Zefrank how to dance
Throwback Thursday: The Internet 1.9 Genius of Ze Frank
The party invitation that started it all.
Do you remember Ze Frank? Don’t be ashamed if you don’t. You see, long ago, in the before time of the internet (around 2005), there was no Facebook or Twitter, and none of those obligatory “share” buttons that universally clutter and slow down your web pages even though no-one uses them. Which, combined with the fact that his early creations were often created using a sometimes lethal, long-abandoned tool called “Flash”, meant you had to share his creations with elaborate incomprehensible strings of text like http://whateveryourdomainis.com/d4x_ss3/pages/poop/how_to_poop.html, and you probably had to do it by email, for chrissakes. It’s a wonder anyone even discovered he existed. But exist he did, one might even say he thrived for several years. To paraphrase Jack Nichilson’s character Art Land in Mars Attacks, “Ze Frank was thinkin’ ’bout viral when there wasn’t no viral”.
You may very well have seen his later work, which has millions of YouTube views. His True Facts series had a much broader reach than his earlier series The Show, but they both were hilarious in their own way. There’s a good chance you’ve seen “True Facts About The Angler Fish”:
Although Ze Frank got a lot of page views back in his early days, he didn’t rise to the God-like status of say, Grumpy Cat or Rebecca Black. But he did make a splash, and his notoriety probably played a part in securing his current job as president of BuzzFeed Motion Pictures. Which would probably be more suitably described as a Satan-like status. And which is ironic in another way: the formulaic success of sites like BuzzFeed and UpWorthy have pretty effectively killed the kind of organic sharing that made viral a thing in the first place, and made his new job possible.
It’s like a time paradox in a Star Trek episode or something!
Strangely, ZeFrank doesn’t seem to have any videos about time travel. Or maybe he has simply traveled through time deleting them all. But he DOES have a funny cat video, proving the simple mathematical theorem cat+video=views. It has more views than any of his other clips:
But ignore our snark about his current employer, Ze Frank was an “Internet 1.9” genius, carving out a clever new niche in era when smartphones barely existed, and many were still on dialup. He created hundreds of clever and engaging videos, games, and interactives that were shared on “web forums” and “webrings” everywhere, and did a lot of it using – as we joked earlier – the animation/design tool Flash. Fortunately for us he didn’t delete it all in shame, it’s preserved for eternity in the labyrinthine archives over at ZeFrank.
com. Or until he forgets to pay a hosting bill, whichever comes first.
Below are a couple of personal favorites of ours, but you can’t really get the full scope of his capricious genius without actually visiting his website, where his Web 1.9 creations are meticulously archived. You can learn more about ZeFrank on Wikipedia of course, or he’s done a heck of a lot of TED Talks too.
How to Dance Properly
One of ZeFrank’s first viral successes was How to Dance Properly, which was actually a party invite he had sent to a few friends. In 2001, this was a pretty sophisticated little dookickey to send as a casual invite, and it exploded in popularity. Fortunately for Ze Frank, the address of the party was not included in the page. (We’ve embedded a similar doodad further below, these items aren’t vary “share friendly”).
This is just a screengrab. Click the image to visit the actual Flash page.
My Advice to You
Again, this felt a little edgy in its day.
ZeFrank takes on the character of your probably gay Euro-trash club friend, and answers advice questions in a clickable Flash page.
Sequencer
Although it’s not terribly musical, this little gizmo was the first time I personally had seen a Flash-based music sequencer embedded in a web page. It seems downright primitive now, but it was pretty amazing back then.
How To Impress Your Date
This one was hugely popular. We’ve embedded it here with an iFrame, because we know you’re too lazy to actually click on anything on this page so far. We hope ZeFrank doesn’t sue us, now that he’s a CEO with a hugely-funded tech firm. If the block below is all bunged up on your phone or something, just go visit the freakin’ page here
Ze Frank | Know Your Meme
5
- 11,451
- 44
- 2
This submission is currently being researched & evaluated!
