Grown Ass Man Passionately Monologues About Baby Show Music For Over Twenty Minutes

Pilot Presentation vs. Aired Episodes

Being that my claim here on this blog is that I’m the world’s biggest LazyTown fan, you might have an image of me in your head where I have watched all of the episodes a million times over, and could read you the scripts backwards and forwards. Not only is that not the case, but you might be surprised to know that it has actually been a few years since I’ve sat down and watched an episode just for the sake of it. That’s not a testament to any lack of enjoyment of the show, rather, just a consequence of my love for LazyTown being deep and multifaceted enough such that I don’t absolutely need to watch the show all the time. Still, it’s a good idea to revisit the show from time to time to refresh my thoughts and feelings for it. I figured it was about time for that, so a few weeks ago, I started to give the whole series a once over.

Before I go on, I want to briefly rewind to last year, when I did a LazyTown interview with Shelby Young, the actress who portrayed Stephanie in the pilot episode of the television series. While speaking with her, I was able to convince her to release the previously unseen pilot presentation for LazyTown fans to see. I am profoundly grateful for Shelby’s generosity and willingness to do so, as her actions uncovered a part of LazyTown that very well could have stayed hidden away somewhere in a Nickelodeon storage warehouse forever. It’s an incredible treat as a LazyTown fan to be able to fit a new piece of the LazyTown puzzle in, because the full picture is then one step closer to being realized.

My metaphors for this whole “big picture” thing might seem cheesy and cliché, which is partly because they are, but it’s just the plain truth. You see, I had not watched any LazyTown episodes since the pilot presentation was released, and while the concepts from the pilot were certainly familiar, there was an appreciation that was unknowingly lost to me because it had been so long since I had watched the series. Since I am watching the episodes again, now I can identify even the most granular pieces of dialogue or direction shared between the pilot and the aired episodes and use them to develop a more complete appreciation of LazyTown.

One way in which that is done, is by taking note of the kinds of things that were added, subtracted, or kept as it. This allows for a deeper insight into what kind of things are important in LazyTown, and that’s what I am talking about when I mention all this “big picture” stuff. For example, there is a shot in both the pilot and what aired where Sportacus is doing a handstand on a ball/melon, and then smiles to the camera. That exact shot was for whatever reason important enough to where it was kept in mind for years until it was finally able to be realized on camera.

The revelation was important enough to me to where I felt like I had to make a video for others to see. The video being a showcase for each and every one of the scenes in the pilot, comparing them to their counterparts in the aired episodes. So that’s exactly what I did. It is my hope that LazyTown fans will watch the video that I made and have the same inner delight that I had when I was able to connect all the dots between the pilot presentation and what was eventually aired.

There was a time when I made LazyTown fan videos regularly. They were mostly stupid and pointless, but they made me laugh so that was reason enough for me to do them. For a very long stretch of time, and for no particular reason, I fell out of making LazyTown videos. However, I’ve been coming around to making videos again, though with a different aim. The kind of videos I make nowadays are more meaningful. They’re meant to do more than just make me or others laugh. They’re meant to help fill in the gaps that LazyTown has, and to try to make others see the same things in LazyTown that I see.

Translating Latibær: An Overview

The first Icelandic LazyTown play that I saw was Áfram Latibær. It was at a time when I was still a budding LazyTown fan, and still adamantly digging my way into the concept to see what was at the center. When I came across the play, I thought I had taken a wrong turn somewhere. I was in quite literal disbelief. Even though I was told that this was supposed to be LazyTown, surely someone somewhere got something terribly wrong. Seeing these weird looking characters running around these weird looking sets, singing these weird sounding songs just did not register with me as being correct, despite the fact that that description sounds exactly like present-day LazyTown. I double checked and triple checked, and everything kept telling me that yes, this was right; what I was watching was LazyTown.  That’s when the word “Latibær” (Icelandic for LazyTown) became part of my vocabulary, and I began to consume everything that I could find with that in the title, beginning with the continuation of Áfram Latibær, the first of three pre-TV series LazyTown plays.

