So here was the thing about Johnny Depp: as celebrity heroes go, he had kind of become a huge fucking disappointment. I had spent the greater part of my life idolizing the guy, and then his domestic abuse case hit the news. At some point, I just had to separate Johnny Depp the person from all the characters and roles I had grown to know and love.

I could do that.

His characters were amazing. They were also kind of terrible. But mostly, they were batshit gonzo insane. They ranked from pure, eccentric genius (Ed Wood, Sweeney Todd, Jack Sparrow) to bad, oh so bad (Tonto, Mordecai, Jack Sparrow). Yes, the Pirates of the Caribbean film franchise had seen Johnny Depp all across the board. It was a blurry line that separated Johnny Depp’s greatness from his not-so-greatness. But if I had to draw it somewhere, it would be between The Curse of the Black Pearl and Dead Man’s Chest.

Nevertheless, I embraced all of Johnny Depp’s roles, regardless of their critical reception: the Mad Hatter, Willy Wonka, Barnabas Collins, Sam from Benny and Joon, Raoul Duke from Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas (whom I bought the perfect bucket hat for, and then took it a step further and purchased a bald cap online, blending it perfectly into my scalp. It was my greatest makeup feat to date). Each video was essentially a highlight reel of my favorite quotes, edited into a phantasmagoria of Johnny-Depptitude.

SAM: “How sick is she? Because, you know, it seems to me that, I mean, except for being a little mentally ill, she’s pretty normal.”

RAOUL DUKE: “Let’s get down to brass tacks. How much for the ape?”

WILLY WONKA: “Everything in this room is eatable. Even I’m eatable, but that is called cannibalism, my dear children, and is in fact frowned upon in most societies.”

JACK SPARROW: “Me, I’m dishonest, and a dishonest man you can always trust to be dishonest. Honestly, it’s the honest ones you want to watch out for.”

SAM: (Stabs a pair of dinner rolls with a pair of forks.) (Makes them dance.) (Like, performs an entire fucking dance number.)

If this seemed out of character for me, that’s because it was. I liked to draw attention to myself as much as I liked to draw dicks on my own face. This hobby started quite by accident. By the time I realized what I had gotten myself into—what I had become (a minor-league YouTube celebrity)—it had taken on a life of its own.

Maybe some lengthy, convenient exposition is necessary.