Friday, August 22, 2008

The Bel Air

The other day I caught a few minutes of a “Fresh Prince of Bel Air” repeat on some dodgy TV channel. It was so strange to see the “I am Legend” star in this crazy, silly, carefree role, so different from his recent movies.

One of the memes on 4chan involves Will Smith’s famous rap that opens the Fresh Prince sitcom. I swear I could sing that whole song word for word when I was younger…





So, to perform a ‘Bel Air’, a person on 4chan will post a story (normally with some risqué story line) and just as it reaches a climax, it suddenly devolves into the ending lyrics of the Fresh Prince song. Generally, the story ends and the song starts with ‘and then my mom got scared, and said, “you’re moving with your auntie and uncle in Bel Air”’

Check this Google Answers page to see a Bel Air in action (posted by Mantrid, about half way down). Also see this IRL example (IRL = In Real Life):


Some Bel Air stories have become ‘copypasta’ and are repeated ad-nauseam on the boards.

To perform a reverse Bel Air, you actually start with Fresh Prince song, and then change half way through to a real conversation. XKCD demonstrates:



6 comments:

Tamara said...

That is hilarious. Need to learn those lyrics again!

undergroundbastard said...

Nicely covered!

Anonymous said...

I love your blog
I'm surprised you havent mentioned Charlie the Unicorn yet

or even the famous comic Cyanide and Happiness

I would love to read about those :D


and the fresh prince takes me back

Kit said...

T... You'll be surprised how quickly you pick them up again.

Thanks Underground and Sarah.

Charlie the Unicorn up soon.

Anonymous said...

MOAR!

Anonymous said...

ZOMG! srsly guise, guise srsly. I miss ur posts!1! pls post soon kthxbi