You can help confirm this entry by contributing facts, media, and other evidence of notability and mutation.
- Person
- Status
- Submission
- Type:
- Comedian
- Year
- Unknown
- Origin
- Unknown
- Tags
- youtube, video, comedy, zefrank, comedian
About
Ze Frank is the stage name of Hosea Jan Frank, an Internet comedian and performance artist who is credited with pioneering the vlogging format through his web series the show with zefrank and numerous other projects.
Online History
In March 2001, Frank launched the website ZeFrank.com,[4] which featured Flash animations of the comedian performing a variety of dances (shown below).[5]
Frank continued to create various projects for the site, including an online birthday invitation that brought millions of visitors to his site through a widely circulated email, several Flash games and short films. In 2002, Frank won a Webby Award[6] for Best Personal Website.
In February of 2004, ZeFrank gave a talk at the TED Conference about his experiences with performing comedy on the web (shown below).
In September 2012, the viral content site BuzzFeed acquired Frank's startup company to produce video content for the site.[7]
The Show
On March 17th, 2006, ZeFrank launched the online video show The Show with ZeFrank on the Blip[1] media platform, which took the format of a daily news show providing commentary on current events. The show rain until March 17th, 2007 but has since had all episodes removed.
A Show
On February 27th, 2012, Frank created a Kickstarter[2] campaign to fund a new show titled A Show. On March 9th, the funding period ended with over $146,000 of the $50,000 goal pledged.
On April 9th, 2012, Frank launched the new show with a video titled "An Invocation for Beginnings" (shown below).
True Facts Series
On December 7th, 2012, the first in the series of comedy animal videos titled "True Facts" was uploaded to YouTube (shown below), in which Frank narrates humorous factoids about the echidna monotreme animal from Australia (shown below). In the first 10 months, the video accumulated more than 4.22 million views and 3,000 comments. As of November 2013, 21 additional videos in the series have been released.
Notable Videos
Search Interest
External References
[1] BlipTV – ZeFrank
[2] Kickstarter – A Show With ZeFrank
[3] Wayback Machine – ZeFrank.com
[4] ZeFrank – Ze Frank
[5] ZeFrank – How to Dance Properly
[6] Webby Awards – 2002
[7] All Things D – BuzzFeed Hires Web Video Pioneer Ze Frank
Recent Videos
44 total+ Add a Video
View All Videos
Recent Images
2 total+ Add an Image
Salsa, love and fate
Cuban Frank VALDEZ has been teaching Kazakhstanis to dance for 12 years and saves them from loneliness. He also says that it is very easy to meet your love in Almaty
In a conversation, Frank always says: “We are in Almaty”, “we are Almaty residents”.
For verification, I immediately ask the main question: can he now in his hometown, in Havana, determine where is up and where is down?
- It's difficult, but possible, - Frank thinks for a minute and laughs. - At least I did it when I came to acquaint my relatives with my daughter and wife.
Frank was born in Cuba, studied at the National Academy of Arts (it seems that dancing is the main occupation in Cuba), then worked in an ensemble and came to Kazakhstan on tour. Then, twelve years ago, a real fashion for Cuban music and dances appeared in Almaty, artists were eagerly invited, persuaded to stay for some time in the city, hold master classes, perform ...
- Arriving, the artists fell in love, started families here. This happened to many of my friends. A whole Cuban diaspora was formed here. We, Cubans, are very grateful to this city, because we found our soul mates here. The popular club "Copacabana" was not just a place of leisure, but a real embassy of music and dance of our republic, where you could always dance salsa and bachata.
I met my future wife on the dance floor, she is also fond of Latin American dances. Fell in love with her at first sight. She is very beautiful: tall, green-eyed, Jewish and Russian blood mixed in her, she lived abroad for some time, knows several languages and is generally a very cosmopolitan person, says Valdez.
Frank at first could not communicate at all, he could not even distinguish Russian and Kazakh speech by ear. When he realized that he wanted to stay in the country, he began to master the language, while his wife took up Spanish...
