The throng of young people stood outside of the upscale Manhattan club, basking in an ebullient glow, one which warmed them from within, even though the temperature was well below freezing. I, a much older person dwelling in the midst of this youthful crowd, in it but definitely not of it, nevertheless felt the same ecstatic spark bathing my soul.
We— that is, they (the crowd) and I (who stood among them but was not of them, being the only fiftysomething, Gen-X person in sight)— had all just seen Sam Hyde, along with his Million Dollar Extreme (MDE) mates Nick Rochefort and Charls Carroll, perform live in New York City. Most of the audience was local, but for me, who lived far away, getting to this venue had been a whirlwind journey, undertaken on a whim and a shoestring budget; I had run across supercheap flight fare, and opted to stay in a cheap hostel on the Upper West Side for two nights.
It was worth it; I was simply captivated by the notion of catching a Hyde show in the Big Apple, of all places. Sam (I’ll call him by his first name, in that creepy “parasocial” way, because it is entirely appropriate to do so under the circumstances) is a hero to me, as he is an entertainer and artist who has resolutely refused to bow to the strictures of convention and fashion, or to the presumed moral authority of the “woke” mob.
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Because of Sam’s utterly unrepentant defiance, he was robbed of what looked to be a promising career, essentially kicked out of showbiz and blacklisted as an ostensible “alt-right” miscreant. Hyde, Rochefort, and Carroll’s acclaimed comedy show “World Peace” was canceled by Comedy Central in 2016 after one season, in spite of garnering high ratings. For a time, all seemed lost.
Yet just a few years later, Hyde and company have roared back, finding success on their own terms, partly due to MDE’s fanatical and loyal “ride or die” fan-base, but also undeniably helped along by by Sam’s undyingly magnetic charisma and uncanny ability to “meme” himself into mass consciousness.
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The New York show proved to be as entertaining and transporting an experience as I had anticipated, and then some. Grabbing a front-row table meant becoming one of the several people near the stage with whom Sam made eye-contact during his act, usually in the hyperaggressive, confrontational manner that is the very hallmark of his schtick. In one hilariously manic episode, he clambered off the stage and onto the floor of the club, stepping down from our table and using my left shoulder to brace himself during his dismount. (“I’ll never wash my shoulder again!” I joked later to my tablemate.)
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Now, as I hung out on the sidewalk in the cold with the rest of the MDE fans, hoping that the boys would make an appearance and allow us take phone selfies with them, I became aware of an odd couple standing just to my immediate left. There were two brunette girls, both rather tall and broad-shouldered; each was sporting a white T with the “Billions Must Die” meme, popular amongst clued-in dissident right wits, affixed. Before I knew it, one of these girls was addressing me. I couldn’t hear her over the happy din a first, and begged her pardon.
“I said, what’s your favorite MDE skit?” Her tone could be described as one of hostile levity, and immediately I caught what was going on. It was like when a guy’s friend sees his new girlfriend wearing a “Blue Oyster Cult” shirt and is suspicious about the veracity of her fandom, since he happens to know that her boyfriend is a Blue Oyster Cult fanatic, and he thinks she is trying to gain undeserved cred, so he starts peppering her with queries like, “What’s your favorite BOC album?” or “What’s your favorite deep cut?” or “What are the names of the members of the band?”
Now, in an unlikely instance of turnabout, this strikingly tall, remarkably broad-shouldered zoomer girl had noticed my aged appearance, which had struck her as suspicious, and had opted to try and expose me as a phony MDE fan. It didn’t even occur to me to be offended; I found the situation so thoroughly hilarious (me being the equivalent of the “clueless girlfriend” and my interrogator playing the role of the “unimpressed best friend”) that I felt like I had been included as a hapless foil in a reality-show skit of some kind.
And the thing is, she actually did kind of stump me. I managed eventually to say that the “Peanut Arbuckle” sketch was my fave, and she seemed unimpressed (and indeed, it’s probably the best known of all of MDE’s season 1 sketches, hardly a “deep cut” of any sort).
The other broad-shouldered young brunette— looking nearly identical to the first and wearing an identical T-shirt, though with a slightly softer face— then addressed me rather courteously, saying that she thought it was impressive that someone my age was there, and that she saw me as a kind of “authority” figure. It was then that I began to notice that this odd pair were in all likelihood M-to-F cases, given their largely non-feminine physiques. That such as they would be here, amongst the rest of the “based” Hyde-enthusiasts, and that they would be busting my balls (instead of their own) about not being a real fan, just struck me as not only extremely funny, but also somehow wonderful. Dissidents from “woke” tyranny clearly come in all shapes and sizes…
I told the nicer of the pair that I needed to leave (it was getting late, and I had a morning plane to catch), but to let Sam know I said hi if he showed up, then strode toward the nearest subway station, feeling enormously happy…
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