Ikea Heights

September 5, 2009 2:50 PM

Ikea Heights is an online video series (secretly shot inside the Burbank Ikea Store). Episode 1, Episode 2, Episode 3, Episode 4. Via.
posted by cashman (24 comments total)

No one say anything about fonts.
posted by tepidmonkey at 3:06 PM on September 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

A Channel 101 show.
posted by kenko at 3:15 PM on September 5, 2009

I don't get it. Was cortex at this Ikea?
posted by special-k at 3:16 PM on September 5, 2009

The "HEIGHTS" in "IKEA HEIGHTS" was in Bookman (my favorite font and I don't care who knows). I feel suddenly less irrelevant.
posted by wendell at 3:20 PM on September 5, 2009

Just watched episode one, thought it was super funny. Nice distraction from writing a paper for school. Thanks for sharing. :)
posted by too bad you're not me at 3:20 PM on September 5, 2009

That doesn't look like Verdana to me.
posted by delmoi at 3:35 PM on September 5, 2009

that's pretty funny. i wonder if they got permission to do this, or if they're just winging it.
posted by msconduct at 3:55 PM on September 5, 2009

apparently not. just googled it and found this from his blog:

Special Thanks to IKEA for not noticing us shooting a whole show in their big cool store.

posted by msconduct at 3:57 PM on September 5, 2009

I'd love to see an interview with employees at this Ikea. I'm kind of suspecting it would be a lot like this where the rank and file were trying hard not to giggle and the management was wandering around scowling, vaguely know something weird was going on, but not being able to put their finger on it.
posted by Kid Charlemagne at 4:33 PM on September 5, 2009

I am never buying a pillow at Ikea again.
posted by not_the_water at 5:35 PM on September 5, 2009

talk about saving on set costs...
posted by HuronBob at 6:06 PM on September 5, 2009

The best part (of episode one) was where he picked up the phone.

Perfectly captured the whole ethic of the show.
posted by hifiparasol at 6:32 PM on September 5, 2009 [3 favorites]

Detective Mathis is a much better actor than everyone else.
posted by nathancaswell at 6:59 PM on September 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

I don't believe the comments so far properly indicate how awesome this series is. This series is really awesome.
posted by bowline at 8:40 PM on September 5, 2009 [1 favorite]

Agreed. Ignore the font talk and watch this. This is brilliant.

(oh, ok, one small thing: I wish the actors names in the beginning had ikea furniture0like names, with superflous umlauts, etc.)
posted by NikitaNikita at 9:41 PM on September 5, 2009 [2 favorites]

Special Thanks to IKEA for not noticing us shooting a whole show in their big cool store.

uh, but, at the end of episode3, they get busted by staff, don't they? or was that staged?

Detective Mathis is a much better actor than everyone else.

Samuel, the guy with amnesia, was pretty good. and, yes, this series is definitely awesome.
posted by mannequito at 9:48 PM on September 5, 2009

"A land of convenience and murder" LOL

Too bad by the end of #4 they seemed to be exhausting the dramatic possibilities without resorting to street theater.
posted by dhartung at 9:54 PM on September 5, 2009

Funny concept, but since they're not really parodying anything in particular, the script is a bore, and the "pretending to be bad" acting is rather clearly being done by genuine not-so-great actors, I don't have a lot of motivation to keep watching.
posted by drjimmy11 at 9:56 PM on September 5, 2009

I love this. I live right by that store and walk there for lunch sometimes... too bad I've never seen them filming.
posted by Nattie at 11:10 PM on September 5, 2009

Thislerk isburn prettyfarn nordcool.
posted by chairface at 11:13 PM on September 5, 2009

Woo another Channel 101 shoutout. Channel 101 is great if you haven't seen it yet (or its sibling Channel 102 in NYC). Particularly good shows include:

• Cat News: "Live from the center of the universe" with anchor Smiley Muffin the cat.
• Puppet Rapist: a whoddunit with good production values and great puppetry
• Sexual Intercourse: American Style: like it says on the tin. Worth it for the theme song alone.
• Yacht Rock: it invented the name for a genre of music that people didn't even realize existed.
• The Bu': a parody of teen dramas like "the OC" by a group now known as The Lonely Island. Their best-known member is Andy Samberg, now a cast-member on SNL (a number of the musical Digital Shorts on SNL feature members of The Lonely Island). This show in particular is a good demonstration of the inherent goofiness of Channel 101, as you can watch the show quickly devolve when Lonely Island members dropped the show and other participants picked it up and "guest directed" it.
• Stop It: a hilarious take-off on reality "Intervention" shows.
• Your Magic Touched Me, a show about a magician who touches people's lives, followed by a sequal Your Magic Touched Me: Nights, where you see him perform his "Night Job" as a sex crimes investigator

There are many more good shows, oh so many more, and it's worth going to both sites and viewing all the current and cancelled shows. Just a note: every show can be no longer than 5 minutes, or it is cancelled (and for successful, long-running shows it's traditional to make a purposefully too-long episode in order to "self-cancel" the series). However, this shot time limit means that entertainment must be crammed into a very short window. As a result, most of the shows feature a lot of crude and potentially offensive language and material (consider, for example, Gregory Shitcock, P.I., which features a quadriplegic protagonist. Possibly not as funny if someone you know is disabled).

Much like MetaFilter, a community culture, with a variety of in-memes, has developed within Channel 101, including self-referential material and demonization or deification (sometimes simultaneously) of long-time participants.

A number of celebrities have been involved in various productions, including Sarah Silverman, Drew Carey, and Jack Black.
posted by Deathalicious at 10:40 AM on September 6, 2009 [4 favorites]

No, the good Channel101 shows are (in addition to several already mentioned):

• Making Mistakes
• The Pop
• Arrow
• Boner for Boner
• Return to Supermans
• Cautionary Tales of Swords
• Phone Sexxers
• Utopia
• Dick Richards, Private Dick
• Quest

And that's not even touching the great failed pilots like "The Con-Time Machine".

"Latimus", too.
posted by kenko at 2:57 PM on September 6, 2009

"I know I'm not a cop, but isn't this illegal?"

"You're right, you're not a cop."
posted by niles at 4:18 PM on September 6, 2009

kenko, I did think about adding quest but it is a bit meta (not MeTa meta, but it depends on the viewer being relatively familiar with existing Channel 101 lore). I haven't seen the other ones you've listed and can't BELIEVE I forgot one of the hands-down best produced short film series ever, The Defenders of Stan. Hilarious, extremely well made, monstrously enjoyable.
posted by Deathalicious at 9:47 PM on September 7, 2009