Here’s a golden chestnut from the Rock TV vault - a promo for a Rock barn dance from 2000:

This video pre-dates my involvement in Rock TV, but it was always one of my favorites. I remember particularly enjoying the pumpkins arbitrarily setting on fire after they’ve been run over.

For those of you wondering, regular posting will resume next week!

Nourish yourselves, my children, on the thick, sweet milk of this new Rock TV:

A few years back, Rock TV did a video called The Viewmaster, a collection of short sketches that didn’t really turn out as well as we’d hoped. For a long while, the talk within the ministry was that this was a fertile concept that we just failed to execute properly. This video is our attempt to correct that missed opportunity. I’m still not sure whether we were totally successful, but I do feel that we did a better job this time around.

The advantage to a video like this is that it gives us the opportunity to get silly and run with ideas that would otherwise be immediately dismissed. A great example of this is the “Mumsy” sketch. Kevin pitched this at a number of meetings, and I still can’t honestly believe that it ended up getting shot. In the end, though, it makes me laugh more than probably anything else in the video.

I’d also like to note that the running gag of Todd and I explaining pre-1995 pop culture to Jordan comes right out of a number of conversations we’ve had with him. This video became a fun way of playing with those real-life discussions.

Some other bits I enjoy:
-Todd’s hinted-at depression surrounding Ms. Pac-Man, which was an ad-lib.
-The rapture insurance bit is a really solid concept and features footage of my cats, which is probably my wife’s favorite part of the video.
-The ambiance in the antique shop during the headband sketch is great. Kudos to Ted for the Sean Connery voice he used for some reason.

Enjoy!

P.S. Sorry about that ending. We didn’t really know where to go with it.

About a year ago, Rock TV finished a video called America’s Next Top Pastor. As our videos go, it was a decently successful satire on some of the issues in the American church today, particularly regarding people’s expectations of their pastors - that they be “cool”, relevant, funny, and cuddly, but never challenging or willing to discuss unpopular issues. It also featured Beaker.

The video was posted on YouTube when it first came out, and over the last year, it managed to collect just over 12,000 views and become the most watched Rock TV ever. Unbelieveably, the video was featured on the front page of YouTube yesterday, and has been viewed over 100,000 times in the last 24 hours. That is completely nuts.

The most interesting facet of this recent spotlight is the comments the video has garnered - a mix of positive and negative. Generally speaking, the positive feedback seems to have come from Christians (which makes sense, given that the satire would only really hit home with somebody familiar with today’s Christian landscape). Much more amusing are the negative comments, a few of which I am happy to share with you now:

ducktill writes:
I didnt laugh once , how come?

I don’t know, ducktill. Did your cat get run over recently?

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oXxBENNYxX0 writes:
Be very care folks !!
joking about Gods stuff/PPL is like playing with a mad viper !!
trust benny !!
and ya NEVER really know ,Sometimes who IS real/Really Gods !

Eloquently stated, sir. I shall indeed trust Benny in the future, because ya never really know who IS real/Really Gods, whatever the hell that means…

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AznElf1 writes:
Boo, this is completely painting another view on us. Is this what America has gone to? I think so.

I can’t make heads or tails of this. Who is “us”? What view have we painted on them? Why is an Asian Elf watching Rock TVs?

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TJZA1986 writes:
what a sh*t. My time was wasted watching this.
you clearly don’t have anything good to be done out of your meaningless lives.

Excellent point, and quality insight. Hopefully my honorable suicide can still set things right.

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koreaboi6 writes:
i found this very offensive…as i’m sure many other people did
some of it sounded like a weak imitation of dane cook to me. anyway, they didn’t have to involve pastors and christianity. pastors really have a rough time in the increasingly secular world today. i find comedy that doesnt aim for a larger audience and that offenses a large population very inefficient

Thanks for paying attention to the video, koreaboi.

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And finally, supershroom164 writes:
no wonder America is sucking so much.
America wastes money on stupid offensive productions that arnt even funny.

This video cost our ministry about $60 to make - it was spent constructing the Beaker puppet. Apparently this money tipped the scales toward our nation’s cultural demise. On behalf of Rock TV, I would like to apologize to supershroom and the world.

Relax, my friends, in the inviting softness of a new Rock TV - The Dealbreaker List.

We’ve had a lot of fun in the past riffing on themes of Christian dating, and this time we wanted to look at things from a decidedly female perspective, and from the hindsight of marriage (as a number of the writing team members are married these days). It’s great to be at a place in the ministry where we have enough women actors to even do a video like this.

A few thoughts:

-The bit with Jim driving the truck made us laugh harder than anything during editing. This is the kind of thing that is constantly pitched at writing meetings and rarely makes its way to the screen (normally for good reason).

-Yes, Leroy really did stick his tongue in the fan. We actually destroyed the first fan we tried to use by trying to stop the blades with a pencil (that footage will probably end up in an outtakes video down the road). After that, Leroy volunteered to just use his tongue.

-My favorite moment in the video is Jordan’s line delivery when he says, “Hey, I’m Johnny Bowflex.” There’s just something unsettlingly intimate about it that makes me laugh.

-The sweetness of the ending was something we really came to appreciate about the video in the editing stage - it’s something different for us. I think that Rachel’s great reaction shots to Kevin have a lot to do with the tone that comes across.

Enjoy!

Here’s an odd little morsel for you on my normal day off - an old Rock TV!

This is from 1999, way before my time in the ministry. I don’t have a lot to say about it, but I’d like to note a few things:

-What I find interesting about this video is its lack of outright jokes, and I mean that as a compliment. The whole thing is like a tone-gag, where they keep straight faced and buttoned-down about an idiotic song and terrible recording.

-The pre-production for this video involved Jeromy Darling (one of the founders of Rock TV) writing this boy band style song - “I Can See It In Your Eyes” - and recording it with the other guys. Kudos on the work - I think the song is great, and funny in a subtle way.

-Why is Leroy bald in this video? I have no idea, but God bless him anyway.

-Years later, Kevin Sawyer came across an a capella group online (don’t ask) that had covered the song and changed the lyrics without permission. Their changes altered the song’s content to PG-13 status, which I found puzzling, and apparently Jeromy wasn’t pleased with their unsolicited contribution.

-This Pop-Up version of the video was put together about a year after the original music video was completed and got a great reception at the Rock (it was literally received better than any Rock TV of the last 7 years). I believe it was done to allow Ryan Pickett and Todd Luker to passive-aggressively make fun of the actors in the ministry.

Enjoy!

Suprise! Here is a new Rock TV for you! Suckle upon it and recieve precious comedy nutrients!

This wasn’t really intended to be a Rock TV at all. Instead, this bit was written as a scene in an upcoming Rock TV called The Dealbreaker List, which will come out sometime in the next few weeks. However, when we started shooting, it was clear that the ideas were flowing. I remember noting that we shot 23 minutes of video for what was supposed to be a 20-30 second gag.

Once we reached the editing stage, the decision was made to excise this bit from The Dealbreaker List video and release it as a stand-alone Rock TV. All credit for the humor in this video needs to go to Leroy, who (without speaking a word) completely sells it. It’s probably as low-concept as we get, but that’s the appeal of it.

And for the record, he spit out maybe 2 or 3 of those brownies, but ate the rest of them.