Parody Redouble: A Crown of Parody

Friends,

Over on Ande's blog, he showed a video of a Norwegian band called Hurra Torpedo that uses a stove and a deep freeze for percussion as they play a particularly crappy song. So while in the office with Dylan, I did some searching and found that Hurra Torpedo also covered a song by that Russian lesbian outfit T.A.T.U. What made that interesting is how self-aware that is for one schticky band to cover another schticky band. That's kind of interesting to me.

Tonight, while trying to sort out my head as to why Tegan does what she does at a sunrise service in my thesis, I found another interesting doubling of of things.

You've probably seen that Chocolate Rain YouTube video. If you haven't just YouTube search for it...you'll see it. The kid's from Minneapolis or something, won an award for being viral...and I'm told that they used this kid in a South Park episode recently, the one where Canada goes on strike (haven't watched it, but South Park is really getting too didactic). Anyway, that's one internet superstar thing.

Then we have Chad Vader. Go ahead and YouTube search him too. Essentially, it's a series of short films putting Vader to work in a grocery store, under the thumb of an evil manager, Clint. Chad Vader's hapless adventures are funny, even if they are a little hacky (taking a parody character and putting it into an unlikely scenario is how bad impersonation comics have been making a living for years), but its worth a peek.

Tonight, I found the below video of Chad Vader singing his version of the Chocolate Rain song. Now, I'm not sure what to make of this. It's this strange land of double parody that's interesting. It's like one in-joke making fun of another in-joke...and I just can't grasp why I think this is so interesting. This isn't like the first pie-to-the-face caught on film (which is what movie I wonder), and one internet darling sending up another internet darling must have happened before, but this is where comedy's heading as it becomes more and more reference based, or Family Guy'ed. Anyway, here's the video:



viva el mustache