Amazing Mario Crap From the Far East
Here’s another submission in the “crazy amazing happy fun Japanese crap” category. It’s a video of a custom level that some dude created in Super Mario World. His work propels Mario through various obstacles and worlds to produce sound effects in such a way as to perfectly accompany some crazy Japanese pop song. It just keep going and going in a perfect mashup of video games, nostalgia, and weird Japanese shit.
Check This Out: The Postal Service – “Nothing Better”
I’ve become a huge fan of The Postal Service lately. I heard them for the first time on my XM and picked up their CD the next day. My favorite song by far is “Nothing Better”. It’s a pretty catchy song that’s about a couple breaking up.
Breakup songs and songs about how much love bites (Def Leppard), love hurts (Nazareth), or love stinks (J. Geils Band) as a whole are a genre that’s been beaten to death over the years, but what makes this song different is that’s it’s about the breakup itself. It plays out like a fight between two lovers – one that’s in love and desperately wants to stay together and the other that wants to end things and move on.
As I said earlier, it’s incredibly catchy and really well written, but what really pushes it over the top for me is how it totally nails the “fight” dialogue – like the way the dude will do anything to keep the girl and just refuses to accept that it’s over. In his head, he’s already thought out their whole life and can imagine them being happy growing old together, but he’s being unrealistic. The girl for her part is trying to get his head out of the clouds and get him to see that it’s not working, but he won’t hear it, leading to my favorite line in the song:
Don’t you feed me lines about some idealistic future
Your heart won’t heal right if you keep tearing out the sutures
We’ve all been there — I was there just a few months ago. Maybe that’s why this song strikes such a chord with me. Anyway, check this out:
YouTube Grab Bag: Spock Sings!
It occurred to me last night that when I made my list of the worst celebrity music video crossovers earlier this summer, I made one glaring omission. Sometime back in the 60’s, perhaps as a result of eating some spoiled food or something, Leonard Nimoy recorded the song “The Ballad of Bilbo Baggins” and even made a video for it, joining his good friend Captain Kirk in the exclusive fraternity of bad actors singing terribly. The video speaks for itself — pure nightmare fuel all around. Now all I need is Dr. McCoy doing a cover of “Comfortably Numb” and my life will be complete.
Cowboys are the new ninja. You heard it here first, folks.
Today, around 4 pm, the video for Muse’s “Knights of Cydonia” arrived on my e-desktop and my day was instantly transformed. I don’t know if I’ve ever seen a video that so effortlessly combines virtually everything that is cool in this world.
Hot chicks with X-ray vision? Check.
Handlebar moustaches? Check.
Cowboys? Check.
Robots? Check.
Kung Fu? Check.
Deliriously frosty beats? Unicorns? Holograms? Peasants whippin’ poo? Humpin’? Chrome guitar rock? Mexicans with bugles and bandoliers? Check Check Check Check Check Check Check.
I honestly can’t think of anything else that I’d add. There was even a part towards the end of the video where I thought to myself “Wow. The only thing this video is missing is dirt bikes.” And then what do you know – a dirt bike. And then I thought “Lasers. Yes. Lasers would be cool.” And then all of a sudden there was a hot chick in a jumpsuit and a helmet shooting lasers. It’s like I did it WITH MY MIND.
I don’t know who you are, Muse, but believe me. You have my attention.
Update: I think that I’ve watched this video approximately eighty times now and I have yet to discover anything that would me to believe anything other than that this is the greatest video of all time. Notice that you can see the director and camera crew in the bedroom mirror around the 3:13 mark. Spectacular.
Gnarls Barkley is Rad
As of yesterday, I’ve become obsessed with Gnarls Barkley and their song “Crazy”. It happened by way of their performance during the MTV Movie Awards this past week. The boys of Gnarls, DJ Dangermouse and Cee-Lo, took to the stage with their band, dressed entirely as characters from Star Wars. The result was one of the most truly mesmerizing musical performances I’ve seen in awhile.
I don’t know what appeals to me more: the stormtroopers pounding out the buttery bass line, Boba Fett playing the ivories and packing a blaster at the same time, Red Five singing backup, or Chewbacca’s competent drumwork – look at his face around the 2:55 mark! Unbelievably catchy song. Unbelievable performance. Maybe there’s hope for MTV afterall…
