I’m excited to announce that my former writing partner, Luke Del Tredici and I are giving the online world a glimpse at a cult-hit comedy project we put together five years ago.
In 2006, we created a full 30-page fake copy of the “Learning Annex” course catalog, a parody that poked fun at the naive and smarmy “Yes You Can! If You Pay Us Enough” attitude of the real thing. We used it as a comedy writing sample, and it unexpectedly caught fire around Hollywood. For the past few years, we’ve heard that heavily-fingered copies of our fake Learning Annex had made its way into sitcom writers’ rooms and network executives’ bathrooms.
Today, we’re excited to share this bathroom-reading with the world! We’re rolling out an online version of the course catalog at theteachingannex.com, (a little name change to avoid legalities) and tweeting @teachingannex.
Three years ago, my friend and go-to comedy compatriot, Kit Pongetti and I shot a short film called Trendsetters. I played a con man, and Kit played my assistant, and it was the first time we explored a comedy dynamic — repressed boss and his eager-to-please secretary — that we’ve been playing around with ever since.
Today, I’m excited to roll out a follow-up project with a similar dynamic: Nothing Ventured. This 3-part web series puts us in familiar roles: me as a wealthy internet pioneer (and former ice cream parlor owner), and Kit as a job applicant for an assistant position.
I’ve been meaning to become a blog guy, a guy who tweets apropos timelies about the world around him, for a year now. I think I found a platform that’ll make it idiot-proof enough for me to do this with some kind of regularity. Only time will tell. Thanks to anybody who takes a look at the site. I’d love to hear comments. Getting a line of communication going with the outside world (especially people watching or reading my stuff) is one of the big draws toward jumping into the blogosphere — a word I plan to use a lot in coming months.
