Steve From ‘Blues Clues’ Is Still Alive, Lives With His Dog, And Is Having A Vague Existential Crisis On Twitter
He also has an album out.
Where were you when you heard the news that Steve from Blues Clues had died?
I was in the playground of my high school on a brisk Autumn day, tucking into a luke-warm meat pie with the nonchalance of a teenager who hadn’t yet found out that her favourite children’s television show host had blasted himself with drugs in a cloud of depression, and died suddenly of an overdose.
The rumour that went around our school in Sydney was one of many that turned out to be circulating the world at around the same time: Steve Burns, the host of Nickelodeon’s most popular show from 1996-2002, had left she show suddenly because he’d become addicted to drugs, or had died from this addiction, or had committed suicide, or was in jail for pedophilia, or had been killed in a car crash. It got so bad that — according to another rumour that might not be true — his own mother called him in a panic, and he had to convince her that he was still alive.
Because he is still alive. So alive, in fact, that he’s on Twitter. His Twitter handle? @SteveBurnsAlive
Still mostly alive.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) March 5, 2012
I am alive again today.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) March 22, 2012
I remain not dead from anything.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) June 5, 2014
Arguably still alive.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) January 6, 2015
Technically still alive.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) March 22, 2015
^The only Alivish boy in New York.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) May 27, 2015
Sending out sporadic Tweets from his home in Brooklyn, Steve Burns reveals himself to be a humorous chap who hates Manhattan, loves Walmart, might be on Tinder, and is occasionally circumspect and morose:
If failing a little is part of succeeding a lot then I'm on the right path like whoa.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) March 23, 2013
And so an inwardly frowning man turned to ice cream for solace, but found none.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) November 19, 2012
Self pity is the most seductive and corrosive luxury of all.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) May 24, 2015
In an interview conducted for Nickelodeon’s ten-year anniversary special, Behind The Clues, Burns addressed the rumours head on: no, he wasn’t dead; he quit because he was going bald.
“I knew I wasn’t going to be doing children’s television all my life, mostly because I refused to lose my hair on a kid’s TV show,” Burns said. “And it was happening … fast.”
I've come to believe that my dog's inexhaustible, extravagant shedding is in fact a direct mockery of my own male pattern baldness.
— Steve Burns (@SteveBurnsAlive) May 14, 2015
Oh yeah, that’s the other thing: he still does share his home with a dog. And also, he’s on Instagram.
He even still has the chair.
Getting rid of all the dirty thoughts.
A video posted by @steveburnsalive on
And, like everyone else who lives in Brooklyn with their dog and the apparent sense of a life half-lived, Steve Burns has an album out, which he recorded with the Flaming Lips.
‘Mailtime‘ is sadly absent from the tracklist.
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[Update, 11am]
@junkeedotcom You might enjoy Steve from Blues Clues telling a story about being fame-ish at The Moth in NYC. https://t.co/wRzKnpHQxR
— Dave Gorman (@DaveGorman) June 12, 2015