Projects

Lame is… danesch.com 1.0

It’s been four years now since I started this site, and something got me thinking today about the very first pages in this space. After digging through some old CDs, I found my first web site, devoted entirely to the ridicule of that which deserves it. It was called Lame is….

The name was one I had been hanging onto for years (it was first conceived of as a xeroxed zine, if that gives you any idea). It came to me in a nightmarish vision that combined two bugbears from my childhood: the sleepy-eyed, pointy-nosed naked dwarves of the “Love Is…” comic that were everywhere in the ’70s, and the little French waif of Broadway’s Les Miserables, who was all over the New York–area media in the ’80s. (If the concept still isn’t clear, click on the picture for an explanatory animation.)

Beginning in January 2001, Lame is… delivered excerpts from stupid corporate press releases, bad photos from stock collections and the AP wire, and a small amount of original writing that strived to be funny.

From a technical standpoint, I was largely clueless, so updates were tedious and difficult. Ripping off other people’s content grew tiresome, too. Lame is… ended within a few weeks.

There are a couple of things in this folder of old stuff that still make me snicker, so I’ll be posting them shortly.