Matchbox Twenty – “Unwell”

  We start out with lead singer Rob screwing around with a model airplane, using one hand to make it fly over and around the coffee table. (The other hand appears to be busy doing something else, but we won’t really go there.) Then we get a close-up of Rob and that haircut I never understood staring at us staring at him. He has a hurtful and disappointed look in his eyes, making us feel guilty about something we may have done fifteen years ago but we’ve had too much beer since then to really recall.

  The camera pops back so we can get a full-frontal of Rob, and he’s seated in a chair whilst wearing a t-shirt asking us to “love him”. (I’m sure that can be arranged, Rob. So you’ve forgiven us for whatever you didn’t like about us five seconds ago? Great.) Quick bit with Rob watching a tennis match that we can’t see, and then a dog that clearly wasn’t on the floor last time we looked suddenly gets up, twirls around and walks away. The camera angle makes the dog look bigger than Rob. Actually, it looks bigger than Atlanta. I’m starting to get concerned about the things in Rob’s apartment and whether or not he has full control of them.

  We get a shot of a green teddy bear on the coffee table. He seems to share our concerns because he’s got one little arm raised, as if pleading for us to help him. But we haven’t had time to run a background check on him, and it’s very possible that he’s a serial-killer teddy. Best let him be for now.

  More images of Rob fiddling with his toys and glancing around the room in a despondent manner, including a long shot that lets us see he’s all alone in this startlingly-large room (well, except for his little stuffed friend, the potential sociopath with Poppa Bear issues). We also see that whoever selected the wallpaper on the back wall might have an obsession with eyeballs. This does nothing to help us relax and want to know Rob better. Nor does the banjo on the floor that appears to have been violated in some way.

  Rob flops his head back to look at the ceiling, and as we follow his gaze, it seems that the ceiling stretches out into infinity and then snaps back. Okay, then. This is about our third sign that something is not right up in this grill, so maybe we should just get our coat and call a taxi, lying to Rob that we just remembered an important ukulele recital in the next city. Or state.

  Close-up on Rob again, as he starts to sing the song that we’ve actually forgotten about, what with the stretchy architecture and such. Things are rather calm for a few moments, and we start to put our coat back down, intending to stay for at least a one drink, but then we cut to Rob standing in front of some walls that appear to be breathing like they just ran a marathon, then the walls start rapidly sliding away while a bright light appears and seems intent  on swallowing Rob’s head. Then the light just as quickly disappears.

  Okay, that’s it. Time for all the smart people to run like hell and let our more simple companions stay behind and serve as monster snacks, giving us more time to reach safety and call our lawyers. (As we learned from watching Scream 14: Drew Barrymore Returns and She’s Really, Really Pissed, the smartest thing to do when facing potentially-lethal situations is sacrifice your less-popular friends and run for Jesus, not stick around and try to open locked doors, enter buildings with no electricity, or pause to have sex with people you just met.)

  Oh wait, now Rob is lying on his couch with his teddy bear, and he looks even more blue. We can’t just leave him like that, can we? We start to say something comforting, but then we get another image of the ceiling reaching toward the sun and walls reaching toward Yonkers. Then everything is back in place, and he’s singing tenderly again. This relationship with Rob is turning into too much work, and I don’t know if I have enough anxiety pills to go around, especially if the bear wants some.

  Suddenly, Rob does this teleporting thing where he’s standing right by us and then he’s across the room, a movement accompanied by a flash of light just like in the old-school Star Trek series where William Shatner always said his lines with much more enthusiasm than was necessary. Maybe we don’t need to leave just yet, because flash-travel would be an interesting skill to have, like when you’re running from the po-po or your mother-in-law rings the doorbell. Maybe Rob can show us how it’s done?

  I guess not, because he chooses instead to sit in a chair and make a grimace-face that causes his bare feet to become super-huge. This is a little disappointing. The ability to grow my feet is so far down on my bucket list that it will never get crossed off. But wait, if Rob can show me how to apply that magic to other parts of my body, then maybe I’ll sign up for classes and-

  But no, Rob is singing again, first to us, and then to a bathroom mirror, where we catch the reflection of another stuffed animal watching Rob watch himself. Then the little guy disappears. This is far more creepy than the melting walls and Rob’s bangs. Then a pig briefly pops his head out of an oversize bathtub and then hides again. Instead of being mature and looking for an exit, Rob goes to investigate Porky in the Tub, to find that it’s been replaced by Frank Zappa or his stand-in. The sanity train has now officially left the station.

  The giant dog jumps into an equally giant toilet, and Rob decides that the only appropriate thing to do is shove his face into the toilet water and see where Fido might have gone. The plumbing leads to an elevator shaft, and after a bit of fancy camerawork, we’re inside an elevator with Rob, what might be the other band members, and the green bear, who has apparently taken steroids and is now almost ceiling high. (What is up with all these people and toys and commodes wanting to be ultra-big? Now they’ll have to shop in special clothing stores and they’ll have to pay for two seats on airplanes. Is it really worth it?)

  Rob’s not sure, either, so he backs out of the elevator and onto a subway car. (Brief shot of a spinning skull zooming toward us through the walls of several other speeding subways. As if we need another warning sign that we knocked on the wrong door when trying to sell our Twirl Scout cookies. But then the skull goes somewhere else for a while, and that’s fine by me.) Rob glances around his subway car, and he spies the other band members just hanging out and reading newspapers. Are we safe now?

  Of course not. As the subway car rolls along, and an annoying flashing light splashes over everything, we get little snatches of the passengers’ faces turning into monster faces for a split-second and then back again. (Does this mean they are all Republicans?) Even the band members are having these little flash-morphing episodes, so Rob needs to think very carefully before renewing their contracts. Then the giant green bear appears and runs to stand next to Rob, all cute but still not right. Rob proceeds to grab the bear and throw him to the ground before stomping out of the subway car, so he probably won’t be getting a Christmas card from PETA.

  Rob exits out of a phone booth onto a plaza of some kind, where a couple of the band members teleport in and then slide out of sight along with the phone booth/subway exit. (What, they’re too busy to appear in a video for their own song? Better keep an eye on them, Rob, they might be secretly working on solo careers. Oh wait, you went solo shortly after this. My bad.) Then we’re back in Rob’s stretchy apartment, not because we want to be but because the pushy director thinks we need another visit. While Rob sings in the chair we don’t like because it’s the one he uses to make his feet annoyingly big, we get interspersed scenes of the band members (I think) back on that plaza, doing things with fire and walking sticks while Rob gazes around in confusion like his house just landed in the color part of The Wizard of Oz.

  Then a dog drops from the sky, a disturbing kind of cartoon dog where we can sometimes see his canine skeleton. Bone Doggie hands Rob a special newspaper that transports them into one of those tiny European cars that are so compact you don’t dare toot or the doors will blow off. They’re racing down an unnamed highway, with the car in color and all the things they pass (odd buildings, cows) in black-and-white. This might be a political statement or solid evidence of a budgetary issue with the video. Who knows.

  I guess Rob commits some type of vehicular violation (perhaps singing to the not-real dog instead of keeping his eyes on the road?) and we soon have a police car in pursuit, a car driven by two band members with giant noses. The chase goes on for a bit, with noses flapping in the wind, Rob wrenching on the steering wheel but never actually looking out the front window, and the dream dog doing nothing of real value, other than occasionally letting us see his bones and waiting for a chew toy.

  Then Rob hits a special ramp, one that allows the tiny car to disappear into some mountains and Rob to appear in a passenger seat on a plane. Oh, and we can see Fido out the plane window, struggling to stand up on one of the wings. (Dude, what have you got against animals? Or a real part in your hair?) But Rob isn’t explaining anything (maybe he can’t) and we roll into a montage of Rob and the Big-Nose Boys on the plane, Rob and his Big-Ass Feet in the melting apartment, and Rob singing directly into the camera and trying to appear charming, but we can no longer trust him after he shoved his face into the toilet, because there are just certain things you don’t do on a first date.

