One day during one of the west-coast YouTube events I got a call from one of my YouTube friends Eddie. He hates when I call him Eddie because he goes by TheMightyThor1212, and using the name Eddie might compromise national friggin’ security.
Eddie knows I’m boo-hooing that I was missing the SanVegasFranAngelosDiegowhatever YouTube meetup and puts me on the phone with a number of YouTube peeps (including a somewhat perplexed LisaNova who kinda pretends she knows who I am, but is really thinking “I hope this bearded dude doesn’t grab my boobies… Nothing tastes as good as thin”).
Then Eddie puts a guy on the phone who has a spark to his voice- yeah a spark like the one that graced Joe Pesci’s tooth on Home Alone. The guy says he’s Shaycarl and I make him repeat the name about 5 times because I honestly wanted to see his videos after hearing this odd sincerity of his voice. I wrote it down and subscribed, but then (and this is unusual for me) I started eating his videos like cereal at midnight. Shay says something about Sxephil having mentioned him, and it got him a bunch of subscribers. I later find this video response to “YouTube is My Wife,” and my nuts still hurt from laughing.
Shay and I have spoken, collabed, and met a few times, and he’s punked me good. But now he’s eclipsed me and is in the YouTube Popular crowd, but not anymore affected by it than Buckley or HappySlip. He’s the rare YouTuber you’d take home to your mama. He’s deeply faithful and not nearly as annoying as I thought he’d be. I thought I’d have to fake laugh in his presence like I was meeting Robin Williams. But it turns out he’s as delicious in person (mind you this was pre-ZZ Top beard).
So this Shay turns out to be a mega star on planet YouTube (find him and his cult-like following at ShayCarl or Shaytards and he steals the show on TheStation). But he still has the sweet heart to reference Uncle Nalts and that book about YouTube Popularity I wrote and published for free on the Internets. Like, Scoob, it’d be worth my time writing that dated eBook if it had .05 percent of a role in taking Shay from a disk jockey gig in some state none of us have heard of (Nevada or Oklahoma or something) to 300 plus subscribers and WWF Dominator of YouTube’s most-popular page.
Of course I can’t take credit, because then I’d have to take responsibility if he ends up getting sucked into the wild life of Venice Beach, and we find his bloated corpse all coked out on a beach like Belushi or Farley, his TV equivalents.
Oh shit I have to write a real book in about 20 days. WTF am I blogging for? Oh yeah- my car’s still warming up. So a long way of saying… be careful how you treat people when you’re hawt because they might eclipse you, and make you proud as an Irish mama.
P.S. Buckley said he saw me at the YouTube 777 gathering but thank God he didn’t approach me. Because I might have been all, like, “yipes! An unpopular gay guy!!! Zipster protect me!!!!” And then he’d never return my e-mails.