Zefrank is a humorist, designer, lecturer and online performance artist. He is also, in my opinion, quickly becoming an internet icon as his video blog "The Show" is rapidly gaining viewers for its satirical, humorous and surprisingly oddball style.
In other words, stop reading this write up and go watch it. That's probably the best way to enjoy "The Show"- in a state of surprise. It can be found at http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/.
For those of you who want a bit more background information before watching or just curious as to who this guy is, read on.
Zefrank was born Hosea Frank on March 31, 1972. While earning a degree in neuroscience from Brown University, Ze played in a band called Dowdy Smack, which broke up in 1998. He now lectures on the way telecommunications is changing the nature of human culture and experience. His website, zefrank.com is a quite a large collection of games, humorous jokes and other malarkey. It reached fame after Ze sent a series of video clips called "How to Dance Properly" to his friends as birthday invite. By accident (as is often the case with these things) Ze had prompted an explosion of interest, as the meme spread rapidly.
Subsequently he built of this interest on the simple principle of making stuff people like. He involves his audience in a quite few of his projects (something very apparent in "The Show" as well).
On March 17 2006 he aired the first episode of "The Show". It's rapidly gained a large fan following most likely for it's light satirical nature, strong humour, rapid development of recurring jokes and an honest and thoughtful nature. He will insult his auidence but only playfully and only when he wishes to point out the flaws in someones argument. He also tries experiment accross the internet like playing a game of chess against his collabrative audience. Once he actually got his audience to write the show for him, if only to show what happens when fans collaboratively write the show.
References:
http://www.zefrank.com
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ze_Frank
http://www.goodexperience.com/blog/archives/000191.php
http://blog.industrialbrand.com/archives/2006/03/ze_frank_interview_life_like_a_potato.html
http://www.tisch.nyu.edu/object/ITP_zefrank.html
Suggested playing/watching:
http://www.zefrank.com/invite/swfs/index2.html- "How to Dance Properly"
http://www.zefrank.com/athiest/athiest.html- "The Atheist Game"
http://www.zefrank.com/punc- "Secrets of Communication"
http://www.zefrank.com/theshow/archives/2006/03/031706.html- "First Episode of the Show"
"http://www.zefrank.com/thewiki/the_show:_03-23-06"