Today was a very long day at work. I really liked my students today, though. Especially the incurably silly Gavin, Cathy, and friends in the new ER2(T) class, with their “happy singing zombie students” act.
Not to mention the “8th grade princess mafia,” aka the new TP1(T), which by some quirk of exam-scores and fate has become a girls-only class. They’re smart-alecky and unshakably in love with their cellphones, and only motivated under very generous definitions of the term… yet, they manage to be unmotivated almost exclusively in English, and thus I can’t bring myself to complain. I was feeling sad for the super-smart Lainy and Julia, the only 7th graders in the group having recently been promoted into it, given the other girls’ very cliquey behavior, but they’re so smart they hold their own and put the others to shame with stunning performances.
So. I stopped in the H-mart on the way home at dusk, and bought some food for my barren cupboards, including not just cabbage and tomatoes but a decadent bag of doritos and some chocolate milk. Then I proceeded to spend the evening surfing wikipedia and other bits of the internet. And became obsessed with a little internet meme that peaked over the summer, known as “Chocolate Rain.”
I’ll let you pursue it, if you’re interested – the tale of Tay Zonday, a University of Minnesota PhD candidate who, using a quirky youtube video, bootstrapped himself from obscurity into talk show appearances, big-bucks product jingles and endorsements, and major-talent collaborations.
And yet he continues to be a grad student, and the original ditty is actually an intriguing piece in its monotonous way: a little allegorical study of racism, with references to, among other things, the riots in the Paris suburbs. And, to quote: “Chocolate Rain / Made me cross the street the other day / Chocolate Rain / Made you turn your head the other way.” And continues, “Chocolate Rain / The bell curve blames the baby’s DNA / Chocolate Rain / But test scores are how much the parents make.” People who complain that the song is pointless, haven’t read the lyrics. And those who accuse him of selling out are missing the point completely, I think – publicity is a two-way street, and a thinking artist with a social-change agenda may in fact have a weird sort of obligation to leverage offers of publicity and money from commercial interests in order to further that agenda however he or she can.
A Brazilian vlogger observes (and maybe I’m just quoting him to showcase my own multilingual erudition, but I liked the way he phrases it):
É impressionante como a internet consegue transforma em celebridades os mais inusitados dos seres e as suas mais toscas exibições de talento. Veja o exemplo de Tay Zonday, um garoto que gravou uma canção chamada “Chocolate Rain” fazendo uso de uma voz grave, quase que robótica.
I’ve certainly got the tune and words stuck in my head, now. And so I listen to dozens of remixes and parodies of “Chocolate Rain,” while eating doritos and drinking chocolate milk, while I sit in my little apartment in happy Ilsan, Gyeonggi-do, South Korea.
To quote Mr Zonday: “This internet thing is wild!”
[Update: youtube embedded video added retroactively, 2011-08-03, a part of background noise.]