  We close things out back in the origami apartment, where someone has changed the background wallpaper to something involving planes that twirl, because this video hasn’t been busy enough. All of the band members are there, minus prosthetics, and each of them gets a solo, where they strut toward the camera, take a bow, and then wander off the set, presumably to a better place where things that shouldn’t move or grow bigger refrain from doing that. (One of the guys is holding the green bear, now returned to a manageable size, and they leave together. I hope it works out for them.)

  The last to go, of course, is Rob. He and his non-cartooned dog saunter our way, with him giving us a sheepish grin, as if proud of the little ride he just took us on, but not sure if we were all that keen about it. Oh, the video was fine, Rob. A little out there, but at least you were trying to do something creative, unlike so many “artists”, and you didn’t just stand there in a thong and show us your breasts or grab at your crotch like it’s a national treasure.

  But the cookies, Rob. You didn’t buy any of my cookies. That’s the only reason I stopped by. I mean, the drug trip was fun and all, but I’ve got a deadline with this fund-raiser or I won’t get to go to Camp SnaggleCrack  this summer. So if you would just order a few boxes….Rob?...

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Kelis – “Milkshake”

  We start out on urban street somewhere, with some construction guy’s ass on prominent display, so I’m already thinking that I clicked on the wrong button somewhere. Then the cameraman manages to find Kelis, and here she comes strutting along with her long legs and an impressive hairdo that could probably orbit the sun if things work out just right. At first she’s walking kind of slow, in that “I know I look cute but I really don’t have a destination” kind of way, but then she spies a diner called Tasty’s Yard, and suddenly she’s running up to the entrance like they’re offering a free bikini wax with complimentary champagne.

  Once inside, she bursts into song, so she already feels a very special connection to this place. (Don’t miss the cowhide cowbell hanging on the door, announcing arrivals. It’s a fine piece of prop-work and I hope somebody got an award for that.) The diner is a bit cramped, with booths on one side and tables-at-a-counter on the other, but judging by the high-volume occupancy, they must be serving some tasty meat that will satisfy you in every way, and Kelis and her hair made a wise choice in selecting this establishment.

  I guess Kelis is a very confident young gal, because she walks right up to the counter, briefly humps it, and then spies a triple-layer milkshake which she simply must have . She plucks the cherry off of the concoction, and then she does things to it with her mouth that one can normally only see in movies that you order at cheap motels where they don’t ask questions. (One of the diners, a matronly mother with control issues, covers the eyes of her son so he can’t see any more of the cherry plucking, so she’s probably one of those who deny that sex actually happens despite having squirted out a kid of her own.)

  Kelis, because she likes attention, then takes the cherry and expertly hurls it across the diner so that it lands in the milkshake of a startled man at one of the tables, right next to his own cherry. He looks at her for an explanation. She and her hair say nothing, but the nice gold pendant on her neck lights up briefly, right on the beat. (Did Kelis just receive an email from her home planet?) I guess we’ll never know, because Kelis decides to ignore the man she bumped cherries with and starts using her pinky finger to seductively toy with the whip cream on her shake and resumes her intimate relationship with the counter.

  While Kelis and her painted-on jeans undulate, we get shots of one of the short-order cooks becoming aroused and banging on the “order up!” bell they have in places like this where they don’t take reservations and there are no refunds. The cook shoves a hot plate onto the pickup counter, and then wipes something sticky and red off his shirt while he smirks. This action can be interpreted in a number of ways, but before we can fully discuss the implications we cut to the waitresses in the diner who have suddenly decided to sit on the counter stools and do a line dance involving breasts and tongues.

  The girls seem to be quite proud of their choreography, appearing to have worked very hard on the exact moments when they should thrust their appropriate body parts, but we’re distracted by their tiny aprons, which seem to be made out of pages from those order pads that waitresses use when they really don’t care what you want and just scribble whatever. Kelis takes one look at that mess and knows she can do better, so she takes off her jacket so we can see that her blouse is made of something even tinier than the aprons.

  Very quick scene where one of the waitresses does a twirl routine in front of some milk bottles. No explanation is given, we really don’t care, and the actress involved is now selling used cars in Poughkeepsie.

  Back to Kelis, who is now emoting more of the lyrics and apparently unable to keep from juggling her jugs like a woodpecker on crack. (We get a reaction shot from a couple of diners, where the female is not impressed that her husband is watching the juggling. Well honey, if you don’t like the wandering eye of your man, maybe you better come up with a cheerleading routine for your boudoir and quit whining about whether or not the damn trash gets to the curb on time. Sayin.)

  Then Kelis becomes invested in a particular male patron who insists on wearing his ball cap backwards, a couture choice that should immediately mark the dude as someone incapable of fidelity and amicable divorce proceedings. But Kelis doesn’t care, and she finds a place at the end of the counter that doesn’t have spilled coffee and pie crumbs all over it, and she proceeds to flop on her back and do naughty aerobics that one will never see on Sesame Street.

  Meanwhile, we start getting shots of random guys from the neighborhood racing to the diner in order to review Miss Kelis and her cherry-plucking ways.  (Not sure how the word got out so quickly. Maybe she has a GPS transponder in her hoo-hoo, and the signal is strengthened whenever she’s near fried foods and dairy beverages.) Whatever sent out the bat signal, the boys are definitely in the yard now, even lining up at the windows to peek inside and dream about pouring some sugar on she.

  Kelis decides to sit at one of the booths and finish the milkshake that her tongue only partially violated back in the day, and she and her hair go at it with a gusto. She energetically sucks at the straw while a busload of boys enter The Yard and look around for Kelis. She identifies herself and her needs by doing more interesting things with her barely-clad chest and gripping things around her to keep her libido from imploding.

  Out of nowhere, Kelis decides that she really needs to head into the tiny kitchen and assist one of the chefs with his dough-making responsibilities. (He’s really not the cutest thing on the menu, but odd things can spark your interest when the smell of yeast is in the air.) Kelis fiddles around with a few of the props, then opens one of the ovens that can apparently only be opened if you bend over and show  buttcrack. Then she hauls some baked bread out of the oven and shoves it at Not-Hot and immediately loses interest in him, heading back out into the diner proper, which takes about two steps.

  Kelis and the waitresses decide to do another line dance, this one involving a lot of hair-touching and more of the bending over for no apparent reason. (Someone has turned the lights down really low for this part, apparently trying to set the mood, although I really don’t know what that mood would be, never having been in a diner where the chicken-fried steak got my hormones racing.) We zip outside to see that now we have droves of dudes rolling up on motorcycles, coming to check out the word on the street about some diner where something unclear is happening with milkshakes and cherries and a blue plate special.

  Whilst the other waitresses continue to cavort erotically with serving trays and attention-deprived men pile through the door, Kelis is suddenly transported to another locale where she has been forced to wear an outfit that is missing some major structural components as she writhes about on a dimly-lit platform of some kind. (Okay, maybe “forced” isn’t the right word. She clearly seems to be quite happy with her new minimalist couture and the opportunity to test exactly what she can do before things start to pop free and endanger nearby citizens.)

  Oh wait, we’re back in the diner, where one of the waitresses is doing a suggestive dance that seems to be based on the “Pin the tail on the donkey” challenge of childhood days. But the cheering men around her are obviously a bit more educated than young boys who have yet to figure out how to unlock the parental control on their cable TV provider. In fact, the “donkey dance” has inspired folks in the now-crowded diner to start a dance line similar to that on “Soul Train”, only with more explicitness as men and women hooker-strut their way down the aisle like there’s a prize if you totally lose your mind and act like a sex-crazed Chihuahua.

  Okay, it looks like Kelis is back from that special room where she had burning needs and golden-hued lighting, and she’s once again on the diner counter, causing the milkshake machine to reach critical mass and start spewing sugary goodness in an alarming manner. Cut back to the dance line where booties and buddies are pushin’ it real good, then zip over to Kelis, who has managed to find her original outfit somewhere, with her gyrating whilst everyone raises a milkshake glass to her overpowering ability to eroticize a patty melt.

