The Human Billboard, Lessons on Selling Out, Repetitive Retardation

The Human Billboard doing what he does best.

The first day Rob Dyrdek showed up, he was dressed head to toe in DC, a walking billboard. I wondered what it was about this pogo stick from Ohio that made a company want to choose him to be the face of their entire business. But then I remembered the skating. Oh yeah, the skating. But that's how it is with a lot of skaters, if it weren't for skate boarding they'd just be total jack asses. He arrived in the mid-afternoon, and although they sky was blue and setting up for a beautiful day, I felt a certain dread, as if it were going to rain, at any moment. I assumed it was his doing. He wasn't alone either. He had a camera crew with him, the same guys who gave The Jackass crew their fame (hmm I see a theme developing,) and although he was friendly, I wasn't fond of the cameras.

"Cameras?" I asked.

"Yeah I film everything now. . . I find that I'm just such a volatile force of creativity that everything I touch just turns to gold. . . "

"Like King Midas." I said. "From the myth."

"King who? From the what?" He shook his head, the confusion was water in his ears and he was desperately trying to shake it out. "As I was saying, I'm a genius." He echoed Kanye. "And I just couldn't live with myself - just couldn't sleep at night - you know, if I ever missed any of it, because then I wouldn't have a chance to exploit it. . . And that my good friend, is what life is all about, exploitation." He smiled. "I'm an inspiration, and you should feel lucky to be around me."

It was good to see that fame wasn't getting to him.

"So why I'm here is I was thinkin' maybe I could write your blog, and then you could go to a skate park and try and skate, and we'll film it all. . . Its for my new show idea, "Switching Places with Rob Dyrdek."" He framed the title in the air with his hands, his eyes already glowing with some imaginary light bulb billboard that said just that "Switching Places with Rob Dyrdek," it was a billboard only he could see. "I was thinking about how great it is to be me, and then got to figuring that everybody wants to be me. . . So I came up with this show, where me and a contestant switch places, I do what they do, and then they try and do what I do."

"And what is that? Singing all the time, selling out, walking around generally disrespecting stuff and being to wealthy for one's own good? . . . I'd like to try that - I just generally disrespect stuff, all the other perks of being you might be fun."

"No, no." He threw his arms out, it was a defensive move he learned from rap videos. "They skate, the people in the show I mean, they skate, because I skate. . . I'm a skater."

"Oh is that what you do?" I asked.

"Weren't you listening?" The arms came down, it was a swinging motion he learned from rap videos.

"I was, I was, it just sounds retarded, Rob."

"Retarded? Wh-what?" He was shocked, he adjusted his already skewed baseball cap, it was a move he learned from rap videos. "Retarded? Do you have 21 Guiness Book Records? Do you have 2 hit shows? Your own line of personalized skate shoes, clothing, and apparel? Do you have your own movie, that you wrote, directed, and appeared in? Have you done commercials? Have you been in video games? Do you have your own line of kids toys? . . . How many clip shows have you even done?"

"Clip shows?" I asked.

"Hah." He laughed, sandpaper. "What we in the business call clip shows - recap shows, you know where you just go over all the memorable moments of the season in one nice and simple episode all of its own? You know, so you can put out another show in the season without having to come up with any new material or having to put in any real effort. You can seel yourself, your image, sell more commercial space, appease an episode contract you can't fulfill with new material, and you don't even have to use your noggin. . . Now that's smart!"

"And you actually do this?" I feigned ignorance.

"Oh yeah, I've practically done a whole season's worth of clip shows, 8 , 9, 10 episodes at least! Plus it feels great. . . no greater promotion than shameless self-promooooowowowtion." He sang the last part, like an R&B singer, and laughed again, sandpaper.

"I don't think it works with blogs Rob, or even literature for that matter."

"Why the hell not? You can do a blog recap blog, of all your other blogs, of just the good moments. . . It would be genius, and since it was my idea, I think I should help you with it."

After much debating, Rob finally convinced me, we were going to do a recap blog, sell out style. . . It went like this:

"Hey J. Wood, remember the time you had your kid sister cousins from Germany stay with you and your family for the weekend, and you told them a bed time story?"

"Yeah I do. . ."

"And how did that turn out for you?" He looked at me for an answer. He threw his arms up in the air, a move he learned from - oh you get the point. "Well lets just go to the 'clip' then, shall we?"

And suddenly its that time, my young cousins in their bed trying to sleep but failing due to the warm unfamiliar Californian weather. . . I forget what year it was.

"Can you tell us a story?" They asked one night, so innocently I couldn't say no.

"Sure sure. . ." I sighed heavily, searching my brain for a story, and then it came. "Once upon a time, there was a half-man half-bull named Brock Lesnar."

"A minotaur!" One of them shouted out.

