Randy Rainbiw Make America Great Again
Your Son Will Come Out Tomorrow: Randy Rainbow's Memoir of Dearest, Turmoil and Trump
Rainbow made the nation laugh by setting witty political commentary to Broadway tunes. Now he has a memoir on his ascension from theater kid lip-syncing in his bedroom to social media star.
When your proper noun — your bodily name — is Randy Rainbow, your career choices are limited. Banking concern president? Mafia don? Nope. Neurosurgeon? Probably not. If Tom Brady had been named Randy Rainbow, instead of heading to the N.F.L. Hall of Fame he might be banging out show tunes at a Chelsea pianoforte bar.
Then perhaps this fellow'south path was preordained: Rainbow, xl, is a breakout YouTube star. His videos adroitly mixing one-act, satire and musical theater have been viewed half a billion times; his "Pink Glasses Bout" has been crisscrossing the country for the past year; and in certain circles, trying to anticipate what news story will get his attention next is the parlor game. (Electric current Twitter favorite: Tucker Carlson'south, uh, unusual approach to increasing testosterone levels.)
And at present here comes the memoir, "Playing With Myself," published this calendar week by St. Martin'southward Press, nearly his rise from introverted teenager lip-syncing in his bedchamber to social media star.
Randy Rainbow and I are day-drinking at Joe Allen, a Broadway hangout, while dissecting his Bumble profile. Recently Rainbow was thrown off Tinder; he has no idea why. I offer my theory: maybe he got reported for impersonating that online celebrity, Randy Rainbow? "Oh!" he says, a petty pleased. I gently suggest that being a public figure on a dating app has its risks. "Why, what'south going to happen?" he says, nibbling his martini olive. "I mean, it'south not gotten to the signal where I have to be worried nearly sex tapes …" and so, with perfect comedic timing, "God willing, it gets there."
Nosotros're hither to discuss "Playing," whose title refers to the fact that until very recently, Rainbow has been the editor, cinematographer, and musical director of all his videos, as well as the star. He wanted to write "a love letter to the women in my life — my mother, my grandmother, and too the idols and icons that inspired me." But it is besides a letter to his younger self, the bullied outsider who x years agone was lying on the flooring of his tiny studio apartment in Astoria, pondering the videos into which he was sinking most of his waking hours, and request, "Why am I doing this? I take to become brand money only experience like I need to stay home and work on this, but I don't know why."
Prototype
For many of his fans, Rainbow is much more than the star who makes clever political commentary utilizing favorite Broadway show tunes. Over the past v years, his videos skewering the country's dysfunctional politics have helped an angry nation express joy it off. They are bitter, sweetness, and sometimes both at once, such as his tribute to Anthony Fauci at the height of the pandemic, sung to the melody of "Officeholder Krupke" from "West Side Story," and his duet with Patti LuPone in late 2020, "If Donald Got Fired" to the tune of "If Momma Was Married" from "Gypsy."
"Comedy can be a weapon, and Randy is the globe-tape holder in comedy weaponry," said the comedian Judy Gold, a friend. "Information technology'south similar, 'I'm so aroused all the time.' How practice nosotros release this tension? And here'due south this beautifully sung song that is hilarious and and so true and just somehow elevates us. He speaks for and so many in a mode they can't speak for themselves."
These days Rainbow has been speaking to, and for, an extraordinary number. According to Tubular Labs, the visual measurement and analytics platform, he has 3.12 one thousand thousand followers across social media platforms. Fans include Hillary Clinton, who wrote him a very squeamish cheers letter. He's likewise frequently retweeted past George Conway, the lawyer and married man of Kellyanne Conway, despite the fact that she was the target of many Rainbow videos.
Notwithstanding Rainbow claims not to be specially political. "Some people remember that I'thousand hired past the D.N.C. to, like, push some agenda. The only agenda I have is to be Carol Burnett." His fan gild likewise extends to Broadway royalty. In 2019 Lin-Manuel Miranda tweeted, "Sondheim is genuinely crazy well-nigh @RandyRainbow, concluding time I saw him he told me: "he's skilful as anyone writing lyrics correct now. And what he's doing is harder."
