Remember back in the old days when the way to get maudlin attention at a funeral was to throw one’s self onto the casket and scream? Remember that? People probably still do it all the time, but the technology today has digitized these agonizing moments and taken them a step further — and just a teeny bit faker.
Instead of throwing themselves on caskets and moaning to the heavens, “Take me, God! Why don’t you take me,” people are throwing themselves and the images of their departed loved ones onto the internet. YouTube has become the modern day casket. Why not? It’s free and it never rots.
It’s being used by everybody who wants to cry, complain, grieve, offer false or insipid inspiration — you name it — all the maudlin junk you can imagine at an Irish wake or an Italian repast is now on YouTube — and it’s getting more and more cringe-worthy every day
Back in the 1950s, the late, great actress/singer/comedienne Judy Holliday made a famous film called, “IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU.” In this film she plays a woman named Gladys Glover; an ordinary gal who makes herself famous simply by plastering her image on billboards throughout New York City.
How blissfully ignorant and ironic that the title from that film is eerily close to the title of the newest YouTube sensation about a gay guy –who seems to want to be famous — and the lover – who also seems to have wanted fame — that he lost one year ago when said lover fell off a roof.
You’ve probably read the story already and you’ve probably seen the video because every bird-brain on your Facebook page is passing it around and talking about how sad it is and how every gay person in the world needs to revolt because nobody seems to want them at a funeral, and everybody is a bully, and everybody is a hater, and everybody is an evil Christian who watches Fox News.
One deeply saddened gay activist wrote: “This is why we have to fight back! I can’t stop watching this. It brings tears to my eyes. I can’t stop crying. It’s terrible.”
If it’s so terrible and it makes you cry, why the hell do you keep watching it and sending it to your friends? Are you a maudlin YouTube masochist first and a Facebook sharing sadist second? Perhaps you’re organizing a big pity party with go-go boys? Or maybe…just maybe, you’re just a dopey, maudlin, simple-minded provincial dingbat? Yes, I think the last guess is the right one.
Anyway, Shane Bitney Crone is the first gay mourner to officially throw himself onto the virtual casket of YouTube with his teary commemorative video, “It Could Happen To You.” Dammit — he was so close to getting the title right! Judy Holliday’s movie was called, “It Should Happen To You” which I happen to think is more appropriate in this case, but I can’t be that mean. 
Keep in mind that Shane Bitney Crone did this because he is sad and horribly repressed by our ever evil and perpetually cruel heterosexual Christian society. (yawn) He years for the day when he can move to a Muslim country where he can openly mourn the death of his gay lover.
Hey! Maybe….just maybe, he’s a modern-day Gladys Glover and he simply wants to be famous. Oh, no, no, no! Momma Mia let me go! Nobody is that shameless, are they?
Shane Bitney Crone made this video — a video that ranks up there with “Old Yeller” for people who like to cry at the movies — because he wanted people to know that his gay lover was accidentally killed and that this gay lover’s evil family shunned him from the ceremony when they had to bury their son.
Oh, I forgot to tell you the actual back story. It goes something like this.
Shane Bitney Crone’s longtime boyfriend, Tom Bridegroom, fell from a rooftop and died during a photo shoot. People who seek fame often do photo-shoots because you have to have headshots of yourself in edgy places — like grungy roofops and stuff.
Notwithstanding the glaring fact that both these guys have names that sound like they both stepped off the Mayflower, it has been alleged by Shane Bitney Crone that Tom Bridegroom’s family would not allow him to mourn properly. This is an outrage and something that should never happen in such high-bourne society.
In a crying-jag performance worthy of Lana Turner, circa “Madam X” and/or “Imitation Of Life,” he describes in his video how he was pushed aside by those evil anti-gay heterosexual monsters – aka, his ersatz in-laws.
So now, thanks to the world’s newest “Gladys Glover Show” that’s playing at a Facebook page near you, the gay world is on the verge of kvetching. Does the maudlin gullibility of the facebooking and YouTubing human being ever end? Unfortunately, the answer is, no.
Is it sad that the guy died? Of course it is. Is it sad that Shane was allegedly dismissed by the family of the dead lover? Yes it is. Is the whole thing totally true as it as been told in the over-played, tear-jerker YouTube video? Uh…probably not, but you have to allow for a little poetic/dramatic license.
Keep in mind that a video on YouTube is only half as effective as a real-life, black-veiled, old lady wailing and throwing herself onto her husband’s coffin, but you need production value, dude, and Shane Bitney Crone seems to have done a great job of making himself a YouTube martyr/hero — an internet Gladys Glover — and in HD no less.
I don’t, however, recommend watching the dead lover YouTube video. Go out instead and rent or buy the Judy Holliday film “IT SHOULD HAPPEN TO YOU ” – the acting is a whole lot better.
Damien LeGallienne reporting for: TheDamienZone.com.
