One of the more excruciating aspects of the coverage of Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade (and there are many, heavy nostalgia factor aside) is the appearance of recording stars purporting to sing live. These poor freezing souls are plopped on floats celebrating everything from the U.S. Postal Service to pork products to... some sort of rhinoceros and forced to lip synch to hits of varying age, complete with fake microphone. It gets even better when puppets enter the vocalizing act.
This year combined the extreme best of the two, with an irony cheese tray factor so high it eclipsed the entire Thanksgiving table: America was Rickrolled in the dead middle of a float performance.
If you're not familiar with the art of Rickrolling, suffice to say that it's perhaps the first universal online practical joke. In its most wicked form, Rickroll victims are sent links to supposedly important or secret material-- links which open a small virus which takes over the Rollee's computer, playing Rick Astley's 1988 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" in pop-up window format until the song plays out or the victim reboots. A gentler form of the Rickroll simply takes the victim to this YouTube clip of the song's music video in lieu of actual information.
So when Astley strode from behind the Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends float mid-lyric, unceremoniously pushed his way past three small children, and faux-broke into "Never Gonna Give You Up," the level of appreciation from the crowd was highly satisfactory. Notice, too, that Astley remained true to authentic Rickrolldom, lipsynching to the original 1988 recording.
Truly cool trends are played out the nanosecond they enter the mainstream, and if this is how Rickrolling is going to officially enter the realm of the uncool, it is hereby the best exit from the stage of memedom in the history of the Internet.
NBC shot its surprise, however, by announcing Astely as one of its "performing guests" at the top of the program. This prompted exclamations of "That's outstanding! Rick's finding work outside of rolling!" in my house, but he sadly had no new project to push. Hang in there, Rick-- income will come if only in the form of live Rickrollings for the rest of your natural life.
