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?...
Click Here to Watch
this Video on YouTube.
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