About

About? About what? I guess it could be about this website. Well, this website serves as a hub for all things Wheezy Waiter, including his current activities, goals, accomplishments, videos, general ramblings, and links to all his other hubs that feature tweets, facebooks, google plusses, musics, and other incorrect uses of plural.

Hm, but I suppose if you're new to this site you might not even know who or what Wheezy Waiter is. Well, oh geeze. *inhales*

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Wheezy Waiter

There are many proper usages of the term "Wheezy Waiter".

It could refer to the youtube channel of the same name:
"Yesterday I was on Wheezy Waiter and I took note of the childish, photoshopped header."

It could also refer to one of the over 600 videos contained on that channel.
"Did you see the latest Wheezy Waiter? He had his shirt off again, gross!"

Wheezy Waiter could also refer to the bearded man himself, Craig Benzine.
"Oh, Wheezy Waiter. He's so random."

Over the years, Wheezy Waiter has garnered hundreds of thousands of subscribers and many ludicrous recurring jokes, characters, expressions, explosions, beards, clones, awards, and a new couch. If you've heard a person on youtube refer to the description of the video with the odd term 'doobly-doo', Wheezy Waiter is responsible for that term. Sorry, or, you're welcome. There's really no better way to understand Wheezy Waiter than to venture over to youtube.com/wheezywaiter and watch a few videos yourself. There are lots of inside jokes but it shouldn't take long to get them. (WARNING: that sentence above about the shirt being off was no lie. It happens sometimes.) And if you like what you watch and would like to see more you can check out his other youtube channels, alwayswheezy and wheezynews. He is also in an indie rock band, Driftless Pony Club, and a web series, Platoon of Power Squadron. And he just realized that he's referring to himself in the third person in this paragraph which is inconsistent with the first person in the third sentence of this page. Luckily, this isn't English class. It's my own website and I can do what I want!

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Craig Benzine

I suppose this about page could also be about the founder of Wheezy Waiter, Craig Benzine. If you haven't guessed already, that's me! Let's see. What to say. About 4 years ago I was a waiter with a dream. About my whole life ago I had asthma and still do. So that's where the name comes from.

Anyway, after college in Madison, WI, the indie rock band that I'm in that I mentioned earlier decided to move to the big city of Chicago and see what happened. I gave myself two years of going for it, at which time, if we failed, I was going to move to L.A. and try to get into the film/tv industry. I became a waiter because it was flexible and without real commitment. Well, two years passed and then three and then four. I got frustrated. I needed to do something that utilized the storytelling, video shooting, and editing skills that I gained from college and screwing around with cameras growing up.

I came across Ze Frank. This guy seemed to have invented a new format for video entertainment with 'The Show with Ze Frank'. It was a Daily 3 to 5 minute comedy show created by just him. I loved it. (Seriously go check it out if you haven't.) At the same time I thought, "I can do that." So I decided to just put myself out there.

Sometime in July 2007 I started putting up videos, lots and lots of videos. Videos about the news or commentaries on different aspects of life or being a waiter or whatever I thought could be funny. Doing those videos led to getting freelance video and editing gigs from my friend and the designer of this website, Ryan Wolff. That led to getting a job for a web development company called liQuidprint in the suburbs of Chicago.

At the beginning of 2009 I decided to get up hours before I had to go to work every weekday and make song parodies about the breakfast I ate. At the end of January of that year, after 100 videos, I was finally discovered by the youtube community. I submitted a comment to the website 'Youtube Reviewed' which doesn't exist anymore. They watched some of my videos and loved them. They did a featured article about me. A youtuber named Corporalcadet read that article and tweeted about me. The next day I had 97 emails. Youtubers toddly00 and hexachordal made a video about me. After a few days I got 1000 subscribers. I was elated. Maybe the most excited I had ever been in my life. The rest of the year I made maybe 2 or 3 videos a week. I won a Ford Fiesta for 6 months. My subscribers grew to about 16,000 by the end of the year.

In 2010 I had the crazy idea to get up before work every weekday and make a video. I would do this for as long as I could. I ended up doing it for six months, grew to about 75,000 subscribers and was able to quit my job to do videos full time. Since then my channel has grown to 380,000 subscribers at the time I wrote this 'about' page. Now I'm looking forward to seeing where this weird, amazing career takes me in 2012.