I’D heard from a pal who goes to Steve Burns’ gym that he had a tattoo.
Who is Steve Burns? For kids, he’s a one-named phenom – just Steve. Like Oprah.
For the uninitiated Steve Burns is the co-producer and bright-eyed, upbeat host of Nickelodeon’s “Blue’s Clues.” The pioneering interactive tot show airs weekday mornings.
Last week, Trevor and I met Steve at his office on the third floor of the Hachette Fillipachi building across from “Cats.” I downplayed the event beforehand. I didn’t want my four-year-old so pumped he couldn’t sleep and then crash in Steve’s face. (When we’d met Barney, the overstuffed dinosaur cowed him into an atypical and brooding silence.)
Steve met us in the corridor. He was a tiny man rocking on his heels outside his tiny office. Boyish, sharp-nosed, single and shyer than Trevor, the twentysomething didn’t resemble any media star I had ever seen … the Stallones and Pacinos with their big, sculptural heads perched on small bodies.
The unprepossessing guy could be mistaken for an intern if you didn’t watch the show and invest his slight frame with god-like qualities.
Steve didn’t wear his official uniform, the green-striped rugby shirt and khakis. (“We can see which side of the pleated vs. flat controversy he’s on,” my husband commented dryly while watching the TV show; Steve inspires this kind of talk from grown-ups, who need to find some sense of irony in a program so firmly pitched at a preschool sense of wonder.)
But Trevor recognized him right away — and greeted the realization that he was in the presence of greatness by laughing that ether laugh of delight he gets on the kiddie Himalaya ride at Coney Island’s Astro Park.
When asked, Steve copped to the tattoo. He dropped the sleeve of his fatigue shirt to reveal a matching tank top and a small yellow circle the size of a nickel on his right bicep. It was a smiley face – but different. The mouth didn’t smile. It was flat, like a dash. Steve made the same face. Not happy or sad.
He seemed to think this permanent expression of a lack of expression was somehow profound. Zen maybe. Interesting.
Steve might be the inheritor of Mr. Rogers’ cardigan, but his tattoo proved he is clearly part of Generation X. If Rogers has a tattoo, it would say Mother.
But there are few performers gentler than Steve is. In person, he is baleful, oddly boho, as if he might be another struggling artist you’d see on the F train. (He lives in Brooklyn’s hip but untamed neighborhood under the Brooklyn Bridge, Dumbo.) But he is also the person you see on TV.
Steve showed us his live frog collection and his micro aquarium. “I order them for all my friends from aquababies.com,” he said. “Cool,” said Trevor. (So that accounted for Steve’s painfully single vibe, I thought.)
The office itself was hardly the showplace of a TV star. It was smaller than the one with river views inhabited by Nickelodeon’s V.P. for Marketing. The tidy, unimposing desk held only a laptop. Atop a nearby magazine pile was the US Weekly where tattooed newlyweds Angelina Jolie and Billy Bob Thornton confessed to watching “Blues Clues” in the opening graph.
Steve grabbed his guitar and improvised a song for Trevor. He built it simply and repetitively from the most basic facts at hand, the way he works on the show. He fingered the chords while Trevor strummed, and then handed the instrument over to Trevor without getting uptight that he might bonk it into splinters.
Steve put the kid at ease – even though the star himself didn’t seem quite as relaxed with the real world as he does when surrounded by animated pups and salt and pepper shakers.
But the apparent edges did not phase my son. He could accept that Mr. Rogers’ heir apparent was a little funky, was into body art.
When I asked Trevor what I should write about Steve, he answered unequivocally “that I love him.”