  Then that milkshake machine finally goes cray-cray, with the icy milk dousing all the humpsters and humperinas, a development that would normally stop the show, what with all the ruined couture and the way it makes your shoes stick to the floor. But this ain’t your grandpa’s sense of reality, and everybody basically doesn’t care and continues to dance and exchange phone numbers while the waitresses continue to not wear panties.

  We end the video with Kelis back in the mysterious golden room, with her and her hair and her patchwork outfit sucking down a final milkshake. Then she smiles seductively and heads out the door to find another Dairy Queen that hasn’t been sexually liberated…

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Beyonce, Jay-Z – “Crazy In Love”

  We start out in a car, barreling down the street in some unnamed city. (Judging by the lack of any pedestrians on the sides of this somewhat squalid thoroughfare, it must be an Amish community of some kind, and there’s a barn-raising going on.) Jay-Z appears to be in the back of the car, or at least the inside of something, and he’s letting us know that things are super crazy right now. (Like the fact that the cameraman has basically shoved the lens into Jay-Z’s mouth and nobody is safe from his teeth until that stops happening.)

  Suddenly, the speeding car comes across a woman who has chosen to stand in the middle of the road, as if that’s a completely safe and natural thing to do. We nearly run over this woman, but then the car realizes that it’s Beyonce who has chosen to play chicken, and the car slams to a halt, because it doesn’t have an insurance policy that covers celebrity mishaps in Amish towns. Beyonce marches right up to the camera and asks us if we’re ready.

  Well, I’m not sure, Miss B. Will there be a test when we’re done? Is pain involved?

  Obviously, Beyonce doesn’t really need our permission, so she and her incredibly-tight shorts begin sashaying along the street, doing just the right moves to make her hair flip about lusciously in the wind. (The cameraman conveniently provides us a rearview shot to let us know that the rear is something to view.) Meanwhile, Jazy-Z is still hollering in the back of the car, or the sensory-deprivation tank, wherever he is, assuring us that history is in the making and doing something with his hands.

  This is apparently a signal for Beyonce to strut up the ramp to a loading dock, where she commences to do an interesting squat and then launch into her first part of the song. I guess she really, really likes wooden platforms, because she becomes very heated and starts wallering all over the dock. She does an interpretive, lusty dance that seems to be telling the story of what can happen if you straddle a washing machine right when it becomes unbalanced during the spin cycle.

  Beyonce does some spinning of her own on the woodwork, doing things with her fetching legs that make it very clear that she has a staff of personal trainers and/or some amazing genes in her bloodline. (There’s a short montage where B strikes various poses against a chain-link fence, a segment that doesn’t quite fit in with her aerobics on the dock, but I’m sure she had her reasons for this bit.) Beyonce finally ends her relationship with the platform after several more energetic moves, and does so without losing her impressive red high-heels, a magical bit of footwear artistry that brings a tear to the eyes of drag queens who happen to be watching.

  We zip to a new location, one that might be on the top of a building and appears to feature a small landing pad where rich people would park their personal helicopters when they want to impress people with their bank accounts. But Donald Trump will have to find somewhere else to land, because Beyonce is currently dancing around on the pad, sporting an outfit that might have been fashioned out of an army tent and a hairdo that resembles what Tina Turner would have looked like in 1984 if Tina hadn’t been so invested in using enough extra-firm hairspray that she created her own ozone hole. (What’s aerosol got to do with it?)

  Beyonce shimmies on the rooftop for a while, doing some cover-girl poses and coordinating her movements with the strobe-lights that have been strategically placed around her. But before we can get the full story of what this actually means, we cut to Beyonce and some of her Girl Posse strutting somewhere else. We’re possibly in an alley, or maybe the storage facility where Beyonce keeps her awards. In any case, the girls feel it’s very important that they show us what their rhythmic fannies can do when the music is just right, and so they do. The booty-shaking is accented by couture with a theme of “possible baseball tribute with a sprinkle of New Jersey Party Girl”.

  Someone apparently spent some time on the choreography with this section, because all of the girls have intricate things to do, although many of the moves consist of thrusting themselves up against a concrete wall and then breathing heavily. There’s also some random gum-chewing, reinforcing the Jersey flavor. (Is that Snooki in the background, getting drunk and continuing to make bad decisions?)

  Next we have Beyonce somewhere else, but the locale is not really clear because it’s very dark. (Did the lighting technician go on a union-ordered break?) She might be in the backseat of Jay-Z’s ride, just a guess, and she’s very emotional about something, as indicated by the way she keeps raising her arms over her head in personal anguish. Then we get a shot of someone flicking open a lighter, and then this shadowy person throws the lighter into the night where it lands on a street that has been rudely drizzled with gasoline.

  Are we suddenly watching an episode of The Sopranos?

  Cue up the gasoline igniting and the flames racing toward a car that explodes, as (presumably, based on attire) Jay-Z stands there and watches all this happen without calling 9-1-1. We get a quick montage of Beyonce struggling in the back of a car, but, interestingly enough, there are no flames in her scenes even though we have aggressive burning in the exterior shots of the unfortunate car. Bad editing? Beyonce is inflammable? Drug usage on the set? Not clear.

  Whoops, now Jay-Z is doing his rapping bit while standing near the burning car. And here comes Beyonce, wearing an interesting boa, another set of high heels, and little else. (I guess the heat from the burning vehicle is a little intense, so we can forgive her for not dressing properly.) This kicks off an extended scene where Jay-Z is rapping a lot of information that might prove useful if we paid attention, but we’re distracted by Beyonce trouncing around, hormones racing, and doing everything she can to show Jay-Z what an E-ticket ride at Disneyland can mean if you’re consenting adults. She horny.

  Hours later, after Beyonce has professionally air-humped every corner of the set, and Jay-Z has finally completed his long-ass rap about the joys of something or other, we see Beyonce (new outfit, new heels) walk up to a fire hydrant in the dark of the night and kick at the poor thing with her apparently steel-toed footwear. The hydrant starts gushing like Old Faithful, and Beyonce proceeds to bathe herself in the spray, luxuriating in the power of the forceful spurting.

  I guess the wetness does nothing to dampen Beyonce’s libido, because she then launches into another erotic interpretive dance, this one involving choreography that includes self-fondling of her booty, hair whipping that draws a line in the sand with Willow Smith, and at least 74 orgasms. By the time she’s done, the water smokes a cigarette and smiles with satisfaction. Call me?

  And we’re off again to another location, with Beyonce apparently shoving her breasts at a giant turbine fan thing, the blades whizzing dangerously while she undulates. (Really, honey? Is the itch that bad?) Happily, Beyonce finally turns away from the Danger Fan and we can see that everything is right as rain, no slicing and dicing. Now we can focus on her latest outfit, an obviously unfinished mini-dress where the upper section is barely held together by some baling wire and a prayer.

  Beyonce is quickly joined by the surviving remnants of her Girl Posse, all of them decked out in equally-flimsy sherbet-hued ensembles. It’s clearly time for another line dance, and they go at it with gusto. This round of expressionistic cha-cha involves booty-shaking that has been ramped up to a degree that an employee at the local seismographic substation had to pick up the “red phone”, conveying the news to his superior that an earthquake had just hit the Eastern seaboard.

  Luckily for us and the planet, it’s just an exuberant display of unbridled lust, nothing that truly requires a FEMA alert, and we close out the video with Beyonce and the other 30 flavors at Baskin Robbins innocently proffering their tasty goodness to anyone who wants a sample.

  And as we all know, now, it turns out the Jay-Z’s spoon was just the right fit for Beyonce’s ice cream. Mmm hmm.

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Madonna, Justin Timberlake, Timbaland – “4 Minutes”

  We start out with Timbaland on a stage somewhere, standing in front of a giant clock display. The clock is supposedly showing us the four minutes that we’ve got left to save the world from… well, it’s never made clear, but it actually appears to be showing us four hours. Unless we’re counting the milliseconds? Why would we count those? Those things only matter in Tom Cruise movies where he has to push an important button right now or Manhattan will be turned into a decaying wasteland, just like the Republican National Convention.

