Imagine sitting in the audience, and someone on a big video screen says, “Suck It Out Of My Ass.” How can you not laugh? Being in the crowd makes that damn funny. Scoble writes:

The funniest thing at the Crunchies

So, who picked up the award? Fake Steve Jobs, of course, only he did it through a video. Beware of the language, if you’re going to play that around the kiddies this morning.

Michael Arrington commenting on Scoble’s blog post said:

“sorry I couldn’t show up in person…you’ll probably get some big names anyway…scoble will show up…scoble will show up for anything, he’d show up for a burger king opening.”

God I love that video.

My secret stalker sent me links to both articles. He also wrote, if that what you call this:

You arnt [sic] smart enough to be a freetard or borg. You’re sit [sic].

Personally, I found that funnier.

My post on FSJ Jumping The Shark sure got a quick reaction from the teaming masses. I received and e-mail from Dan Lyons. The e-mail address was dan dot lyons dot fsj at gmail. The full text:

The retaliating will be swift and severe. We will bring down you [sic] website. Mose [sic] will have you begging you f**khead. SIOMA [sic]

I would like to believe the e-mail is from the real Dan Lyons. The funny thing is that if he e-mailed me, I don’t know how I’d tell the difference between the real and the fake.

Many people interested in creating a web presence to interact with their audience can learn a lot from Fake Steve Jobs. Like any character sketch without a story, there is a point where it becomes stale. That happened about the time FSJ published his book. New concepts are uninteresting. The character is unchanged. We probably aren’t too far from self-mockery and self-parody. I wish to declare that Fake Steve Jobs has jumped the shark.

To quote wikipedia:

..the phrase has become a colloquialism[1] used by U.S. TV critics and fans to denote the point at which the characters or plot of a TV series veer into a ridiculous, out-of-the-ordinary storyline. Such a show is typically deemed to have passed its peak. Once a show has “jumped the shark” fans sense a noticeable decline in quality or feel the show has undergone too many changes to retain its original charm.

I watched Fake Steve Jobs perform a 2007 Crunchie Award. Writers shouldn’t act their material. The material wasn’t so remarkable either.

One really bad step can undo so much hard work. Authentic is the best antidote for this outcome. When your approach is parody and mockery, authentic is a hard tool to use.

Fake Steve Jobs has jumped the shark.
.

I’m too young to have figured out this allusion. John Gruber at daringfireball tipped me to this nugget. First, to quote FSJ:

The guy who talked to my lawyer on the phone last night got on a red-eye to the East Coast and I went to see him this morning in a suite at the Four Seasons, even though my lawyer, Tony Clifton, who lives in New York, could not attend and had told me not to agree to anything but just to listen and hear the guy out and report back to him.

Then to quote wikipedia:

Tony Clifton is a fictional character created and often played by comedian Andy Kaufman in the late 1970s. Kaufman saw Clifton as the antithesis of the sweet, gentle “Foreign Man” character he was best known for (which was later adapted into Latka, Kaufman’s character on Taxi). Clifton was a staggeringly untalented lounge singer with a nasal, deliberately annoying singing voice. Clifton epitomized the washed-up showbiz casualty, a “star” too lazy to even bother to remember the lyrics to his songs. Clifton would often attempt to improvise comical lyrics that were intentionally unfunny before giving up entirely without seeming to care. Clifton also tended to randomly insult patrons, passing off the abuse as the “comedy” portion of his act. Many people misunderstood Kaufman’s intent, focusing on the character’s foul language and prima donna antics while failing to appreciate the fact that Clifton was meant to be the comic antithesis of the typical lounge singer, a bland, genial entertainer designed to add a touch of class to a hotel and make guests feel welcome.

FSJ is good. Real good.

Enderle:
Snark Attack - my take on this amazing bad piece of writing. So bad, it’s good.
MacDailyNews - Enderle: Is Apple Rotting From The Inside Out?