It seems like just another local news segment: FOX5 Vegas’s chief meteorologist speaking live from a fireworks depot about what’s hot this Fourth of July season when it comes to pyrotechnics. The camera follows him around the corner of the store, to where a solitary kid stands with a pamphlet of firework options in hand.
“What’s the best kind of firework to buy?” the weatherman asks, innocently enough.
“Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” the kid shoots back. Sick burn.
“Where are your parents?” the weatherman responds, taken aback. “Kid’s sketchy. Back to you guys.”
The now-viral 12-second clip — first published online by YouTube user Fireattack142 on Wednesday, where it’s since racked up over half a million views — is already a classic of on-air local news comedy. But it turns out the sassy interaction was actually, well, staged. The tart-tongued kid is chief meteorologist Ted Pretty’s son, as one internet sleuth named Luke O’Neil uncovered, and Pretty himself gamely confirmed.
Ah, well. “Wouldn’t you like to know, weather boy?” is the kind of withering retort that the world is better off having in our collective arsenal of internet-birthed comebacks. Use at your own risk.
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Write to Raisa Bruner at raisa.bruner@time.com