internet bubble as a home for politically incorrect animation. After some wayward years as a pay-per-view service, it's back with a slate of slick, defiantly offensive cartoons.

Star Power A professional affair, Icebox recruited the best and the brightest: Site co-founders Howard Gordon and Jonathan Collier are executive producers of 24 and King of the Hill; other alumni have gone on to South Park and The Simpsons. "We give our talent the freedom to flex their creative muscles," says managing director Tal Vigderson.

Highlights Queer Duck, starring Jim J. Bullock as a duck who's "gay as a goose"; Mr. Wong, a racist, misogynist geriatric Chinese butler who makes Mickey Rooney in Breakfast at Tiffany's look progressive.

EBAUMSWORLD.COM
Logging more than a million hits per day, Ebaum's World is a clearinghouse for online comedy, with user-submitted videos, jokes and soundboards featuring the best lines from Napoleon Dynamite and The Big Lebowski. A new section hosts clips of up-and-coming stand-up comics.

Star Power Twenty-six-year-old Eric Bauman launched the site as a teenager in 1997. "One of the keys to our success is the site's underground look," says Bauman. "People know they're going to get quality. Unlike, say, Comedy Central, we don't have to censor ourselves."

Highlights Comedians like Mad TV's Aries Spears and Christian Finnegan, best known to comedy fans as the hapless white dude on Chappelle's Show's "Mad Real World" ; Trey Parker and Matt Stone's animated short "Princess," featuring pets, porno and a very gory blow job -- a bit much even for South Park fans. In other words, perfect for the Internet.