WHAT'S NEW?

SITE OF THE WEEK

Long-time fans of Superman comics know all about the Bizarro world, an alternative dimension where everything is the polar opposite of things here on Earth. Cockeyed.com is a little like that, but not exactly. The online world of Rob Cockerham is more like the eccentric vision of Lewis Carroll -- but no, that’s not it either.

VISIT the Cockeyed web site

It’s all a matter of proportion. Cockerham asks himself questions that are not terribly strange. How many pumpkin pies, for example, can you make from a 116-pound pumpkin? You’ve wondered that, right? The weird part is that Cockerham and his expansive gang of friends then set out to find the answers. Can you really beat a speeding ticket in Sacramento by pleading innocent? How often will toast land butter-side up when flipped? How many cups of beer are in a keg? What’s the smallest container that will hold a million dollars in cash? How many feet of silly string come in a spray can? What is the total square footage of the Sunday newspaper?

The giant pumpkin, by the way, made 100 pies. The keg held 141 cups. The Silly String squirted for a total of 1,600 feet. You’ll have to visit the web site for the rest.

What makes Cockeyed.com among the most enjoyable web sites I’ve ever seen is the obvious rapture with which the members of the team go about solving their goofy problems. Each caper is fully documented with text and photos. There are pranks too, like when the team placed a fake historic plaque in downtown San Francisco. There are science experiments and strange Halloween costumes, papier-mâché figures travelogues from around the world. Everything is creative, well documented and fun to read. It’s "Sesame Street" meets "Mr. Wizard" meets "Home Improvements" meets MTV "Jackass", except that unlike the mean-spirited MTV show, the pranks on Cockeyed have no victims. It’s all good clean – okay messy -- fun.

After a couple of wonderfully wasted hours on Cockeyed, I emailed the webmaster with a series of questions. While I was waiting for a reply I watched TV which paled in comparison to the clever stuff I’d been reading online. Then I noticed that Cockerham had long ago posted his biography online and it anticipated my questions.

In a nutshell, the webmaster is the third of five Cockerham kids from Sacramento. He graduated from college 10 years ago, which indicates, despite some of the online pranks, that he is older than 10. He has worked at Internet companies, but is currently out of work, which explains a lot.

Cockerham began monkeying with HTML in 1997 and graduated through a series of cruder sites to the classy current format with dozens of offbeat, always entertaining, online projects. When his site hit 200 megs of server space and the hosting bill hit nearly $100 a month, he talked a Naperville, Illinois company FatWallet.com into hosting his site for free. The site regularly outputs 1.7 gig of data daily to about 2,000 loyal readers. After an interview with Cockerham aired on National Public Radio the web site spiked to 60,000 page views in a day.

By continually adding new features, many that defy categorization (a coffin in the shape of a cat, a six-foot statue of Satan, an homage to Hans Blix) the webmaster developed an international fan club. I heard about the site on that NPR interview and was among the crush of people who hopped online to see what Cockeyed was all about.

After writing the info above I found an email from Rod Cockerham himself in my mailbox. He says he works on the site between five and 20 hours a week, but often the rest of his time gets absorbed in the "sponge" pastime of responding to reader email.

"I do all the designing and writing," the 33-year old adds, "but many of the great ideas come from the ‘staff’ – friends of mine who are recruited into the adventures. I’m always looking for something big, fun and mischievous to embark upon."

The devil is in the details. That Cockerham knows well. The more you analyze what’s "normal", the weirder it gets. If you don’t believe that, go stare at your own face in the mirror for 10 minutes. Conversely, the more you study what’s abnormal, like the amount of gum in a giant pack of Wrigley’s, the more sense it makes. It makes much more sense to me than bombing Saddam and blowing up the world to teach Bin Laden a lesson.

Cockerham applies scientific principles to ridiculous situations, but always with intriguing results. In the teaching business this is called "experiential" education, or learning-by-doing. Rob Cockerham reports on miniscule topics with forensic detail. His writing is guileless and full of wonder, flowing on like a camera with an endless supply of film. He wonders what will happen next with such naïve attention that the reader can’t help but wonder too. Jonathan Swift used a similar tone when writing "Gulliver’s Travels" which is why it works as a great children’s story and as a devastating satire.

This ability to communicate clearly is a rare gift among young writers whose work is often cynical, dark, defensive and scatological. Then again, so was Jonathan Swift. Cockerham’s writing has all the inherent wonderment of a conversation between Wally and Beaver Cleaver, but with a slightly dangerous edge. Hey Beav, I wonder what will happen if I pull this blender apart and use it to make a cheap Jacuzzi? I don’t know, Wally, do you think we should try it and see?

"Someday I will publish something important. I guess," Cockerham apologizes in his online bio. "I'm working up to that,"

I think Cockeyed is already full of important stuff. Although he appears to shrink from the corrupting influence of making a living off his wits, the webmaster is dangling on the edge of commercial success.

"I would love to have a larger audience," he says in his email, "or to market this material in a way that would generate an income, but that is turning out to be harder than it looks."

To earn a trickle of income Cockeyed.com now sells logo T-shirts and coffee mugs. Readers can bid on eBay.com to own the latest Cockeyed coffee mug, created by the webmaster’s father in the family kiln. Even here in the advertising copy, the patented Cockerham humor prevails. The advertising copy for the auction reads, in part:

"Designed with the thirsty in mind, this ceramic mug is sturdy and dishwasher safe. Although not as durable as some plastic mugs, ceramic mugs are known to have lasted thousands of years... ask any archeologist!"

Rather than work really hard on projects for little return, I’d like to see Cockeyed recycle its data offline into more lucrative media. The 31 entries in the "What’s Inside?" category alone will make a great science book for kids with almost no alterations. I suggest dropping the occasional "naughty" sections and turning the focus away from college freshmen toward high school and middle school students. Nickelodeon would be smart to launch a TV version of Cockeyed where kids learn basic skills in every field by conducting outrageous experiments with host Rod Cockerham. With Mr. Rogers gone to that Big Neighborhood in the sky and Pee-Wee Herman still locked in the closet – there’s plenty of openings for new role models. I can almost here the cockeyed theme music playing now.