Jenice Armstrong: Tapping YouTube: North Philly guys use video site for fame and profit on the Net

IF IT'S FAME you want, all you need is a video and the Internet.

Susan Boyle, the frumpy Scottish woman who recently became an international singing sensation, went viral after a video of her singing on "Britain's Got Talent" was uploaded onto YouTube. If it can happen for her, it can for anyone, right?

Enter Kevin "Skorpion" Simmons and Makael Mclendon, 20something guys from North Philly who are trying their best to use YouTube to hustle up their own 15 minutes of fame.

Famed Internet gossip Perez Hilton they are not.

And like Boyle, their videos, "The Skorpion Show," could benefit from some Hollywood glamming up.

These two unlikely Internet stars have their own thing going, thanks to YouTube. They make and post videos of themselves dishing about celebrities such as Beyonce, Michelle Williams of Destiny's Child, Miley Cyrus and Britney Spears - and have attracted a respectable following. According to YouTube, they have about 10,000 subscribers.

"This isn't something that would have been picked up by any TV network," pointed out Spencer Crooks, a spokesman for YouTube. "They don't need that now. They've put their stuff on YouTube and have a fan base."

Recently, a video Simmons did about the Miss California gay-marriage controversy got almost 144,000 views. Another video, this one showing Simmons' horror at the police photos of singer Rihanna's battered face - got nearly 1.5 million views, which is huge for a three-minute video produced with someone's webcam. About 3,600 people e-mailed comments to that video.

"The Skorpion Show" is considered a member of the YouTube partner programming and is making inroads much the same way more established programs such as "Smosh," "Fred" and "What the Buck" are doing.

"You could definitely call them a rising star," said Victoria Katsarou, YouTube spokeswoman. "They're a real good example of the democratic nature of YouTube."

"The Skorpion Show" is filmed in Simmons' mom's living room, where he sleeps, or elsewhere in the house as various family members and visitors walk by, interjecting their own opinions and observations when they feel like it.

It's not unusual to hear the noise of kids playing or people elsewhere in the house arguing or laughing. It makes me chuckle when the nieces and nephews who live in the house start getting loud. "Madison, don't even do that," Simmons warned during one video. Four-letter words fly with abandon. It's all part of the - ahem - folksiness of "The Skorpion Show."

Last week, the show's co-stars got their first brush with press coverage after a story about them appeared in Philadelphia Weekly. When I spoke with Simmons immediately after publication, he sounded despondent about the article. Later he posted an angry response online headlined "Philadelphia Weekly Did Us Dirty."

I asked Simmons exactly what bothered him about the piece, and he told me he and his co-star objected to being compared with the over-the-top gay caricatures portrayed in the "In Living Color" comedy skit "Men on Film."

"We are gay, but that's not what our show is about," Simmons said. "Our show is nothing like that."

Mclendon added, "I told Kevin, now we know what people like Beyonce go through when people write negative stuff them. We got a taste of it."

In a word, these two guys are outrageous.

And they are not for everyone, particularly people easily offended by stereotypes concerning gays and women.

But the duo's profane, in-your-face style has attracted a fan base. Even before the Weekly's article, we'd heard about "The Skorpion Show." Anthony Henderson, a Philly fashion stylist now based in Los Angeles, told me, "My whole plane ride across the country, I watched these guys on my laptop. I love these guys."

"The Skorpion Show's" video on the Chris Brown-Rihanna domestic-abuse allegations opens with Simmons surrounded by a group of people discussing the police photo of Rihanna. A teenaged girl stands in full range of the camera combing her hair as she and others interject their thoughts and observations into Simmons' commentary.

"Chris Brown, you ain't have to do that to Rihanna. Look at her lip. Her face is busted. Look at the hump on her forehead," Kevin lamented. "That is not fake. That is Rihanna. Look at her hair. Chris Brown is going to have to apologize for this. He's going to have to do PSAs and everything."

Simmons, who started posting videos on YouTube after being fired from his job as a design consultant at Blinds to Go, says he brings in $1,500 a month from the advertising YouTube places on his videos.

"I didn't try to look for a job. I just was relaxed. I got on unemployment. I was supposed to do community [college]. But I'm a big procrastinator, so I just got lazy," recalled Simmons, a 2004 graduate of Strawberry Mansion High School.

In 2007, he began putting videos of himself on YouTube. Things really began to take off the following year after he brought on Mclendon, a 2004 graduate of Fels High School who works as a dispatcher in the cleaning department of a hospital. They had met through MySpace.

"There was something about Makael. It just clicked," Simmons recalled. "When he would come on, more people would comment . . . he just brings out something different in me when we do our videos together.

"I didn't take YouTube seriously until the night of the Grammys last year. So many people loved me talking about Amy Winehouse," Simmons told me. "It's a lot of people watching the videos. I try to do my videos based on what's popular." *

Send e-mail to heyjen@phillynews.com. My blog: http://go.philly.com/heyjen.