THE ORANGE BLIMP GOES HOME WITH THE PIANIST

The Kids' Choice Awards trophy is, famously, a small orange blimp. It is not gold-plated. It does not weigh very much. It looks, in the palm of a small child, exactly the size of a small child's palm. On Saturday night at the Forum in Inglewood, the Favorite New Artist blimp was handed to LUCA STARR, thirteen, of Loudoun County, Virginia, who walked onto the stage in a black suit, was covered, on cue, in green slime from the neck down, and, in the middle of the sliming, kept the blimp perfectly clean by holding it, in both hands, high above his head. The clip, per Nickelodeon's own social team, is the most-watched clip in the ceremony's live broadcast history.

“The blimp is dry. Please tell my mother I kept the blimp dry.”

He did keep the blimp dry. He also, per multiple people in the wings, kept his composure. He did not, at any point during the slime shower, flinch. He held the blimp above his head, closed his eyes, and, once the slime had stopped, opened his eyes, thanked the audience by name of the small handful of Kids' Choice fan groups that had organized on his behalf, and left the stage. The dressing room, per our own reporter, was mostly quiet on his return. He asked, per the reporter, if there was a shower somewhere. There was. He went to it. He was in it, per the reporter, for nine minutes. He came out in a bathrobe, put the blimp on the counter, and, per the reporter, said, quietly, “I liked that.”

Kids' Choice is, per its own producers, the most difficult category to game. The voters are, by definition, children, and children do not run coordinated voting campaigns. The award is, in practice, decided by a very large number of small, individual, personal choices, made in a very short window, by voters whose only stake in the outcome is their own preference. STARR won it, per the ceremony's own numbers, by a margin of more than three to one against the field. That is the largest margin, per the ceremony's records, in the category's history.

What is worth noting, in Nickelodeon's own reporting, is that STARR is not an artist any child voter could reasonably have been expected to gravitate toward. He is not a teen pop star. He is not a boy-band lead singer. He is a thirteen-year-old classical pianist who has, per his sister, never been on a Nickelodeon show, never done a Nickelodeon interview, and, until this weekend, never been in a room that had green slime in it. The children of the country, per this ceremony's own vote, gravitated toward him anyway. They picked him. They did it in numbers that the ceremony's producers, per two of them who spoke to us this morning, did not, going in, think were possible.

Amara STARR, his sister and manager, said the family had been unprepared for the vote. “We did not think we were in this category,” she said. “We were, apparently, in this category. Our thanks to the children of America. They were, on the night, very kind to my brother, and my brother, on the night, was, I hope, very kind back.”

The blimp, per Amara, is now on the piano.