Billy Magic and the internet’s unabashed enthusiasm for public transit
“
Americans only love the college
experience because it’s the only
time in their lives they live in a
walkable community,” reads a viral
January 2020 tweet. Ann Arbor fits
the bill, hosting most campus buildings
and housing within about a one-mile
radius and offering free transit to
students. I’ve always found pleasure in
proximity.
I like to imagine the buildings on
campus opened up like Richard Scarry
books to allow peeks into what goes
on. Scientists bait lab rats a short walk
from where swimmers count down to
the Olympics a step away from where
a mother delivers a baby a hallway
across from where a loved one is lost
to an incurable disease. Elementary
schoolers learn addition a block from
where frat brothers play daytime
pong; a world-class map collection sits
steps away from the spot where I once
laughed so hard that coffee came out of
my nose.
In a dense area like Ann Arbor,
the marvelous and the mundane are
neighbors, and you can catch peeks of
them from the windows of the Blue
Bus. What a joy it is to get around.
Luckily, I’m not alone in my love for
transportation. Bus sentiment varies,
but a community of half-serious transit
enthusiasts has risen up around an
eminently meme-able transportation
guru named Billy Magic.
Residing among University of
Michigan meme royalty like Reggie
Bee and Big Flappo, Billy Magic has
become an integral figure of freshman
orientation in the nine years since the
Michigan Transportation Musical was
created. Breaking the fourth wall, Billy
Magic looks straight into the eyes of the
eighteen-year-olds packed into lecture
halls and preaches a gospel of new
urbanism.
“The masses… need to know that safe
ride offers a variety of free and low-cost
options for a ride home!” Magic says.
With
its
slightly
censorious
cheerfulness
and
ever-changing
ratio of irony and sincerity, the video
has built a cult-like obsession for the
campus’s decidedly unsexy fleet of blue
diesel buses. How did this happen?
Baby you can drive my bus
I
tracked down the writer behind
the 12-minute musical, a Brooklyn-
based director and social-impact
storyteller named Emily Lyon. When I
asked how the character of Billy Magic
was born, she responded carefully.
“I was staring at a blank page and
realized that my script about the magic
bus needed a guide,” Lyon told me over
the phone. “And then Billy Magic just
came to me.”
She paused, deliberating.
“I can’t attribute it to anything except
… inspiration from the gods,” Lyon said.
The former Music, Theatre & Dance
student
had
made
informational
PSA-style videos for the University
before with a student-run production
company called Filmic, but no project
had been this big. Tasked with
replacing the previous transportation
video, Lyon knew she wanted to use
humor.
She felt an obligation to preserve
the endearing cringe-worthiness of
the video’s precursor, a late-nineties
production that was memorable for its
lack of self-awareness. Lyon described
it as a “run-of-the-mill PSA video”
“But sort of dramatic, like D.A.R.E,”
she said. “I loved it,.”
With that in mind, she and a team
from Filmic let goofy ideas fly.
“We were aware that this was a
ridiculous topic, and our audience is
teenagers who are dubious of content
… we decided to play into it,” Lyon said.
“Few people show up to orientation
thinking, ‘You know what I want to
talk about? Buses!’ … Except maybe
Billy Magic.”
The video’s three days of filming
were chock-full of improvisation.
Boundaries were pushed.
“We had a lot of fun with it … a lot,”
recounted Lyon.
Others agreed, including co-star
Nick Skardarasy. I called him on
the phone to discuss his reflections
on the project nearly nine years
after he co-starred as a kid — “The
Kid,” according to the credits — to
whom Billy Magic explained campus
transportation. Skardarasy told me
that the team had a good time.
He also hinted that some scenes
were cut on account of their suggestive
content. One of those deleted scenes
stuck with him for nearly ten years,
and though he couldn’t tell me exactly
what it was, he disclosed that it implied
a sexual relationship between Billy and
a bus.
As a creator, Lyon still has a knack for
using humor to make dry but important
topics palatable. I asked her what PSAs
should be revamped to be funny, and
her immediate response was “all of
them.” Specifically, she’d like to see
more jokes and gags in “Terms and
Conditions” (the average American’s
digital contracts would take 250 hours
to read!).
“One of my favorite quotes is this:
‘Laughter is the sound of recognition,’
meaning that an audience that laughs
is still with you,” Lyon explained.
Meme page fame
T
here’s a contagiousness to Billy
Magic’s pure and uncomplicated
adoration
for
buses
that
catapulted the video to meme fame
almost
immediately.
Skardarasy
recalls freshmen pointing at him and
approaching him after the video’s
first showing in fall 2012; nearly eight
years later, C.J. Eldred (who played
Billy) was repeatedly asked to sign
autographs on the Diag during a recent
visit. Borderline evangelical zeal for the
short film continues to this day.
In the poll the Facebook group
UMich Memes for Wolverteens used
to determine its official endorsement
for 2020 Democratic nominee for
president, Billy Magic got 11.52% of the
vote, coming in third place only behind
Reggie Bee and Bernie Sanders. He
later appeared in a meme captioned
“AND WITH 100% OF PRECINCTS
REPORTING, BILLY MAGIC HAS
WON THE 2020 PRESIDENTIAL
ELECTION!” Meme page admin
Zachary Wernet made the short film its
own IMDB page. A Billy Magic design
for wall art in Animal Crossing got
over 450 likes. Seniors get graduation
photos in front of M-buses in honor
of the video, and the team behind the
video even reunited to speak at the
virtual 2020 graduation. A quirky
12-minute informational video has
made buses, of all things, inexplicably
cool for almost ten years.
Over the phone, Lucas Renno,
renowned admin of UMich Memes for
Wolverteens, recounted to me his first
impression of Billy Magic.
“I remember sitting turning to the
girl next to me in the auditorium and
saying ‘What the hell did I just watch?’”
Renno told me.
In his opinion, the Michigan
Transportation
Musical
is
great
because it tries just hard enough.
“Too many big institutions try
too hard,” Renno said. “They make
communications that are obviously
intended to be funny or ‘hip with
the youths,’ and they fall flat on their
face. It’s clear from the beginning that
this video was written and directed
by students rather than school
bureaucrats.”
Planes, trains, not automobiles
The
Michigan
Transportation
Musical isn’t the only corner of the
internet where deliberately over-
the-top
enthusiasm
for
public
transportation runs free.
10
Thursday, May 13, 2021
The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
STATEMENT
BY ANNIE RAUWERDA, STATEMENT CONTRIBUTOR
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