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Nominations have been announced for the sixth annual Ecny Awards, representing the work of the New York comedy scene over the past year. The awards ceremony takes place March 8 at 8 p.m. at Comix NY, 353 W. 14th St, N.Y. For the third straight year, comedian Jon Friedman will host. Nominations were announced at Comix NY by Comix's Kambri Crews and past winner Kumail Nanjiani of "Michael & Michael Have Issues."  The announcements were streamed live via Ustream as well as on Twitter. (See a video of the announcement below.) The nominees were selected from a voting committee of industry professionals, as well as through a public nomination process. Nominees must reside and have performed mostly in the New York City area from October 2008 to October 2009 to be eligible. A Lifetime Achievement Award will also be presented to a comedian or group that has aided in the growth of New York comedy.

“How much acid do you guys do?” asks a commenter on the YouTube page for the first episode of Sunset Television. It’s an appropriate question. Sunset is some old school psychedelic satire, making heavy use of rapid channel surfing editing, dark absurdist humor, and pass-the-bong image and sound effects (dropped pitch seems to really make these guys giggle) to lampoon the cheesiest of boob tube cheese as well as some unidentified flying miscellaneous weirdness. Created by Drew Blatman, Alex Goldberg, Graham Mason, Jesse Millward and others, the “station,” now up to its fourth episode, looks to be one of the smarter and stranger web series concoctions on the internet, keeping the freak power flame alive in the age of dull bro-centric comedy. Episode 1 is titled “Get in the Zone,” and like all of Sunset Television’s output, it’s divided into short, mini-sketches, opening with a bizarre, unexplained clip...