If you didn’t already know, I have a younger brother and he’s quite the character.  When he was still in high school I knew that he really had potential to be an entertainer and that’s why I came up with “Brothers TV“, the short lived TV series that he and I starred in.  Although that show did get us quite a bit of exposure, it didn’t really showcase either of us to our full abilities… largely because we had to work morning to night just to produce the friggin’ thing and all of the work involved with it sucked most of the creativity out of us.

But that’s a story for another day.  The long and the short of it was that “Brothers TV” didn’t launch either of us into stardom, and although we still sometimes get recognized from it, it didn’t make us famous.  So I moved on to continue my different acting endeavors and of course my online pursuits, while Andy didn’t do much to pursue a career in entertainment after that, unless it came with a push from me.  I was always lining him up with odd acting jobs or auditions and pushing him to do a live show with me or a new TV series.  I knew that we both had a lot of potential if we could just get “discovered”.

Then, out of almost nowhere, Andy decided to take one more shot at his character “Spandy Andy“. Dressing up in spandex and dancing was nothing new to him - I’d been videotaping him doing it in random public places for years, but nothing ever came of it.  But for some reason, this summer it exploded.  One day he decided to play his boombox and dance along the beach and he was almost instantly a local fixture.  Photos and videos starting popping up online of him and people were talking about him and recognizing him on the street.  A few weeks ago someone came up to the me at the bar and asked me if I was Andy’s brother.  That’s when I realized that just like that he had become more of a celebrity than me… locally.

Well, tonight that changed and now he’s more of a celebrity than me, nationally.  He was on So You Think You Can Dance Canada and he was freakin hilarious.  We watched it at a pub with a bunch of his friends and everyone was cheering and laughing so loudly that we could hardly hear anything… but it was the visual presentation that mattered anyway.  If you’re in Canada you can watch it again this Sunday afternoon on MuchMusic.

Now people are Twittering about him (including Blake, the choreographer, and the actual SYTYCDCanada account) and I’m getting messages all over the place from people that I know (or knew at some time) saying they saw him on TV.  He really made a memorable impact and I’m sure this is just the beginning of a lot more for him.

So, what’s the lesson in this? How about that you never know when something’s going to take off.  And being original and unique certainly doesn’t hurt either.  And just don’t ever give up on your dreams because you never know when all of a sudden something will change and everything will fall into place.

So congrats to my little bro! Now I just have to make sure that I keep having more subscribers on YouTube and more followers on Twitter… because if he becomes a bigger celebrity online than me too, then he’s gonna be in trouble.

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