Category: TEAMWORKING DAY

Brockway: In the early days of YouTube, the music video maniac was king. But history only remembers its champions: For every Jan Terri, there are a thousand less remarkable goblins forever drowning in the wake of passing internet fame. Joshua Michael & Realm 1-11, it’s too little and too late, but this article is your final life preserver.

Brockway: That’s the real album cover! I didn’t whip that up in three minutes to make fun of him. As a young man who also watched The Crow at a critical point in my brain development, I feel for Joshua Michael and to a lesser extent, his realms. It’s like he’s playing a Goth build, but he hasn’t invested any skill points yet. He’s got all the pre-order bonuses – saggy leather pants, vaguely Egyptian rocks, an embarrassingly small crystal cock ejaculating time, the hair of a handsome horse – but he would still lose a fistfight to a sewer rat.

Seanbaby: This looks like a magician realizing it’s time to get his notary accreditation. It looks like a flyer for a Christian blowjob retreat. It looks like a cut scene from a game called Kiss of the Time Pussy. It looks like a cranberry farmer’s least beautiful daughter finding a forbidden jewel. The last goddamn thing in the world it looks like is a cover for a real product.

Brockway: Didn’t Jermaine Stewart do the soundtrack for Kiss of the Time Pussy? What a banger, in one and only one sense of the word.

In 2006, Joshua Michael started collaborating with director/producer James Prince, the two of them posting to YouTube under the name Astaria Films. Their second video was almost, but not quite enough of an ironic hit to launch them to stardom. It’s an example of my favorite thing: Somebody accidentally becoming sort of a meme, and then spending the rest of their lives chasing the ghost of success they never actually experienced. It’s a little bit like being haunted by the restless soul of a dork you almost gave a handjob to one time, but I don’t bring that up for any reason. Let’s watch the music video for “The Hunger.”

Seanbaby: I love when someone is following up a sincere failure with just en– hold on, this looks like a title card from a VHS tape called What Does The Bible Say About Fonts?. Okay, I was saying I love when an artist tries to recreate their sincere failure with just enough self-awareness to ruin it, but way too little to improve. Like Corey Feldman trying to recreate the viral success of “Corey Feldman Knocks His Tooth Out With Microphone And Looks For It” with a song called “Cut The Music Arrgh I Have Diarrhea It’s Real This Time.”

Brockway: Your Corey Feldman senses are keen as ever. He’s not in this video, but his desperate lying dork energy permeates the text. The video description consists of SEO terms that boost clickthrough to all my ex-girlfriends, plus a passive-aggressive apology for the wardrobe and hairdressing, and a final humblebrag that somebody involved in this would later go on to get a much better job, after four years of practice.

Seanbaby: I think “the 25 most difficult minutes” of Alice in Wonderland starring Johnny Depp as The Mad Hatter was probably watching him order his lunch in character.

Brockway: I can tell you with absolute certainty Anne Breedlove did not use “The Hunger” in the portfolio that landed her the 25 most difficult minutes of Tim Burton’s Alice in Wonderland, a finished movie that wound up looking like this:

Seanbaby: This looks like the VGA remake of something called Story Game. If this came from the 25 most difficult minutes, the rest of the movie must have been a 65 minute nap. If Todd McFarlane saw this lazy garbage he’d say, “This is nothing. This is at least four dog collars and a bloody chastity belt away from being an idea.”

Brockway: I’m going to assume Anne Breedlove was responsible for pasting those faces on the flowers and then turning down the opacity. “The Hunger” begins with crude hieroglyphics that blur before your very eyes, transforming into these immortal words:

Brockway: It’s kind of the frustrated brainstorm of a drunk greeting card writer, and kind of an AI translation of a Hungarian acid reflux medication. These are bullet points on the syllabus for Goth 101. This is something a vampire in a hurry would tell a Grubhub driver that would make both of them too sad to eat.

Seanbaby: This is the literal Cantonese translation of Jack’s Spicy Nacho Chicken Sandwich®. It’s the copy on the back of a Todd McFarlane Little Bo Peep adult action figure.

