From the South Florida Sun-Sentinel

Revenge of the nerds

By chronicling their quirks and obsessions on the Web, a new crop of celebrities emerges.

by Joanie Cox and Colleen Dougher

August 2 2006

In 2002, Ghyslain Raza of Quebec made a two-minute video of himself in an empty room, battling an imaginary enemy with a golf-ball retriever he pretended was a lightsaber. Raza, who was 15 at the time, never intended for anyone to see the video. But the following year, some mean-spirited friends acquired the tape and posted Raza's Jedi fantasy online, where it has since been viewed by millions.

As a result of the widespread taunting, Raza fell into a depression and had to change schools. He also became a media sensation, with The New York Times, CBS News and the BBC, among other outlets, reporting on the video's popularity. Star Wars Kid was born.

Raza shunned his newfound fame, but many people rallied to support him. Two California bloggers, noting that geeks must stick together, took up a collection and sent Raza an iPod and a check for more than $3,000. More than 148,000 people signed an online petition with the hope of landing him a cameo role in Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith.

George Lucas never came calling, but Raza's experience demonstrates the power of the Web to turn even the most-anonymous person into a global phenomenon -- willingly or not. Ava Lowery, a 15-year-old from Alabama, was recently interviewed by The New York Times and CNN about the anti-war videos she posts online. Matt Harding of Seattle recently spent six months jigging in front of various landmarks across the world courtesy of a gum company that sponsored his trip. And Robert Ryang is fielding calls from Hollywood after he created a fake trailer imagining the horror classic The Shining as a romantic-comedy.

Ghyslain Raza isn't a dork. He's a trendsetter.

Tron guy

A year after Raza accidentally became Star Wars Kid, Jay Maynard earned his own Internet fame for doing something equally geeky. Maynard attended Penguicon 2.0, a science fiction and Linux convention, in a self-made costume inspired by the 1982 Disney film Tron. After some fellow conventioneers praised his Spandex outfit, the 46-year-old computer consultant posted a link to his site, Tronguy.net, on the popular tech blog Slashdot.

"I figured a few people would look at it and think it was nifty and everybody would move on," Maynard relates. "I never expected the actual reaction I got."

Visitors to his Web site began posting nasty comments about the 210-pound man in a unitard. "Look! Milton from Office Space made a Tron uniform," one wrote. Another advised Maynard to wear a cup. One person who viewed the pictures over breakfast noted, "He's forever ruined Cap'n Crunch for me."

As Maynard drove home from Detroit, he thought about all the people who were making fun of him. But once back in Fairmont, Minn., he was greeted with interview requests from radio programs, including the nationally syndicated Don and Mike Show.

"They were approaching it strictly from the angle of 'Let's make fun of the geek,' " Maynard says. "But I think I won them over."

A few weeks later, Maynard appeared on ABC's Jimmy Kimmel Live. "They put me up at the Hollywood Roosevelt Hotel a block from the studio and generally treated me like I was somebody important," he says.

Maynard's television debut was such a hit that Kimmel hired him as a temporary on-air correspondent. As Tron Guy, Maynard interviewed people at a bodybuilding contest, a pit bull show and a screening of the movie Fahrenheit 9/11. Each time, he brought the conversation back to Tron.

"I got into an argument with one guy, and it led to a nifty green-screen shot where they showed me using my Frisbee to de-rezz -- blow up, in the Tron world -- Michael Moore," Maynard describes. The show also hosted the Win a Date With Tron Guy Contest and set Maynard up with five women.

"The biggest thing I've learned," he admits, "is that no matter what the opinions of the big, unwashed masses are, I'm going to have fun my way."

Maynard's attitude now earns him admiration, not jeers. "You have neither drama-queened nor folded," one visitor to his site wrote. "You rock."

See Tron Guy rap in a new video at Wearetheweb.org

Ava Lowery

Ava Lowery isn't old enough to vote, but she can voice her opposition to the war in Iraq. "I think I'm proof-positive that even a 15-year-old with a computer can do something," she argues. "They can get their opinion out there and convince people to change their minds."

Last year, Lowery created Peacetakescourage.com and began posting original videos that could move even the most apathetic American to outrage. The site, which received 1.5 million hits in June, has captured the attention of anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan. The New York Times recently covered Lowery's efforts in a story titled "Could a 15-year-old with a laptop be the new campaign media guru?"

Lowery thought the article would only mention her. "I went to [The New York Times'] Web site and was just in shock," she recalls. "My jaw was dropped to the floor when my mom came in. We were so excited."

