Few things on the Internet feel purer than the original memes stemming from You on Kazoo!, a sing-a-long, play-a-long home VHS release from 1989 that prominently features a boisterous (somewhat demanding) child with a blonde bowl cut absolutely wilding out on his red, plastic kazoo of choice. Although the obscure piece of media was first uploaded to YouTube in 2011, its reedited 2014 compilation from the Dead VHS channel is what truly brought the clips to the Extremely Online masses.
It didn’t take long for “Kazoo Kid” to be identified as a guy named Brett Ambler, but other than a confirmation from the Kazoo Kid Man himself, there wasn’t much else to the story for years. Thankfully, the folks at Know Your Meme stepped up to the plate (yet again), tracking down Ambler last week for an interview revealing the long-forgotten, behind-the-scenes look at the making of the You on Kazoo! special. Our biggest takeaway? We’re getting old, man.
Yeah... with his salt-and-pepper hair and mustache, Kazoo Man is just as susceptible to the progress of time as the rest of us. We don’t mean that in any rude way, of course—Ambler looks like he’s doing great and appears to still get a kick out of his unlikely rise to meme glory, all thanks to the casting directors deciding he was “just the little weirdo they were looking for.”
After recounting the experience filming You on Kazoo! over a few weeks during summer break at a farm in Connecticut, Ambler revealed he’s still acting and performing in Colorado, and is even on Cameo, should anyone want a personalized greeting.
Still... knowing that Kazoo Kid is now pushing 40, it really forces us to take a long, hard look in the mirror before asking ourselves, “Wait a minute... who ARE you?”
[via Digg]
Send Great Job, Internet tips to gji@theonion.com