Brockway: The best punchline in this article is the opening chords to “The Hunger.” It’s tough to describe music in mere words, which is why most music critics are unemployed. This is a long walk, but imagine if Morrissey had a fail-brother desperately trying to cash in on the name with his own much-diminished talent. A Frank Morrissey, if you will. A Billy Morrissey. Now imagine Randy Morrissey got a gig singing the lyrics to the loading screen of a Prince of Persia point-and-click adventure for the Philips CD-i. “The Hunger” sounds like somebody who only speaks English phonetically, making fun of that 30 years later on TikTok.

Seanbaby: It’s the first song performed entirely in freeze ray.

Brockway: The music video for “The Hunger” is the story of singer/songwriter Joshua Michael dying without the consensual touch of a woman, but I’m not doing it justice. Before we had words like incel and cuck, we really had to show you a loser striking out, dying, and deserving it. It was kind of like the hieroglyphics of our day.

Brockway: The direction is so bad hieroglyphics might work better. I think you’d write that scene as <𓄿💃💼🚌🪦𓆙, where the snake represents the businessman playing Snake on his phone as Lesser Than The Crow dies on the pavement.

Seanbaby: Joshua’s acting is suspiciously good here. Look at how confused he is when he gets rejected and her other date swoops in to kiss her. I think she made that change in the script without telling him, like how Stanley Kubrick told Shelley Duvall they were making a ski school comedy.

Brockway: Because the last thing he saw before getting a Chrysler lobotomy was a tacky Egyptian cafe, Joshua Michael must travel down the Loser Stargate into a screensaver called “Egyptian Nights WIP (1996).”

Brockway: I think the whole boating into the afterlife thing is actually Greek, but just like director James Prince I am unwilling to look up Egypt to check. Also I’m pretty sure Charon charged an extra obol not to tell everyone you crossed the Styx fetal in your own trenchcoat.

Seanbaby: Virgin afterlife looks like shit. It looks like a camel puppet just said, “Join Sad Josh on his Pouting Canoe for the dullest learning adventure yet!” Does he ever move? He has the energy of a child at a bus stop whose parents are four weeks late.

Brockway: Of course he moves! Just try not to get distracted by Joshua Michael’s undeniable screen presence in the next gif, or you’ll miss something important:

Brockway: I lied about him moving. But that’s not the important bit: This is the final dream of Joshua Michael’s dying brain, supercharged with dopamine and DMT to construct an alternate reality that will provide him comfort in death. And in this fantasy realm – this literal car-strike incel isekai, his brain absolutely flooding with psychic nitrous, mentally turbo blasting off the ramp of creation – Joshua Michael can imagine a girl being into him, but he can’t imagine doing anything about it. She gives him a little hello shimmy to welcome him to the final brain dimension, and he just freezes up until they both look around the underworld lobby awkwardly, hoping a bellboy with the head of a crane drops some bags or something to draw the tension out of the moment.

Seanbaby: Before this article, I was telling you how no man will ever be weirdly motionless enough to distract me from side vulva. Yet here we are. His paralytic virginity is all I can look at.

Brockway: It is hypnotic. He’s going to find so many more new and inventive ways to not move before this is done. Case in point: Anubis tries to save the awkward moment by backhanding Joshua Michael into a Doctor Who time-tunnel straight to hell. Here’s his reaction:

Seanbaby: This is the second set of nude haunches that have rendered our hero helplessly mesmerized. They are his only weakness.

Brockway: You’d think Joshua Michael would be stoked about hell, since it’s his home turf: A stage magic show for loser vampires. And because it’s hell, audience participation is mandatory.

Seanbaby: Ha ha ha Anubis backhanded him out of Duat and into a Vampire: The Masquerade retirement party. This is rejection on a cosmic scale. This is like meeting Saint Peter and he says, “Fuck you, nerd,” and slaps you into an eternal improv show.

Brockway: The only vampires on food stamps immediately swarm Joshua Michael to ravage his flesh with their dark mouths and he doesn’t even embrace it. This is like the first wet dream a sad boy has after listening to The Sky’s Gone Out, and Joshua Michael can only make a face like mom brought home the wrong flavor Hot Pockets.

Brockway: His dying brain is rapidly flipping through every scenario he fantasized about in life to prove to him that no, even in the shifting ethers of a brainworld where anything is possible, Joshua Michael would still face Anubis with a dry dick and a heart heavy with apologies.

