“I don’t know why it makes me mad, two years ago it would have been my alcoholism, but now it’s that bright red shit,” Asterios jokes about the millions of peacock colored Myspace pages that require users to highlight text to read them and are packed with blinking pictures. Asterios along with Geoffrey are the brains behind the Mario Myspace parodies that have been virally hitting the web. We previously showed their first video and now we’re going to show their second in this episode of Spotlight.
Asterios and Geoffrey have a background in sketch comedy. Both of them are part of Overtime Comedy, a comedy troupe that has local shows in Los Angeles. Their group has a streak of five wins for improv comedy over at the Upright Citizens Brigade Theater on Franklin Ave in Hollywood. The duo took their talents online when they made their Myspace sketch using clips from the Super Mario Brothers Super Show. In the story Luigi complains about having to add Toad’s band to his friend list, even though he isn’t friends with him. In the dubbed over cartoon Asterios voices Mario and Toad while Geoffrey does Luigi’s voice. The YouTube video was a surprise hit for the team with nearly 40,000 people who watched it. So they decided to follow their work up with a new cartoon and here it is.
How did this episode come about? “One night I drunk emailed Geoffrey, and told him that his Myspace page was uncool,” Asterios explains. “I told him that he had a top 16, which made him look indecisive about who his friends really were.” “My feeling is that any number of friends in your top friends is fine, as long as it doesn’t make the page look bad,” Geoffrey responds. “24 friends often stretches out your page in an ugly way, like that ugly toy, “Stretch Ug-strong." But hey, I’m not gonna judge. I stopped judging people a long time ago. Unlike my friend Asterios, who’s judging me right now.” The next time they met they decided this topic would be great for their follow up video. They dug up more Super Mario Brothers Super Show footage from a DVD, dubbed the voices and the rest is what you saw above.
On the social networking system Asterois says, “I love Myspace. I’m thinking of buying a house in MySpace, or changing my residency to, "Myspace". There’s no faster, more efficient way to let people know you don’t like them. You have so many options! You can refuse to put them in your top 8, even though they’ve put you in theirs. Or, if you’ve a top 16, you can make them the last person in the list – effectively worse than not being represented at all. You can reject their friend request outright, or not respond to their comments. Also you can cover your page in glitter, and it doesn’t get everywhere like with real glitter.” Sure he’s joking around, but he makes a point many people take Myspace way too seriously.
With a point to get across and some great source material Overtime Comedy struck gold. Best of all both of them are having fun in the process. “I really enjoy making these cartoons,” Geoffrey exclaims. “If you told me that I was going to be spending my time syncing mouths to a vocal track, I would tell you that I’d rather kill myself. For some reason, however, it’s a lot of fun.”
