No one obeys the laws better than Matt Houchin. Since joining fellow Northwestern grad Ross McNamara to form a Bloomington-born comedy duo two years ago however, Matt's just lucky Minnesota doesn't have a three-strike rule. The duo has attempted to facilitate a child's kidnapping, robbed women at knife-point, made unauthorized copies of Click and tried to feed an unconscious man to the birds. Now that's what I'd call trendsetting in the 21st century.

"It is our dream that one day wearing old letter jackets will be a nation-wide craze," Ross revealed. "The hierarchy of high school will once again be enforced.  All thanks to us!"

That cocktail of youthful narcissism and a complete disregard for others' well-being is what makes the Bloomington Bros. web series so addicting. It's instantly reminiscent of FX's Always Sunny in Philadelphia and even Seinfeld, both cases where the cast appealed to our darker sensibilities, and earned mega-stardom by squandering the human spirit on a weekly basis.

"The Bloomington Bros. are based on the types of people that we can't stand," Matt said. "They're truly horrible people but they're completely clueless about it."

Matt and Ross are far from clueless about the roots of their success however, crediting it all to Nickelback's Chad Kroeger. The goatee'd Canadian hillbilly turned lyrical savant wrote "Photograph," the bros. cover of which went viral last summer.

"Sure, Photograph isn't representative of our preferred comedy style," Ross admitted, "But it's far more approachable than most of our stuff.  Yelling, holding up funny pictures, and talking about old memories while wearing high school letter jackets?  It stands on its own."

Then Matt unearthed a shocking revelation sure to rip the Bloomington Bros. fanbase asunder!

"I'd rather listen to [Nickelback] than the opposite-"

MEGAFAN.

"...most anything on whiny indie-rock radio."

COMMUNIST.

"This will forever cause a rift amongst the Bloomington Bros., but it's a rift we can live with."

Oh you have no idea.

"I'd say we average about two takes per shot," Ross explained, adding that the real writing often occurs during editing. "We like to write, shoot and edit our sketches in a day."

And they've been producing content at a blistering pace, adding videos to their YouTube channel and website every couple weeks or so. The series is cleverly self-referential, rewarding regular viewers and encouraging a day's sifting through their catalog. Sharp editing frames the punchlines, but the character's interactions feel naturally improvisational.

The series is also instantly relate-able because its characters seemed ripped out of your high school home town. Little to nothing of Matt and Ross' real life personalities are represented with the Bros. Houchin is an improv performer and has produced a feature-length documentary while McNamara has directed a feature film and edited projects for Will Ferrell's FunnyOrDie.com.

Meanwhile their Matt and Ross personas drive around looking at Christmas lights and take local college girls on haunted hay-rides. It's unclear whether the Mosaic Media Group, the Los Angeles management firm that helped bring you Bruno and Step Brothers, called hoping to reach the real guys or their letterman-jacketed doppelgangers, but they invited them to a TV pitch meeting regardless.

"We've been working on the pilot since last winter," Ross said. "It's hard to maintain the same kind of frantic, in the moment energy over such an extended period."

For a moment, it seemed like the right opportunity to hang up their letterman jackets for good.

"It's awesome it's gotten us this far," Matt remembers thinking. "It'll be nice to do something else and retire the letter jackets."

But the Bros. showed their resiliency and survived to see another day. The resulting script was a 30-minute sitcom where the plot follows the Bros.' parents finally kicking them out of the house, and their subsequent move onto the mean streets of Minneapolis.

"We'd love to make a show as tangential, as ridiculous and as unique as our web series is," Ross said, "but the move from 3 minutes to 22 minutes is gonna mean changes"

Now the series is a much larger production, with Mosaic courting SpikeTV, FX and Comedy Central to air it after editing on the pilot wraps up this month.

"That's a big shift from hitting record on an unmanned camera and doing our best to position ourselves inside the frame," Ross added.

Suddenly they find themselves in LA, and it's difficult to explain their sudden rise. This is especially so for Ross, because he went to the poor school.

"Wait, what?  You were in Minnesota?  And they just contacted you out of the blue and signed you just like that?" Matt can remember being asked. "We just have to shrug, cause yeah.  That's exactly what happened."

//Anyone want to go throw Jello at a fence?