"Playing with Myself" traces Rainbow's history: the sparkly but child growing upwards in Long Isle, putting pajama bottoms over his caput to mimic ponytails; the chubby middle schooler teased about his weight, which led to a few years of anorexia; the depressed and closeted theater child who, having moved to Florida, sat in his room listening to Barbra and Judy and staring at the glittering backdrop of the New York skyline his friend painted on the wall.
At 22, he moved to New York City, and took the usual assortment of glamour-adjacent jobs: a maître d' at Hooters, a receptionist to a carnal talent agent. The one affair he didn't do? Audition. "I could non become in those rooms. No. I was agape of everything," he said. "I was 22 but I was still covered in amniotic fluid. I was a very sheltered mama's boy."
"This is truthful," says Gwen Rainbow, the mama in question. She never doubted her son's talents, fifty-fifty if she was a little more eager to see him excel as a scholar than, say, the world's all-time 10-year-old lip syncher of "Hi, Dolly!" Just the boy who craved the spotlight was also deeply unsure of himself, she said.
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"Randy had friends, but he would oftentimes elect to stay home, and he would be by himself for long periods," she said. "He would never accomplish out."
Compounding Rainbow's struggles was the relationship with his father, which was poisonous, his female parent said. The male parent, Jerry, was a drummer and a singer, and had a magnificent voice, just as shortly every bit his son became a teenager, he became jealous of the boy'due south talents. "This competitiveness, Randy felt it, and eventually I had to explain it," Gwen Rainbow said. "When your father doesn't like you lot, yous don't empathize why."
His parents fought constantly, and sense of humor became his coping mechanism. "I learned this from my grandmother, my female parent, that the way to respond everything — adversity, depression — was to make a joke about it," he said.
The idea is at the crux of all his piece of work, from his early "Randy Rainbow Is Dating Mel Gibson" serial (which also shows off Rainbow'southward stiff intuitive acting chops) to his most contempo skewering of Gov. Ron DeSantis of Florida in "GAY!" which got nearly three 1000000 views in the first eleven days after its release. Rainbow's souvenir is taking the admittedly bloodcurdling and tragic and worst of human beliefs "and making people experience meliorate about it, because that's how I made myself feel meliorate," he said.
These days, Rainbow is feeling pretty good, and with proficient reason. While he became a household name by taking on the darkness of Trump's presidency, he has found enough of headlines to lampoon, equally his latest videos of DeSantis and Marjorie Taylor Greene ("Gurl You're a Karen") can attest. His volume tour began this week, but he's already thinking near what he'll write next.
"I'g thinking my next book will exist like, total 'Sexual activity and the City.' A dating volume," he said. "I call back perhaps that will force me to get out there if I tell myself, 'Oh, it's research for a volume …' and that will lead me to finding the dear of my life."
Whatsoever detail blazon?
"Jake Tapper," he says, without hesitation.
"Daddy, serious, responsible, will take intendance of me, has the answers," he said, "considering I oasis't got them. That's who I demand. America'southward fellow, Jake Tapper. If he decides he'due south ready, I might be taking myself off Bumble."
As we're leaving I ask Rainbow about a band he's wearing. Information technology looks like … a tiny crown? He flaunts the ring most three inches from my eyeballs.
"It's from the Snow White collection," he said. "If a homo gives you this band, don't marry him. I got it for me, for my volume tour. It'south inspired by the box, when the queen says, 'Bring me her heart.'"
He besides got his female parent a necklace from the same Disney collection, he said: "It'due south similar: Thank yous. Thank you for letting me put pajama bottoms on my caput, and cheers for letting me play Snowfall White."
When we met a few days earlier the book bout kicked off in New York, I wondered: Was Mom going?
"Oh please," Gwen Rainbow said. "I've got an auto immune disease, I'chiliad taking my life in my easily. Of course I'll be at that place."
Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2022/04/22/arts/randy-rainbow-book.html
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