Katherine’s Funniest YouTube Pick: Glove and Boots
Posted on 16 May 2013
In a few days YouTube Comedy Week begins. I’m interested to see the people they put forward as YouTube’s funniest. I’m already a fan of David Mitchell and his video blog Soap Box. He will be featuring that week, but many of my other favourites are conspicuously missing. I decided to redress this problem.
Today I direct your attention to Glove and Boots. This vlog is about the thoughts and adventures of a pair of Muppet-like characters. Mario is a fuzzy red monster of some sort and Fafa is a loveable groundhog. They are frequently joined by Gorilla. These are performed by Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi and Vincent Bova.
The puppets are well made and the puppetry is performed with the ease of real skill and artistry. The video production is kept simple and effective. They have one main set, then make use of green screen and cuts to other media. This is not an expensive production, but it is well-conceived.
Of course what makes Glove and Boots work is the delicious sense of humour. They don’t rely on shock humour, but wit and absurdity. They know how to keep the humour concise. This keeps the audience engaged and interested in coming back again and again.
I first discovered this team when I was doing research on current Alternative Reality Games (ARGs). Their videos were central to the New York treasure hunt We Lost Our Gold. Not long after this was kicked off, they created the official music video for Polyphonic Spree’s “Hold Me Now“.
Eckhardt-Jacobi and Bova were New York street performers when in 2004 they put up a Website with videos of their puppets. This was before YouTube. In 2010 they relaunched their videos on that service. Their careers took off when their vlog entry “Evolution of a Hipster” went viral. This video makes me especially happy since they managed to sneak in a musical intermission with Pomplamoose, who have done a few comic videos themselves.
In 2012 Glove and Boots won the Shorty Award for video blogging. This was after months of humorously encouraging people to vote for them since…you don’t want Justin Bieber’s DJ to win. They are now in the midst of putting together a television show with their production company Bento Box Entertainment.
Glove and Boots are an example of what you can achieve online. They are also gut-bustingly funny. Enjoy!
Peace and kindness,
Katherine
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