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Site of the Week
Various Sites

The Web is a pretty funny place if you know where to look. This week marked the kick-off of a number of national comic sites. We check them out and toss in some funny local sites for good measure.

THE NUTS & BOLTS

This week, for example, comedian Jerry Seinfeld released a very short film of himself hanging out with an animated Superman. The mini-film is directed by Barry Levinson (Wag the Dog, Rain Man, Diner) but you can’t see it in the theater or on TV. It was designed for the Internet and is only available currently on the American Express web site. Of course it is blatant commercialism, a comic book episode wrapped around an ad for credit cards. You have to surrender your email address (or someone else’s) to watch the short show. And the idea of Seinfeld as a buddy of Superman, to be honest, is funnier than the show. In this episode a robber steals Jerry’s new DVD player on the streets of New York and his buddy goes to the rescue.

This week also marked the release of satirist Al Franken’s new liberal radio station Air America Network . The station is supposed to include serious liberal issues in direct contrast with the largely right-wing talk-radio work of hosts like Rush Limbaugh. Franken launched the show Wednesday, announcing that he was broadcasting from a bunker 3,500 feet below the bunker of Vice President Dick Cheney. I thought that was funny, but when I tried to listen via the simulcast Internet stream, I could not get through. But the site is up and running now with some heavyweight guests – including former terrorist czar Richard Clarke. In another jab to right-wing host Bill O’Reilly, the three-hour afternoon session is called ‘The O’Franken Factor". It’s serious, but funny. For more funny stuff I switched over to the new automated joke web site, ComedyRobot.com featuring an automated stand-up comedian. A crudely animated cluster of robots read the gags aloud. Vote on the quality of one joke and the robot serves up another. You can see the joke rating in a bar graph and then submit your own gags. If the robot reads your joke online, you get an email. I listened to three dozen old mostly-dirty jokes, voted against all but three – and left.

Meanwhile it is nice to know that Google, still the hands-down favorite search engine online, retains a youthful sense of humor. Featured on the cover of Newsweek last week, the thirty-something owners have still not "gone public" with their profitable high-tech company. Google-watchers speculate on the elusive Google "algorithm" that ranks millions of Internet pages. This week the company revealed that the process is managed by rooms filled with pigeons pecking on keyboards. The Google "Pigeon Rank" process is fully explained on the web site

LOCAL COMEDY

Seacoast web sites are riddled with humor too, and I’m not talking about all those online cartoons about the Tyco Dennis Kozlowski trial. In fact, a number of locals are actually making their living being funny. Here are just a few.

 THE HUMOR GAZETTE
www.humorgazette.com

Former Portsmouth newspaper editor John Breneman has jumped from the frying pan into the fire. His online Humor Gazette is now both avocation and vocation. Fashioned after the extraordinary satire web site The Onion (  ). Now Breneman can offer his own daily spin on the news to a growing audience of readers. His "Fake News" and comic spin have earned kudos already from USA Today. Can a hometown boy make fun of the world full time? Stay tuned.

POOLYLE PRODUCTIONS
www.poolyle.com