The Seven-Year Long Story of me Kicking Myself in the Face, Literally
In eighth grade, the spring of 2008, I kicked myself in the face and filmed it. I have been dealing with the results of that decision ever since.
YEAR ZERO: 2008
In the second semester of eighth grade I was enrolled in a “video broadcasting” class whose definition of “broad” meant “the school”. Every two weeks, our class would send in a show to be played during the lunch hours. First semester’s class had a habit of doing more Power Point presentations than actual videos, so our expectations were super low.
I don’t remember who suggested it but someone convinced the teacher that we needed more stuff that was just stupid entertainment, and less advertisements for the school. So we came up with the idea of doing a world record attempt! Something catchy, flashy, dumb. Exactly what an eighth grader would pay attention to.
Someone found “head kicking” and I, the gangliest of teens, figured that since I had already mastered the Stupid Human Trick of putting both feet behind my head, it would be easy to do. I don’t know why we thought a guy in a bar kicking himself 70 times in 48 seconds was the measure to beat, but it was the fastest we could find so we used that. Standardizing it to a minute, we set up in the school’s theater with a garbage camera and a stopwatch. I wore four pairs of socks, because that was what it would take to avoid giving myself a concussion. The other change made was that since the first genius had only used one foot, I would use both, to maximize speed and efficiency.
I kicked myself in the head 96 times in one minute.
For take one. We did three takes.
The totals ended up being 96, 101, and 106 times respectively. The final take was the one we used for the show, and the one that I put on a nascent YouTube way back when. You can see it here.
It was a hit! We got a good review by our classmates and I was, for about 5 minutes, relatively interesting. Some final notes before we journey through time: we had the kid in the background walking through so that nobody would think we faked it. We did the up-close shots to prove that I was really kicking myself. The Rocky montage music was recorded from YouTube on a laptop using a camera microphone and then patched back in using Windows Movie Maker. We didn’t send it to Guinness because it would have cost money and taken months for them to get back to us. There are LAYERS to this beast.
YEAR ONE: 2009
I told my 9th grade English teacher we made this, and he played it on the projector. Somehow, I made friends using this.
YEAR TWO: 2010
Here’s where shit gets interesting. In the spring of 2010, two years after the video had been made, I received a Facebook message from a company called October Sky, who produce a television show called Rude Tube. Rude Tube is a clip show in the UK that does themed episodes. They were doing some work in America talking to people who made clickbait-esque videos and they wanted to know if they could use the video on their show. I said “of course,” and they added that they wanted to interview me.
They wanted to interview me for this video. The video of me kicking myself in the forehead 106 times.
And they did.
They came out to my house on their own expenses and filmed the interview for about an hour of talking to me about this horrifically stupid stunt. Not only that, but they sent me a final cut of the episode, and small parts of that interview made it to the finished product. I was #46 out of 50 in the Ultimate Champions episode. I can’t link it due to copyright claims, but if you can find it, I’m there.
YEAR THREE: 2011
The only important thing about 2011 re: this story is that between 2010 and 2011 I had moved from Northern Virginia to Maryland because my mom found work with a different church. Anyone who remembered the video being made and knew about it (save my immediate family) was now over 50 miles away from me. Keep that in mind.
YEAR FOUR: 2012
So I’m in Maryland, and about to go to New York for college. Someone from my mom’s congregation talks to her about a trip to England that she had recently taken. Apparently, she’d stayed up at odd hours due to jet lag and just watched whatever was on, when:
Me. She’d stumbled onto Rude Tube, the very episode that I was in. Somehow, this video has beset someone that was tangentially related to me and made its way back, as if to say “HELLO, I AM STILL AROUND!” This was also the first definite confirmation I had received that the episode had made it to air. I was officially on the television in another country.
YEARS FIVE AND SIX: 2013 and 2014
I got big in Germany.
At this point I was well entrenched in the college experience, and was paying thousands of dollars to go to class. Meanwhile, an interesting side effect of my original deal with Rude Tube was occurring: I had allowed them to use the clips in syndicated versions of the episode, and those syndicated versions were making their way out to other countries. Notably, German audiences apparently really enjoyed my clip, because I was getting offers every few months from German productions studios offering to fly me out and repeat the stunt on live television at their expense.
I basically had to say “Look. I am far older than I was back then. I don’t think I could even do it again. And I’m definitely too far gone in college to give up a week’s worth of classes to make an ass of myself on German television.”
YEAR SEVEN: 2015
For a while, I thought I was clear. I thought I was out. But no.
In January of 2015, I received a Facebook message regarding the video from one Leo [last name redacted] in Rome. “I saw your video” yes, of course you did. “I represent a production studio” yes, of course you do, “that works with Japanese television” Ooookay, Leo. What can I do for you?
“We’d like to use your clip on our show, and we’d like to send you a $200 invoice to do so.”
... Really.
...Is Paypal good?
“Paypal is fine. Once it gets through our bosses in Japan, you will have the money in your account.”
...Thank you.
Sure enough, that night I had a cool $195 (with paypal fees) in my account. This video had finally paid off, at a rate of $28 per year. This video continues to happen to me. It’s happened THIS YEAR. I’m not eagerly waiting anything because I know that there are at least a year-long gap between these things, but, what happens once it airs in Japan? What ELSE is going to happen to me via this fucking video?
I guess we’ll have to see.