The Blue Man

The Blue Man

Picasso had his blue period and then moved on to different colors. Paul Karason knows where the famous artist was coming from. After literally living the blues for more than a decade, the real-life “Blue Boy” is ready to try a different color. “I’m anxious to try green,” Karason joked to TODAY’s Matt Lauer in New York Thursday. “You get a little bored with blue.”

Recluse to celebrity

A year and a half ago, Karason vaulted from life as a relative recluse to Internet fame when he first appeared on TODAY to tell how he turned his skin the color of a ripe Concord grape with years of self-administered doses of colloidal silver. He went from a man who didn’t like to speak in public and didn’t appreciate the often-negative attention his singular skin color brought him to giving interviews on national shows and being approached with acceptance by people who had seen his story.

Lauer asked him if being on TODAY helped bring him out of his shell. “I didn’t have much choice. I couldn’t find the cave I was looking for,” Karason said with his characteristic self-deprecating humor. When he first appeared on TODAY, Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, talked him into getting his first complete medical checkup in years. The colloidal silver that had been collecting in his tissues and turning his skin blue is a heavy metal, and there was fear it could have affected his organs, particularly his liver. Karason passed all the tests with flying colors (of a bluish hue) and was given a clean bill of health.