A still from Áfram Latibær
It was at about this point that I thought something was wrong

I soon found myself neck deep in the bizarre, absurd, and whimsical world of LazyTown circa late 90’s and early 2000’s. The only thing keeping me from going all the way under, was the obvious question of, “But what are they saying?” That question stayed mostly unanswered for the next several years. Even though an English translation of the plays was in high demand by LazyTown fans, translating the plays was no small task. The obvious challenge was the sheer amount of work that would have to go into it, as the shortest is still nearly an hour long, but a more hidden challenge is the fact that there are relatively few Icelandic speakers in the world, so finding one to help with the project was more difficult than if it had been a Spanish to English translation, for example. Regardless of the challenges that the project faced, every so often, someone would try to take it up. Usually, it would be an Icelander who would enthusiastically come out and say, “I’m going to be the one who does it! I’m going to be the one who translates the plays!” Then they would translate, say, the first five minutes of one of the plays, and then never be heard from again. You can still find relics of work like this in videos on YouTube, which have commenters begging in vain for them to be continued. Sometimes a fan would come by and try to make something happen using Google Translate and song lyrics, and while it was something, it obviously didn’t paint the full picture, and there was still an awful lot lost in translation. Even I had personally looked into doing it, and researched the possibility of using a professional translating service. It’s a pretty good idea until you see the price tag. It would be about $1,000 per play for an Icelandic to English translation, which is more than most would be willing to fork out. I admit that after years of the same old disappointments from fizzled attempts, I had given up hope that this was ever going to happen, unless I somehow hit it big and could throw around 3,000 dollars like it was nothing. I guess most of the other dedicated LazyTown fans came to a similar conclusion, because it was not really seriously brought up for years on end.

One day in early 2016, an up-and-coming LazyTown fan who goes by the handle of “Fox” decided, like all up-and-coming LazyTown fans do, that the plays needed to be translated. However, he had a different approach than most of the people in the past, who had simply banked on the generosity of an Icelander to get the job done. Not that Icelanders are not generous, but Fox knew that you had to get the green flowing before anything would ever happen. By the time he said anything to the rest of us, he had already gone ahead and purchased a few minutes of translation of the second play, Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ. He purchased the service from an Icelandic native named Kristófer on a website called fiverr.com, where people sell small services for a fee of five dollars. Kris was selling Icelandic to English translations, in chunks of a few hundred words at a time. I had not heard of the site before, and given my past experiences, I was still skeptical that this would turn into anything big. But in short time, the guy delivered, and Fox wanted to continue to pursue this option to eventually get the entire play translated. I figured why the hell not, and despite my skepticism, I more or less took charge of the project to see how far it could be taken.

I agreed with Fox that Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ was the correct place to start, so I kept down that path. That may not seem logical because it is the second play and not the first, however, the reason why I thought it should be done first was rooted in the fact that there have been so many flakes in the past. I hedged my bets on the side of pessimism to account for the possibility that Kris would flake at some point, and decided that if I had to choose just one play to be translated, even if it was only a piece of it, it would be Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ. I think most LazyTown fans would feel the same way, and I’m pretty sure that that’s similar logic that Fox had when he got the wheels turning on the project.

I spoke with Kris, thanked him for what he did so far, and asked him if he wanted to continue working on translating the play until completion. He said that he would, so we proceeded to negotiate the terms. We had to move away from Fiverr at this time, because their service structure is pretty strict; you pay exactly five dollars for exactly whatever service is advertised, which wouldn’t work well with what we would be doing. We agreed that we would just use email as the main communication channel, use Paypal for payment, and we eventually landed on a price of $130 for a transcription and translation of the entire hour-and-a-half-ish long play. We both had to take a little leap of faith here since this would not be done through a managed structure like Fiverr. Not everybody is willing to take a risk like that, so I’m grateful that Kris somehow found enough trust in a stranger to take me up on the terms. I was also grateful to see a price that would be much more manageable for the average Joe like myself. So just like that, we had begun.

