American in Spain

Ze Frank Parody

August 8, 2006

In my "how can I whore myself on Revver?" brainstorming, I came up with the idea of doing a parody (more of an imitation, really) of the Ze Frank show, which I told you about here. As with any parody, it won't make any sense unless you've seen its target, so, if you haven't yet, go watch some of The Show. The episodes I mentioned in my previous entry would be a good place to start.

revver(44911)

But why?

Two main reasons, really: 1) to better understand, and thereby appreciate, what Ze does every day, and 2) to see what kind of traffic/revenue such a stunt could generate for my Revver account.

As for #1, let me tell you, it ain't easy. Although the entire process, including all brainstorming, songwriting, and editing only took me two hours (iMovie rocks!), the final product, as you can see above, was pretty unspectacular. It really boils down to acting skills, of which I have none, and Ze has tons. He mentions in some of his other videos (not from The Show) that he regularly spends time in the mirror making faces at himself to better understand and control his facial muscles. It's really very hard to make yourself interesting when all that is seen are your eyes, nose, and mouth. Also, enunciation. Speaking clearly, yet rapidly, is a real talent. Radio DJs and news anchors take classes to learn to better enunciate. I have had no such classes, and even I don't understand all the words in my video.

For #2, I'm fairly pleased. In the first day (well, only 12 hours so far, really), that video has been viewed 1642 times and earned me $12.60. Thankfully, I have a day job that pays more than $6.30/hour. Ze Frank Parody Earnings

My secondary goals, which are more shallow and ego-driven were to 1) make "King of the Comments", and 2) get Ze to mention me, or even show a clip from my video, on his show.

The "King of the Comments" is a daily contest to see who can post the best comment. Everyone (it's managed by IP address) gets 99 votes that can either be for or against any comment they choose. Your comment's total score is the positive votes minus the negative votes. Voting ends at the end of each day (EST, I suppose). And I actually did it! I proudly post my King Duckie emblem here:

King of the Comments

To see this on the actual site, go here.

I still have to wait 12 hours to see if Ze decides to honor me with a shoutout. Hopefully he won't skewer me too badly...

In conclusion, I'd just like to say that I find the world of the Anonymous Internet is always interesting. It gives you a taste of what the world must be like for celebrities and politicians. There's ALWAYS someone to criticize you and shout "you suck!" from behind their shield of anonymity. And that's a good thing. It's also something that you don't experience in day-to-day life. You surround yourself with people that like you and laugh at your jokes, and are never told that you "[have] on a hell of a butt chin" (whatever that means) and are "the least charismatic person on the planet", as some of the comments about me said. But I also got comments like "that parody was pretty cool. :👍:" and "Kudos to Rasman, he gets my 100 clickety-clicks for today. That was entertaining on a limited budget." And frankly, the positive comments are worth a lot more because, in the world of the Anonymous Internet, it's a lot easier to be mean that to be nice.