This is how many subscribers to Internet-fueled rumors imagine the last day in the life of Steve Burns, the former host of Blue’s Clues:
Piles of syringes surround the man as episode 54 blares on his 87-inch television. He realizes the tragic fact that he will never frolic with Blue again, never pass those morning hours in ecstasy playing games like “Lolly Stick Project,” “Let’s Dream,” or “Water Xylophone.” Steve expires as he intently stares at a Blue’s Clues mug, wondering if they have Nick Jr. in heaven.
But what really happened to Steve? The surprising truth is that he became an indie-rocker, collaborating with Steven Drozd and Michael Ivins of the Flaming Lips in 2002 to produce an album titled “Songs for Dustmites.” Steve sings and plays guitar on the twelve tracks, which include “Mighty Little Man,” “What I Do On Saturday,” and “A Sniveling Mess.” Combining fanciful lyrics with a quasi-Flaming Lips sound, Steve reveals the thoughts that had been drowned out by his scripted persona during his six-year stint on Blue’s Clues. In the title track “Songs for Dustmites,” Steve croons, “Biggest baddest world / You’ve ever seen / Is smaller than a tear / Where all the kids have robot hearts / And dustmites fight with micro gears.”
In high school Steve played in bands like “Sudden Impact” and “Nine Pound Truck.” But when he left his hometown in Pennsylvania to pursue an acting career and stumbled upon Blue’s Clues, he had to sacrifice his musical ambitions. It’s possible, though, that every time Steve wrote in his trademark “Handy Dandy Notebook,” he was formulating lyrics for his future album, such as: “Nobody else is stronger than I am / Yesterday I moved a mountain / I’d like to be your hero / I am a mighty little man.”
Following his voluntary departure from the show, Steve clearly felt he had something to prove. As a five-foot-six 28-year-old who had just spent six years on a children’s show with a computer-generated blue dog, he thought he could be slightly more of a badass. “There were a lot of bachelor parties that I didn’t go to. But I’ve realized, you know, I’m kind of a fuddy-duddy anyway.” The day he left Blue’s Clues he shaved his head, an act that had been prohibited by his producers. Songs for Dustmites came out shortly after, and in 2003 and 2004 he toured small venues in the U.S. and England. People who attended his shows must have agreed with Steve’s producer, Dave Fridmann, in calling him “the best ex-children’s-show-host-record-making-weirdo I know.” Steve will reach the apex of his post-Blue’s acting career when he plays an astronaut in the upcoming Flaming Lips movie “Christmas on Mars.”
So what’s next for Steve? Curiously, he hasn’t updated his website (Steveswebpage.com) in three years, which may lead some to believe he finally succumbed to the Internet rumors. In any case, if we want to learn about the next step for Steve, we can look no further than the quote on his outdated website, which he oddly attributes to Andy Warhol: “In the future, everyone will be famous for several years on children’s television, then will make an indie rock album with the help of members of the Flaming Lips, and will ultimately become an unwitting pawn in a conspiracy by millimeter-tall space lobsters to take over the solar system via brain control.”
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