Even though Kris and I had worked everything out, I was still jaded from my past experiences and still wasn’t really convinced deep down inside that this was going to work. Well, spoiler alert, it absolutely did. Kris totally delivered on his promises and then some, and we were able to not only get Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ translated, but also the other two plays, Áfram Latibær and Jól í Latabæ as well. There will be more details on how each of those projects went individually in later blog posts, but here, I’d like to give you an idea of how the general translation process worked. Admittedly, the process of translating is actually very dull, but if you’re reading this, hopefully you’re the kind of person who would want to learn about it anyway. It goes without saying that as Kris and I progressed through the projects, our methods tightened and changed a little bit from what I’m going to explain, but you’ll get the idea of how it went down.

We would start out with Kris transcribing an entire play in Icelandic and sending it to me, at which point I would pay him whatever agreed upon amount for the transcription; usually a little less than half of the total price. The only meaningful thing that I could do with the transcription at this point was begin laying out the timing of the lines for the subtitles, which I mostly avoided doing. Although it was slightly more efficient for me to do so, it could complicate things later if some of the lines actually read a lot longer in English than Icelandic, which would cause me to need to split up the lines and then re-time them and then shift everything else accordingly and so on. So I just didn’t even bother. I told you this was dull. Are you still reading?

Immediately after the transcription was done, Kris would begin the translation. Instead of sending it as a whole like the transcription, he would send it to me in chunks as he completed it. This would allow me to get to work as soon as possible, and the method greatly cut down on the overall time that the projects took. It also allowed us to build trust with one another, as I would pay him per chunk. Once I had some parts flowing in, I would begin by interpreting the lines into “real” English, meaning English that was actually intelligible and that sounds like it was coming from a native speaker. I would use the Icelandic transcription a lot during this process to ensure that I was keeping the original meaning as true as possible by referencing the sentence structure, the surrounding context, isolating words, and using my knowledge of English, Icelandic (albeit small), and language in general to guide me. It goes without saying that Kris did interpretation while he translated, but given that he is not a native English speaker, there was still a lot for me to do as far as rephrasing, fixing grammar, or even flat out changing things whenever appropriate. Similarly, some localization had to be done from time to time. The dialogue would occasionally have references to Icelandic cities, puns, traditions, and so on, that absolutely made no sense in English. Lines like this had to be modified with special attention to ensure that it made sense in English while still keeping the core of the meaning. Kris would usually make a little aside in the translation if there was anything strange like this that needed some extra explanation, which was very helpful and very appreciated. If anything still didn’t exactly make sense to me after Kris’s and my own efforts, I would take note of it to later send in for review. I would say that only 1-2% of lines had to get that treatment.

I would also throw in a little bit of sneaky fan service here and there, by retooling lines to retrofit them with current-era lines or gags. For example, changing one of Stingy’s lines from, “I own that bus stop,” to, “That bus stop is mine!” Or, admittedly less elegantly, changing a line that went, “Stephanie the Stiff I surely was,” to, “I was one stiff Stephie,” which is not only a nod to the lyrics of the same song remastered for the television series, but it’s also a brilliant way to slip past the complications of the characters’ surnames… more on that in a later post.

People who have only seen the final product might be surprised at how much changes from the initial translation to what ends up on the screen. When I started out, I was a little more of a purist, and was slightly uncomfortable even rephrasing a line. As time went on, I came to realize that what the characters say is less important than what the characters mean, and began to wield artistic license more willingly. Below is an example of how the dialogue evolves. Keep in mind that while it is a really good example in my opinion, it is also on the more extreme end. Here, Sportacus tells Pixel a little poem about taking control of your own life. I could have just taken Kris’s translation, fixed it up a bit, and called it done, but I was compelled to make the translated poem not only rhyme, but also have proper meter. Even though people watching the play would understand that it was supposed to be a poem regardless of what the subtitles were, making the extra effort allows the viewer to much more easily and naturally pick up on a truer meaning of the scene.

