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Chung! Chung!
By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 11, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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By
Jen Chung
Published Mar 11, 2004
Modified Mar 6, 2008
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Oh! My! God! This is the best shirt ever made. Not only does it express the essence of Gothamist's favorite show, Law & Order, it's also a shout-out to us! (Yeah, we know it's not really a shout-out, but we can dream) Glarkware, the clothing arm from the masterminds behind Television Without Pity (they used to recap Law & Order: SVU, but then stopped, explaining, "It was just like Law & Order, except that no one cared."), is offering the chung! chung! shirt for March pre-order. The description is priceless:
"Chung Chung." It's a noun. It's a verb. It's an adjective. It's an interjection. It's the humble yet commanding not-quite-music cue that keeps your most beloved cop shows chugging -- or, really, Chung-ing along, from one bogus New York address to the next, moving us inexorably toward the last five minutes we just absolutely will not believe.
Wearing "Chung Chung," the shirt, will let you express your affection for the best and most memorable element of that beloved cop show -- not the revolving cast of tic-y law-enforcement officers in the station house and the court house; not the cases "ripped from the headlines" and clumsily not-really fictionalized; not the bit players who keep mysteriously reappearing in episode after episode in different identities so that as soon as you see them, you know they must be the killers just because they've been on so many times -- but the "Chung Chung" sound that really has no reason to exist at all, and yet is so integral to the show that it should get its own screen in the opening credits.
It goes without saying, this will be our favorite shirt. Half of Gothamist is lamenting that there is no dobkin! dobkin! shirt, but them's the breaks. Perhaps there is a dobkin! dobkin! sound effect in the Bizarro World. [Via reader Sarah who is automatically our new best friend for alerting us to this.]
Updated: slower kindly gives us a link to a .wav file of the chung! chung!
Check out The Ledger, a fantastic Law & Order blog. Capn Design posted about the on the Law & Ordies, a brilliant 2001 Conan sketch where all the awards were for Law & Order concepts (the "chung! chung!" was heavily used). And Gothamist on the evening of Law & Order talk, Law & Order inspired art, and the Mayor in an upcoming L&O episode.
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Jen Chung
Jen Chung is a former WNYC and Gothamist editor.
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Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
Gothamist is funded by sponsors and member donations
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