In What Will You Do?, Lowery juxtaposes statistics -- including the number of Iraqi civilians killed or displaced by the war -- with images of wounded Iraqis, Johnny Cash's "Hurt" cover and the question, "What will you do to end it?"

In Not Just a Number, pictures of 500 American soldiers who died in Iraq flash alongside photographs of family members draped over caskets. These images become more powerful when coupled with quotes by White House Press Secretary Tony Snow ("it's a number") and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld ("I don't know anybody that I can think of who has contended that the Iraqis had nuclear weapons").

Lowery dismisses criticism that she is anti-military. "I definitely support the troops," she avers, "and that's why I want them brought home."

Her efforts have earned her support from soldiers and their families. But films such as WWJD, which portrays wounded Iraqi children and asks "What would Jesus do?" have led some people to threaten Lowery's life. The fact that these people remain anonymous, she argues, proves they're feeling guilty about the war, which is exactly how she wants them to feel.

"They should feel guilty," Lowery declares, "as we all should."

The Evolution of Dance

Clad in an orange T-shirt and blue jeans, Judson Laipply twists to Chubby Checker and disco-dances to "Grease." In addition to strutting his stuff to MC Hammer's "Can't Touch This," The Village People's "Y.M.C.A." and 'N Sync's "Bye Bye Bye," Laipply walks like an Egyptian and does some kung-fu fighting.

Laipply, a 30-year-old from Cleveland, has no formal dance training, but The Evolution of Dance, his unedited, high-energy, low-tech debut is the most-watched video on YouTube.com and has been seen by more than 29 million people. His maniacal routine originated with his work as an inspirational speaker.

"I talk a lot about change, dealing with change, understanding change and recognizing that change is consistent and it's going to happen no matter what you do," Laipply says.

After considering how to illustrate this point to audiences, Laipply had the idea to dance to 30 songs spanning the past 50 years of popular music. He now concludes every speech with the six-minute routine, and has performed it on The Today Show.

The exposure is leading to more work, including corporate engagements. Laipply says young employees are accustomed to being entertained and don't want to sit in a stuffy room and be lectured to for six hours. Instead, he believes, they want a motivational speech that ends with a goofy dance.

Shining

Few people will recognize Robert Ryang's name, but many people have seen his parody trailer for the Stanley Kubrick horror movie The Shining. Set to Peter Gabriel's "Solsbury Hill," the video recasts the spooky flick as a heartwarming comedy titled Shining.

In 2005, Ryang's video won an award at Trailer Park, an annual contest held by the Association of Independent Creative Editors. Soon after, the 25-year-old Brooklynite, who works as an editor for the postproduction company P.S. 260, placed the trailer on a secret backdoor site he had created to send a digital birthday card to his girlfriend.

A friend of a friend discovered a link to the site and forwarded it to his brother, who worked in Hollywood. Within the week, Ryang's co-workers began receiving the link from their friends. "They were like, 'I think your thing has just leaked and gone viral,' " Ryang recounts.

That day, P.S. 260 experienced server problems. "We called our provider," Ryang explains, "and they said, 'Yeah, well, everyone's going to this one link, PS260.com/molly. … It was, like, hundreds of thousands of people."

An hour later, a vice president of Warner Bros. was on the line. "I thought he was going to ask me to take it down because The Shining is a Warner Bros. Film," Ryang says. As it turned out, the VP had watched the video and wanted to know whether Ryang had other projects in the works.

Ryang, a Columbia University graduate majoring in film studies and psychology, is taken aback by the response the trailer has inspired. "I've actually gotten some really cool e-mails from filmmakers and people I have idolized and respected," he says. "They just decided to contact me and say I made them laugh."

Ken Create

Ken Padula made his national television debut on VH1's Web Junk 20, performing as a juggling mime and dancer named Ken Create. But he says he's been turning heads in New York nightclubs since 1979.

"The first time I danced at a club, I really didn't know what I was doing," Padula admits. The 48-year-old New Jersey native claims that isn't the case today, however.

"Kids have come up to me and said, 'You're the best entertainer in the world,' " Padula relates. "I never took a lesson in my life. I'm self-taught but there's a lot of power that comes out of me."

In 2002, Padula released a video showcasing his dancing, juggling and miming skills. The tape later appeared on the Web, but Padula had nothing to do with it. He doesn't even own a computer.

"I had no idea I was on the Internet," Padula offers. "Then one day, one of my buddies said he saw me on VH1. I couldn't believe it."

Since the video aired on the network, Padula has been bombarded by calls from across the country. "I actually had to change my telephone number that appeared at the end of the video," he asserts.