The Evolution of Translation

While all of the interpretation and so on was happening, I would be entering the text in to a program called Aegisub, which is subtitling software, and which I would use to properly line up the subtitles with the video. As opposed to the interpretation part of the process, this part takes no critical thinking whatsoever, but it does require meticulous precision. It’s a little more complex than just simply syncing the subtitles to the video, as there has to be additional considerations, such as making sure the lines are on screen for the appropriate amount of time, and making sure that the lines are not too long, rendering them difficult to read. The software has information that helps you know if there are any lines that might meet those criteria. This could actually get dicey at times when people were speaking very quickly, or when there were many people were talking at once, and compromises would have to be made. Sometimes, the compromise is to simply accept that a particular line is not going to be on-screen for long enough to comfortably read. Other times, the compromise would be to rephrase or reword lines to make them shorter, which is another example of how lines might get changed. The process was long, as there are 1000+ lines of subtitles in any given play, and definitely took the most time to do. After I had finally laid out all of the subtitles, and kept my brain from melting, it was time for a whole lot of reviewing.

I would review the subtitles two or three times, or however many times it took for me to feel good about them, by watching the video and keeping my eye out for both technical improvements and linguistic improvement. The technical improvements would basically be me scrutinizing the work that I described in the paragraph above, and making additional improvements to the timing and layout. The linguistic improvements include small things like grammatical errors, but would mainly be changes to the phrasing of lines to better reflect their true meaning, as the meaning can become more clear after you start to the see big picture of the conversation or scene or play, rather than seeing things line-by-line.

Working in Aegisub

After I was happy, or happy enough because I’m a bit of a perfectionist, I would then send any questions that I had or clarifications that I needed back to Kris, which he would kindly answer and the necessary changes would then be made. If for whatever reason he was not able to answer any questions, or if I still didn’t understand despite his best efforts, I would send the remaining questions to a second translator that I would hire over fiverr for a second opinion. We would go through a similar, yet much more compact, process like what has been described so far, and necessary changes would once again be made. There have been times when even after a second opinion, a certain line might still not make sense. I have never felt the need to get a third opinion on anything so far, and would just use my best guess on any lines like this.

Once the subtitles were “finalized,” it was now time for a final review where myself, Kris, and at least one other third party (it was usually Fox, who I mentioned earlier in the post) would review the subtitles. By this time, there were very little meaningful changes that could be made to the text. Most of the final changes were grammar fixes, or making minor technical changes. After everyone got their final word in, I would throw Kris a few extra dollars for his efforts because I’m just that nice of a guy, and finally, after all of that time and effort, the subtitles would be added to a video upload on YouTube for the world to see. We went through this entire process three times, once for each play: Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ, Áfram Latibær, and Jól í Latabæ, in that order.

Glanni Glæpur í Latabæ, translated

Working on these translations was quite rewarding for me in several ways. First and most obviously, it allowed me to understand the plays, which is great all by itself, however, by extension, it also allowed me to have a deeper and more clear understanding of the ideas behind LazyTown. I am now better able to understand what the characters are supposed to represent, the core values of LazyTown, the evolutionary path that it it has taken over the decades, and have been able to re-evaluate LazyTown as a whole with my new knowledge. Second, translating the plays also gave me an opportunity to understand Icelandic a little more, which is always a good thing to have up your sleeve as a LazyTown fan. Finally, and most importantly, it is very meaningful to me to have been one of the people who finally opened the door for LazyTown fans, both present and future, to have an opportunity to develop a deeper appreciation for LazyTown. To get metaphorical, I was once a sheep, and have now become a shepherd; a concept that I actively appreciate every day. I admit that every morning, you can find me checking the comments on the YouTube videos. I’m both surprised and humbled by the amount of people who are watching, and it brings me joy seeing their reactions. There are even people now using the English translation to springboard into translating the plays into other languages.

I went from having little hope that it was never going to happen, to actively making it happen in a matter of a few days, and then being done in a matter of a few months. Looking back, my hopelessness seems silly, because it really wasn’t difficult to do once we got started. The real challenge was having the patience to wait for everything to line up correctly to make the goal of translating the plays within reach. I’m very thankful for everyone who contributed to that. But enough of all of this pour-my-heart-out crap, because there is still lots to do! There is still a pretty large amount of LazyTown content waiting to be translated to English, like the group of books that were published even before the plays! I absolutely look forward to getting, and fully intend to get, all of those done and more, and to once again discover the LazyTown mysteries that are hiding just behind the language barrier.