"No no, he's just a normal man, now let me finish the story." She frowned and let me continue. "He was born a particularly soggy summer afternoon, on July 12th, and aside from the rain it was a particularly strange day. . . It was to be the day when a cow gave birth to a human being, the first recording of its kind. All the boys were hanging around, shooting the shit, drinking beers, when they heard quite the ruckus come from the barn. It was old Betsy, the crowned gold cow of the farm, crowing like she was about to give birth. Sure enough, out came Brock Lesnar, half human-half bull. He was the result of a lonely night on the farm, when some tired farm hand yearned for the touch of a woman but found himself to be surrounded only by cows. . . During his days as a kid he'd shoot up steroids - the kind they use on horses to help fix races, and was fed nothing but proteins - 3 raw eggs in the morning, and 3 more at night. When he was 16, he'd run around town scooping up chickens and biting their heads off. He'd eat them," I demonstrated his ravenous feeding as I said this, for added effect. "While the torso still flapped around molting feathers - the hunt for him was like some sort of primal urge he could not control. When he grew up he wrestled, and even was in the UFC, where he'd tend to your face like a man tends to a pillow." I illustrated the pounding for them, my two poor cousins staring back at me with wide fearful eyes. "And he's swelled up by all the steroids, and by his ego, and by the limelight, which further swells him up, so he just stands in the ring and looks giant from all the swelling. He looks down at you and he's got fists like sledgehammers; two large 4XL gloves that fly out at you with a vengeance and try and crack up your face like so much concrete. . ."

I stared at them, nothing but half covered eyes and white knuckles, white knuckles up around their heads where they had pulled the sheet up over themselves for protection, even though they knew it may as well been tissue paper at the hands of a dangerous retard like Brock Lesnar.

Suddenly back to the present.

"Who would of thought that you would be such a nice guy that you would read terrifying bedtime stories to your two little cousins." Rob said sarcastically, staring into one of the cameras - his safety net.

"Yeah they didn't sleep much after that. I had to convince them that Brock Lesnar only beats up other athletes, and not women and children - which we all know is a lie."

"True dat." He said. "Now. . . I've been around some big people, but never any big women, Bobby Light don't get down like that, I'm more of the 'dirty girl' kinda guy. . . But your boy Tom Arnold seems to love em."

"Yeah he does." I affirmed.

"But we all know sometimes it can be a hazard, like in this next 'clip.' Check it out. . . "

"Can you stop sayin' clip?" I asked vainly.

Suddenly its 1990.

They lived in bliss as the years just seemed to float on by, Tom Arnold got his own show and he and Roasanne opened a restaurant, "Rosanne and Tom's Big Food Diner," a roach house for ugly obese people in Illinois. Yet the marriage started to deteriorate after Rosanne trapped Tom Arnold in her massive vagina, for three whole days, much like Jonah had been swallowed whole by the giant fish in The Old Testament. During his captivity, he sang songs to keep himself busy, finding amusement in the echoes that rang off her vaginal walls, and kept himself fed with the carcass remains of other men she had trapped in her vagina, and totally forgot about. By candle-light he wrote his memoirs, and vowed after getting out to become a star all on his own, and to divorce Rosanne as soon as possible. It was as if he had found himself in a sudden clarity, as if the beer-goggles which seemed attached to his face were suddenly taken off, and now he had seen the error in his ways - and all it took was three days in a deep hot dark cave that smelled of rotten fish.

Suddenly, back to the present.

"How did Tom get out of her vagina anyway?"

"He escaped with a grappling hook he made from the spines of other ex-boyfriends of Rosanne, who, as it turns out were not as craft and smart as Tom Arnold was. . ." I said.

"He certainly has gone to hell and back." Rob said, pausing for laughter that wasn't there. . . Speaking of hell, didn't you do an iR about the Devil's other son?"

"Yeah. . . Billy Mays."

"And how did that go?"

"I don't think this is working Rob. . ." I said finally.

"Why not, clip shows are a staple in the t.v. industry these days."

"Yeah, the t.v. industry Rob, it doesn't work the same with stories and written words. . . Why what if Hemmingway did it, or Faulkner, or Carroll? What if they wrote a book that was really just made up of all other books? Everything would get so mushed up that people would confuse the stories, Alice would no longer be a lost blonde hair girl, but a ball player, or maybe a fireman that burns books. Or maybe there was no Alice at all. Dorian Grey wouldn't be vain, he'd be homely a sickly and longing for his Dear Lonore. . . The raven wouldn't be a raven at all, but maybe a seagull out of The Old Man and The Sea, and nobody would be the wiser of it being any different. . ." I frowned a heavy frown.

"I don't think I get it."

"Yeah I don't think you do Rob, I don't think you do. . . You just can't recycle shit over and over again, and expect everyone to enjoy it. You can't expect everyone to love you just because you're everywhere. . . You've spread yourself thin Rob, real thin. Your retardation plagues many fields, it isn't just skating anymore. You're a reality star now, and guess what that makes you retarded."

"I still don't get it."

"I know Rob, I know. . . And you're so retarded you repeat your retardation over and over again, like some broken record. . . And its true, you really are an inspiration Rob."

"Really?" He was excited by the thought of it.

"You've inspired a whole new type of retardation. . . Repetitive Retardation, you're repetitively retarded Rob, repetitively retarded Rob, repetitively retarded Rob."

repetitive retardation n. - retardation in an individual that is constantly repeated, without ever straying from the formula. Said victims are repetitively retarded.

"Hah you said that three times."

"Good Rob. . ." I waited. "I said, repetitive retarded." It was the code work. Out from the cupboards, from other rooms came men dressed like a swat team, guns in tote. They fired these guns, at Mr. Dyrdek and his camera crew, and killed the whole lot of em.

The end. fuck. shit. ass.

iR.