You should know that this post is totally NSFW. Prepare for a serious case of the willies.
Before I get started, here's a little backstory behind all the weird you are about to stumble into. Yesterday, I was inputting concerts into New Times calendar database. I came across a show taking place August 21 at the Rhythm Room featuring a long list of artists I'd never heard of. I started to randomly Google names from the list, which is 23 names long. Finally, I got to Bryan Lightningrod.
That's the boring part. Bryan Lightningrod is actually a 97-year-old vampire from Egypt. Cool, right? Except he looks like he's bordering on 40, is from Chandler, and likes to take videos of the fannies of young girls. What seem to be really young girls.
The video for "Give It to Me," which was self-shot on one camera, features two teenage-looking girls in standard unsexy garb at a skatepark and cut shots of Lightningrod dancing like a Tommy Wiseau-Muppet hybrid.
Is it just me, or does it look like those girls were filmed without their knowledge?
Two days ago, the video was posted on the Tosh.0 Community, a forum where fans of the Comedy Central Internet-clip show can submit videos for the show's consideration -- after, of course, the writers have already plundered Digg, Reddit, and YouTube for videos that were popular seven months earlier. The Tosh.0 post has only 12 views so far, but the nearly 4,000 viewers of the video on YouTube kindly encourage him to "stop sexualizing young girls" in the comments.
Apparently, the video was flagged on YouTube, but the company eventually wrote Lightningrod back, confirming that it doesn't violate YouTube's community guidelines.
Yes, the artist behind the songs "I Want to Fuck You're [sic] Butt" and "Hello Kiddy Girl" (seriously) has a Facebook, MySpace, and official website filled with pictures of scantily clad, young-looking girls with his name scrawled across various body parts. He solicits his 500 or so Facebook fans for photos, though he never suggests that they should be half-naked photos.Then again, he doesn't discourage them, either.
Hey, if you're the parent of a teenage girl in the Phoenix area -- or really anywhere. This guy is on every social-networking site imaginable -- you might want to check out his Facebook page. Oh, by the way, he also hosts a Facebook group called "Bryan Lightningrod Loves Scene/Emo/Adorable - Girls."
Here's a gem.
It all seems like a big joke. Though I'm not sure it actually is one. Either Lightningrod is a master troll looking to push the edge of what's socially acceptable or just a completely careless creep. His music, satire or not, is much like the genre "Tweenwave" that was the adoration of the youth-grasping Randy Marsh on South Park. But the music Lightningrod makes isn't merely Tweenwave. It is its own genre, he claims. It's a mix of rap, techno, screamo and metal, and it's called "Lightningrod," he says on his Facebook page.
This dude is ballsy. Here are a few lovely lyrical insights from "Ain't Gotta Tell Your Momma." Sadly, the beat on this one actually isn't bad.
"Oh, babygirl, wow / You ain't such a little girl now / Your momma don't know this, but, baby, I've noticed / You've got the sweetest candy, girl / Girl, I gotta touch it. Do you trust me? / Will you take a picture and make it look sexy? / Make it look hot, girl. Wear your bikini, or maybe just your panties / Take a picture of your ass, girl, straight to my phone."
Speaking of which, Lightningrod actually encourages that sort of thing with the general public. He posted his cell number on his website, telling his fans that he "loves to text."
Reverse searches for his official websites, bryanlightningrod.com and klumix.com, his Lightningrod-exclusive "record label," lead to someone named Bryan Henning. Pretty coincidental that there are two Bryans with a "y" in the picture now.
I've opened this can of worms, and now I have to walk around knowing this dude exists. That's fine. But looking at the pictures of these young girls exploiting themselves to get the attention of some delusional weirdo on the Internet will leave me sufficiently creeped out for weeks. No doubt there will be more Lightningrod coverage to come.
