They Call Him "Silver Kid"

I mentioned in my last newsletter that I saw Gallagher's website as his auxiliary brain. This seems obvious, to the point that all websites are the auxiliary brains of their creators, but I didn't just mean "This is where Gallagher writes what he's thinking about at the moment." I meant "This is everything Gallagher has ever thought." Every stray idea, every inkling that maybe George Clooney could help him pitch a movie to Beyoncé, unedited ramblings about what animals might be thinking, they all went on to a website ostensibly used to book Gallagher performances at comedy clubs. If there's any sense of curation, it's only because Gallagher didn't walk around dictating literally every thought he had into a recorder for later transcription.

Most blogs and certainly most social media profiles are not idea dumping grounds because most of us want to be accepted socially. I don't share idle napkin sketches on Instagram, I share cute pictures of my kid. When I posted poems, they went up after a draft was complete, rather than as I was tapping stray ideas into my phone. Even the loosest curation is a lot of work. Holding in a fart is curation when you consider what you're doing and why.

Curation has its limits. You do it too much and you look like a robot. It's unconvincing. You hold in every fart around your partner for years, and brag about how you've never farted, they aren't going to think "Wow, this guy never farts." Everybody farts. They'll think "What a bizarre thing to try to make me believe."

Hyper-curation is a cringe comedy gift. It's people acting inhumanly cool, denying room for error like a video game character on god mode. There's the laugh of what you want me to believe and then the laugh of what that must mean for who you actually are. And I say that to introduce David Jason Silver, known to what must be millions as "Silver Kid."

I first became aware of Silver Kid through the Channel 101 forums, and I'd love to know how the person who shared his IMDb profile found him. This was twenty years ago. I've thought of Silver Kid often since.

Silver Kid's IMDb profile is a goldmine of hyper-curation. He is the coolest man alive and he has zero credits. His page's "Salaries" section lists three movies he made extra rates on, but that's about the extent of his professional connection to film.

I don't see any shame in this. Movies need extras, people need jobs, it's near impossible to make it into the film business. I do find it weird that Silver Kid used that experience to wax poetic about this business of show. I find it weird that he took three extra roles as license to share advice like this:

These are all things he and only he has said. Some of the later quotes are more revealing, especially when taken with that "think long and hard before you react to anything" line:

This is absolutely a man who has blown up at people while working as an extra.

His bio is similarly inspiring:

Senator Dennis DeConcini?! My god.

Silver Kid has worked in LA and the Arizona area after some time in the Navy after high school. Reading his IMDb profile, you could learn as much about him as you know about anybody in your life. His bio, after explaining his connection to Blood, Sweat and Tears' Lew Soloff twice, lists an additional 46 factoids.

Some of the items in his bio are relations. Some of them are like this:

He was a pizza delivery driver in high school. He met George W. Bush at a rally. He skies black diamond runs. He has three trademarks:

My favorite piece:

"Did you know?" IMDb asks. No, I say out loud. I promise you I did not.

I know where he attended boot camp, which films he wrote papers on in college, his favorite sports car. I know this because he wants me to know it. I know it because Silver Kid thought it would help him land a job. A casting director is supposed to see that a man walked in circles for 22 hours, stopping only to do push-ups, to prove his dedication to picking random suitcases on Deal or No Deal, and that casting director is supposed to think "This is who we need to play Jack Nicholson's son in our new movie."

I don't want to make fun of Silver Kid as some kind of doofus or loser. I don't think he is one. I think he's a guy forever sucking in his stomach, raising his eyebrows at you like "you see how skinny I am?" To say he should be the subject of a documentary is a dramatic understatement. He should be the subject of a TV channel. And I know he thinks so, too.

I try sometimes to allow myself to think I'm good enough. A good enough writer to merit a newsletter, a good enough partner and parent that my family won't be scarred by the association. There are times any confidence has felt like total masturbation. I'm really not sure why. I've only been surrounded by supportive people.

And so I say this honestly: I cannot help but envy Silver Kid. He rode a motorcycle at 100 mph and then paid for an IMDb Pro account so he could tell somebody about it. Or he didn't ride 100 mph but he wanted people to think that. Either way, he is a paragon of ego. He can't fake his film credits. He has none. But he can tell you how aggressively he auditioned for roles he didn't get. He can take solace in his relation to a person who acted in nine German films (three uncredited) in the 1920s and 30s.

He has hyper-curation. I salute the Silver Kid, sincerely, as he salutes himself in a mirror. And I maintain a space in my heart for a nearly-impossible alternative theory: That all of this was written not by Silver Kid, but by an admirer.