Good Commitment was a weekly-ish sketch comedy show that ran from January 2007 to June 2008. We are on indefinite hiatus as we now live over a thousand miles apart. Here are some of our videos. More can be found here.

The NSFW ending has been removed. If you missed it, count yourself lucky.

This video was in no way born out of being passed over for the YouTube Sketchies contest. For the second year in a row.

Our entry into the YouTube Sketchies 2 contest

I’m proud to announce that the The Peripook took home the Best Home Grown award at the 2008 Magnolia Independent Film Festival. This award is given to the film the judges deem as best among the ones submitted by Mississippi filmmakers. Good Commitment is honored and excited to receive this award as there were some fantastic entries by other Mississippi filmmakers.

Inspired by an improv scene with Jarrod Bates and Justin Glover from the Lab Rats.

Featuring the musical talents and guitar wizardry of Drew Dieckmann.

If you are on our mailing list (look in the sidebar) you would’ve gotten an email inviting you to send in your mailing address to receive one of these sweet Christmas cards to put on your refrigerator or mantle with all your other Christmas cards. If you did send in your mailing address, you should expect your card in a few days.

Happy Holidays!

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Also, Happy Halloween!

So where’s Good Commitment been, eh?
Well, right now Kary is hopping around Europe with his wife Mandy.

Gabe is in the thick of rehearsals for his role as the detective in the murder mystery Laura at SCT.

Graham and Derek have been busy getting the ball rolling over at The Tenth Wonder (in case you’ve been sleeping under a rock, the 2nd season of Heroes just started.)

And James has been helping Bruce Butler get some plans underway for the 2nd Southeastern Comedy Arts Festival Nov. 9-11 in Oxford this year. And even though James has more free time than the other four, you wouldn’t want to watch him fiddling around with his crappy camera and some sock puppets.

So we promise we haven’t died, and we will return with plenty of funny in a short while. If you need funny quickly, check out a local live comedy troupe. Lots of Mississippi troupes are having shows soon.

Oxford, MS: October 4- Laff Co. is performing at the PowerHouse!

Starkville, MS: October 12- Lab Rats are performing at the Lab Theater!

Jackson, MS: October 13- Off Kilter is performing at George Street Grocery!

And then, get ready for the return of Good Commitment!

If this is a possibility for you, we’d love for you to let us know, just to give us an idea of how many are coming, but if you find yourself free Saturday and you didnt tell us, just come on out anyway! Saturday @ 5:00, at the Pecan Grove near the old Music Building. Be there!

Also, the Reflector is slated to have a story about us in Friday’s paper, so check it out!

In November of 2006, Kary, Will Cooper, and I performed at the New Orleans Improv Festival (the same festival that bequeathed the name Good Commitment to us) as the BBQ Peas. We were originally going to be a six man ensemble with Gabe, Kristin, and Jonette (how awesome would that have been?!) but they couldn’t make it. So Kary, Will, and I developed a lineup that included some new versions of several games we love.

Interrogation is an improv game played by three people. One is the “criminal.” He must either leave the room or seal his ears while the audience determines who he is (usually a celebrity or a literary character) and what crime he has committed. The other two players are the cops, and they sit him down in front of everyone, and through their interrogations, he must figure out the info and confess to the crime.

Sounds challenging enough, huh? Well, apparently not for us. No, we decided to make it as hard as we could on ourselves. So we developed a version with further limitations. What you’re about to read might scare you. Brace yourself. For this version, Kary is the criminal, Will is Cop 1, and I’m Cop 2.

Will was mute. He put duct tape over his mouth. So he heard the important information for Kary to guess, but he couldn’t say anything. I was deaf. I had my ipod on the whole time, and I never even got to hear what Kary’s crime was.

…so obviously Will would have to act out what it was, so Kary could guess from that, huh? Nope. Kary was blind. We put a blindfold on him, so that there was no way he could see what Will- who was the only one who knew the information- was doing.

It was one of the few games we performed that the New Orleans audience loved. Probably because it was almost like watching a Penn and Teller trick. The premise is impossible, but somehow, it all works out. And it did. I interrogated Kary based on what I was guessing from Will’s charades, while Will indicated whether Kary was on the right track, or even whether I was making the right guesses in the first place.

