Nina In New York: It's Thanksgiving, According To Patrice Wilson
A lighthearted look at news, events, culture and everyday life in New York.
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By Nina Pajak
It's that magical time of year before Thanksgiving but after we've already forgotten it hasn't happened yet and just fast forwarded to Christmas.
The decorations are going up, the giant tree has made its first appearance in Rockefeller Plaza (more on this another time, I'm sure), the stores are merchandising, and people are still functioning in the manner of paid employees. It's a golden, peaceful time. I call it Thankschristma(kkah). (Marginal and sorely lacking in Santa Claus though it may be, we can't forget good old Hanukkah).
More: NYC's 5 Best Takes On Classic Thanksgiving Dinner
And as with every year, the Internet has granted us its traditional offering of gratitude: the annual Thanksgiving pop anthem.
Oh wait. That isn't a thing at all. I was confused. The internet has granted us its traditional offering of gratitude: something totally dumb and hysterically funny. This time, in the form of another Patrice Wilson jam, entitled "It's Thanksgiving" and featuring a very cute, very young, possibly confused Britney-in-training. You know good old Patrice. He's the genius brains musician dude behind the love-to-hate-it YouTube sensation "Friday," sung by poor (rich) Rebecca Black. Speaking of Rebecca, I want to make something clear. I watched an interview with her a while back in which she pretended to be cheerful as she explained that she received death threats regularly and had to drop out of school due to the extraordinary amount of taunting and relentless mockery from her peers. I felt terribly for her. Of course, she's crying all the way to the bank, but still. She's just a kid. So please do not misunderstand what I am about to write about her successor, Nicole Westbrook. This does not come from a place of snark. I am totally not being sarcastic.
I love this video.
I can't say I love the song, but that really isn't the point. It's a song in which the main lyrics are, "it's Thanksgiving, we are gonna have a good time." It's about a girl who spends the whole year counting down the days to her very favorite holiday (but has fun celebrating the other ones in the meantime). Patrice Wilson is obviously a hack, and I can only hope that these kids and their parents get their money's worth when they hire him to write and produce a series of the worst songs ever written for their dear daughters. I can also only hope, at this point, that some of his clients are in on the joke.
It's unclear here whether young Nicole gets what's going on. She seems to be passionately (and a little too flirtatiously) crooning about cranberry sauce in a manner which may belie her grasp of the situation. No matter. SHE LOVES THANKSGIVING. Here are so highlights of the video, in my amateur opinion:
1. A gripping slo-mo scene in which Nicole dramatically pours frozen corn into a pot. It's possible she's been left to cook this entire meal herself, which seems both incredibly negligent and terribly mean of her parents. Then again, her feast is populated only by other tweens, so perhaps they exist in an alternate universe where adults don't exist and kids are their own guardians. That might explain the bizarre concoction she appears to be stirring, which consists of the corn, unidentified chopped greens, and some sort of gruel.
2. Patrice Wilson makes a cameo himself, as a creepy old dude dressed in a turkey costume who is the only person over the age of fifteen at the banquet. He makes dumb faces and quietly counts his money in the corner as Nicole belts out a line about stuffing.
3. She raps. Yes, ladies and germs, another triple threat: singer, rapper, defroster of frozen corn.
4. Nicole spontaneously grabs a turkey leg and playfully uses it as a mic while serenading her friends at the table. Except that she refuses to put it down, and though she is moving around the room, continues to use the drumstick mic for the better part of the duration of the song. Her hands must have been so greasy. Also, doesn't she know meat makes for terrible acoustics?
Unfortunately, this video started making the rounds just before the Satan Toaster made a resurgence. Or perhaps people are just sick of Wilson's shtick. Either way, the video has a paltry 6 million hits compared to Black's nearly 43 million. People are missing out. I certainly know my family's Thanksgiving will never be the same.