We Are Number One, But It’s a Blog Post

I remember where I was the first time that I heard this song. How could I forget? I was nowhere other than sitting in Máni Svavarsson’s studio at LazyTown HQ in Iceland. One by one, Máni was graciously showing me some sneak peaks to each of songs that he had been working for on the latest season, something I had only ever dreamed of happening. When he put We Are Number One on, as you may know, it started with its little wonky saxophone measure, and then all of a sudden, breaks into very direct ska. Not LazyTown-with-a-twist-of-ska, just ska. I was shocked at what I was hearing, and I remember yelling over the music to Máni, “This doesn’t sound at all like LazyTown!” I wasn’t saying that as a bad thing, not at all, but it certainly was not what I thought would start coming out of his speakers. The song left an immediate impression on me, no doubt about that.

The original

Shortly after I got back home, and after I got over the depression of having to leave Heaven on Earth, I was in my friend’s car, and told him that he absolutely had to listen to two of the new LazyTown songs that I had heard while in Iceland. He is not a LazyTown fan, and I didn’t particularly think he would like the songs or care at all, but something drove me to show him the songs anyway. I suppose that’s just what happens when you are excited about something; you just want to show the world! In my case, I couldn’t show the world since the songs hadn’t released yet, so my world had shrunk significantly, just down to one guy who wouldn’t care anyway. So after just a little protesting from him and an alright-lets-just-get-this-over-with type of face, I threw on Dancing On The Moon and We Are Number One. As I expected, he didn’t seem to care a whole lot, giving me a half-hearted, “Yep, those were pretty good.” I was just happy to scratch the itch to show it to someone all the same. As the days, weeks, and months went by, I continued listening to the song, but no matter how many times I listened to it and knew exactly what to expect, the way that it breaks into ska at the beginning kept surprising me, over and over.

Since then, season 4 had released, the song was well-received by LazyTown fans, and that was pretty much that. Or at least it was, until about 3 months ago, when the song started to gain popularity as a quirky, fun song that some people enjoyed using to make bizarre creations. That’s not an uncommon phenomenon for LazyTown, as the same quality that attracts me to the show also brings in outsiders from time to time. Because of that, I wasn’t “surprised” that the song began to catch on, but its popularity largely existed in my peripherals, and I had no idea that the magnitude of the song’s popularity, and its subsequent memetic corruptions, began to snowball.

My introduction to the meme in September
I had no idea what I was in for

I didn’t quite understand how big this whole thing had become until Stefán Karl, Robbie Rotten’s primary portrayer, was diagnosed with cancer. I learned of the terrible news in early October, and just as to many others, it was very upsetting. I mean, it’s Stefán Karl! It’s Robbie fucking Rotten! He is an absolute legend to me, and it never even crossed my mind that something like this could even happen. The news was a little hush-hush, but a few weeks later, the news was announced to LazyTown fans, and that’s when the rest of the world found out. The announcement came from Mark Valenti, the gentleman who was the head writer for LazyTown while it was on the air. The LazyTown fans that I know were all just was devastated as I was, but the news that Stefán had cancer was only half the announcement. We didn’t just have to sit in sadness; we could make a difference in Stefán’s life, because the other half was that Mark had created a GoFundMe page to raise money for Stefán and his family to use during his tough times ahead, with a goal of $10,000. Of course, I chipped in, and was very pleased to see many names of people that I recognized from the LazyTown fanbase showing their support. However, I admit that I had a terrible fear that the fund would raise a few thousand dollars and then peter out, resulting in what could largely be considered a failure. However, that is not at all what happened. The money soon came pouring in from people clearly from the meme crowd. That’s when I, as well as Stefán, Máni, Mark, and many others were formally introduced to the craze.

