myfavoritekirby.com

The Abouting [sic] of Kent

myfavoritekirby.com offers readers a daily dose of awesome raunchy often-punny boy humor fittingly presented within a grammatically sloppy webcomic website.  Critics and editors, like mothers entering a messy dorm room, may feel the uncontrollable urge to sic, Strunk and White its content before and while presenting it to decent, adult society.  Do not do that.  Touch nothing.  These boys like it this way.  And it works.   

“This project began as a challenge for me to draw a different picture every day for an entire year, and it gradually transformed into this website,” states co-creator Kent Kirby.  Kent, a University of Michigan student from Alma, MI, was inspired by friend Kevin Budnik, who had made a resolution to do just that for his own purposes.  (Playwright Suzan-Lori Parks endeavored similarly in 2002-2003, and the result was the short play collection “365 Days/365 Plays.”)  Determined to achieve his goal, Kent began daily production of his crude Microsoft Paint pictures with captions that, along with prose and videos, would become website content before the year was out.

Since its January 2011 launch, myfavoritekirby has established a presence on Facebook (myfavoritekirbycom), Tumblr (myfavoritekirby) and YouTube (myfavoritekirbyvids).  Fans (referred to as “peons”) can purchase myfavoritekirby t-shirts (available through t-shirtdesignworld.com) and submit Kent Kirby-drawn picture requests to productsofpop@gmail.com. 

The Staff of Kent

Kent Kirby does not run the quickly-expanding myfavoritekirby empire alone.  The website staff is comprised primarily of college students from both the University of Michigan and Columbia College Chicago, although most staffers grew up with Kent in Alma.  T.J. Piccolo, a playwriting major at Columbia College Chicago, serves as Personnel Coordinator.  Marketing issues, as well as the hilariously insensitive “Dear Travis” segment, are handled by Travis Mitchell, formerly of Columbia College Chicago (now at Lansing Community College).  “Cinematography” is the duty of Mike Klaric from Columbia College Chicago.  Many other friends from either side of Lake Michigan (and some from locales unknown) contribute regularly to the website, including students from Central Michigan University, Saginaw Valley State University and Anderson University.

The Book of Yanni

Yanni, the overly-sensationalized Grammy-nominated New Age composer and musician, is an obsessively popular subject on myfavoritekirby.  The 57-year-old Greek-born/American Midwest-raised performer rose to international fame with his wildly successful 1994 music video Yanni Live at the Acropolis.  Since then, the moustached multi-platinum artist has performed his “contemporary instrumental” music at various world landmarks before millions of cultish spectators (and televised to hundreds of millions).  His compositions are also widely used at various sporting events (including every Olympic Games since 1988).

Not since Marlene Dietrich (who was allowed by the Israeli government to sing in German during her tour of Israel after WWII) have nations been more willing to break tradition for a performer.  Aside from the Acropolis and, most recently, the Burj Khalifa (formerly Burj Dubai), Yanni has been allowed to perform at restricted venues such as the Taj Mahal and China’s Forbidden City (both in 1997).  In October, China gave Yanni permission to adopt a panda, an honor not usually extended to individual people, but, rather, to nations.  (NOTE: Michael Jackson was never invited to adopt a panda.)  According to Reuters, “[China’s] decision was made from the inspiration and harmony that derives from his music.” 

myfavoritekirby plays on Yanni’s hysterically overblown (perhaps biblical?) superstardom with The Book of Yanni.  The website also credits Yanni as a staff writer, humorously describing him as “the New Age superstar of our parents’ (40-year-old women’s) generation.”  Presented as a collection of bible verses, The Book of Yanni recalls fictitious events in His life and wisdom imparted unto His flock.  The first in this series was posted in March: 

Yanni 21:42 Healing The Blind

and Yanni put his hand upon the blind woman, and she was able to see. Yanni spoke to the audience of his concert, who saw the miracle with their very own eyes, and said unto them:

“what is the big deal? paninis all around!“

and then Yanni made a panini and did not share with anyone.

The News of Kent

According to the website, myfavoritekirby has been reviewed favorably by Time Magazine and unfavorably by Pitchfork in March and October respectively.  Time raves about the site’s May Video Game Month, calling it “a boner-inducing landmark,” and Kent’s punny drawing, “Boo-bees” (which he admits was T.J.’s idea).  Pitchfork pretentiously dismisses The Book of Yanni as over-emphasized “Mediterranean folklore” and describes myfavoritekirby as “a website that presumably exists only to provide retailers with ironic and ‘random’ images to print on novelty t-shirts…How droll.”  The hostile review ultimately questions whether the “inconsistent,” “absurdly mundane” site is “low-brow Dadaism or poorly implemented baroque.”

Attempts to locate these reviews outside the site (as you may have already figured out) will prove unsuccessful.  They do not exist.  And neither does the myfavoritekirby Wikipedia page shown on the site, which quotes a line from the Pitchfork review (“reading myfavoritekirby will make you sterile”) that does not appear in the review at all.         

In October, the site began a new series featuring a different aspiring artist every week called Project Consistency: “8 weeks of segments, sketches, writings, drawings, collaboration, masturbation, and anything but procrastination every sunday through wednesday.”  Submissions can be sent to productsofpop@gmail.com.   

The goal of myfavoritekirby is to create a cult following similar to what is enjoyed by Yanni, which T.J. shamelessly admits.  Maybe get a panda or two.  They seek to develop a brand born of those messy rooms where boys do as boys do, surrounded by piles of coke cans, video games and images of “Boo-bees.”  And, with the help of Yanni, Orson Welles, Kentfoot and Amoeba, they are well on their way to doing just that.