It seems that the The New York Times agrees with us that the old paths to comedy opportunities are being increasingly abandoned in favor of that zippy and irresistible internet thing: "For comedians who aspire to break into television, it’s no longer necessary to spend years cracking one-liners at stand-up clubs in hopes of landing an HBO special or a sidekick role on a network sitcom. With clever material, an act that mixes live skits and multimedia, and, especially, some savvy use of the Internet, members of a young comedy troupe can suddenly find themselves starring in their own cable series."

The Bastion's recent conversation with Maria Bamford about her phat and creatively flexible deal with Super Deluxe, as well as Chicago examples of online self-promotion (i.e. Blerds) turning into more and more IRL opportunities has us thinking about this even more.

We've been talking with Jon DeWalt of Chicago's ThoseGuysFilms.com, who are also taking maximum advantage of the viral video phenomenon and are putting out original content as frequently as possible. According to Jon, "We have a ton of online outlets. It isn't like in ye olde times in the days of The Lonely Island (three years ago) anymore where your website was it, and everyone flocked to see if you have a new video out. Now there are so many video websites that the playing field and viewing population is really divided. So we try to get to as many as we can - we are on Super Deluxe and Funny or Die - these are the two video-sites I most enjoy being a part of and we have gotten the most views from. We are also on MySpace which is good for fan feedback, and average for views, and we are also on iFilm and YouTube which have not gotten us a lot of views at all. AOL featured one of our shorts, 'L'attraction,' off of iFilm and it got a lot of hits from that, but otherwise iFilm hasn't brought us anything. YouTube is tough because if you get one popular video you will be set on fire, but that is not likely because every douchebag in the world is uploading his drinking videos and every confused twenty year old girl is uploading her bikini dancing videos and it's like okay, where is the real comedy? That's why we like Super Deluxe and Funny or Die - it focuses the audience."

Jon went on to explain: "We get some pretty good traffic, we have been in some magazines and featured on Super Deluxe and AOL and some other things. Like I said it is weird because one video will get thousands of views in a day; like today we just uploaded 'Musical Makeover Montage' and it has over 2,700 hits in less than a day on Funny or Die - that same video and same amount of time on YouTube? Nine hits. But what I do like is that the overall sum of views and feedback and people who are enjoying our work gets a little bigger with each video, it has been snowballing for over two years now, and it keeps adding on slowly but surely. That is uplifting."

The Bastion has also been chatting with the charming and funny masterminds behind "Ask Anything With Beth and Val," aptly named Beth and Val, two more comedians taking advantage of those series of tubes to get their material in front of a wider audience. Valerie Hurt and Beth Dover are two self-described "theater dorks turned laugh whores" based in LA who do improv and sketch. Beth trained at Second City in LA and is writing for the National Lampoon Lemmings tour, while Val studied with the Groundlings and does a fake home shopping show on VH1 called the Home Purchasing Club.

Some of Beth's MySpace videos caught the eye of CJ Arabia, who works for dotcomedy.com, and the pair were invited to contribute to dotcomedy.com, which was looking for funny fresh female talent. Beth and Val learned iMovie and started using a Mac laptop, shooting and putting up their stuff, which is in question and answer format with an eye toward pop culture and current events.

They don't get a ton of money for their efforts but they have a lot of fun entertaining questions from viewers, ranging from "If a guy shaves his balls, does that make him gay?" to "Have you ever touched anything and then regretted it?" all the way over to "If Anne Heche was crazy at some point, doesn't that mean she still could be?"

Beth and Val's self-loading video about the viewer comments that came their way after being featured on "What Would Tyler Durden Do" can be seen here.

- Elizabeth McQuern