The announcement to the LazyTown world

I began to scramble around a bit, trying to figure out what the heck was going on, and what I had missed while not paying enough attention. I don’t think I was the only one to find the success a surprise, and I imagine that the others were doing the same. I started flailing around YouTube and Soundcloud and facebook, where I found an absolute sea of people’s strange creations that I had no idea existed, and I eventually landed on somewhat of a center of it all, a facebook page called “Lazy Town Memes”. The page was not exactly a catalyst for the meme (actually, from what I have come to understand, the remix I linked a little bit above was), and is by no means the only place where the LazyMemers congregate, but it did have a very large following and many of the donators to the fund kept mentioning it. While normally was dedicated to propagating the dankest LazyTown memes, it was now using their influence to spread the word of Stefán’s situation, and of the donation campaign. I just wanted to know who they were and what they were all about, as they were doing a great service. I reached out to the admins of the page, and spoke with one of them, a woman named Nicolas. She knew of me, and we had a pleasant exchange about the meta LazyTown fanbase, Stefán’s situation, and I of course thanked her for what they were doing. The page has only grown since then, now with 116,000 followers.

The spread and popularity of this thing became more apparent to me when Stefán did a Reddit AMA (Ask Me Anything) session to bring attention to the fund set up for him. Questions came flooding in from the memers, and in turn, so did the donations. I was relieved to see that most of the questions were honest and heartfelt, and not just trashy questions referencing the joke. In fact, the AMA became the 11th most popular of all time. I mean seriously, what the actual fuck? Let me take a moment to list off some of the names that are below Stefán’s AMA: Bernie Sanders, Buzz Aldrin, Peter Dinklage, Neil deGrasse Tyson, and Bill Gates. Let me repeat that last one: Bill Gates. What an absolute trip this was all starting to become.

The memes just kept on being created and shared, as well as the link to the GoFundMe donation page, so the fund’s goals kept being met: $20,000, $30,000, $50,000, $75,000… it just kept going. Somehow, every time it met a new goal, it never ceased to amaze me.

The latest big event surrounding this monster was no later than a few days ago, when in Máni’s home studio in Iceland, was Máni and Stefán, as well as Björn Thors , Snorri Engilbertsson, and Bergur Þór, the actors who played the three one-off characters in the song and the episode that the song came from, who met to do a live stream in honor of the song’s popularity. Only tens of thousands of people tuned in live, and hundreds of thousands so far have watched the recording… so just a handful. The five men spoke about their experiences from working on that song and their thoughts on the uptick in popularity and just had a grand old time. As a fan, the two highlights were the original quartet performing the famous song live, as well Máni’s announcement that he would be releasing the stems (the individual tracks) from the song. I don’t want to understate that last part there, because the move to do that is a big deal. It wasn’t as easy as, “Here you go,” Máni had to jump through legal hoops to get permission to do that, and it is a totally unprecedented move in LazyTown’s over 20 years of history. It is a dream come true for a LazyTown fan, and for the many, many remixers of the song out there, it’s not only a tremendous gift, but also a tremendous gesture of appreciation by Máni for their work. All that said, on a personal level, everything else was overshadowed by my happiness of seeing Stefán just being Stefán. Even though everyone kept saying that he was recovering well and never lost his touch, I still couldn’t kick the thought of a pale, sickly, bald Stefán, wandering around the hospital ward in a half-tied gown. It took a great emotional weight off just to see him smiling and laughing and dancing around.

The live event

Máni messaged me the next day, as he was preparing to make good on his promise to release the tracks. He wanted my advice on where they should go, whether on Soundcloud or facebook or YouTube or what. He was also consulting with Mark and Steina, Stefán’s wife, during the process. We ultimately decided to put it everywhere. Máni was hesitant though about YouTube, because some actual video editing work had to be done to properly make the video, which he wasn’t sure he was capable of, so I offered to do it. I guess at the time I didn’t really grasp what I had offered to do. I was at work at the time, so I couldn’t do it right then and there, and Máni knew that, but he blew my mind when he sent me a message saying, “Steina is asking when Chris is going to have the YouTube video ready.” I guess that moment, when I had Stefán Karl’s wife hounding me for a video, is when it kind of sunk in that I had just gotten myself involved.

