YouTube Tuesday: Russian Roulette Roll'D

I'm sure all of you out in interweb land have heard of the gag that was born about two years ago called 'Rickrolling'. For the uninformed, a bit of back story courtesy of wikipedia. For they can sum up many topics much better than I can.

"Rickrolling is an Internet meme typically involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a bait & switch: a person provides a web link that they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true destination of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled".



My favorite description of Rick Astley? From comic Mo Rocca, "I'm a skinny, little white boy with a big 'ol blaa-ack voice." (sung in place of the lyrics, 'never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down.' geez, how hard is it to describe a quote that is sung? hard.)

I also vividly remember the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade float that Rickrolled the whole audience.

Place: My living room; Cairo, Egypt
Activity: Watching the Macy's Parade
Date: Thanksgiving '08

The kids were only mildly interested in watching the parade. I don't blame them. It has gotten progressively worse. It was family tradition to watch the Parade every year. Once I got married, I continued on with this tradition, but some of the magic was lost. And it wasn't because I was older. More commercials, less class, etc. I was watching in Egypt because I wanted some sort of 'cultural tradition' to hold onto. Though we were watching it after dinner instead of before.

The parade managed to grab their attention with the announcement that the next float was "Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends" singing some song that was attractive to the 12 and under audience. Then, just as the song is getting going, Rick Astley himself bursts out of the float and sings his signature song. It was freakin' hilarious! We adults were rolling in the aisles, wiping tears of hilarity from our cheeks and the kids looking at us like we'd gone insane. They wanted the other song back.

Well, I stumbled across this video just this last weekend. It was described as 'Ray Roll'd, The NEW Rick Roll" Russian version. I don't know about that. Don't worry, no translation needed. There isn't an intelligible word sung. I had a dilemma; shove the ice pick in my eyes or ears? Can I choose both? Well, you be the judge.