A FATAL JOURNEY TO THE WEB A FATAL JOURNEY TO THE WEB Who: Zach Johnson, 25, and Jeffrey Max, 24, met at a Dallas all-boys high school, where they encouraged each other's then-offbeat interest in making funny videos. "Now it's the rage," Johnson says. "If everyone was hot on investment banking in 2003, today people are flocking to entertainment jobs." Early success: The duo moved to NYC and dived into the ad world. A quirky effort, "Sushi," won praise; in it, one doctor consoled another at a Japanese restaurant after a surgery gone bad, only to find his buddy can't even pick up a piece of fish with chopsticks. "We started spending more time messing around and less having drinks with ad execs," Johnson says. Aim to annoy: One of their passions is lampooning pop culture. They took mocking aim at Disney's Duck Tales, the Scrooge McDuck vehicle, in a video tale of kidnapping. "We were hoping to get a cease-and-desist notice from Disney to, you know, get noticed," says Johnson. "Instead, a Disney animator actually e-mailed us, saying he found it funny. Oh well." Eureka moment: A clumsy tech infomercial made the two wonder, "What if everything this guy was saying was a lie?" That spawned Infinite Solutions. Episode 1, which promised viewers access to "Google TV," quickly snowballed. "We watched the hits climb from a few hundred to 100,000 in a day," Johnson says. The current tally is 500,000. Ultimate goal: The pair have "not made any money yet" on their Internet fare and have day jobs to pay the bills. "We're in Hollywood, so of course everyone is always asking if you have a screenplay," Johnson says. "For the moment, though, we really want to stay online longer and make a name for ourselves there." No matter how tech-savvy you think you are, it's difficult not to fall prey to Infinite Solutions. The Web-based series features appropriately nerdy Mark Erickson, who calmly explains how to turn your cellphone into a WiFi network or shows you how to log into a Beta version of Google TV. Viewer comments often praise the tips, while noting the procedure often took them, uh, quite a while. Amusing, considering there is no Mark Erickson, and his gizmo solutions are actually hokum. "We've gotten e-mails from people saying, 'Finally got Google TV, thanks.' It's a crack-up," says Zach Johnson, 25, who along with Jeffrey Max, 24, make up Fatal Farm, a blossoming Web-comedy production team whose subtle satirical videos often border on high-concept performance art. The WiFi cellphone episode is the most popular, drawing 1.3 million views. "We built our reputation on stuff that's silly," Johnson says. "Now we want to branch out to more mature work with a stronger narrative." That's why the Los Angeles duo is back in Dallas where they once attended the same boys' school before eventually heading off to film programs at New York University (Max) and the University of Southern California (Johnson). Lured by familiar surroundings and lax production codes ("You can't point a camera in LA without being asked for a permit," says Johnson), the team is filming its final Solutions goof. The decision to create a new episode wasn't easy. Fatal Farm dreamed up 17 Solutions, then burned out. E-mails clamored for more. The team was torn. "You don't really want to walk away, but it's so high-concept it's really not sustainable," Johnson says. In other words: Once you know it's fake, where's the joke? In contrast to the usual 2 to 3 minute fare, this episode could run as long as 10 minutes and "is more like a pilot for a TV show than a Web-based video," says Johnson, who plays Erickson. However the ambitious finale goes over, the Fatal Farm guys aren't worried. They have two other successful video concepts to their name, as well as sustained interest from Hollywood agents who they continue to rebuff. "So much on the Web today is B-movie lite," says Jason Nadler, head of the online division of United Talent Agency. "They're the sort of pioneer voice we're looking for, people who are taking risks and moving the dial." While Fatal Farm hopes to eventually be in business with mainstream entertainment companies, they'd prefer to stay independent for the moment. While that means taking occasional editing or advertising jobs to cover costs, it also allows them to keep control. Max says he and Johnson are "interested in longevity, and we're not in a rush to make deals and crank out media. What's great about doing work directly for the Web is that there's a community out there that will instantly give you a sense of how you're doing." Max stars in another popular series, Lasagna Cat, which was born when the two found a ratty cat costume and decided to act out Garfield comic strips that segue into surrealistic music videos. In a flurry of invention, they created 27 over the course of a few days. The work that brought Fatal Farm its first bit of Web fame consisted of strange takes on TV show intros. One of the most successful is their tweaking of Doogie Howser, M.D., the late '80s sitcom about a boy-genius doctor. When you first watch Fatal Farm's video, it seems like nothing more than a replaying of the show's theme-song intro. Look closer, however, and you notice Johnson is artfully squeezed into every scene — sometimes as a photo in a newspaper clipping, other times seen walking past Howser in a hospital hallway. "So much of American comedy is performance-based, the Will Ferrell model," Johnson says. "But there are more avenues to express comedy. We'd like special-effects comedy (such as the Howser intro) to be our special niche." In the meantime, there's one more chance to hoodwink an Infinite Solutions virgin into spending hours following Mark Erickson's guidebook to nowhere. Enlarge By Jessica Rinaldi for USA TODAY Zach Johnson, 25, left, and Jeffrey Max, 24, are the production team behind Fatal Farm, which has several hit series, including one about tech gizmos that don't exist. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read more