  Odd clock aside, Timbaland is currently invested in making some interesting noises that go along with the ominous opening notes of the song. But more importantly, we get our first images of this creepy triangle-based mass that appears to be eating parts of the set around him. Timbaland doesn’t seem to care, since he’s got the music in him and that’s all that’s important, but we get a close-up of a dusty speaker component that is trembling in fear because he’s further down on the cast list and will probably be the first casualty. (Maybe he should have had a better agent.)

  Brief montage of some gears spinning and cocktails on the verge of being spilled. No idea.

  First image of Madonna, wearing some form-fitting night-night clothes and facing away from us. (I guess we should have purchased the higher-priced concert tickets if we wanted to see more.) Then Justin debuts, again not facing us, wearing basically the same outfit that he has worn since moving on from the Mickey Mouse Club. Interspersed with all the introductions are shots of Timbaland still enjoying the noises that his mouth can make, then we cut to a fancy car rolling towards somewhere.

  Oh look, the car is being pushed by Madonna, now wearing a black outfit that involves parachute pants and a matching puffy blouse that practically scream “1984”. But we can forgive the debatable fashion choice, because you really shouldn’t question couture decisions made by a woman who has thighs capable of repositioning vehicles. (I guess it really does pay off to have a personal trainer who will holler in German and force you to do enough leg lifts that you could raise the Titanic.)

  Okay, I guess Madonna loses interest in impressing us with the number of squat thrusts that she’s apparently done in her day, so she sexily slides off the front of the car onto… a dinner table where a random and sad-looking family is eating leftovers. The family pays no attention to what is actually happening in the real world (do they watch Fox News?), slurping their soup and ignoring the woman on their table who already has more secrets in her parachute pants than they will ever have in their lives.

  Meanwhile, we keep getting quick glimpses of the Triangle Monster munching on everything in its path and not caring what it swallows. I could make a Rush Limbaugh reference, but that would be too easy.

  Madonna marches away from that set where all the lonely people are, and launches into her part of the song. This requires her to wander through a loft apartment where a young couple is preparing for a bath and kissing one another. (No idea, part two.) Cut to Justin in the same apartment, singing to himself in a dirty mirror and admiring his nifty neck-scarf that one would normally wear in an artsy movie where British people talk about nothing and wait for redemption that never comes.

  Cut back to the kissing couple who apparently don’t mind having international superstars show up at unexpected times, and we can see that part of their flesh is missing as they smooch, showing bone and such. This is possibly the least erotic thing I have ever seen, and I’ve been to some very questionable websites. Then we’re back with Madonna somewhere else in the apartment. (Is she in the couple’s bedroom? Not clear, but it’s definitely not a place where she or her staff would ever sleep.)

  Madonna rips off her puffy parachute jacket (my prayers worked!) and possibly straddles the bed, but then we cut to the kissing couple again and they are missing more flesh, so we are now basically watching two of those life-size dissected-body models from high-school biology class sucking face.  With tongues involved. Ugh. This is a world I would not want to save, I don’t care how many minutes we have.

  Then Madonna and Justin meet up and hover around the bed where the Skeletors are procreating, and just as quickly hop out some convenient windows that are nearby. Outside, they find a bunch of cars parked in a haphazard manner, with two guys wearing red plastic doing street moves on top of one of them. This is an additional sign of the apocalypse, so our stars should just keep running, but they don’t. Justin has to get something important out of the trunk of the car where the jacked-up Oompa Loompas are gyrating. (Is it his recording contract? Yeah, probably should grab that.)

  Madonna, on an agenda of her own, as she always is, decides that she needs to jump in and out of some of the cars in a sexy but unclear manner. Not to be outdone, Justin decides to run across the top of the cars using the same mysterious motivation. They manage to meet up in the front seat of one of the cars, where Madonna briefly flirts with Justin, whispering in his ear and either hinting at a future hook-up  or promising that she will one day make a movie that doesn’t require serious editing before it can be released.

  The frolicking with the cars continues for some time, with both of them proving athletic prowess and the ability to strike poses right on the beat, but without anyone explaining the critical bit about what needs to be done to save the world or at least make the two dudes stop dancing on the one car. Those guys really need to find a better purpose in life, because they are just a few online votes away from surpassing The Skeletors as Most Invaluable Players.

  Hold up, now Madonna and Justin have made their way (via modern technology) to a supermarket of some kind. We have an extended scene with the two of them alternately flirting with or threatening the various products lining the shelves of the aisles, nuzzling up to the granola and slapping the canned tuna. They eventually reach the front of the store, where each of them jumps on a conveyor belt at the checkout counters so they can dance while essentially running on a treadmill. (Is it always about physical competitions with Madonna? Honey, can’t you prove your supremacy with a non-strenuous card game or maybe a nice round of Jeopardy?)

  Happily, they both give up with whatever they were trying to accomplish in the checkout lanes at Wal-Mart, and they both suddenly appear on that stage with the clock that I don’t understand. (Timbaland is gone, so he’s probably off at yet another awards show.) Madonna is back in her naughty night-night ensemble, and Justin is back in the outfit that he’s never changed since Mickey.) They are both breaking out some serious dance moves here, but it seems a bit odd that they are rarely in the same shot. Do I smell a contractual clause of some kind? (“I want 36 flavors of vodka in my dressing room, 24 varieties of massage therapists, and only 12 moments when I am in the same room as my co-star.”)

  We have some quick scenes here and there of someone wearing aggressive high-heels and stomping around an office environment. We’ll just assume it’s not Justin. Not that there’s anything wrong with that if it’s really him.

  Wait, now Madonna has just stormed into a public bathroom. She’s back in part of her black outfit, so I’m not sure where this fits in the space-time continuum. And now she’s looking in the mirror and Justin is staring back at her. They do some mess where it appears that they exchange clothing but they really don’t, with each of them throwing the unwanted garments off toward the less-popular toilet stalls. Then they tromp out of the restroom without even bothering to leave a tip for the attendant who is probably hiding in a corner, weeping and wishing that s/he had paid attention to their mother  when she proclaimed “do your homework or you’ll have to listen to people pee for the rest of your life.”

  Okay, NOW we have Madonna and Justin on the same stage at the same time, and they seem to be involved in yet another dance-off. Justin is very good with his street poses and arm-flipping, but he’s up against Madonna, who was already artfully thrusting her crotch when Justin was still trying to figure out which end of his baby bottle offered the most promise. Still, they’re both very energetic  and each manages to hold their own, despite Justin’s insistence that he keep wearing that scarf from the British play where nothing actually happens.

  As we roll to a close, Madge and Just-In start ripping parts of their couture off of each other. In most diva camps, this would result in a drive-by shooting, but they both handle the ripping and flinging in a professional manner. Then Timbaland arrives back from his awards show just long enough to holla “breakdown” on the soundtrack, which sends M and J into overdrive.  They amp up the dance moves, trying once again to prove who has the most flexible whatever while Timbaland makes noises off to the side.  The “oh yeah, we almost forgot about that” Triangle Monster arrives onset and starts chewing the scenery, as well as our illustrious co-stars, causing flesh to disappear without leaving a forwarding address.

  Our last image is of Justin, with an exposed rib cage, leaning in to kiss Madonna, who has an exposed jaw. Just like Romeo and Juliet. Only completely not…

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Blink-182 – “All The Small Things”

  We start out with the Blinkers apparently having just stepped off a private jet. They’re all wearing completely white outfits, so either they’re practicing to be orderlies or they’ve just returned from Fantasy Island. Then we suddenly cut to a crowd of fans somewhere, with Mark (I think) dancing around in his underwear whilst wearing an odd hat. This is a possible sign of the Apocalypse, so we should all pack a bag and prepare to run like hell, just in case.

  Then the rest of the band shows up, and now we have Tom acting all ghetto-fabulous while the other guys pretend that they’re his backup singers only without coordinated moves or hairstyles. Zip over to Tom wearing what might be a bustier made out of Minnie Mouse’s ears, winking at us because the outfit makes him feel unbelievably sexy. (There are some other people behind him wearing matching camouflage pants and trying to dance, but you really don’t care what they’re doing since we can’t get past the bustier.)

