Man of the Year: Christian Chesnut
[by Tish Remmly | Feb 15th, 2021]
The name “Christian Chesnut” may not mean much to you at first, until you realize all the great things he has done for society at large. A storied history, a troubled past, Christian Chesnut is anything but your average customer. From humble beginnings in the tiny town of Upper Darby, Pennsylvania, he quickly became a multimedia guru, fashion designer, and, in essence, the high king of the fields.
It all began in 1968. Apollo 8 has finally orbited the moon, mere months before man finally conquered space. A frontier statesman and a demolitions expert fused together romantically one fateful night, and 9 months later, Christian was established. He was raised on the fine Darby streets, learning how to juggle and paint the backs of people’s clothes. He would rub paint all over his hands then slap the backs of Darby denizens for hours until their backs were completely covered in paint. He became quite gifted with a curling iron and also taught remedial mathematics to children with no legs as a side hustle.
“It all started with a dream, but for a minute, it had become nothing but a nightmare.” – Christian Chesnut
On August 14, 1972, he released his first album of original music: Why Must I Cry? The blue-eyed soul found within the album’s lengthy 4 hours catapulted Christian into the illustrious life of fame and fortune, and he was only four years old! He experienced riches unheard of to a boy his age, and quickly released his follow-up LP Tears in My Tiny Eyes which sold less well. It was becoming increasingly clear that the track from Christian’s first record, hit single “At the Sock Hop” wasn’t going to be the first in a series of hits, but was instead going to make him nothing more than a one-hit wonder.
By the time he was eighteen, a grown man, the world had moved on. Christian’s adult contemporary singer-songwriter records simply weren’t selling anymore. The year was 1986, and a new wave of contemporary artists dominated the charts. Synthpop and post-punk was the game, and Christian was only cut-out for soulful pop standards. At the age of eighteen, he was too old for his time, and any chance of a comeback was unlikely.
Christian officially quit the music industry in 1988 after one final attempt at stardom, a sixteen-hour epic called My Shoes, Oh God, My Shoes. It did not chart. Embarrassed and saddened, Christian looked to teaching. He became an adjunct professor at the coveted Pig Iron clowning college, where he taught juggling, advanced dance, technical trapeze ethics, and high-wire basics. He also would substitute teach lunch and recess, but this was unpaid volunteer work.
He didn’t become a household name until he invented the nickel in 1992, which was considered groundbreaking and revolutionary at the time. Before the nickel, there was nothing in between the humble penny and the overambitious dime. The nickel changed the way we saw finance, and Christian Chesnut was the man behind it all. His original plan for the nickel included an embellished profile of his own face, but was replaced instead with the late President Thomas Jefferson, a man that Christian has publicly called a “hack” on numerous occassions.
“If I were President of the United States, I sure as hell wouldn’t be anything like Thomas Jefferson. I mean come on, Jefferson?” he said in a statement months after the reveal of the US mint’s nickel.
With this newfound fame and fortune, Christian decided it was time to have another go at the entertainment industry. Having left music far behind him, he decided to turn to acting. He immediately signed a sixteen film deal with Paramount, releasing hit films from the years 1994-2013. Such hits include The Magic of Sand, Ducks in the Outfield, Remember This Kazoo, and his biggest earner Lemons for the Rooster. He went from C-list nickel guy to A-list movie star guy. The year is now 2013, and Christian has just fulfilled his Paramount deal, what now?
“I was basically a dog without a bone, a man without a nickel, a star looking for his place in the sky,” Christian said to Howard Stern in 2015. And it’s true, for the entire year of 2014, Christian Chesnut just walked in circles. Sometimes he walked in bigger circles, and sometimes he walked in smaller circles. He ended up walking throughout the continental United States, slowly but surely, until he ended up at the bellybutton of planet Earth: Louisiana. In 2016 he struck an endless film deal with Sasquatch Fever Studios, producing instant hits such as Closet-Man: Mindsweeper, Minutia, Video Transtechnica, Hellbound: Closet-Man 2, and, perhaps most importantly, his OGUS original series Christian Values. That show alone allowed him to exit A-list movie star status and enter the coveted “God Tier” where he reigns supreme as the “GOAT.” It also gave him ample time to focus on fashion design and unveil his deconstructed fashion sense, which he called “bare bones chic.” It was essentially the bare-minimum amount of clothing one could legally wear in public without getting a ticket for public indecency.
“While making those hits with Sasquatch Fever Studios, I was given a lot of free time to find my true passions outside of the entertainment industry,” Christian Chesnut is telling me right now, “I would often wander the incredibly large field behind my mansion and I would hear the calling of the trees, the hum of the wind. The flowers would grow and tell me sweet nothings. I met a horse-man named Loafer who called upon me to control the land. I didn’t know it at the time, but I was controlling the land. That’s when Loafer brought me to this tiny kingdom made of plants and invited me to sit upon the throne. Their past king had long gone and I was the first who deserved the seat. That is the day I became the true High King of the fields.”
Today, when not starring in hit films for Sasquatch Fever Studios and ruling as the High King, Christian keeps himself busy working as a professor at Soundass Night School, a new institution of education with an emphasis on higher learning and great success. So, whether you know him from his adult-contemporary records, his creation of the nickel, his teaching and clowning, his film success with Paramount and Sasquatch Fever Studios, or because he’s the true High King of the fields, the world agrees: Christian Chesnut deserves to be crowned Orulio’s Man of the Year for 2021!
