Friday, April 30, 2010

April 30

Today's birthday is a cautionary tale. Glenn Humplik was the co-host on many of Tom Green's shows, from his Canadian public access show in the 90's to his ground-breaking MTV series. The signature comedy of Tom Green combined the absurdity of Ernie Kovacs with the lowest common denominator of the America's Funniest HomeVideos standard that is a baseball bat to the groin. And when Tom didn't have his parents or unsuspecting civilians to bamboozle, Glenn served as Tom's patsy.

By the time Tom Green relaunched his eponymous show on the web, Glenn was nowhere to be found. What happened between them is, publically, a mystery. Glenn doesn't speak about it, and Tom Green says that, legally, he isn't allowed to talk about it. Glenn returned to a career in IT and has a personal blog he posts about work, raising his kid, and random videos he finds on the Internet.
He's relatively gracious to fans, but not extremely forthcoming about why that chapter closed. Was Glenn tired of being treated like a sidekick instead of a co-host? Did Tom go one joke too far? Does Glenn not want to make any more humiliating videos his daughter will eventually find on the Internet? Is the money just better in the tech industry?
There's always the memories. Here's a rap that Tom composed about his old friend:

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