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Yikes!
I think this review was made for me. When I got to Yikes!, I was hit head on with some "obviously mistaken opinions on whatever it is that Josh has written about". This is one of the most wry, sarcastic, and funniest site I have read to date. Josh is a Jewish teacher from Encino, who among other things once had to go to the hospital to have a gum wrapper removed from his nose. This site has some of off colour humour and profanity, which goes right up my alley.
Yikes impressed me right away as it has an About Me section, and was not a blogspot blog. The site itself is well laid out, easy to navigate and just generally looks good. There are some humourous - while colurful - images, that enhance the humour in the posts they accompany. There are perma links ranging from blogs Josh reads, to Mac links, to satires of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Quite the range, and yet I found myself reading most of the sites after I ran out of things to read on Josh's site. All the links on the site are working, and there is really nothing that detracts from the obvious work he has put into the site.
Josh posts about things important to him, like his school, interesting things that happen to him like trying to get on TV, and just random banter. No matter what the topic, each post is written with the same amount of obvious effort, and the same wit. No topic is taboo on this site. Something else I really enjoyed was the photo albums. I always find they add a bit of personality to a site, and are enjoyable just for readers to look at. Josh also made sure he included a link to his old Blogger blog, so you can keep up on when Josh was infatuated with Canada, and was rambling somewhere else.
Overall, this is one of the best sites I have seen on my own time, let alone reviewed. It is because of this, and the fact I have read and reread this site so many times in the last couple of days just looking for a laugh, that I have to give it a 5. There is nothing I can even think of that would make this better. Josh, don't change a thing.
This site was reviewed on 2004-01-31 by Princess Joanna.
They felt this site belonged in the Personal category.
Princess Joanna felt that Yikes! deserved a rating of 5.
My first impressions of "Yikes!" were not so good actually, despite the high score I eventually gave it. Firstly I was confronted by a rather disturbing picture of a guy in his underpants, with an even more disturbing slogan on it. Secondly, the "About Me" page basically states that the author has nothing worth saying and people would be stupid to read the blog anyway, with a lot of swearing thrown in for good measure.
I have mentioned these first impressions because they do not in any way reflect the rest of the blog and had I been a casual browser, I may have let them put me off what is otherwise an outstanding blog. To be fair, the disturbing picture just happened to be part of the most recent post and it (along with the slogan) are both meant in some kind of ironic sense anyway, which the entry text abundantly confirms. The (rather unnecessary) self-berating in the "About Me" is actually false humility too - the author clearly has some interesting, intelligent opinions which are backed up by degrees in both religion and politics and his blog is, in my opinion, most certainly worth reading.
Before I say more about the content though, let's get the technicalities out the way first. It is a Typepad blog with its own individual title bar and fairly plain (but functional) colour scheme. There are the usual links and archives in the one sidebar, along with extensive photo albums. Incidentally, I would like to have known the relevance of the five pictures in the title bar, or whether they are simply just some random images.
I will move swiftly on to the content, because the content is what the site is really all about. As I hinted earlier, I really cannot praise this guy's writing enough. He writes about a variety of topics- the usual blogging fair of interesting links, quotes of the day, personal entries and stuff about his job, but what raises this content above the norm is the fact that a) the author is well educated and politically astute, b) he is a practising Jew (I always like to see bloggers prepared to write about their religious beliefs with conviction) and c) he is also very down to earth and fun to be around. I made a note of the links relating to the posts I loved, so here goes - firstly the underpants one, which is actually highly critical of the Deep South in the US, an interesting discussion about the use of 'Auschwitz' as a flippant analogy (especially with the comments too), a rant about the inappropriate use of language in the British Sporting Press (as a Brit I found this particulaly funny), the difficulties the author has with blogging, some outside criticism of an earlier post (and the author's response to the criticism) and finally some great opinions on the Arab/Isreali conflict. I could write a paragraph on each of these entries in turn, and there are others which I enjoyed too (even the occasional joke thrown in for good measure), but time and space prevent me from doing this. The best thing to do is check them out, as the quality of the writing speaks for itself anyway. My only minor gripe is that the swearing (which is peppered throughout the posts too) may put people off. It didn't bother me though.
Overall then, this is another example of a really well written blog. I laughed, I was entertained, I was educated and I was given an insight in to someone else's world. What more could I ask for?
This site was reviewed on 2004-01-31 by ODAAT.
They felt this site belonged in the Personal category.
ODAAT felt that Yikes! deserved a rating of 4.5.
2 reviewers gave Yikes! an average rating of 4.7500
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Site Category: Personal
Reader Rating: 1.2500 based on 4 votes
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