PHOTO BY FELICITY MURPHY

Lauren Berger held 15 internships while in college.

Lauren Berger has gotten coffee at MTV. She's gotten coffee at Fox. And yes, she's done it at several other agencies that may not have as much brand recognition. She even broke the darned coffee pot once.

These days, the 28-year-old entrepreneur gets others to fetch the java for her. Her web-based business, InternQueen.com, connects top-level companies with the cream of the college-student crop.

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See our previous story, "Pinterest Makes Me Feel Like I'm Bad at Being a Woman"

Pinterest -- the latest social media craze sweeping our laptop screens -- can be many things to many people. As a virtual vision board on which you can bookmark little Internet finds that strike your fancy, it's your canvas. Whether you're into cooking, marathon-running or curating a man collection, there's a board for that. It's a little overwhelming, really. Hence, we haven't quite figured it out yet. But we're having fun trying.

Among the seemingly endless recipes, crafting instructions and home decor pins, something on Pinterest is bound to prick you. Here are the eight of most ridiculous head-scratchers we've found on Pinterest so far.

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The characters Red and Blue drive each other crazy in the web series Dick Figures, pictured in the episode entitled "Zombies & Shotguns"

Red and Blue are stick figures with a Bugs Bunny/Daffy Duck type of relationship. They drive each other crazy, but somehow remain friends. Their adventures are at the center of one of the hottest shows online. In less than a year and a half, Dick Figures has become a YouTube sensation, racking up views as its central characters reference memes and wreak havoc across their town.

Produced by Six Point Harness and airing on YouTube via Mondo Media, Dick Figures is written and directed by Ed Skudder and Zack Keller, two friends with a fondness for Internet humor and dubstep. With season 4 set to premiere April 5, Dick Figures made an appearance Saturday afternoon at Los Angeles Animation Festival, with both Skudder and Keller on hand for the panel. I had the chance to speak with them after the event.

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Screenshots courtesy of Starcast

The "best performances" screen on Starcast

Startups is a new column about new companies, big ideas and bold discoveries happening in the L.A. area.

OK, fine, maybe you've got the chops and you've got the looks, but you've missed the fame boat five times over. Your clean-cut mug and obvious talent got you out of Skokie, but you're still slinging pizza shooters six nights a week at TGI Mulligans in Studio City. Why won't anyone let you become the new flash in the Hollywood frying pan? Why doesn't anyone notice your raw talent and chiseled visage? You're destined to be the modern reincarnation of Cary Grant, clearly, if only someone would notice.

Cue StarcastAuditions.com, the Internet-based casting startup that will get you noticed -- if, of course, you deserve to be. Starcast is not a bunch of guys on a couch mocking videos of your craft for their own entertainment. It is serious business.

Founded by Gary Beer, the man behind cable TV's Smithsonian Channel and Sundance Channel, Starcast takes your craft as seriously as possible. The setup is pretty simple -- you log on and pay a nominal fee (right now it's about $10 and supposedly won't go much higher [Update: it's now free]). Then you pick a professionally crafted script, videotape yourself performing it, and voilà! Your video will be seen by legitimate high-level casting agents, reviewing Starcast footage in hopes of finding the next Tom Cruise. If you're truly gifted, they may rate you as one of their "Best Performances," marking you for further attention.

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This is Pinterest

Pinterest, much like the little black dress or the Birkin bag (depending on your tax bracket), has suddenly become the new must-have for women. It's the latest social media craze -- and it's blowing Google+ out of the water, despite, or perhaps because of, what some media outlets project is a user base that skews about three-quarters female.

I don't quite remember the first time I heard of Pinterest, which is most likely because it was mentioned alongside knitting or pickling or some such activity I only half pay attention to. But once it was on my radar, I quickly developed a bad case of "red car syndrome." Suddenly Pinterest was everywhere, in particular all over my Facebook minifeed next to pretty pictures of homemade fruit tarts and hand-crocheted sweaters. I'm no expert on crafting, but I do get excited about new technology. I signed up.

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photobucket (bella_13_SPMS)

So far, no signs of the apocalypse for the startup-company-for-startups kickstarter.com, a website successfully proving that frugal, unemployed Americans do care about things enough to donate a dollar to a dreamer.

February brought about two million-dollar projects that amazingly surpassed their fundraising goals, and of course about a million projects that weren't worth two dollars.

