No joke, Fil-Canadian comic Mikey Bustos has a serious side

It may seem like a joke but there's really a serious side to Filipino YouTube sensation Mikey Bustos, the comedic talent behind a series of wacky Filipino "language tutorials" that have gone viral online.

Born and raised in Toronto, Canada, Bustos in 2003 became the first Filipino to make it into any of the “Idol” singing competitions worldwide, placing eighth and tasting his first fame. But his fans may be surprised to learn that Bustos is also an ant lover, once aspired to be a zoologist, and is one of the brains behind AntsCanada, a two-year-old organization and store that provides “easy access to proper ant-keeping products” and ant farms to schools and enthusiasts alike.   The store has a YouTube channel, where Bustos talks about ant-related things like “How to Collect and Store Queen Ants During Nuptial Flight Season” and “How to do a Test Tube Setup for Housing Queen Ants.”   Bustos’ group have been featured in international channels like Animal Planet and Discovery Channel.   Music   While ants fulfill one side of this quirky Pinoy, on the other side of his brain Bustos nurtures a serious love for music— intense enough to steer away him from his family’s dream of him becoming a veterinarian.   Bustos left the University of Guelph after his first year as a Zoology student to pursue a career in music, which paid off three years later when he placed eighth in the first season of Canadian Idol in 2003, a landmark achievement that was followed by the successes of the likes of Jasmine Trias and Ramiele Malubay on the “Idol” stage.   That opened doors to other stages in Canada, the US and the Philippines, where he opened for the Pussycat Dolls and Christina Aguilera. Five years after his “Idol” stint came his debut album “Memoirs of a Superhero,” an all-original hit that was noticed not only in US and Canada but also in Dubai, Australia, and China.   His album’s success secured Bustos a nomination for a Toronto Independent Music Award for Best Adult Contemporary category in 2010.   Currently, the Filipino-Canadian talent is promoting the YouTube “movie” titled “Prison Dancer,” an interactive web series set to debut in March, which was inspired by the dancing inmates in Cebu.   Filipino humor   However, Bustos’ biggest break came through YouTube and his “Pilipino bidyos," which said he didn't produce to garner any fame.   “It was really unexpected. I just decided one day to upload a video about the Filipino accent, make people laugh a little bit. I didn’t expect a lot of people to view the video, but in three days, it just exploded,” he told anchor Howie Severino on “News To-Go” on Wednesday.   His “Pilipino” accent, Bustos said, is an “intimate” form of speaking that he grew up with at home.   “I speak with the accent with relatives, my elders, with babies. But when I’m with my friends, my Caucasian friends, I speak like this—Canadian, ey!” he said.   Bustos said they were raised with “hardcore Filipino values” even when they were growing up in a foreign country—eating Filipino food, being “very religious”, and having “very strict parents.”   The subjects of his videos, he added, came from “things that I noticed about Pinoys that [are] different from the rest.” ”It's really about Pinoy pride. And we should be really proud of everything that makes us Pinoy, including an accent,” he said.   ‘Unofficial ambassador’   Indeed, as of this time, one of the things Bustos takes most seriously is his role as an “unofficial ambassador of the Philippines”—on YouTube and the Internet, that is.   He admitted that he made the tutorial videos “because the world needed to see how unique and beautiful the culture of the Philippines is.”   “For whatever reason, I was really disturbed growing up because the only time Filipinos made it on the news in Toronto was when there was a natural disaster or some kind of corruption in the government. That’s all they knew and, to me, that’s a false representation of what the Philippines is like,” he told GMA News Online.   Echoing the new tourism slogan launched last week, Bustos said there are, indeed, a lot of reasons why it’s “more fun in the Philippines”— from food to the people to our celebrations that are “like nothing else in the world.”   “Of course I have the desire to make my own through my art—through my various crafts—but I also realized that I’ve been given a unique opportunity to make a difference, a positive difference. And I have a responsibility now,” he said. -VVP/HS, GMA News