All Over Albany

Drew D'Amelia, the Mathmaticious guy

After we saw Shen 9th grader Drew D'Ameilia's Mathmaticious, a math-inspired parody of Fergie's Fergalicious that's been viewed more than 1.1 million times on YouTube, we ran the numbers and figured there was a high probability that he'd be interesting.

That turned out to be true. And it's a good thing, because we didn't bother to check our work.

So, why did you do this?

Attention, I guess. I wasn't expecting this much attention. I pretty much did it because I felt like it. It's something I was interested in doing, making fun of a song. I like writing parodies. Also, this was for a contest at my school, a Pi Day contest. It was a song writing contest and I kinda went over the top because they allowed music videos this year, so I had to be the first one to submit one, but nobody else did, so I kind of won.

Why use the Fergie song?

I'm not a particularly huge fan of Fergie. But I heard the song Fergalicious before I went to bed and then after that I started thinking about the contest and thought it would be a really good song to make fun of. I couldn't get to sleep that night, so I just got a piece of paper and pencil and wrote the song in about 20 minutes.

Have you done other stuff like this before?

Yes, I've written other parodies, but I haven't done music videos for them. I did one with the song YMCA about a lemonade stand. We might do a music video of that song in the future.

Are you a big Weird Al fan?

Yes, I like him. I like how he does parodies and original songs, because that shows two side of his creativity.

So, are you good at math?

Yeah, I'm in an accelerated course. I'm not a math geek or anything, but I'm pretty good at math.

So, do people think you're good at math now?

I didn't think that people would assume I'm a math geek, but people on YouTube do. I'm going to have to try to erase that image, somehow.

(Laughing) You got some work to do. You got a lot of work to do.

People who know me know that I'm not really a math geek. (Smiling) I'm more just kind of an obnoxious sort of person.

Were the glasses a prop?

Yeah, I guess I shouldn't have gotten involved with nerd stereotypes. I thought the glasses and the sweater vest helped add comedy to the video.

So, what's happened at school with all this? Did this make you cooler, or are you like king of the dorks now?

It's not really that popular at school. They liked the video, but it's probably old now. I still get attention from it. I'm not noticeably any more popular than I was before, which was plenty. (smiles and laughs)

What did you think would happen when you posted this on YouTube?

I put it up the day before Pi Day, just so a few people could get a sneak peak of it. I didn't expect it to get this popular, though. I was shocked for it to be getting like 300 views in 12 hours. That was like amazing to me. The fact that it's gotten a million in three weeks is pretty amazing, too. It was nice to be featured on YouTube. That was probably how I got the most views.

Have you heard from Fergie's people or any entertainment people?

I heard it was on Fergie's web site, but that's all I heard from Fergie. And a couple of blogs have talked about me. I just think it's interesting that when I search for my name in Google now there are actually results.

How long did it take you to put the whole thing together.

It took about 7 hours to film. And it took about 12 hours to edit.

What about the editing, how that'd work?

I didn't have the technology to edit, so I had to edit at my uncle's house. I pretty much instructed him about how I wanted things laid down and organized and how I wanted them to look. And he took care of the technical things for me. So, I directed the editing. It came out very close to the way I wanted it -- not dead on, but it's pretty good, I think.

Almost you're vision...

(Laughs and smiles) Yeah.

That's a nice uncle, you'll have to make sure to thank him.

Yeah, I'd like to get him a nice basket or something. (smiles)

You've already gone Hollywood.

(Laughs)

So, do you have any career aspirations in this field, or plans for college?

I plan on going into film making -- acting and directing -- and probably theater, as well. Both if I can manage that. Anything that has to do with creativity.

What is it that gets you going about that?

Creativity just allows you to do pretty much whatever you want. There aren't really any limits with creativity. And I really hate being limited, so I like to do my own thing with creativity. I do film making, but I also like to draw and write -- it's all creative.

So, what's next?

There are other people who are involved in what I do. My friends play a big part -- Dan an Steve -- and children from the neighborhood, (my sister) Jess. We have a list of about 65 feature ideas. So, I think we're pretty good to go for the next few years.

This interview has been lightly edited and condensed.