  We get to see the band actually perform for roughly two seconds, then we’re flying all over the place again, with more of the ghetto fab, the rodent undergarments, the underwear, and hundreds of screaming women who are either terrified or incredibly horny. (There’s also some mess with the three guys wearing candy-colored silk shirts and sporting blacked-out teeth, making them look like hillbillies that got hit by an exploding Oompa Loompa.)

  And the uncertainty continues, with more of Tom leading his camouflage dance troupe where no one is really paying attention to him, the guys getting all boy-band on a beach with matching black t-shirts and crashing waves, the underwear that remains startling with each new shot, Mark getting jealous and wanting his own bustier, something about an airplane hangar and a possible jet-fuel spill that makes people assume a squatting position, and the women who are screaming in either agony or ecstasy.

  (I look down and realize that we’re only one minute into the video. If we keep this pace up, my fingers are gonna snap right off of this keyboard. These guys need to settle down and let the backup dancers do something for a while. Then I look back at the video and realize that during my one-second distraction I’ve probably missed 47 jump shots and at least one round of Mark making his wondernuts bounce in his panties.)

  Cut to Tom jacking around with one of those coin-operated telescopes, through which he is watching Mark being attacked on the beach by a dog, with the dog trying to rip Mark’s pants off. (Probably so Fido can take them to the other Mark in the scene where he doesn’t have any.) Next we have Tom on that same beach (that set is getting a workout), flopped on his belly and warbling to us. This scene prepares us in no way at all for the next one, where one of the guys is dressed as a girl, standing on a rock and clutching one of those giant rubber balls that were a hoot when you were little until someone hit you in the face with it and then all the neighbor kids had to go home while Mommy wiped your tears and drank vodka out of a paper cup.

  Man-Girl suddenly starts racing down the beach with her ball in a gratuitous scene where s/he shows lots of butt crack and flopping pigtails. I have no idea what this is supposed to mean, but I suddenly want to watch Chariots of Fire and the third season of  The L Word.

  Next we have Tom starting to get slightly amorous with that telescope, so he apparently has a fetish about things that magnify, more dancing around in the jet-fuel spill like nothing bad can happen doing that, and the guys running naked down the worn-out beach that is probably ready for all these people to stop tromping around like idiots and just go home. There’s also a bit where Mark spends some quality time with some lovely ladies that are pouring hot wax on him. (Now that’s a Scentsy part that I would attend, mmm hmm.)

  Back to Tom, who is now openly frenching the turn-knob on the telescope, so don’t be surprised if little baby telescopes show up on the tour bus in nine months.  Then they finally let Travis have some serious screen time, and he spends it by running down that tired beach with a busty woman who apparently wants nothing more than to be hurled to the ground so she and Travis can roll around like an enchilada on crack. This romantic montage is mixed in with more shots of the colorful hillbillies, Mark taking an erotic shower while fully-dressed (now he’s going to put his clothes on?), and Tom and Mark sniffing each other’s flowers.

  All of this is upstaged by the image of Tom sitting on a man-throne and lustily unrolling the toilet paper. With a vanity wind-machine blowing, no less. And a pirate shirt. (I’m sure they had a reason for going there, they just didn’t leave any notes behind when they did.)

  Anyway, we’re rolling into the final chorus of the song, so we wrap things up by revisiting all of the special places we’ve been, so you can choose your favorites and possibly act them out at your next party. Jet fuel, ghetto glam, underwear, screaming fans who show their adulation by exposing themselves and/or making marriage proposals, and Travis’ little girlfriend from the beach waving a sign announcing her pregnancy, so he apparently has some very quick and efficient sperm.

  And then the boys wave goodbye and hop back on their plane, as unsatisfied women wail and a grown man wearing a giant banana cries. It’s very sad….

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Rihanna – “S.O.S.”

  We start out with Rihanna shimmying about in front of some tree-bush thing. She’s sporting lots of that body makeup where her skin sparkles like she got a finger caught in an electrical outlet, and she’s performing a dance that seems to be based on the fact that her breasts are fighting desperately to escape the pretty but functionally-questionable dress that she is wearing. There’s a nice breeze blowing that gently caresses all of her various body parts as they compete against one another to get our attention.

  Eventually we switch to Rihanna and an unnamed male companion cavorting in a spotlight that is being splashed on a grey wall. (They didn’t spend a whole lot of time on the set design for this bit.) Rihanna is showcasing a new outfit (something about tight blue-jean cutoffs and eye shadow) and a new dance that involves rubbing against the back and buttocks of her little friend before dropping to the ground on all fours and searching for her water bowl. (The camera catches the guy staring at Rihanna like he really didn’t expect this type of behavior when he innocently picked her up to go get some sushi.)

  We jump again, this time to some place where there’s lots of pink and purple lighting, and a random stylist has made the decision to pile all of Rihanna’s copious hair on top of her head in a sort of poofy, curly bun that is bigger than some planets. (I would imagine that this hair-piling process was a major operation, and that the production team had to hire some extra contractors just for this scene.) She’s accompanied by another male companion, or possibly the same one, who seems really invested in waving his arms around so that they reflect the pretty lights in different directions.

  We zip back to Cutoffs Rihanna in that spotlight, where she has modified her choreography to include energetic movements that make her hair whirl about like she’s helicoptering troops to a secret deployment site. Sidekick Dude has been instructed to clutch at Rihanna’s body in a manner that allows his head to be positioned dangerously close to her hoo-hoo. There appears to be a very interesting story here, perhaps we’ll get to the details in a bit.

  But first we check back in with Green-Dress Rihanna as she continues her advertisement for body cosmetics and whips her really fancy earrings about with complete abandon. (Operation Breast Escape update, for those keeping score: the twins are still bravely fighting for liberation, but the dress is apparently made out of some miracle fiber that manages to keep the detainees in lockup.)

  And now we’re off to another location and another outfit, where Rihanna and four of her horny male posse are doing a line dance that involves arm-waving and baseball caps. In the background, we can see what might be giant ice cubes with their own internal power source that allows them to be lit-up and sparkly like Liberace forgot to put his cufflinks away. I’m sure we’ll be seeing more of those things, because you don’t spend obvious cash on set pieces and only allow them to be in one brief scene.

  Over to Pink-Lighting Rihanna, where she and her hair have wandered into a House of Mirrors, creating an army of Rihannas wearing high heels and a backless jumpsuit. Seeing herself reflected that many times has gotten Rihanna even more lusty than usual, and she proceeds to rub her booty on as many surfaces as possible and do more of that crawling around on her hands and knees business. (Meanwhile, her little companion is enjoying his own set of mirrors, writhing around and loving his own bad self while still managing to keep his sunglasses in place.)

  I guess the two of them are really enjoying this part of the shoot, so we spend a lot of time watching them frolic and undulate while those samples from the old-school Soft Cell song are blaring from the speakers. But even the hardcore fans can take only so much of this symbolic masturbation, so we cut to another scene and outfit, this one involving Rihanna dancing with some other ladies who have discovered the joys of smearing glitter on your skin and then cavorting in places where the wind blows your hair just right.

  All of these lovely lasses have libidos that completely control their bodies, because that’s some sort of requirement in a Rihanna video, so of course they immediately engage in a line dance that allows them to leap about like somebody sprinkled paprika in their panties, as if they were wearing any. While they are doing that, we revisit Green-Dress Rihanna to confirm that the chesty inmates are still trying to jump the walls of the penitentiary.

  Now it’s time for the inevitable product placement, so we have Rihanna wearing Capri pants and fiddling with a Nokia phone whilst she relaxes on a leather lounger. It seems that this is a very special phone that you simply must have, because exploring all the high-tech features of the device can apparently cause you to have instantaneous multiple orgasms, based on the way Rihanna is arching her back and curling her toes in complete ecstasy.

  As if that wasn’t enough excitement, we head back to the room with the spotlight and the boring grey wall, so that Rihanna and all of her various dance partners can perform solos while the ever-present wind whips across the soundstage. The main motifs with this bit of tag-team shimmying seem to include touching your head repeatedly and trying to hump the wind that never stops blowing. Then we jump back to Pink Rihanna in the House of Mirrors, where she is now invested in doing lots of sultry maneuvers that showcase the fact that she is very limber and has legs strong enough to snap your head right off.