Ahh…good times. Now, why the New Orleans audience only loved a “few” of our games, well, that’s a different story for another day.

We’ve entered into the sketch vs stand-up contest at Project Breakout. Please consider voting for our entry Stiff Job. You’ll need to create an account, but it’s pretty painless.

Thanks!

Well, we’d like to thank a few people who have been working behind the scenes to make that happen.

First, you can thank Mallory Violette for the awesome new GC look! When we decided to update the feel, we knew we had to ring Mallory up for the rocking work she does! Thanks, Mal!

Second, in no particular order, we’d like to introduce you to the new members of the Good Commitment creative team, who are joining us here in the second season to help bring even more bang for your buck!

Graham Hancock is a podcaster, photographer, and producer extraordinaire! He currently records and produces 10th Wonder, an NBC “Heroes” podcast which is regularly in the top 50 most downloaded podcasts on itunes. He recently also just finished his work on a documentary with Bo Duke himself, John Schneider, which is set to hit the DVD shelves within the year.

Derek Russell is another successful podcaster and comedian. He is the front man and creator of Starkville’s House of El, a “Smallville” podcast. SHoE recently shot a feature video which will appear on the “Smallville” Season 6 DVD this fall. Derek also hosts Tangent, a podcast devoted to conversational topics and celebrity interviews.

Last but certainly not least, Gabe Smith, Good Commitment regular and fan favorite, is joining the team as a full-fledged contributor. Gabe has worked on 10 previous Good Commitment episodes already, and is set to direct the next one. He has more acting experience than any of the other four GC members (possibly combined), is currently the sketch coach for MSU’s Lab Rats Comedy, and has won numerous awards for writing, including 1st place in the American College Theatre Festival’s southeast region Critics Institute.
We are extremely proud to be working with Graham, Derek, and Gabe!

(Note: The quicktime version takes a bit longer to download, but it looks better.)

UPDATE: Please view our apology for the interruption in this episode:

Click To Play

Click on the commentary link above to watch Stiff Job with our commentary.

So to sum up, next Monday, the 11th, there will not be a new Good Commitment episode. But the 18th, there will! 25th, no. July 2, yes. And so on.

You know what? There are probably episodes and extras hiding out that you haven’t seen yet, plus old ones worth a second look!

The Kidnapper is Good Commitment’s entry into the YouTube Sketchies contest. Wish us luck!

Update: We didn’t make the cut, but here’s three that did. Good luck to the top 20!

Best Friends Defeat Dragons
Secret Agent follows Muslim
Quake Flakes

Go vote!

Happy Memorial Day. We’ll be back soon with a new episode.

Good Commitment brings to the internet the hilarious sketch whose original live, staged version won Best Sketch at the 2006 Southeastern Comedy Arts Festival.

He’s rude. He’s crude. He’s a potty mouth.

Click on the commentary link above to watch the video with our commentary.

God bless Bear Bryant! That’s all I have to say, after a wild, wild week of Good Commitment lightin’ it up on the You Tube.

Kary and I knew that we needed to dish out a heaping serving of good ole GC comedy peas on several different plates, one of which being You Tube, and we knew that lots and lots of people eat off the You Tube plate, but woo doggie!

Our post of Tide Pride Talk has now been found, linked, embedded, discussed, acclaimed, despised, distributed, rated, and the platform/instigator for new trash talk among SEC sports fans.
Some Alabama fans think we secretly just hate all things Crimson.
Some think we’re Auburn fans.
Some think we’re for real.
Some think that beyond the spoofery, we’re kinda funny after all. We like those. :)

But beyond all the talk, we are glad to get some real notice on that thar You Tube (http://youtube.com/watch?v=_4sxsyhg2BQ), and in all seriousness, we put out this call to the Good Commitment faithful:

Anybody got any Rebel gear?

Watch it with our commentary! Click on the “commentary” link above.

If you are a fan of Good Commitment comedy, or just a fan of comedy in general, you will love “The Peripook.” For this episode, we are very proud to have worked with Dr. Paul Ruff, a friend of ours from Starkville Community Theatre, who wrote and stars in this episode. Also in “Peripook,” from SCT, are Good Commitment regulars Gabe Smith, Thomas La Foe, and newcomer to Good Commitment, Krista Vowell!

