Tom Guarriello grew up in the Bronx where cool meant black clothes and leather shoes, then moved to Ohio to escape that identity. Now he makes a fool of himself on YouTube in absurd hats, and he's grateful for viewers who let him do it.
Well, hi, it's Tom Guarriello. You know, one of the things that I really enjoy and appreciate about YouTube is— and, you know, web video in general now. I can't just say YouTube because now I'm making Seesmic videos, and I plan to make videos for other kinds of purposes in the coming year. But one of the things that I appreciate about the experience of having made videos is how comfortable I've gotten at making a fool of myself. You know, it's not an easy thing to get comfortable with making a fool of yourself, right? Especially when you grow up in the Bronx. Let me tell you about what it was like to grow up in the Bronx. Growing up in the Bronx, you had to dress and look a certain way, and if you were an Italian guy You had a, you know, the preferred color for all young Italian males growing up in the Bronx in the late '50s and early '60s was black, right? Because why? Black is cool. Black is the color of cool. So you had to, you had to like wear as much black as possible. And you also had to wear certain kind of footwear. You could only wear footwear that had leather soles and leather heels. Now, leather soles, leather heels meant you slid around a lot, but you know, sliding around a lot was cool. If you were really cool, you had taps on your heels, and then so this way you could make a noise and you could walk in kind of a syncopated way with all your other buddies as you walk down the street being cool together in the Bronx. Now, this need for being cool even extended to like playing ball. So if you were playing ball, softball or stickball, the really cool guys would play in black leather jackets, in their black clothes, and they would wear their leather shoes as they were playing. Now the kids that weren't so cool, who by the way were really the better athletes, right, they would see somebody coming up to bat in this outfit and they'd go, "Shoes!" What they were doing was yelling, "This idiot that's up here at BatDow has leather shoes. He's not going to be able to run. He's not going to be able to do anything because he's got leather shoes on." But rather than look foolish and have, you know, sneakers on— how uncool was that? These guys would rather wear leather shoes. Now, It took me a long while. I had to go to Ohio to kind of purge my Bronxness and learn how to make a fool of myself. But none of that compared with being on YouTube in particular and getting comfortable, for example, wearing idiotic hats like this. So I wanted to wish you all a happy, happy holiday season. Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, Happy Kwanzaa, Happy New Year. I'm gonna have a New Year's video before New Year's, but if I don't, happy New Year and happy solstice the other day. Anybody, happy everything, happy everything. And thanks for making it possible to make a real fool of myself in '07, and I'm looking forward to getting even better at it in '08. So take it easy and see you soon. Bye-bye.