  Then we head over to that room with the giant electric ice cubes (I knew we were going to be seeing more of those things) where the whole gang has gathered for more choreography and hormonal release. We kick things off with a drill-team routine where the camera runs down the line of anonymous dancers and allows everyone to perform a signature move that will hopefully transform their careers from “hip-thrusting guy #7” to international megastar. This doesn’t immediately happen, from what I can tell, but you never know.

  Of course, this is really all about Rihanna in the end, so we quickly kick off a montage of Rihanna twirling and kicking in that one spotlight, including some fancy dual-screen imagery in case just one Rihanna is not enough for you to make it through the day. This sets up the grand finale, where Rihanna is hoisted on top of one of the electric ice cubes so she and two of her closest dance partners can perform an energetic ménage a trois based on the insistent beat of the song, with Rihanna’s odd pantyhose (or possible henna tattoos) serving as the centerpiece of the action.

  After a brief return to Pink Rihanna and her beau loving themselves in front of the pleasure mirrors, we close things out back where we started, with Green-Dress Rihanna sparkling in front of the tropical foliage whilst the last few after-tremors of her Nokia orgasm work their way out of her system. For the records, it appears that the prison uprising has been quelled and the naughty prisoners are still locked in their dual cells…

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Miley Cyrus – “Party In The U.S.A.”

  We start out with folks arriving at a drive-in theater as the golden sun is lowering in the sky. This must be a very special drive-in, because not only is it still standing when all the others have been torn down, but everyone here is really young and pretty and thin. Apparently it’s considered socially improper to arrive with anything more than zero-percent body fat. They probably check your weight at the ticket gate.

  Anyway, Miley climbs out of her sporty car, making sure that we see her cowboy boots first, because she’s a country girl and all. (Side note: All of the cars here are sporty and expensive. It seems they also check your financial history at that special gate. You might have to arrive early just to fill out all the forms.) She leans against her car and starts singing, wearing short-shorts no bigger than a stick of gum. I guess it’s no longer necessary to hide the goods until you meet someone special.

  Eventually Miley gets bored with the leaning, so she hooks up with a posse of her home girls, who have been carefully selected to show a rainbow of racial diversity and give the impression that all are welcome in Miley World. (As long as you’re young and pretty and thin, natch.) They strut around for a while, as we get shots of other people getting out of their cars and joining the party. (At no point does anyone seem interested in actually watching a movie, so maybe things have changed since the last time I went to a drive-in.)

  Wherever the girls are headed, it takes a while for them to get there, so we get plenty of shots of Miley’s boots and Miley’s smiles and Miley’s ability to make grown men stop what they are doing and stare at her. Then Miley snatches up one of the speakers from those poles and hops into the bed of a pickup truck. (It’s not her truck, but things like ownership and clothing that serves any real purpose are clearly not important in this video.) It’s time for Miley and her backup posers to give an impromptu concert! (I’m sure this won’t interfere with the movie at all.)

  So Miley rocks it for a bit, and of course the crowd goes wild with adoration, dancing and singing and fist-pumping. (One gentleman gets so excited that he starts doing gymnastics, a response that seems to happen quite often in music videos but never in real life. You try doing a round off into a handspring at a real concert and somebody is going to cut you. Those people paid good money to see the stage, not your airborne ass.)

  Balancing in the back of a pickup while wearing heels is exhausting, so eventually Miley calls for an intermission and she decides to go stand in front of a metal wall. There’s something written on the wall, but it’s hard to concentrate on what it might say, what with all of Miley’s hair and us worrying about her accidentally bending over and getting a surprise flossing situation with those shorts. But Miley is a trooper and she professionally avoids the bending as she continues with the song. She even does some type of modified two-step moves as added entertainment value.

  We cut to Miley wandering around the drive-in by herself, the Benetton girls having run off to do something else for a bit. (Was there a sale at the Ace bandage factory? They could get four or five outfits out of just one roll of that stuff.) But Miley doesn’t mind that they have gone AWOL, because she’s still singing and walking and smiling at everybody, approving of their thinness and prettiness and supposed richness if they got past the screening process at the gate.

  But singing and walking in the dirt is not as much fun as singing and dancing on a stage, so Miley convinces someone to unroll a giant American flag over the movie screen and build her a nice stage just beneath it. (Nobody is ever going to watch a movie in this place, seriously.) This helpful but unseen person also arranges for an airplane to fly overhead and dump tons of confetti over the whole shindig, because it’s really not a party unless there are colored bits of paper in the air.

  Miley does an energetic solo for a bit, with just her and her hair and her microphone that she clearly adores by the way she fondles it continuously. Oh, and the flag. You can’t really miss that flag, which is bigger than some of the states on the Eastern seaboard.

  Cut to later that night, with Miley and more of her carefully-selected friends taking advantage of the playground equipment at the drive-in. She’s got the primo spot, of course, standing in a centrally-located swing, but her friends are still artfully arranged on a nearby jungle gym. Amazingly enough, all the fly girls and fly boys are able to dance and gyrate with complete abandon without plummeting to the ground and ending their careers as dancing extras in music videos.

  The Gymnastics Dude even runs up to perform another one of his hands-free flip things, but it’s not nearly as impressive since he’s on the ground and not clinging to metal bars two stories up like his risk-taking dance-class partners. But if he can pull off that same stunt while on top of the jungle gym, and survive, I’ll buy the man a corn dog, sure will.

  Then we’re back to the stage, where the American flag has been replaced by a giant video monitor, because it’s not really a concert unless you have a giant TV that people can watch instead of the performer. The Benetton girls are back (love the new look, it’s nice that you were able to share one outfit between the four of you) and everybody is super thrilled to be partying in the USA.  The girls are happy to share with us some intense choreography that they learned on the way back from the mall, and Miley is happy to raise her hands over her head as often as possible.

  And that’s pretty much how we wrap things up, with well-toned folks dancing and singing and proving that they have excellent stamina. Even Gymnastics Dude is still at it, suddenly running up and doing a flip-roll thing across one of the tables at the concession stand. (Note to self: Do not eat at that table.) We end the video with Miley back in front of the American flag, proud of her music, proud of her country, and proud of her ability to pick friends that can coordinate with the design theme of any room in your house…

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Mary J. Blige – “Be Without You”

  We start out with some aerial shots of some city at night, probably New York City, since nothing important ever really happens anywhere else. Then we cut to Mary in her fine-ass apartment, wearing a very flattering sweatpants ensemble as she walks to one of the designer windows in her living room. She leans her head against the glass and seems a little sad, probably still a little upset over the cancellation of “All My Children”.

  Then suddenly she’s in what we’ll assume is one of her many bathrooms, and this one has a fancy medicine cabinet that you can open up and look stunning while singing a song. So she starts to do that, because you shouldn’t let such opportunities pass you by. We get a quick shot of the Chrysler Building, in case you’ve forgotten that we’re in NYC, and then we have Mary on one of her many beds, typing out the lyrics of the song on one of her many laptops, the glow from the screen accenting her poufy hairdo that only certain women can pull off with any sort of style.

  We start getting flashbacks of Mary and what we’ll assume is one of her many boyfriends having some type of disagreement. (The boyfriend is played by Terence Howard, but to make things easier we’ll just call him Chuck.) It’s not clear what they’re fighting about (is it ever clear what couples are really fighting about?) but it’s bad enough that Chuck grabs his designer jacket and stomps out the door. We head back to the soundstage bathroom so Mary can break it down for us.

  It seems that Mary and Chuck’s relationship started out fine back in the day. But then it was the next morning and things started to unravel. What went wrong? Well, Mary sings about it for a while in the top-shelf bathroom, and then she sings about it in one of her many living rooms, in front of what might be the largest fireplace known to mankind. She’s really upset and can’t sleep in one of her many beds because her man isn’t there with her. She keeps checking her phone to see if he’s called, which he hasn’t, but you’d think she already knew he hadn’t since she keeps checking the damn thing every two seconds.

