Austin T, a 20-year-old Phoenix man, achieved his 15 minutes of Internet notoriety last week after Videogum ran his YouTube application for a spot on the reality TV show "WCG Ultimate Gamer 2."

In the clip, Austin, who games under the handle Darth Cranium, methodically explains that he should be the ultimate gamer because he owns seven video game systems (five if you don't count hand helds) and that he is a "10- to 12-" year video game veteran who has "never had any other personal hobby in my life."

He does so in a hilariously halting, but supremely confident, nerd accent. (Think the comic book guy from "The Simpsons" reading off a flickering teleprompter.)

It was all enough to make Videogum declare: "This nerd is the final boss of nerds and he cannot be defeated."

Since we couldn't agree more, we emailed Austin, in hopes he would agree to a phone interview which could very well help us unlock the secrets of life -- or at least "God of War III"

In his response to our interview request, he didn't disappoint. Read on to find out what we wrote.



Needless to say, we called him exactly at 3:00 p.m. Phoenix time. Despite his oh-so-specific instructions, nobody answered. Very well, we thought, he must be caught in an intense session of "Resident Evil 5."

So we tried again in an hour. A woman got on the phone. We asked to speak to Austin. Then, in a maternal way we remembered from junior high school, the woman quizzed us on who exactly we were.

"Austin told me about you," the woman said. "And he's not going to do the interview."

Austin / Darth Cranium's mother couldn't have been nicer. She even offered to answer any questions we might have. But we were too stunned by this development to do anything but meekly hang up.

Lesson learned. When you set out to interview the Final Boss of Nerds, you're going to need a strategy on how to circumvent his mom.

(Sadly, Austin has removed the video that started all this from YouTube. We think his mother may have had something to do with that.)