Interview: The World’s Oldest Professional

I know what you’re thinking. That here’s yet another interview with a withered old coot railing against modernity, suddenly awarded a hefty and uncritical forum to complain. Nope, not today, my friend. You won’t find any graybeards here. You won’t find beards of any kind for that matter. And you’ll have to squint if you want to see wrinkles. As a society, we’ve showered the Shirley Temples, the Tatum O’Neals, and the Mozarts of the world with gifts and adulation, saddling the talented tikes with impossible expectations. But Mozart wasn’t poisoned. He was just one more child star incapable of adjusting to adulthood. Had TMZ been around in 18^th century Vienna, he would’ve been their favorite subject target. My guest today knows all about the ups and downs of show business. Archibald “Bye Baby” Lavato saw fame before air, going viral while still in the womb. As a faint image on a sonogram shared by an enterprising young nurse, the sight of Lavato’s tiny hands making unmistakably obscene gestures sent the Internet into a collective tizzy. After birth, Lavato reached the height of his powers. His grandparents, filming some home movies, waved at the newborn, saying “Bye Baby.” Lavato turned and flipped them off, smirking while giving his relatives the bird. People couldn’t get enough, replacing the child’s given name with “Bye Baby.” But it was all downhill from there. Most people never go viral once, let alone twice. This interview’s been edited and condensed for clarity and entertainment. I caught up with Lavato in his nursey. Now 9 months old, and washed-up career-wise for a variety of reasons, the child is wondering – what comes next?  

MTP: Good morning. Do you prefer Archie or “Bye Baby?” 

AL: Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

MTP: Archie it is. As I was preparing for this interview, mostly by googling your name over and over, I thought long and hard about what I wanted to know first. I’ll put it bluntly. What’s it like to be finished this soon?

AL: Goo. Goo…goo. Googoogaga. Ga?

MTP: In a way, you already reinvented yourself once, after becoming an in-utero sensation you hit the social media jackpot again. But there’s some speculation on various reddit threads that your parents, the mischievous jackals, put you up to flipping your grandparents off. What they say, your critics that is, is that no child is born knowing the weight and power of the middle finger. Do you have a response to them?   

AL: Wooooooooooo. Ha ha hey hey ho ho he he. 

MTP:  I want to believe you. Honestly, I do. But it’s just hard to imagine an infant having the wherewithal, not to mention the camera presence and comic timing without a little parental direction. 

AL: [spitting into the phone]

MTP: No need to get personal. Look, it doesn’t bother me. What’s that story about Vermeer using mirrors to capture the right light? The point is, great artists do what they have to do to create. I understand that more than most. 

AL: [indiscriminate squealing]

 

MTP: I want to discuss the “scandal.” The real reason you lost your 15 seconds of fame.

AL: Eyeyeeyeyeyeyey.

MTP: Of course. Your baby monitor was hacked and leaked online. On it you said a lot of wild things, things I can’t repeat here. Not because they are particularly offensive, but because they are extremely hard to say. 

AL: Goo…goo…ga…gee...golly, it such a betrayal. My nanny was swaddling me, recording me and posting the videos on her public social media accounts, hoping to leech a little off my good name. My parents, as was becoming a theme back then, were largely absent, trapped by their own idiocy. I couldn’t handle it. You don’t know what it’s like to be the center of a maelstrom of controversy with no end in sight? You certainly don't. I self-medicated. I went to rehab. I went again. I tried to change my name. Nothing has worked to dull the pain. Not yet anyway. I’m still relatively young, so at least I have that going for me. 

MTP: Unfortunately, that’s all the time we have. I thank you.