Shyzer.com

For anybody who has never made an Earth Sandwich, been a member of the League of Awesomeness, or had a fixation with small duckies, you have until March 17th to check out The Show with Ze Frank.

You might have seen some of his other work without even knowing it (much can be found on his main site), but for the past 11~ months, Frank has been writing, editing, and staring in his own three to five minute videos which he creates and uploads every weekday. Each episode is tight, fast paced, up close, and personal as he covers anything that tickles his fancy at the moment - news, politics, culture, sports, whatever. But he does so in a Jon Stewart/The Daily Show-esque manner with a dash of raunchiness, a heaping of absurdity and cooked at the speed of a TV lawyer announcing all rules and regulations to a contest.

Every week he seems to come up with a new idea or theme and from there, he lets his audience run with it and shape it into it’s future form. This isn’t some giant community we’re talking about here, but instead a relatively close (and fairly large) group of fans with similar viewpoints and even more similar absurd thinking. Besides the aforementioned recurring themes in the first paragraph, one great example is where a college student from his forums had nothing to do over Christmas holidays, so long story short he became a human baton, driven cross country from New England to California by follow Sports Racers (translation: fans of Frank’s show) before returning all the way home the via the exact same method.

It might sound stupid, but trust me, after you watch a few episodes, you realize Frank is not only capable, but is fully pulling it off.

WHOSH! THIS IS FOX! ZWEEERL! LIVE FROM PHOENIX! BWERNG!

After tonight’s coverage of the Tostitos Fiesta Bowl, FOX has officially sealed its rank as the network with the worst sports coverage. Ever.

Do you enjoy good camera work? How about quick replays of recent important or big plays? Or how about a non-cluttered screen with few sound effects? Then stay away from FOX!

With all the graphics, sounds, and flashes every few seconds, you’d think the powers that be over at FOX were trying to give their viewers an epileptic seizure. Maybe they have a vested stock interest in the leading pharmaceutical company out there. My siblings racked up three months worth of being grounded before I realized that the culprits weren’t them, but instead was FOX.

Almost every replay they showed happened to be through a camera angle where the action was off screen. I can’t tell you the amount of times I watched a replay, turned to my buddy Jeff, and asked him why we were just shown a clip of two players blocking each other near the sideline. The few replays they actually did manage to show which contained some action happened to also be covered with a bare minimum of advertisements and graphics on one third of the screen. It’s such an enjoyable viewing experience when an explosive play is covered by a Nissan ad for a car nobody’s interested in!

But the real kicker had to be the camera angles. I’ve never seen such poor camera work throughout an entire game in my life. It was as if they had only two settings to choose from - nosebleed and ground level. On every play, I was either squinting to see which player had the ball or trying to identify the nose hair shown on the screen. I did enjoy all the aerial coverage of the indoor dome they were playing in, though! Maybe next time you could install a camera underground and show me the dirt beneath the 50 yard line?

FOX, I understand you’re trying to be innovative and fresh. You gave us the yellow first down line and the glowing puck, which are awesome. But there’s a fine line between a cool, new feature and pissing off your viewers.

And I’m pissed.

EDIT: Wow. Holy Shit, wow. One of the best endings to a football game I’ve ever seen was the only redeeming factor that saved FOX tonight. I love Trickeration plays. I love teams like Boise State who run 20000 Trickeration plays in a row even more.

It takes a certain type of show like Battlestar Galactica to leave you with that numbed feeling deep down in your gut even hours after the final scene ended.

Once you sit through an hour of television like that, you don’t just go back and turn on The Daily Show or 24. Believe me, I’ve tried.

Thank you, Ron Moore. You truly are a genius in the midst of a field with far too many hacks.

There are only a small handful of songs that upon hearing them for the first time, evoked a response in me of, “Damn, I wish I had written that song.”

This is one such song.

I’m not sure why the audio and video get out of sync in that version, but it’s not like you need to watch him play in order to listen to the music. This second version is a bit longer and takes a while to get into, but it’s well worth it.

John Butler Trio - Ocean

If you haven’t watched up to the Season 3, Episode 5 of LOST, then please don’t click the “read more of this entry” link below.

I rarely ever vouch for something I have little control over. I don’t like the thought of saying something is great only to turn around later and see it’s total crap. Movies and books are one thing, for if I watch or read one and love it enough to recommend it to people, it’s rarely going to change. No matter how many years later I suggest it, the movie isn’t going to have changed nor will the book have gone through another round of editing. But then you’ve got the oh-so-fickle world of television.

When I first watched LOST, I was excited. Just the general plot was something that I’d imagined about in my brain for years, something that I’d actually begun to write about and ponder turning it into a real story. And then before I knew it, ABC was actually coming out with a show just like the one in my head and I couldn’t wait! And to be fully honest, that first season was dynamite. It was exciting, explosive, mysterious, and fun. I told everybody I knew about it. I stayed up one night in my kitchen, blowing off hanging out at the bars with my friends, to tell my brother all about what he’d missed and why it was so great. I got my dad hooked, my other two siblings, my mom. Anybody who would listen to me, I went on and on about the show.

And now I wish I could go back, tell them that what I saw that first season wasn’t the final product and that if they were smart, they’d stay far, far away from this show.

(more…)