Showing posts with label Bon Jovi. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Bon Jovi. Show all posts

Saturday, July 30, 2011

Bon Jovi - “What Do You Got?”


We start out with a glamorous couple arriving at some big event, with limos, a red carpet, and paparazzi shoving cameras at women tightly strapped into the latest couture. We don’t know who they are, but it’s probably not important in the long run, we’re just here to see if Jon is still managing to not age at all while the rest of us wrinkle up and dry out.

Speaking of Jon, there he is, performing with the band on some stage where they didn’t spend a lot of money on the lighting. Yep, still looks like he just got out of college, so we have to hate him a little bit. All of the band members are wearing black, so they might be protesting something, but this isn’t made clear. But at least they seem to be happy right at the moment, and that’s the important thing, because if band members are unsatisfied, they cut the play list short and there’s no encore.

Back to the apparently-famous couple, as they climb into a limo and the doors are slammed, sealing them off from the dirty, clingy people who don’t have more important places to be. Hmm. They don’t seem to be very pleased, with neither of them speaking to each other. The woman (let’s call her Raychelle) even whips out a smart phone and begins texting someone rather than converse with her partner, being careful not to punch too hard on the keys or her couture will rip a seam.

The band plays some more, then the limo pulls up outside a fabulous house (naturally, do you really think they’d let the Beautiful People live in a trailer?). The non-speaking couple saunter into the dwelling, then take separate staircases to separate bedrooms. Clearly, there will be no consummation of their marriage this evening, which is sad, because now the household staff will have to make two beds in the morning instead of one.

The band plays some more, and at this point I think we can just assume that the band will play some more throughout the rest of the video. They really aren’t doing much on their side of the story line, with Jon just singing and remaining young, and the rest of the band playing their instruments and being professionally cool and hip, having been at this rodeo for quite some time. So we’ll focus on the fake couple, their marital issues, and their failure at being happy despite having oodles of money.

In the separate bedrooms, the man and woman both love watching them some Jon Bon on their fancy wide-screen TV’s (which, if you take this mutual Jon admiration far enough, could certainly explain why they aren’t sleeping together), with both of them wearing 3-D glasses to make sure their time with Jon is well-spent and satisfying. Nothing says quality like drum sticks, guitars and body parts being shoved at you in a realistic manner.

Next up we have a ritzy pool party out behind the manse, apparently a birthday thing for the couple’s wee ones, with lots of energetic but spoiled youngsters splashing about and never having to worry about money while their various parents stand around and compare stock portfolios. Interestingly enough, we see Raychelle ignoring all her rich acquaintances and their offspring (including the products off her own assembly line), choosing instead to read a celebrity magazine with her and estranged hubby on the cover.

Oh wait, she finally does pay attention to the festivities, once somebody pulls out a camcorder, at which point she runs over to pose with hubby (let’s call him Borneo, because cool people never have regular names) as the youngsters are handed gifts that they don’t care about and will immediately throw in the pool when no one is looking. As soon as the camcorder is lowered, Borneo quits smiling and starts texting, while Raychelle fiddles with party favors and makes sure her bathing-wear is camera-worthy.

Quick scene with several of the youngsters watching a TV monitor with a loop of the couple walking down that red carpet. Great. They’re training the kiddos to value star-worthiness over minor things like family relationships and actual happiness. No wonder the children of Hollywood royalty make poor decisions that lead to them experimenting with drugs, shaving their heads, and “accidentally” releasing porno tapes of themselves cavorting with multiple partners instead of going to high school.

Now Borneo and Raychelle are at the airport, boarding a private plane and waving at the paparazzi as they do so, because you can’t really leave home unless an entourage sees you do so. (And, of course, they are leaving their own children behind, because even private jets have baggage limits.) The couple eventually arrives at a swanky hotel where the staff apparently outnumbers the guests in a 5-to-1 ratio and everyone has perfected the art of smiling when they don’t really mean it.