If you’ve ever laughed at Good Commitment, be sure to not miss out on this one! Tune in as it goes up at 5:00 CST, www.goodcommitment.tv! You’ll chuckle. You’ll probably guffaw. Heck, you might even roll around on the floor a little! And you’ll do it for longer than you ever have before! See you at 5!

Get the embed code here. Click “Share” and “Copy & Paste.”

In this week’s episode, Urban escapes the heat by chillin in the park.

The first guy is a theatre lover. Nothing wrong with that, James and I have been known to dabble in the theatre from time to time. He found a “A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum” poster that I had posted a while back. His myspace profile looked like this:

I grabbed a pic from his uploaded pics and Dave made a little plug for GC. This is how his profile looks now (or until he takes down the pic):

Another guy did the same thing but his profile was set to private, so all I could do was grab his profile pic and change the picture he was stealing:

to this

So that I’m not a total jackass, I’ll make them both Short Bus Riders of the Week.

Funny thing though, even though we wrote down a scripted intro for the guy introducing us, he decided to paraphrase from memory, and now, according to him, the two of us are Mississippi State’s improv troupe, Lab Rats Comedy.

Or… we used to be, but now we call ourselves Good Commitment.

…We were kinda just looking at each other, then at him, and then the crowd, thinking ‘umm… okay… sorry Lab Rats. that’s not what we gave them, really…”

… So yeah. That happened.

But overall, it was fun! The audience seemed to enjoy most of what they could hear (darn espresso machine!), and they even clapped for us after we were done! Real nice and polite like.

So thanks to all the Riders who came out and supported us! We appreciate it! Tonight was definitely the best live performance ever associated with Kary, me, and the phrase “Good Commitment.” But that’s a story for another day!

If you didn’t catch it, tune in Monday at 5:00 CST for our smooth, taped version of the sketch we performed tonight!

That’s tonight, March 22, 7:00, at the MSU Bookstore. Come check it out for LIVE Good Commitment!

Full story here.

Download mp3

We’ve had a really good run so far here at Good Commitment. One can only imagine what we’ll come up with next. Including us.

So, we will have something for you to watch this Monday the 19th, but it won’t be a regular, all new, momma-slapping episode. We’re heading to Atlanta this weekend for a little meetup, networking and R&R. We’ll get refreshed, have a few beers, arm wrestle some ten year olds and be ready for a new episode the following week on the 26th.

Make sure you come back on the 19th to see what we put up, we wouldn’t totally forget about you.

And be posting some Short Bus Rider pics in the facebook gallery or email them to us.

Editor’s note: I want to stress that James is not being an ass and picking on some random street preacher trying to tell people about God. This man doesn’t preach about God’s love and grace. This man preaches that unless we are perfect we are going to hell. He was calling people whores, sodomites, children of Satan, etc. I didn’t include a lot of his “preaching” in this video, just our and other’s response to him. Here’s the university paper’s article. Google has more.

Click on the commentary link above to watch the video with our commentary.

A promo for the Tenth Wonder, an NBC Heroes podcast. If you like Heroes, you’ll love this podcast.

Click on the commentary link above to watch the video with our commentary.

Special thanks to Starkville House of El and The 10th Wonder podcasts.

I think they get more than they bargain for, tune in Monday at 5:00pm CST to see!

They’ve decided to give special thanks in their February 19th episode to the first 10 people who comment on “Vice Prez,” so BE THE FIRST to check it out!  GOOD COMMITMENT: Vice Prez, LIVE AT FIVE, Monday night!

We’re really excited to be bringing you new episodes every week. Funny or not, we’re going to see what it takes to turn out new content on a weekly basis. But rest assured, you’ll laugh at least once.

We’d like to thank those that made this possible:

Rudy Jahchan for the original Wordpress theme UFO’SPLODE and Michael Verdi for using it to create Vlogsplosion.

blip.tv for an amazing service with amazing support.

Dave Pitalo for helping out with graphics and camera work.

Our favorite beer, Southern Pecan, from Lazy Magnolia Brewing Co. in Kiln, Mississippi.

Download mp3