Devon Aston, class of 2025, recently became a campus wide phenomenon when he quoted Smash Mouth’s iconic 1999 hit song “All Star” in his 1000-level English class. In response to a discussion on time and its relationship to novels of the 18th century, Aston said “well, the years start coming and they don’t stop coming.” Aston, who claims that he had no idea the song even existed because of his “sheltered childhood and alternative personality,” is now facing several counts of copyright infringement from the band.
The class, which is discussion based and oscillates between technical English and philosophy, has been a familiar stomping ground for many graduate students. Aston, however (a second-year), felt he was well prepared for the professor’s rigorous syllabus and intense discussions. We contacted that professor who requested to remain anonymous. “Devon is a really driven student who clearly has a strong sense of self. As for how he’s done in the class, it’s only been two weeks, but so far I think he’s been struggling quite a bit with the deeper topics we’ve been covering. You know, he frequently brings up that he’s from a small private school in Virginia, so I think that that may be part of the problem. He’s used to feeling special and smart.”
When we spoke to Aston he indeed prefaced our conversation with this nifty little fact. “I come from a very small private school in Virginia, it had a very low acceptance rate.” We checked, it in fact had a 75% acceptance rate.
“I was a very unique, some might say, quirky, child and I didn’t have many friends who understood me. In second grade, all my friends wanted to talk about were silly bands and Pokémon Cards. Meanwhile, I was trying to engage them in the silent act of nature meditation. But, I fed to the rules and I hit the ground running.”
When asked about how he felt he had been doing in his most recent English class, Aston responded with an unrelated anecdote.
“My mother wanted me to be a vegan but I simply refused to be put in such a narrow box. I prefer to call myself a plant based food connoisseur.”
When asked why he didn’t want to live under any labels, he replied with “It don’t make sense not to live for fun. I mean, your brain gets smart, but your head gets dumb, if you know what I’m saying.”
At some point, we decided to leave, but Aston didn’t seem to understand our hurried movements toward the door, and continued to regale us with a story on how his father once killed a man before becoming a devout Buddhist.
Upon leaving Aston’s dorm room (located in an undisclosed building on Patriot’s Court), one of our correspondents contacted the band “Smash Mouth” to find out their side of the story. Unfortunately we were met with a lot of legal red tape due to the ongoing lawsuit between the band and Aston, but we were able to get a statement from their lawyer. “That kid knew what he was doing and we will prove it to the Supreme Court if we have to.”
With this statement in hand, we returned to Aston to see what he thought of the animosity between him and the California-based band.
“My world’s on fire, how ‘bout yours? That’s the way I like it and I’ll never get bored. But for real, I just wish we could all sit down and do something together, like take a mindfulness walk, or just talk about our positive traits. You know, I always say ‘you’ll never shine if you don’t glow.’”
Image via NPR.