The couple enters their separate but adjoining rooms, with each room containing an alarm clock that conveniently plays Bon Jovi videos. Raychelle immediately plops on her bed, because it’s very tiring being beautiful all the time, not saying a word. Borneo stares at her for a while through the open shared door, then he shuts the door, equally not saying a word. But at least they’ve both got Jon Bon to help them make it through the night.

Final bit is Raychelle and Borneo walking through the hotel lobby. (It’s unclear why they are doing actual physical labor when they could just pay someone to do it for them, but we’ll let it slide.) They happen to walk past a just-married couple, who are in the midst of dashing off to places that couples go before they have learned to hate each other and play little games of pain. Borneo and Raychelle look at one another for a bit, actually smiling, then they turn and keep walking.

Interpret that as you will. They might just have a spark left to their relationship. Or they might just be really giddy that they are currently wearing casual clothing for once. Perhaps that’s the answer to a good marriage. Don’t buy couture.


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

Wednesday, July 13, 2011

Bon Jovi - “It’s My Life”


We start out with some guy named “Tommy” just trying to type at his computer while his mother screams from downstairs that she wants him to take out the garbage. (We’ve all been, there, right?) Phone rings. It’s “Gina”, (played by Shiri Appleby from the excellent series “Roswell”, which vanished from the airwaves just like those UFO‘s), babbling that the band is about to start playing “in the tunnel” (what?) and he has five minutes to get there or else.

Gina’s kind of pushy, even if her hair does look cute.

Tommy slams down the phone and off we go. He races through the house, forced to accept the bag of garbage from his mother as he heads out the door of the apartment. (Moms never give up when they get fixated on something. Once you realize that, life gets much less complicated.) We start seeing snippets of the band playing the song as Tommy runs down some stairs in a manner that indicates he may never have seen such things before. (Dude, why are you walking on the railing?)

Apparently Tommy gets bored using the inside stairs, so he switches to the fire escape and works his way downward. (The editors try to make this sequence fancy by jacking with the video and replaying snippets, but it really only makes it look like a lost scene from “West Side Story”.) Tommy even drops off the end of the escape, using air instead of the sliding ladder, in one of those boldly stupid moves youngsters can get away with, plummeting two stories and not dying. (At my age, opening a stick of gum can lead to bone-breakage.)

Tommy conveniently lands on the ground just as a garbage truck drives by, so naturally Tommy hops on the back of it rather than screw with a taxi. While he settles in for his ride, we cut back to the band, and yep, they really are playing in a traffic tunnel, with fans screaming and Jon’s hair making me think of Carol Brady, which unnerves me a bit. No one else seems bothered by this, so I guess we’ll let it go unless Sam the Butcher shows up with a cleaver.

Checking back in with Tommy, he apparently gets tired of standing near the crushed pulp of things that other people don’t want anymore, so he leaps off the garbage truck (that boy sure likes to jump). Sadly, his timing is a bit off and he rolls into a pack of dogs being walked by Jane Hathaway from “Beverly Hillbillies”. Tommy hops up and runs, with the dogs deciding he’s much more fun than Jane, so they follow him.

We cut away from the Running of the Dogs for a bit, so we can marvel at the band playing and how they’ve managed to remain looking relatively youthful despite all those things that rock bands did in the 80’s. Then we’re back to Tommy and his canine companions, with Tommy making sure to leap over the camera in just the right way so that his crotch is favorably accented. Then he runs into a gaggle of Asian Elvis impersonators.

No idea.

Next up is Tommy and his four-footed gang thundering through a deserted warehouse, for no other reason that it allows Tommy to jump through the air again, making a perfect dismount that should get high scores from the judges but would have killed anybody else. The dogs, wisely, decide that potentially bashing their skulls in is really not that interesting, so they instead go off to watch a “Benji” sequel at the Bowjou Theatre.

