The Reeler Affirms its Superiority (and You Can Help)

Dear reader, I rarely ask anything of you beyond your indulgence and patience when I suck (which, let's face it, is like every day of late) and your beneficent word-of-mouth when I luck into something potentially useful to you and your friends and colleagues. Today, as I prepare to compete in Joe's Pub's ROFL online video competition, I'm requesting a little bit of both.

ROFL comprises a fistful of Web wonks, YouTube junkies and general cultural miscreants who battle it out over three rounds of the most outlandish videos they can find. "(H)igh art, low humor, YouTube video, Myspace weirdness, flash animation, web memes, conceptual puzzles, original film and non-sequiturs galore," the organizers write, "ROFL is a gong show for the new millennium." Well, hot damn. This time around I got the call, and I think I have what it takes to vanquish my rivals, who include:

--Josh Fruhlinger (Comics Curmudgeon and Wonkette)

--Cintra Wilson (Salon and Dregublog)

--Michelle Collins (You Can't Make It Up and VH1's Best Week Ever)

--Andrew Baron (Rocketboom)

--Tony Carnevale (Channel 102)

--Marisa Olson (Rhizome.org and Nasty Nets)

--Charles Broskoski (Supercentral)

Sure, they look formidable on paper, but as we're fond of saying at Reeler HQ, that's why we play the game. At any rate, this is an audience-judged contest, and my strengths lie less in my middling video eye than my deep, sprawling network of allies on the other side of the screen. So if you don't have plans Friday night around 11:30 (and really, who does?), I hope you'll pay a visit to Joe's Pub to drink liberally and back me up -- hardly mutually exclusive exercises, I understand -- against the scary line-up sharing the stage.

Tickets are $12, a small price to pay for what promises to be a truly epic, bruising and entertaining throwdown of shut-ins. Read more and view video samples at Joe's Pub's own site, and please clear a spot Friday night. Together we can accomplish anything -- or at least get me out of the first round.

Posted at June 21, 2007 7:56 AM