Human Giant's Paul Scheer posted yesterday about the little-known pilot for The TV Wheel, and it just might be the best sketch show you never heard of. Created by MST3K's Joel Hodgson, it starred David Cross, Paul Feig, Doug Benson and Andy Kindler with writing by Judd Apatow among others. The pilot aired on Comedy Central one time and from the looks of this clip was funny, original and way bizarre:
There's more about the show on Paul Scheer's blog.
I've been googling "X-Box" for all of these hellish years.
That clip is my favorite bit from the show — "No one laughs in the house of a thousand mysteries, I know this to be true!" has been my motto for all these years — and it's representative of the style and standard of humor of the whole thing. Another highlight is the utterly random (and probably incomprehensible to the lay viewer) Thunderbirds parody years before Matt and Trey came up with Team America doing basically the same thing. But the bizarre structure and format can't be conveyed through excerpts: you have to see the entire thing to really grasp how daring and unusual it was. With all the extras and behind the scenes footage (plus the introductory footage of Joel and a hand puppet riot made exclusively for CC) it would make a glorious DVD.