I was eager to get home and make the video, so I rushed out of there, grabbed some food upstairs at home, then headed into my room telling my roommates I had some “Official LazyTown Business” to do. That phrase has been a joke between me and my friends for when I’m working on something LazyTown related, but there have been times when it was dead serious. I’d say this counts as one of them. And so, I spent the next couple of hours making some assets, cutting together the video, reviewing it, and sending it to Steina to upload on Stefán’s personal YouTube account.

A great tool for me over the years has been a LazyTown style guide (a guide that tells you the exact colors, fonts, pictures, patterns, and so on, that should be used for official LazyTown products) from 2010, and just like many projects I’ve made in the past, it was used as a reference to create assets for the video. Things like these are not supposed to be available to the general public, but in a funny twist, this one was accidentally leaked a few years ago by none other than… Stefán Karl! I never thought I would be using it to make something for the man himself!

At the time of writing this, it’s only three days after, but the video already has a few hundred thousand views, and about 3,000 comments. I’ve read every single one, and they’re overwhelmingly positive. The people are absolutely loving the ability to hear and appreciate each track, and they can’t wait to either make something new with them, or to see what others will do. Even though I was really only a small part of this video being uploaded, I still do absolutely have a feeling of responsibility. To see all of these people react so positively to something that I helped to create, even just a little, is very… weird.

(As of 12/23/16 Turner, the company that now owns LazyTown, decided that they weren’t a fan of the stunt and requested that the video be taken off of Stefán’s account. An alternate upload has been linked below.)

The video in question

It’s a difficult feeling to explain… it’s an awkwardness of sorts, and a bit of disbelief. Well, more than a disbelief, it’s closer to a disregardation of reality. I internally make myself forget that I was responsible for it. Maybe it’s the same thing that the actual people behind LazyTown feel when people like me show interest in the show. Perhaps what I’m about to say may come off as narcissistic or delusional, but in a way, I feel like I’ve transcended the identity of “just a fan.” I started out as a fan, sure, but now I know and have met all kinds of people who worked on the product, I’ve been to the production studio, I’ve formed a huge personal investment in the idea, I’m an administrator on LazyTown’s largest fansite, I’ve created or worked on all kinds of projects, and so on. In my introduction post, I mentioned “loving” LazyTown and what that meant to me. For a long period of my LazyTenure, the love was a one way street; LazyTown became a part of me, but I was never a part of LazyTown. As time has gone on, that has slowly been changing, and I feel like in my own unique way, now there is a part of me in LazyTown. I’m really not sure what I would consider myself anymore. I guess if I was to put this relationship on facebook, I would list it as, “It’s complicated.”

It has all been a long and strange trip, from Máni’s studio in Iceland, all the way to now. It’s hard to believe that it all started with a song. The support shown for Stefán has not subsided, with the donation campaign topping $100,000 dollars, or 10 times the initial goal, at the time of this post. The memers have only just got hold of the song’s assets, so who knows what these maniacs will pump out with them. Even though this whole things has legs yet, it’s important to remember that it will someday come to an end.

As someone born and raised on the internet, and who has been around the binary block, I know that all internet memes die off. It doesn’t matter how popular or widespread they are, they always die eventually. I know that for most of the people meming it up, their feelings for LazyTown or for Stefán are fleeting and shallow, and that a year from now, they will have found something else to attach themselves too, but I am still tremendously grateful for what this collective has done, is doing, and how they have affected those of us on the edges of the phenomenon.

I am grateful that this all happened at just the right time to be more than dust in the wind; that it happened at a time to make a real, positive, and tangible impact on a family. I am grateful that Máni, Stefán, Steina, Mark, and whoever else all embraced this, and chose to ride the wave as it is passing through. I am grateful to be in a position where I can see all of this from the outside in, instead of the inside out. And I am grateful to have LazyTown be part of my life, because I can’t imagine it any other way.