You’ve been sheltering in place for some time now (week nine for me!), which means you are probably run out of new media to consume. Maybe you can rewatch a show to see if it makes any more sense upon second viewing—looking at you, Westworld and The OA—which of course it won’t. So instead of throwing good time after bad and sinking untold hours in attempting to redeem a show you desperately want to like, why not take in something new, something with less of a time commitment perhaps? And while we’re at it, why not have that content be coffee adjacent?
From the twisted minds at Stumptown Coffee that brought you bizarro cold brew ads, skate videos, and even a collaboration with Iggy Pop comes Stumptown TV, a collection of sketches, shorts, and cartoons for your viewing pleasure, and Episode 1 is out now!
Stumptown TV is the brainchild of co-writers Tim Wenzel and Zachary Marvick, Wenzel handing the filming, directing, editing, and music while Marvick taking care of the animation and art. And as is to be expected from a coffee brand, each of the six vignettes over the course of the eight-minute run time has coffee playing at least a small role. In the Venn diagram of Stumptown TV, coffee is in the center; the rest is chock full of infomercials, punk rock, and outdoor cooking shows. In short, it’s like a late-night Adult Swim show, but the writers drank more coffee and (maybe) dropped less acid.
“We wanted to create more in-house content that was focused on Stumptown and Coffee in general,” Wenzel tells Sprudge. “Usually we’ve created content more based around a product launch or collaboration and we wanted this to just be more skit driven and fun. I think the overall goal for our videos is to be light-hearted and fun in hopes that people will get a laugh out of it for the day.”
Sketches on Episode 1 of Stumptown TV include an old-timey coffee ad, a variety of cartoons, and an informercial for a coffee-smelling facestrap. But perhaps the best skit is Cooking in the Wild with hosts Tristan and Gunther, played by none other than Marvick and Wenzel, of course. The pair travel to the northeast to track down a 17th century coffee recipe believing to belong to a Miss Delilah Diggens. Perhaps the world’s first latte, the recipe involves a whole in the ground, pine needles, and a burlap sack, but you can’t argue with the results. And the goofy vignette won’t be the last we see of Tristan and Gunther. Per Wenzel, “let’s just say that they will return for another episode and I believe they will be visiting the far corners of France to track down origins of the first known Cold Brew method ever used by humans.”
As can be expected by the episodic naming convention, Stumptown TV will have regularly recurring entries, running roughly on a bi-monthly schedule. Per Stumptown’s Samantha Chulick, expect Episode 2 to drop around the end of June.
But until then, take a quick break from whatever you are doing and enjoy the wonderful coffee weirdness that is Stumptown TV.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
All media via Stumptown Coffee
Disclosure: Stumptown Coffee is an advertising partner with the Sprudge Media Network