  Mary heads back to the designer window to sing an important part of the song where she needs to use her hands a lot to make sure we understand that it’s an important part. Then she cries a little bit, in an upscale way where she still looks very chic and stylish despite the tears. The liquid on her face triggers a flashback to another time that she cried, in a different apartment that isn’t nearly so Upper West Side. She’s lying on a fairly boring couch, looking a little blue and despondent despite sporting another hairstyle that could win awards if we had time for that.

  Chuck comes in from wherever Chuck goes when it’s not his part of the video, and he sits beside reclining Mary so he can gently wipe away the single tear that is artfully perched in the corner of Mary’s eye. He tenderly kisses that same spot and they gaze at one another with a warmth and devotion that normally only happens on the Hallmark channel. Then we start flashing-forward to Mary in her newer apartment because it’s another important part of the song that requires hand-waving, and this time she throws in some “the words right are so painful that I have to close my eyes and brace my body against a designer window until I can control my emotions again”.

  Oh, it’s time for another flashback and another hairdo, and for this scene we have a dinner party where Mary and Chuck and two hundred of their closest friends are seated around a dining table the size of Newark. Everyone seems to be having a swell time, so we’ll assume that Mary (or at least one of her many assistants) made the right menu choices. She and Chuck spend a lot of time gazing at one another with adoration and a possible side-dish of lusty thoughts. The guests continue to drink their wine and chuckle at one another, but really it’s all about Mary and Chuck maintaining eye contact across the mammoth table.

  Now we zip to another flashback, one that involves a fancy car that Chuck has to assist Mary out of, probably because she’s wearing a sparkly dress with a short enough hem that she needs special handling or we might get a glimpse of personal business. They stroll up a red carpet while cameras flash, apparently heading into a glitzy ceremony of some kind. (Is this where Mary will finally pick up that award for her hair?)

  Meanwhile, present-day Mary is still in her deluxe apartment in the sky, doing the “hands up” part of the song, and doing it in lots of her many different rooms, especially a new one that we haven’t seen where there are enough candles burning to make zoning-compliance people a little nervous. (Girl, don’t be whipping that hair around that room too much, there could be an issue.) Then the hands are down, and we have modern Mary sitting on that one ugly couch that I thought was from back in the day, but maybe this is just one big-ass apartment that has several different time zones.

  Eventually we work our way back to seeing that argument again between Mary and Chuck, with what looks like some really harsh words and a general dissatisfaction with one another. He actually gets a little bit physical with her (which for me would mean instant walking papers for Chuck, but I haven’t had a relationship with him so I really shouldn’t say). We watch him storm out the door again while Mary looks tragic in one of her many outfits.

  Now we roll into the part of the song where Mary is holding those powerful notes for a really long time, so we have to have another montage of Mary in all of her rooms as she holds them. Since it takes Mary a little bit to get all these vocals out, the producers throw in a few extra things for us to look at like Mary holding her head in emotional pain and two sad-looking candles that seem to be burning down to nothing. (Apparently somebody paid attention in film school on the day they studied “symbolism”.) We wind down this montage with flashbacks of all the flashbacks and hairstyles, followed by a closing performance in the designer bathroom.

  We close things out with Mary opening her front door, probably expecting to see the delivery guy with Chinese food but instead finding Chuck with his key in the lock. He just looks at her with a sexy smirk, which is apparently all it takes for them to get back together, and he walks up to her and they embrace. The video ends with them clutching one another, and pondering which of the many rooms in the massive apartment they are going to sleep in tonight. Maybe one that they haven’t even seen yet? I’m sure there are a few of those…

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India.Arie, Gramps Morgan - “Therapy”

  We start out with a guy jumping off a small cliff into some sparkly water, with us unaware at this point that such a thing will become a major theme in the video. Cut to India in the jungle somewhere, sporting a very colorful outfit and carrying a guitar that appears to be made out of cracked mirrors. She’s very pleased to be singing for us, raising one of her arms in a triumphant move full of success and independence, thus establishing the second theme of the video: vibrant flowing garments that match your eye-shadow can make a person very, very happy.

   We get a few shots of some guy climbing a really high rock tower, but before we can ask him why he might be doing that we cut to India in another outfit, standing near a beautiful bay in a fetching orange outfit, strumming her guitar and releasing the music within her. Somebody should probably tell her that it kind of hurts our eyes when the sun hits her mirrored guitar, but that’s really a minor quibble when everything else around her is so pretty.

  We check on Climber Guy, and yep, he’s almost at the top of that tower thing, high above the water, then we have more images of the Indias dancing in the woods and strumming by the sea. Then we get introduced to another flavor of India, this one driving a car that has been painted with pink-based camouflage while she wears a matching outfit. No indication of where she might be headed but, as we have come to expect by this point in the video, she’s very happy to be in control of a colorful vehicle.

  Next up is version 4.0 of India, this one in a comparatively subdued earth-tone ensemble as she plucks her strings in another part of the forest, followed by a long-shot of Climber Guy leaping from the top of the rock formation and plunging toward the dappling waters. (Let me make it very clear that I will never be doing something like that. Just in case you were wondering.)

  Now that we have introduced most of our major characters, we roll into an extended montage of the various Indias and a growing troop of muscular men who are very happy to leap from various outcroppings into the gentle waves of the ocean. It’s nice to see that chivalry is not completely dead, if men are willing to mix gravity and wetness to show their appreciation for womanhood and festive song.

  Speaking of expressing your love, we eventually get to a slightly-startling scene where Earth India has her hands stretched heavenward whilst a man stands behind her and uses his muscular arms to essentially align her planets. Before we can confirm that one of them remembered to bring along hanky-panky protection, we cut back to the montage of leaping men and shimmering Indies espousing musical poetry.

  And we stay in this mode for a while, with the flowing couture and the plunging males. Camouflage India seems to be the most emotionally-invested part of this stretch, as she powerfully communes with the steering wheel of her pink-splashed vehicle, but she’s followed closely by Orange India with that mirrored guitar that can burn your retinas out when the choreography is just right.

  Eventually we get around to visiting a local bar / art house / something, where a new India is performing in front of a microphone, this time accented by green eye-shadow and a glistening blouse. Oh, and there’s a man performing with her who is probably Gramps Morgan, but he’s not holding a sign or anything so it’s not really clear. In any case, they seem to be enjoying themselves, to the point of standing a bit more closely to one another than random duet partners really should, even some fondling, so there might be a juicy back-story here.

  The people up in this joint and very happy to be here, regardless of the relationship status of the singing duo, and there’s a festive air of stress-release, presumed alcohol consumption, and aggressively-supportive dancing. We briefly check back in with the other Indias and the acrobatic men in their lives, but it’s obvious that the real place to be is at the Love Shack, especially when one shirtless man begins executing some amazing gymnastics moves that could prove life-threatening if people don’t keep an eye on him.

  And that’s basically how we wrap things up. We have a final visit with all of the Indias and the thrill-seeking men, and everyone seems to be doing just fine. (There’s one glaring bit with an awkward pale-skinned man failing miserably at the sea-jumping thing, no idea what that was all about.) The final shot is of Camouflage India’s happy car pulling up outside the Shack of Love and Handsprings, which means that there are now theoretically two Indias in the same location, and the video has to end because trick photography can be really expensive, especially on a tropical island where the men folk never get dressed or dry off…


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Kanye West - “Stronger”

  We start out with a solar flare that completely destroys the universe. Oh wait, maybe not. We cut to the inside of some very intense, futuristic medical establishment where we have lots of interesting-looking machines and flashing lights. Some folks who normally race motorcycles have been hired to punch a lot of buttons and wear their helmets so we can’t see their faces.

  We then get rapid-fire jump shots of urban street scenes and some nice graffiti title cards to let us know we’re somewhere in Japan, or at least trapped in an anime-inspired film about Japan. But the main story is back in that creepy medical building where somebody appears to be baking inside a giant burrito maker.