Padula claims to have created a new form of dance that combines pantomime with magic. "In my room, I started dancing and juggling with one sports hat and now I'm up to two," he boasts. "People ask me, 'How come you don't juggle three?' First of all, everybody juggles three. I say, 'Why don't you try it?' The sports hats are harder to control because they're so light. You have to catch them on the brim."

But Padula's act wasn't always so tame. In 1981, he moved to Miami and worked for a year as an exotic dancer in Key Biscayne. "I was pretty bad into drugs back then -- taking pot, coke, angel dust, everything. Then, God turned my life around," he says.

He returned to New Jersey to move back into his parents' house and kick his drug habit. He now works in landscaping and construction. Padula is convinced he'd be a big star by now if he hadn't broken his heel slipping off a roof in the early 1990s.

"If I never fell off that roof, I would've been there already," he says. "I was like lightning on the dance floor."

Still, Padula says his 15 minutes of fame are far from up. "If I ever make it big, I don't want no mansion," he argues. "I just want one giant loft two-telephone-poles-long with dance floors, a studio and some TVs."

Where the hell is Matt?

Matt Harding is an inspiration to cubicle dwellers everywhere. Whenever he wants to get a co-worker's attention, the 29-year-old from Seattle does a little jig. "It's what I do when I'm anxious to go to lunch," he explains. "I just stand by people's desks and annoy them until they get up. I hardly even notice I'm doing it. When I'm antsy, I just start flailing my arms and legs."

After two years working for a video game company in Brisbane, Australia, Harding was definitely antsy. So he decided to quit his job and travel around the world before returning to the United States. Eight weeks into his six-month journey, he met up with a former co-worker in Vietnam who offered this advice: "You should do that stupid dance you do everywhere you go on this trip."

Harding liked the idea, so whenever he found worthy spots -- the streets of Beijing, outside the Taj Mahal or under Jellyfish Lake in Palau, Micronesia -- he'd ask someone to videotape him dancing. He repeated the stunt during a trip to Africa in 2004.

"I kept doing it as a memento of each place, and then when I got home and put it all together, it congealed into something more interesting than I realized," he says.

In early 2005, Harding posted a video titled Dancing on his site, Wherethehellismatt.com. Within months, it had received more than a million views and resulted in an invitation from the ad agency for Stride Gum -- The Ridiculously Long Lasting Gum offering to send Harding on a six-month trip to 39 countries on seven continents. The resulting video, Dancing 2006, appeared on YouTube this past June and quickly became the most-discussed video on the NBC-owned site.

Harding says his family is over his fame. "I think for a while, my mom was concerned that people were making fun of me," he shares. "Her main thing was, 'Why are they so interested in this? Is it because they think you're stupid?' She's bewildered but she's sort of getting that there's a little more to it than that.' "

Maddox

In 1997, George Ouzounian created a Web site for the sole purpose of mocking vegetarians. He soon began blogging about whatever pisses him off -- the list is infinite -- and now claims Thebestpageintheuniverse.com draws 4 million visits a month.

The turning point came in 2002, when The Don and Mike Show plugged his Web site and a post in which Ouzounian criticized children's art. "I'm not a big fan of kids," says Ouzounian, who is known to his fans as Maddox. "I think they smell and they're loud and they're inconsiderate."

But after telling a co-worker that her 3-year-old child's drawings sucked, Ouzounian decided that trashing kids' artwork was fun. So he gathered some examples and posted them on his site along with comments such as "You spelled America wrong, asshole" and "This one would receive an 'A' if the assignment was to throw as much random shit onto a paper as poorly as you can."

"Since then, the site's been going strong," Ouzounian boasts, "110,000 to 150,000 visitors a day."

In 2004, he quit his job as a computer programmer and rented the neighboring apartment to serve as his headquarters. He began filling orders for stickers and shirts that reflect his sense of humor, and started writing The Alphabet of Manliness, which shot to No. 1 on Amazon's bestseller list March 28, the day Ouzounian informed the 143,000 people on his mailing list that the book could be pre-ordered. "This book is all about men and what men like," he states.

Apparently, men like pirates, urinal etiquette, "taking a dump" and Chuck Norris. They also want tips on how to spot cleavage, grope women and kick ass. Featuring illustrations of ridiculously busty women and muscular men punching icons such as Santa Claus, the book raises such probing questions as "What if breasts rained from the skies?" and "What if there were no tits throughout history?"

Ouzounian refers to his book as "the closest thing to guy lit." The New York Times categorizes it as "fratire." His mother takes a different view.

"The first time she read my Web site, she actually cried," Ouzounian remembers. "She calls me up and she says, 'George, did you write this? Did you draw a penis?' … She started crying and said, 'I wished I would have died and never raised you.' "