August 07, 2009

I awoke on the floor of my house today with a thumping, bumping sound bashing lumps into my ears. Yes, someone had called me to play a winning Bing jingle down my cell phone. This was a friend, indeed. A friend with no conscience. I heard a little techno beat, the voice of a distant cousin of the Pet Shop Boys and the oft-repeated phrase "Bing goes the Internet."

When it ended, my friend shouted down the phone, at least I think he shouted, that this ditty had won its creator $500 in a competition sponsored by Microsoft. He also shouted that the first thing I should do after I had scrubbed my armpits with sandpaper and removed myself from the shower was to watch the video on YouTube.

Because I do pretty much what everyone tells me, I went to YouTube and espied a chap called Jonathan Mann, a Mann who has decided to write a song every day. This seems to be a far more noble pursuit than, say, dropping a bomb every day. So I was relatively touched to see Jonathan Mann dancing in a very precise and slightly parodic manner to his composition.

I then discovered that his oeuvre had been pilloried. Words like "awful" winged their way toward Bing--even the phrase "worst ever." These seem like strange words to be directed at a jingle. Any jingle. Even the word "jingle" is from some time gone by and awry.

Source:-http://news.cnet.com