Entries tagged “ze frank”

Today's Blog of the Year Pick: Ill Doctrine.

Put simply, Jay Smooth's Ill Doctrine is the best video blog on the web. (At least the best one that's in English.) As you'd expect from the founder of hiphopmusic.com, Ill Doc starts from a base of reporting on hip hop music and culture. But from that starting point, Jay branches into ruminations on celebrity, culture, politics, and art with real feeling. I don't think anybody else could make me both roll my eyes at and empathize with Amy Winehouse in the space of just a few minutes, let alone turn "Chocolate Rain" into a non-ironic jam. And for casual viewers, nobody does a better job of breaking down complex topics like the bust of DJ Drama by the RIAA than Ill Doctrine.

The editing's tight, the videos frequently feature original music and interviews, and there's a bracing honesty to much of the conversation that really connected for me.
Pick of the Posts:

• Amy Winehouse and the Ethics of Clowning People
• Machine Guns and Stupid Choices
• Black Coach
• And Introducing the Ill Doctrine, the best place to start.

If you like this, try: Catching up on Ze Frank's archives for The Show. I wasn't kidding when I said he was our I Love Lucy.

This is one in a series of posts about Blogs of the Year for 2007. They're my subjective picks about blogs that inspired or influenced me this year, and you can check out my introductory post to find more.

Last time, a rumination on video quality. Today, a look at Ze Frank going Hollywood, courtesy of the NY Observer. The nut graf, to me, is buried halfway down the story:

In March of 2001, Mr. Frank was an art director at Dennis Interactive. He became an Internet rock star overnight when, as he put it, “The ‘How to Dance Properly’ thing hit.”

“You know, I made a little birthday invitation that I put online of myself dancing like an asshole with some sarcastic commentary, and I sent it to about 17 people, and then millions of people were watching it within a couple days,” he said. “It’s one of the strangest things that can happen to you. It’s just so crazy to be getting e-mails at that rate, where every single time you refresh there’s 60, 70 new e-mails from around the world. It was just so weird and exciting.”

Mr. Frank knew he was on to something. He quickly threw up a Web site and quit his job.

Again and again, the lesson I am learning is that jumping in with both feet and being really committed is the key to success. I've seen lots of people who have made little things that took off on the web, (hell, I've made some myself) and almost none of them have done what Ze's done with it. I don't know that my goal would be to get to Hollywood -- Ze's headed West just as I'm moving back East -- but it's still an impressive and useful reminder.