Surfing though the ideas of its hopefuls, we found a few Los Angeles-based, Los Angeles-bettered projects worth looking into your Google wallet for, in no particular order:

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Special Entertainment

The iconic "What" zeppelin, projected onto MOCA downtown

In 1972 Asco spray-painted their signatures onto the walls of LACMA, asserting themselves as active members of the art community despite the fact that LACMA wasn't yet willing to show their work.

Last Wednesday night, Milwaukee-based Special Entertainment, the partnership between artists Andrew Swant and Bobby Ciraldo, also inserted their signature into the L.A. art world. Swant and Ciraldo, creators of Samwell's "What What (In the Butt)" viral video, which has gotten 45 million views since it was posted to YouTube five years ago, projected the video's iconic zeppelin with the word "What" on it onto MOCA downtown, the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Scientology Center and various other cultural institutions and locations around Los Angeles.

Then, on Thursday, the duo presented video footage of the drive-by projection event at Nate Page's Machine Overnight Guerrilla Project at Storefront Plaza, hosted by Machine Project.

Special Entertainment's trip out West and its series of projections was organized in part by Sara Daleiden's MKE-LAX program, promoting artistic exchange between Milwaukee and L.A., fostered in celebration of the five-year anniversary of "What What (In the Butt)."

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Rachel and Carlyle brainstorm the next Couple Time vignette

There are few Internet series that have me itching for the next installment, checking the Vimeo page for new videos several times a week and squealing with delight when one's posted. But that embarrassing behavior is exactly what I do with Couple Time. Comedians Patrick Carlyle and Allyn Rachel, who have been a real life couple for coming on eight years, write and star in the series of 90-second vignettes that explore, in their words, "weird stuff couples do when no one else is around."

No! Not kinky weird stuff! Silly weird stuff. Things we all do when we feel so close to someone that it's almost like they're part of us. Like singing the full Ally McBeal theme song in the middle of breakfast, or having a serious debate about what percentage of pumpkin carving is scooping, or making up fantastical bribes to convince your partner be the one to crawl out of bed and feed the cat .

These moments might fall flat when described in words, but Rachel and Carlyle bring them to life with such honesty, love, and pitch perfect comedic timing, that each vignette leaves you not only in stitches but also with the odd, poignant feeling that you will now appreciate the small joys of life a little bit more.

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Ever had questions about Hell, Satan or various and sundry demons? Then TV writer Martin Olson's Encyclopaedia of Hell: An Invasion Manual for Demons Concerning the Planet Earth and the Human Race Which Infests It will prove most edifying, as it sheds some much-needed comedic light on the dark side.

Purporting to be a detailed manual for demons who are invading the Earth, with a truly encyclopedic glossary of terms featuring often hilarious definitions, fastidious, Sears catalog-Gothic artwork by Tony Millionaire and Mahendra Singh and interesting cosmological stories and sidebars, the comedy is close-to-the-vest and sophisticated enough that the exceedingly pious and godly may still take offense at its flirtation with the Satanic and demonic.

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Jackson Rathbone takes charge as Nick Green: a high school student/CIA assassin in Aim High

Have you heard of the new WB/Facebook web series Aim High? You know, the show about a high school student/CIA operative that actually allows you to incorporate your own pictures and data into the story? I didn't think so. Neither had any of my 997 Facebook friends, or the people I interrogated at Halloween parties last week, or the 50 teens I tracked down around Fairfax High School.

Exec produced by mega-producer/director McG, Aim High stars Twilight star Jackson Rathbone as Nick Green, a teenage undercover CIA agent who assassinates terrorists in between homework and coffee dates with his crush Amanda -- played by Aimee Teegarden from Friday Night Lights. The first 11-minute episode premiered on Facebook and Cambio.com in October.

The series' signature gimmick is that on Facebook you can choose a "personalize" option and have your public data (profile pic, name, etc.) incorporated subtly into the show. After choosing the option, for instance, I saw a "Steph for Prez" sticker with my picture on it on the back of Nick Green's laptop. Aim High claims to be the first "social series" ever, and with blockbuster production quality, breathtaking stunts, a smart script, some semi-name actors and McG's involvement, I would have expected Aim High to go viral instantly. Yet much like its stealthy hero, this show is still flying way below the radar.

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