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Ze End of The Show
theodp writes "Before YouTube caught on, there was Ze Frank. Slate mourns the loss of The Show, which came to an end last week after a 365-day run. Sorry, Sports Racers. 'The result was a new kind of improvised conversation/performance art. Ze beamed himself out to a worldwide audience and gathered them into a universe of his own devising. A wiki sprung up, with fans completing a transcript of every episode. Ze also gave out missions, such as creating the ugliest MySpace page and building an "Earth sandwich," which consisted of placing pieces of bread on exact opposite points of the globe. It was this "live" element that made the project not-televison, not-boring, and ultimately fleeting.'"
His show was fun, but niche, he should find a better outlet on a major network. I'd watch it.
Was she hot?
Hi, I don't suppose anyone has some images or cached pages of the ugliest myspace pages? I mean I'd actually be impressed if the worst myspace I'd ever seen was intentional, after some of the ones I've seen. Trouble is, the links to the spaces on his site are either all dead, or they link to new spaces, as the old ones seem to have been removed/expired.
I'd never heard of this guy until this topic came up, but I just watched his first show and must admit that it was pretty amusing stuff.
Gentoo Linux - another day, another USE flag.
especially for all zee Germans!
...It had its highlights (sit on one testicle whilst rubbing the other...) but otherwise it was a bit 'meh'. In my opinion it was past its peak around the time the viewers started to take over the content. Like ants amassing on a small dead forest animal.
I was lucky enough to be introduced to the Show near its start, it was actually the show that convinced me to get a video iPod as an emergency distraction for a two week family vacation.
Ze's brand of humor really has a way of getting me to smile and the 'projects' that he he came up for the sports racers were often touching in a way. I think my favorites were the ones tied to the whole saga of Ray and not just cause it produced laughs.
I'm going to miss having a daily dose of Ze humor to cap the day with, but since the ORG will still be around, I think I'll be able to manage.
What about TV's Frank?
My favorite episode was the Scrabble one. I watched it over and over, like fifty times, laughing myself sick.
This is a sig. It is like every other sig in the world, except that it is mine, and it is different.
I used to watch zefrank. I liked it so much, I wanted to download the show to my computer so I could watch it when -- well, when I watch *shows*. I don't watch shows when browsing.
So I asked ze about making his show available to BitTorrents. Yeah, I know, but he said he wanted to control his thing and I respected that. He wanted everyone to come to his little carnival tent and sit down on the benches, watch his amusing show, and then sit there and watch the dog & pony show. d&p was essential, because it paid the bills. Plus the web site was where "the community" would develop, and it did.
But ze burned himself out (IMO) because not only was he making the content, he was building and running the web site, building his community and paying large bills for bandwidth.
I don't watch TV when I browse the Internet. If I can't download it and watch it when I want, I won't watch. That is why I stopped watching the show. Did that kill the show? I'm sure it didn't, but we should all really care about why ze frank stopped the show. ze frank was a perfect example of a slick little gem of a performance idea that had legs. If it died because ze frank just got tired, well, OK. But if it died because it didn't ever have a hope of turning into something that sustained ze, then we should all be concerned and try to figure out why.
YouTube isn't the answer. Not everyone can get a slot on The Daily Show or the Colbert Report. Most talented folk don't have the stamina to do it all themselves -- content, bandwidth, webmastering, selling advertising. What is the answer? Maybe ze will come up with it. I hope so.
We asked his private braincare specialist, Gag Halfrunt.
"Well, Zefrank's just zis guy, you know?"
I guess I'm out of the loop, because I have no idea what "ze frank" is. I suppose this is a lot like that stupid mini "newscast" that the chick with the big tits used to do that everyone thought was genius until she left it and the rest of us were like "what the fuck is the big deal?!".
Ah, boy. The internet. The land of the overinflated ego and sense of self-celebrity!
This is the episode http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/08/08 1006.html that hooked me on ze frank. And I didn't find the interactive bits interesting, except for ze's comments on the comments. I watched it because I think ze frank is really, really funny, particularly when he gets on a roll about politices.
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
There is (was) an RSS feed which I used with DemocracyTV to watch The Show. Sure beat a little video window in the browser. However, I don't think the feed became available until sometime after the half way mark in the life of The Show ... Ze must have changed his tune a little from the initial website-only policy.
My brother introduced me to ZeFranks' world. I usually hate useless blogs, podcasts and "web stars" sites with a passion, but this guy had a genuinely funny and witty show, and it's well worth a look through the archives if you've never seen it before. It's even more interesting when you consider it was a one-year, five-episodes-per-week "experiment", and that he actually managed to keep it funny and interesting all the way.
"Do you feel safe drinking your tap water?"
"Not always..."
Thanks you for all the laughs, Frank.