Seanbaby: He’s more hauntingly corpse-like than if they’d cast an actual dead body. This video is like if Weekend at Bernie’s was set in the afterlife, but that makes no sense. What would a corpse be doing in the land of the dead? Is that… can I even hear myself? Unless… there was some kind of zany paperwork error? Holy shit, Brockway, this is the Weekend at Bernie’s 3 spec script project we’ve been looking for! INT. HELL ADMINISTRATIVE OFFICES – DAY, A frantic DEMON (489, his face wearing the stress and worry of centuries) is shuffling papers. He looks up at JOSHUA (mid 30s, hair of a handsome horse) being limply jostled by the recently deceased spirits of TOPLESS ISLAND PARTYGOERS (mid 20s, topless).

Brockway: That’s way more fun than what actually happens: Joshua Michael gets bodily shoved out of the afterlife by a variety of women who do not wish to spend eternity getting secretly sniffed while they sleep. He returns to Earth as an undead monster, a rejected soul who found heaven had consent guidelines and hell wouldn’t let him watch. Back in reality, he sees some hieroglyphics and imagines it is the face of the queen who gave him a bit of a welcoming shimmy that one time.

Seanbaby: Yes! Yes!! Followers of Atum, the haunch prophecy has come true!

Brockway: This is Joshua’s reaction.

Seanbaby: He looks like he’s trying to remember what the word “placebo” means while hearing the sentence, “You were part of the placebo group in our erectile dysfunction drug trial.”

Brockway: I’m sorry, I’m underselling it. He makes that face, and then he flees across the face of the Earth for all time, using the sparkling undead spirit powers you get by nurturing a case of blue balls beyond the realm of the living and back.

Seanbaby: Gasp, gasp, gasp. Gasp.

Brockway: Hold on. Freeze. Rewind. I’m worried you might have missed the single frame of him clinging to the side of a train like a bashful gecko. Like he’s riding a ghost Vespa. Like a piano player getting cyber-bullied.

Seanbaby: This looks like he Photoshopped Shaq out of a picture of him with Shaq. It might be too cute to form a coherent thought about. It looks like a pencil topper you’d get if you opened an account with an adult goth banking co-op. It looks like a Matrix Revolutions game encountering every error.

Brockway: Meanwhile, in reality, the girl is haunted by Joshua Michael’s death and the biggest mistake of her life: rejecting the stalker who would have murdered her for her feet.

Seanbaby: “Do you not need to pee, m’lady? Mayhaps we should move this haunting to a room with a toilet,” moans the spectral voice, again.

Brockway: Drinking her sorrows away, alone, she is briefly comforted by the only soul you can smell.

Seanbaby: This is another really authentic reaction. Either the world’s greatest actress agreed to be in this, or that shudder of revulsion going down her spine is real.

Brockway: The girl walks away, leaving his memory behind forever. Here Joshua Michael’s reaction to being abandoned by love and trapped in limbo for eternity.

Seanbaby: He looks like someone just said the words, “It’s actually super dangerous to swallow pantyhose.”

Brockway: And then a flash of what could have been, if only he’d responded to that welcome shimmy with a little confidence…

Brockway: Hell yeah, I think Charon gives a one obol discount if you return his boat filthy. He’s a lil’ freak like that.

Seanbaby: “Gene Simmons bit my nose off on Egypt’s largest banana!” screamed the hysterical woman.

“Did it look anything like this?” replied the amazing police sketch artist.

Brockway: Because the original version of “The Hunger” went semi-viral (an astonishing 168k views over the next two decades) James Prince and Joshua Michaels took that to mean they’d found their calling. Next they offered a HQ version, which is only notable because we get a clearer look at the most important part of the video: Joshua Michael looking like an action figure named DARK CHARIOT RIDER (Dark Chariot Not Included).

Seanbaby: Fuck yes. Give me that reenactment of Michael Hutchence’s final moments in glorious 360p.

Brockway: We also get an updated video description where they insist they’re totally in on the joke – haha, that hair, the wardrobe, the effects! – but also how dare you.

Brockway: That’s what you want out of a followup to an almost-viral hit: The people who hate it will probably still hate it, but for the people who loved it, they too will only see minor value added.