Some more footage of the band playing, giving me time to realize that maybe Jon’s hair is more akin to Joni Mitchell, then we zip back to Tommy. Now he’s managed to alter his route so that he’s ended up in the middle of a marathon race. (That happens to me all the time.) Tommy snags one of the free water bottles from those people who stand there and cheer you on at checkpoints, takes only a tiny sip, then throws the bottle on the ground, so he clearly hasn’t learned about things like recycling, water conservation, and just taking the subway.

Then Tommy decides that it would be completely safe to just run down the middle of a very busy street. (Why the hell not? Jumping off the Empire State Building didn’t phase him either.) Quick shot of Gina-Shiri sending Tommy a text, all impatient and stuff because he’s not there to watch her have fun at the tunnel concert. (Girls who have starred in their own TV series can be very high-maintenance. Although you’d think she could afford a better mobile device than the crappy one we see her banging away on.)

No matter, Tommy keeps running, because that’s what he was hired to do. (And it allows the video editor that was hired to come up with artsy shots and images. Everybody wins.) Eventually, Tommy finds himself running on a bridge, and you know he’s going to jump off of it, because that’s just his thing. So he does, plunging downward in both slo-mo and quick-mo courtesy of that editor. (They even stop the song so we can fully appreciate his plunging.)

Big surprise, Tommy lands in a lower road directly in the path of a speeding semi, because Tommy can’t live unless he’s about to die. So we get to enjoy some nifty special effects where Tommy rolls just right so the Tires of Death don’t crush his low-body-fat physique. Then he innocently hops up and dashes away, leaving the truck driver to have a small mental breakdown and turn to a life of drugs and alcohol.

Another montage of the band playing, where everybody is really happy despite the camera whipping around so fast that you really can’t see anything, then we zip back to Tommy’s next stunt. This involves Tommy encountering gridlocked traffic, with none of the cars moving, so Tommy, quick but stupid thinker that he is, decides to just run across the tops of the cars. (That would be your first thought, right?)

This works out jazzily well at first (despite the fact that the apparently overpaid editor didn’t realize he was mixing scenes of both day and night, oopsie), until highly-caffeinated Tommy falls through the moon-roof of a car containing thuggish types that are not interested in skinny geek boys falling from the sky, even if they can run really fast and win medals.

Home boys quickly throw Tommy’s ass out da car so they can continue with their drug deals and denigrating of women, so he wisely decides to hoof it the rest of the way at ground level. This is a good idea, since he’s already in the traffic tunnel where Bon Jovi is inexplicably performing, making it easier for him to run past the security guards who have been specifically hired to stop sweaty boys who run past guards.

Tommy hooks up with Gina-Shiri, and they clutch each other in that limber way you can do things before old age and bill-paying make fervent clutching a risky endeavor. Of course, Gina-Shiri has to whine at him about where he’s been, but then they happily turn to the stage to watch Joni Mitchell Jovi finish up the set.


Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

Friday, October 22, 2010

Bon Jovi - “Living on a Prayer”



  Disclaimer: Okay, I lived through the 80’s, and I remember most of them, but it still scares the hell out of me when I see the Big Hair from that time. What were people thinking? Seriously. And here we go…

  We start out with the band marching into some arena where they are setting up for a concert. How these guys got their hair into the arena is unclear, but somehow they did, and they seem really psyched about having accomplished this mission. Quick shot of the band members’ feet, and we can see that they are all wearing go-go boots, another oddity from that time and place. You know drugs were involved. You know it.

  We kick off a montage of the band and their hundred or so roadies running around and getting things in order. Lighting people are doing their thing and sound technicians are testing this and that and lots of other people seem to have no real mission but they’re running around anyway.

  And the whole time I’m thinking “The Hair. Oh my God, the Hair.” (Sorry, I just can’t get away from it. It’s just… everywhere.)

  Oh look, now people are strapping various band members into flying gear so they can be yanked around the stage as if they were in a revival of “Peter Pan”. The band members seem really excited about this part, but if it was up to me, I’d like to remain stationary on the stage, thank you very much. If my ass is flying over the audience’s heads, I’m thinking they’re probably not listening to my heartfelt lyrics, and that’s an issue with me.

