Temporarily banned from YouTube, sent packing by Japanophile-convention organizers, and despised by Williamsburg fashion plates, the sketch group Million Dollar Extreme is nothing if not polarizing. Its catalogue is divided between abrasive, strategically offensive acts of (sometimes public) provocation and anti-sketches that amount to hanging out with some very funny dudes while bargain-bin effects whiz by. Some videos borrow Wonder Showzen’s toolkit, wielding subliminal blips and eye-straining text in service of subversive ends. Some make use of the Tim And Eric Awesome Show, Great Job! aesthetic, and some are surprisingly slick, with excellent, eardrum-shredding music courtesy of talented mystery-men like Orangy and Vaervaf.
MDE has taken cameras into a Texas drug-dealer’s apartment, broken into a dilapidated LA manse, prank-called Craigslist prostitutes, and posted whole half-hour episodes of content, but the following videos are mostly on a smaller scale. Their output is large, various, and difficult to compress into a GJI! post here, but it’s worth taking a bite if you have an adventurous comedy palate. How adventurous? MDE videos, YouTube comments, and tweets sometimes espouse some pretty heinous views in the service of a joke, and the group doesn’t tend to “wink” when it’s ironically adopting the personas of scummy Internet denizens.
iPhone monologues, an MDE staple:
The “smooth” series:
“Sketches”