  The microwave dings, and Kanye comes rolling out of one of the E-Z Bake oven, lying on a hospital gurney or maybe a high-end coffee table. He has electrodes and such attached to his body, so they might be testing him to see how many more hit singles he can produce. The helmet heads continue to run scans of Kanye using giant white Cheerios while the Daft-Punk sampling music continues in the background.

  Cut to Kanye somewhere else, wearing those now-famous glasses that look like window blinds. He’s standing against a shadowy wall, being all street, while we get quick glimpses of a supermodel looking sultry and sporting an asymmetrical hairdo while neon glows behind her. Kanye likes to do dance moves that involve shoving his hands in his pockets, in case you need to take notes about that sort of thing.

  Next we have some military people looking bored, a couple of folks who seem to be angry with those military people, more of Kanye on that coffee table, more of Kanye breaking it down for us in that alley, and shots of overcrowded city streets where no one seems to be happy. All of this is accompanied by the flashing Japanese words which probably explain exactly what is going on. Or maybe not. They might just be there for style and atmosphere.

  Suddenly, we have a motorcycle gang racing along through the middle of town. We have no idea who invited them, what it’s all about, or why it’s so important that they get somewhere fast, but the brake lights (the few times that they use them) look pretty and blurry as they race past designer boutiques and startled woman lugging groceries that are probably far more healthy than anything an American would eat.

  Kanye appears as a third version of himself, this one having something to do with wearing a hoodie while he’s bathed in golden light and standing in front of a bank vault door or at least something that’s metal and round. He seems to be upset. Are they not letting him get to one of his safety deposit boxes? Doesn’t he have his own bank at this point?

  Next up is the supermodel again as she walks along inside some giant tube, pausing to do a few hip thrusts here and there to show that she’s multi-talented. Then she does something in front of a glass wall of neon tubes that magically allows her to clone herself and get sexy with her own image. Then Kanye comes along and nuzzles her neck from behind. She obviously has a far more exciting life than we do.

  Now we have another supermodel (or at least another outfit) standing in the middle of a busy intersection and glaring at us. I’m not aware of what we might have done, but she clearly didn’t like it. Cut to one of the Kanye characters in a place with lots of pipes that don’t really seem to have a purpose, followed by Coffee Table Kanye still being digitally poked and prodded by the bike racing duo with the identity issues.

  Next up is a nurse walking down a hospital corridor and dragging along one of those odd machines with the clear enema bag hanging from a pole. As she nears one of the patient rooms, we cut inside to see Kanye (Number five? Not sure.) writhing about on his bed like something wasn’t right with that Mexican platter he ordered. Nurse Lady opens the door, takes a gander inside, then runs screaming back down the hallway. (Honey, you’re supposed to make the patients feel better, not worse.)

  Hysterica apparently alerts the authorities, because we suddenly have a whole pack of armored people stomping down the hallway, closing in on a slightly-sweaty Kanye who appears to be swathed in toilet paper. (No idea.) It seems that Kanye does not appreciate being confronted by strangers with guns, so he sends a mind beam their way that makes them fly into the air and presumably die. Kanye don’t play.

  Cut back to those bored military people, who seem to be a bit more invested in the goings on now that there have been explosions and stuff. But they still don’t seem to be doing anything worthwhile, so I’m really not sure why they’re on the payroll.

  Now we have a montage of the Kanye personalities, with Sunglasses Kanye repeatedly advising that it’s “not like I never told ya”. (I guess I missed a memo because I don’t remember him ever telling me anything. We don’t talk as much as we used to.) Anyway, Kanye gets over it and moves on to the rest of the song, while images of the Supermodel Lady are splashed on the wall behind him. (I may be mistaken, but she appears to be grooming his back with her tongue, in what might be one of those naughty wildlife games you read about on the Internet.)

  Brief break in the lyrics so Kanye can perform some more choreography and repeatedly touch his nifty sunglasses to ensure that we see them. Then he’s back to singing while we get another montage, this one involving more of that eerie medical equipment, followed by shots of Supermodel Lady walking back down the strange tube, heading away from the place where she made love to herself in the mirror.

  Oh wait, maybe she wasn’t done with the cloning business after all, because she’s back in front of the glass and now there are three of her, each of them straddling furniture and shimmying with burning heat and passion. But before any of them can reach an orgasm, we start getting shots of somebody spelling out something with a fancy gun that shoots neon paint. (Possibly a citation from the Health Department?) Then Kanye comes out to nuzzle Super Lady again and the video abruptly-


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Gabriella Cilmi - “Sweet About Me”

  We start out with Gabriella lying on her back in the middle of a floor, singing the song, so either she’s already drunk or she was absent that day in pop-star class when they talked about stage presence. Based on her hairstyle-choice and nonchalant attitude, I’m guessing that Gabriella probably doesn’t spend too much time caring about what other people might think. (Really digging on that square-headed microphone, though. Go, girl!)

  Cut to one of the band members doing something with drums and wearing an expression that makes it very clear he is not to be bothered until the pizza gets here. Okay, then. Gabriella then drags her butt off the floor and strolls around a bit, while the camera cuts between her and random band-member body parts like elbows and feet, letting us know that the director is pretty laid back about things like composition and structure.

  Wait, was that a quick shot of a guy in a cage? Has he been naughty, and if so, the good kind or the bad kind of naughty? Will there be further discipline? Hmmm.

  Back to Gabriella and the band, with her still strolling about like she’s looking for some really cute shoes at the mall but isn’t all that invested in actually finding anything. Then she manages to come across some guy who is hanging upside down from a pulley, all bound up in ropes and such. (What is going on up in this place?) Gabriella just sings to him for a while and then wanders off, so I guess she sees things like this every day. And the guy doesn’t bother to say things like “I’m in a bit of a pickle, could you help me out?” so I guess it’s all good.

  Gabriella gets tired and has to sit down in a retro red chair for a little bit, so we do that, then she’s up and wandering around again, so she might have some focus issues. She wanders past Cage Boy and then we get to meet another dude tied to a brick pillar, but at least he can still reach his harmonica and is able to play it in the right part of the song, so I’m sure he’ll get a merit badge for that.

  More singing and walking with Gabriella, along with some close-up shots of her face so we can see that she really means it about not being sweet and all (like the bondage thing didn’t let us in on that little tidbit). Then she pauses right in the middle of the song to take a long swig from what might be an innocent water bottle or could be one of those high-end boutique vodka decanters, not sure. All that walking and looking at tied-up men has gotten her a little parched, poor thing.

  Gabriella gets back in that red chair so she can waggle her finger at us and continue having mussy hair, then she strolls around some more because we haven’t finished the tour of her torture boudoir. In this segment of our program, she introduces us to a man sitting up to his neck in a packing crate, covered in that shredded packing stuff that gets everywhere no matter how much you try to control things. (Did Gabriella order him from Crate & Barrel? I guess I haven’t seen that particular catalog.)

  First, Gabriella steals his sunglasses and puts them on her own head, so she’s a thief as well as a somewhat lazy and dried-out dominatrix. Then, horror of horrors, she up and pours the rest of her vodka water all over his asymmetrical-haircut head (which actually makes him look kind of hot, but we’ll save that story for another bedtime.)

  Satisfied with her wet works, Gabriella turns and heads back to the band, sashaying past yet another guy who has been duct-taped to the floor, making him look like a giant, metallic burrito. She doesn’t bother to mess with him, so he must not be her favorite toy at the moment. Or maybe that’s just what turns him on, being ignored and then later getting handed out the window at a Taco Bell drive-thru.

  We wind down the song with Gabriella alternately sitting in her anemia chair and wandering through her band members. Just to catch us up on the things, the camera gives us quick shots all over the room to show us that, yep, girl done got her a bunch of wet men tied up around here. Then, because she’s worked really hard for at least three minutes straight and deserves a break, Gabriella plops down her microphone and heads out.

  But not before she stops at that hanging-upside-down guy, climbs on a box so she can reach the pulley and so we can see her cool-looking boots, and then she unloosens a knot so he can crash to the floor on his head.

  I guess she needed the rope.


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