Seanbaby: This is definitely (ya, right uh huh) how you act when you were just kidding and also totally in on the (wootie woo hoo!) joke wink. This is as incoherent and lifeless as the thing he imagines to be sex. It’s a rookie online mistake. He’s been having thousands of arguments against these comments in his shower for the last two decades, and he’s trying to condense them all into one brief victory statement. It’s impossible. He’s responding to the hair critic and the fidelity guy and the special effects hater as if we’re them and we remember what we were talking about in a 2007 YouTube comment. Buddy, I barely remember calling you Gene Simmons on a banana. You’re going to go insane trying to “fix” this, and it will never, ever work. You’re going to end up like Frank Dux, spending your days debunking the debunking of the debunking of the debunking of your secret Kumite victories.

Brockway: You’re trying to warn them about a hell they already locked themselves into and ate the key. It’s too late, this cost two men their lifetimes. They’d chase the extremely minor ironic success of “The Hunger” with several more attempts: Next was “Vampyre,” billed as a sequel to “The Hunger.” A song about how Joshua Michael once spoke to Bram Stoker in a dream. It opens with these iconic lines:

Seanbaby: You should always take a little extra time to get things right. For instance, “I was talking with Bram Stoker / He was a shockingly good man stroker,” barely took me six hours to write.

Brockway: Never let Joshua Michael see that. He doesn’t have the mental fortitude to survive being force-Salierie’d. Then came “The Terrorist,” likewise lacking that Hunger magic except for this bit where Joshua turns his charisma all the way up to 1 for a duet with a flame monster.

Seanbaby: This is how electric it would have looked like if we got a Fantastic Four movie with John Krasinski as Reed Richards.

Brockway: Finally, a decade later, there’s “Falling Away.” Abandoning story entirely, it’s mostly B-roll of Los Angeles and disinterested women on trains. There is one bright spot, which is Joshua Michael’s very first fire-twirling lesson. Don’t worry: They won’t let him light them yet.

Seanbaby: Did he just get a wrist transplant from a gorilla who tore itself apart trying to learn sign language? I didn’t know you could be this bad at two different things. The second he lights those, he and everything around him is on fire. If you took a firearms training course and introduced yourself by losing your gun and eating a handful of bullets, your instructor would say, “You must be Joshua Michael. I remember I told you your hair looked fucking stupid in a 2007 YouTube comment.”

Brockway: After a decade of trying, Astaria Films called it quits. But not before James Prince shot a movie! Well, an hour-long pilot for a movie. I… don’t think that’s how that works?

Seanbaby: Oh, fuck. Robert! Robert, that says MIND FOREST.

Brockway: ENTER THE DARK FOREST OF THE MIND. Mind Forest is the story of a frustrated witch who gets Isekai’d into a world where witch stuff is real. James Prince really only has the one story to tell. There are multiple teaser clips, and no way to watch the full pilot, which defeats the point of a pilot. So I went to the website. Sean, let’s play a game: What do you think that Press & Film Festivals button leads to?

Seanbaby: Him bashing himself unconscious with unlit fire twi–

Brockway: That’s right: Nothing.

Seanbaby: I appreciate when the punchlines are built right into the stupid shit’s UI.

Brockway: James Prince is on Facebook, which due to the collapsing internet will only let me see a single post before locking me out with a sign-in window I’ll never use.

Brockway: “Ha ha ha smiley face,” James Prince says. “This is just like me and my less exotic car that costs 1/3rd the price.”

Seanbaby: “In many ways, this is my sexual conquest as well,” says a man who owns a different car and hasn’t met this woman. “And my axe!” agrees a third man leasing a bicycle and fucking an ice cream cake.

Brockway: As director/producer, I assume James Prince is the older, more established force who bankrolled Joshua Michae’s raw charisma and unstoppable talent. But between “The Hunger” and Mind Forest, it really seems like the only thing James Prince has to say as an artist is that he wishes he could disappear from this world and retreat into the better one in his mind. And in a way, isn’t Facebook just Boomer Isekai? A whole generation crossing the streets of their lives, only to be run down by a world they’re incapable of understanding, launched back into the safety of their own bubble which slowly decays over time along with their dying neurons.

Seanbaby: Like the poet said, “Only known as a crazy coker.”

Brockway: James, if you can hear me, if your ears are still relaying messages to your eroding mind, you have to remember one very important thing: Touch the girl who gives you the welcome shimmy. Anubis fucking hates hover hands.