- If now we are arguing with her, she immediately switches to Spanish, - Frank laughs. - There were many difficulties, but in fact they only made our relationship more interesting. At first, of course, I got into trouble all the time: I spoke incorrectly, dressed too brightly, as is not customary here, I was terribly unpunctual, although just this is not considered a crime here. I don’t really remember the period of courtship, because all this was not important: I looked into the eyes of my beloved woman and understood that it was with her that I wanted to live my whole life.
- That's what happened, - laughs Alina YUNUS, Frank's wife. - We fell in love with each other at first sight. I was struck by some of his naivete, sincerity. The only thing that is difficult is with gastronomic preferences. He still does not understand our usual dishes such as beshbarmak or dumplings. Soup with noodles is a very strange food for him. Otherwise, it really is completely ours.
- I was very lucky with my mother-in-law, Frank continues. - Although I was not the most enviable groom. But maybe she just saw that I was a good person. Sometimes you should forget about material advantages and see what a person has inside. Our daughter is seven years old, she is an exact copy of me, to my mother's regret.
Frank admits that the most difficult thing in our country for him was to fall in love with winter…
- But I almost managed it. I just try not to think about how cold it is, but to see the beauty in this time of year. It's much better than just suffering.
Although for a person born in a tropical climate, 15 degrees of frost is very difficult, he argues.
Cuban relatives are completely delighted with both their wife and daughter, and even the fact that Frank considers himself an Almaty citizen. And most importantly, because Latin American dances are so popular in distant Kazakhstan.
- Salsa is an extraordinary dance, - Alina continues the conversation. - Your body becomes free, opens up. I used to be worried, angry, jealous when Frank danced with others, now I am very happy that more and more people want to dance for themselves, for the soul. We will definitely teach our daughter.
For many years, Frank has been teaching everyone who wants to move beautifully and sexually. Moreover, he loves to work just with beginners, with wooden, notorious, people rooted to the sofa. With such an amateur troupe, he even staged his own author's play "Pilgrim".
- Dance is energy, energy is life, Frank is convinced. - It's great to see how people change, this is especially noticeable with girls: at first they are closed, they cannot move, they are shy.
And then they even start to dress differently, behave differently. Sexuality is not forms, not makeup, it's self-confidence, pleasure in your movements, it's when you don't care what they think of you. By the way, I keep count of married couples that have developed thanks to my dancing classes. Now there are nine of them! I am very proud of this result!
Ksenia Evdokimenko, photo is provided by Francom Valdes, Almaty
Share
Share
Twit
Grade
I Won'T Dance - Frank Sinatra
Indicate the link to the video with YouTube in the HTTPS format: /www.youtube.com/watch?v=хххххх
find video on YouTube
Is that the video?
No, please specify other Yes, that's right
Thank you, video uploaded
The page will reload in a few seconds with a new video.
I won't danceI won't dance I won't dance. You know what? You're lovely. When you dance you're charming and you're gentle. But this feeling isn't purely mental. I won't dance. Why should I? I know that music leads the way to romance. I won't dance. Don't ask me. You know what? You're lovely. And oh what do you do to me? When you dance you're charming and you're gentle. But this feeling isn't purely mental. I won't dance. I know that music leads the way to romance. I won't dance. Don't even ask. You know what? You are cute. But, oh, what are you doing to me? When you dance, you are charming and gentle. But this feeling is completely unreasonable. I won't dance. Why do I need it? I know this music leads to romance. I will not dance. Don't even ask. You know what? You are cute. But, oh, what are you doing to me? When you dance, you are charming and gentle. But this feeling is completely unreasonable. I won't dance. I know this music leads to romance. Translated by Innokenty I Won't Dance Lyrics Frank Sinatra Rating: 5 / 5 10 opinions | A swingin' affair!Frank SinatraTracklist (7)
Add videoEnter the YouTube video link for this song to download the video. Popular songs 1.  .
|
Don't ask me. 
