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I Met Shoenice and Fed Him a Bottle of Glue

Shoenice, in his quest to end world hunger, will eat anything.

I didn't blink. When Chris Schewe–known by his YouTube followers as Shoenice–wagged a bottle of carpenter's glue at me and asked if I'd like to be the one to feed it to him for one of his stunt videos, I accepted the task with honor. Having watched dozens of Shoenice's videos on YouTube, the legendary ex-military-man with the iron stomach that will eat just-about-anything-you'd-never-dare-to to solve world hunger, my many ponderings about him were entirely validated. I had always believed that he was capable of his ingestive feats (drinking rubbing alcohol, car wax, hand lotion, you name it), but I was just selfish enough to want to see it first hand.

I was often dared by my uncle into competitive overeating challenges, thus I've always had a great appreciation for such demonstrations. No longer at great distance in my imagination, (or through firewalls of internet), watching Shoenice gobble up the glue as it coated his teeth and stuck to his throat was certainly pornographic. (Need I mention the spillage down his face?) It felt natural, tilting the bottle as he chugged the tacky beige liquid with gusto; I reflected to myself in thought, "Finally." For after so many attempts at messaging him on Facebook, basically spamming the guy, and trying anything I could do to get a response, I'd given up.

But finally, when a PI-savvy colleague told me she had been on the phone with Chris and was in the works of scheduling a shoot of My Life Online with him–and that I was invited–I just about fell out of my chair. Last Friday, I rode a bus up to Lake George, NY, wherein the dead of winter rests little more than a ghost town. From the frozen sidewalks, the shutdown souvenir shop-windows glow with fluorescent YOLO and CALL ME MAYBE tank tops, and handwritten advertisements exclaim, "We have family stickers!" The creaking of the steamboats and the occasional drive-by of 4x4s stir the air, but thank god for Shoenice, there couldn't be better entertainment for miles.

On the way out of town, we passed the first McDonald's marquee I'd ever found saying, "See you in the Spring!"  After two nights and days of hangin' around a motel with Shoenice himself, at one point watching him wade the numbing waters of Lake George (nonchalantly eating full packets of sugar with his coffee), I insist that you anticipate along with me the upcoming Shoenice episode, which will be featured in the next season of Motherboard's video series My Life Online, which is currently in production. While you're waiting, check out some previous episodes. As Chris would holler himself, "Thank Yaw!"