  Quick scene where showers of sparks are falling from the sky, with Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia running to escape the Death Star.

  The lyrics finally start, and we have a close-up of Jon whipping around with his microphone and bellowing at the camera. Two things of importance about this scene. One, Jon looks to be about 12 years old. Two, he has more fringe on his jacket than drunks at a Saturday night barn dance. This does not stop him from singing.

  More montage, with people still testing out the flying-on-wires thing, people drinking coffee, people fiddling with guitars, and Jon hamming it up for the camera because he has validation issues. Some bonehead operating the flying-wires thinks it would be fun to make people crash into each other on the stage. This is fun. For about two seconds. After that, not so much.

  Then somebody else decides that the camera needs to zoom in on the crotches of the flying men. I can’t say that I completely disagree with this decision, but I’m disappointed with the results. I’m not seeing anything of interest. Perhaps it’s really cold in the arena.

  Quick shot of Jon playing one of the other guy’s guitar as it dangles in his nether region. Discuss amongst yourselves.

  Another shot of Jon jacking with his hair to make it even bigger. Not kidding. He’s trying to make it bigger. Can our planet support that?

  The montage continues for a very long time, showing more of the same. Technicians diddling, band members acting like they are in the midst of orgasm as they sing the lyrics, and people zooming through the air like it’s completely natural. At one point, Jon bends over to show us that his jeans have a patch right in a very personal place. What are we supposed to do with this information?

  Then Jon decides that he needs to use his microphone stand as a means of transport. He’s pole-vaulting all over the place, tilting his head just right so that the jet stream will get under his Neanderthal hair and keep him aloft for decades. Jon also likes to run, in case you were wondering. Run, run, run. What he’s running from, nobody knows. One minute he’s on the stage, the next second he’s clear at the other end of the venue, the rest of the band mere ants in the background.

  And, um, well, the montage continues. More of the same. They really need to do something new or different, or I’m going to quit watching and go pay bills. And I hate to pay bills. Tease me, Jon. Make me want more.

  Right at that moment, Jon turns to the camera and slaps his hand over his mouth. Oh? Does he desperately want me as well but can‘t admit his hidden desires? Probably not, but let’s go with that. It’s at least interesting, and will help me get through the rest of the video.

  Hey, the video has changed from black-and-white to color, and now there’s an actual audience. The people at Bon Jovi concerts are very intriguing. Naturally, there are the thousands of women wearing no panties and wanting to have sex with Jon, right here, right now. But watch the guys as well. They seem very, very enthusiastic about watching someone perform who doesn’t have breasts. Jon touches us all, right? I sure hope so.

  The live concert is really more of what we’ve already seen. Big-haired men wearing fringy leather and go-go boots, running about and bellowing. This causes all the women in the audience to raise their hands over their head and gyrate. They want some New Jersey lovin’, preferably as soon as possible. This is SO much more fun than going to church. Me love you long time.

  At 3:12, we have a crotch shot while some band member lies on his back and strokes his guitar. The other band members seem to be encouraging him. (The band member in the background looks like Amy Grant, but I’m assuming it’s not.)

  At 3:19, Prince makes a cameo.

  And here we go with the flying business, with Jon zooming out over the audience like the Wicked Witch of Newark. The women may have been horny before now, but at this point they lose all thought and reason, ovulating with the ferocity of a machine gun. (And look at that, so are some of the men.) I’m surprised Jon isn’t ripped from the sky and devoured by lip-glossed she-wolves. (Pause at 3:26. Does that look mentally healthy to you?)

  And the video works its way to an end, with Jon and the Bovi’s wailing and running. (At 3:45, an exorcism takes place. Not lying.) We have high kicks, pounding drums, flashy guitar work, leather jackets, and the Hair. Always the Hair. The final shot is of more of those sparks showering down on the stage. One lone person runs off to the right to escape the madness.

  Now, watch the entire video again, and think: “RuPaul’s Drag Race”. Seriously. Do it.

Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

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