All You Gotta Do Is Look Up Here In The Tree
Saturday, March 25, 2006
As if I didn’t have enough reason to absolutely love YouTube before now, its latest preservation piece is ample evidence to permanently avow my devotion. You’ve probably already seen it—Mobile, Alabama’s NBC affiliate sent a crew to a working class, overwhelmingly black neighborhood to investigate a rumor of, well, a leprechaun in a tree.
But this otherwise nothing story is lifted high by the ebullience of the local residents, who totally take advantage of a ghost story and the presence of a TV camera to go outside and have a good time. Anyone who grew up in a suburb or working class neighborhood either before or independent of the influence of the internet and 500 channel cable can relate to the joy of an event that causes all of your neighbors to gather together, for however fleeting an amount of time.
But the best part of this accidentally brilliant news package is the guy, spotlit and surrounded by friends, who breaks into rhyme while testifying to the camera “to me, look like a leprechaun to me/all you gotta do is look up here in the tree/who else seen the leprechaun, say YEAH!”, to which his friends eagerly respond in kind. He looks back at the camera with a huge gold grilled smile, implying that while it may not be true, who really gives a damn.
And just as quickly as the YouTube link could find its way around the internet, the quote has been lifted from its original context and reappropriated, via the underappreciated avant-gardists at YTMND, into the party anthem it deserves to be. It’s a fascinating two-step reappropriation process—a non-event that became a goofy news story, and a piece of techno-folk art that emerged from it. Honestly, that 10 second segment of that video made me smile more than I had all week.
Thanks to Muzzle of Bees, who has an mp3 of the song, for pointing me toward this.
Filed under: YouTube
This is so funny and sad and disturbing on many levels. Specifically, your point of appropriation, and maybe on some deeper level a study of race relationships. Especially those square, stiff anchors when they cut back, chortling, “Some people will do ANYthing for a pot of gold … hah, hah, hah.” Then White Guy: “Ho, ho, ho, that was a good story.” (Translation: “Those black folks — wait, he probably says “colored” — are god damn crazy.”)
The other point to be made is: This qualifies as news? Is the news station taking advantage of (read: exploiting) the people in this neighborhood or vice versa?
Well, whatever. It’s damn funny. And that “amateur sketch” is fricking classic. Like it was done with a No. 2 pencil on a post-it note.
Great stuff.
hahahaha….holy shit. oh man. that song. i love the internet. i love technology. this makes me proud to be an american.