The Bitter Buffalo

In honor of the pending September 13 release of Volumes 4-7 of Palm Pictures' Directors Label video compilations (Volumes 1-3 of which are absolute must-owns, especially the Michel Gondry set), I am digging up an old favorite (of mine, if not yours): A Half Hour Wasted, Volume 6. Back in the early days of satellite TV (well, early for me anyway), MTV2 called itself M2 and played nothing but music videos all day long. I watched M2 for hours on end, and every day I lament its untimely passing and transmutation into the unwatchable MTV clone MTV2 is today. Once a week, at a randomly selected time, I'd watch M2 for exactly one half hour. I'd write about the videos I saw, grade them, and post them to Pat Angello's pre-blog blog, which he called Spooboy.com. I called my silly pastime "A Half Hour Wasted," because that pretty much described the endeavor perfectly. When possible, I've included streaming links to the videos described. I don't control the format (and I'm truly sorry about the ads), I merely provide the links. Therefore, it'll be up to you to install Quicktime, RealAudio, or whatever it is you'll need to view the videos. In any case, they're a lot better viewed on a normal television than they are in a 2 x 2 window on your PC. Herewith, for your blogtacular dose of daily (or semi-daily, or whenever I get around to updating this thing) entertainment... A Half Hour Wasted Volume 6 Total Time Wasted this year: 3 hours, 2 minutes View date: October 12, 2000, Start Time: 5:50 p.m. Eastern, End Time: 6:24 p.m. Eastern This time, when I turn on the TV, M2 is showing a Beck video, "Deadweight." Since I reviewed Beck first the last time around, I decide that I'm going to wait until the next full video before I start reviewing. I figure it's the right Christian thing to do. Foo Fighters "Next Year" Director: Phil Harder This is the video I get to review first today. And it's a good one. Here, the Foos are astronauts on their way to the moon. Using stock footage from the Saturn moonshots in the late '60's & early '70's, and Forrest Gump-ian special effects that incorporate the band members directly into the film, director Harder has made yet another cool video for a band that simply excels at making good videos (what other band would have the good sense to commission Devo's Jerry Casale to do a video?). In this one, we see Dave Grohl in a spacesuit. He's in the cabin of a spaceship with the rest of the band, just as the flight is beginning to lift off from the pad at Cape Canaveral. We see the rocket taking off from the familiar camera-fixed-to-the-launch-tower view. As the rocket passes the camera, the insignia on the side reads "FOO FIGHTERS" (instead of UNITED STATES OF AMERICA). That's just plain clever. At the end, in the video's funniest shot, the band's faces are inserted into footage of the Apollo astronauts as they are congratulated by Richard Nixon. Great stuff. Grade A- U2 "Beautiful Day" Director: Jonas Ackerlund This video is completely pointless, yet absolutely beautiful. Filmed in an airport in (I presume) Europe, it's really just a bunch of slow motion shots of the band walking around and playing their instruments in a visually striking setting. Eventually, they wind up on a makeshift stage playing on top of a bunch of haphazardly placed rugs, in the middle of an airport runway, while planes take off and land right over their heads. Even though this is totally fake (I know this because I saw "Pushing Tin," and I'm almost absolutely sure from having seen that movie that they would have been blown over if a plane had REALLY landed right over their heads), it's still pretty cool. And I love the nod to the old U2 video for "Gloria," in which the band is performing on a makeshift stage (complete with rugs and everything, or at least I think there were rugs and everything -- it was a long time ago when I last saw it) on a barge in a river somewhere in Europe. The best thing about this U2 video is that it's for the best U2 song these guys have recorded in years. I can't wait for the CD! Grade: B+ Queens of the Stone Age "The Lost Art of Keeping a Secret" Director: John Pirozzi Look. I've already reviewed this video once, and I believe I said even then that I was starting to get sick of it. And though I still like the song (that is, I find myself whistling along to the "whatever you do" chorus whenever I hear it), enough is enough. This is why I don't listen to the radio: the programmers are so sure they know what I like, they play the same crap over and over again until I absolutely hate it. It's a conspiracy. M2 isn't as bad as radio (and it isn't as bad as regular MTV), but they still piss me off just the same. So, to the M2 programmers, I beg you: Please give it a rest. Play something new. Grade: C- Badly Drawn Boy "One Hour Around the Block" Director: Suzy Ewing Well, just like that, right after I complain about having seen one video too many times, the M2 programming staff decides to play something I've never seen before. And it's a really cool video, too! It tells the story of a guy -- British, I'm guessing (by the way he's dressed, by his teeth -- he's in his early '20's and is still wearing braces -- and by the side of the road he's driving on), who picks up pretty girl for a date. She smiles, and we see that she's got braces, too. Another guy in a dopey hat is just driving his car around. Who is he? I dunno. I guess we'll find out later. The guy who picked up the girl flirts with her and laughs. She flirts and laughs right back. He stops the car, they get out. She takes off his glasses. Then, in a scene that looks almost exactly like the cover of the Chemical Brothers' Exit Planet Dust CD, they kiss. But since they both have braces, their mouths get locked together. What starts out as a sweet, romantic gesture turns vaguely menacing. Then, that other guy who was just driving around comes across the couple and picks them up. Then he drops them off, still attached by the teeth, at the hospital. In a neat little touch, after they get out of his car, he kisses his fingers and touches a picture of he and his girlfriend that is stuck to the dash. Bonus points for being directed by a woman. Grade: A- Good Charlotte "Little Things" Director: Nigel Dick This guy seems to only be able to make decent videos for Oasis. I say that because all the other ones he's done, including this one, suck. Just like most Marcos Siega videos (in fact, at first I thought this WAS a Marcos Siega video). The band, which looks like every other rock band that wants to be Blink 182, is inspiring "rebellion" in a high school somewhere. But if I were a high schooler watching this video, I'd be offended by the fact that I was being portrayed as a complete idiot, to say nothing of the fact that the song is a blatant -- and I mean BLATANT -- rip-off of Nirvana's smells Like Teen Spirit (the video for which, you might remember, is the *original* high school rebellion video). Junk. Grade: D Eminem "My Name Is" Director: Dr. Dre/Phil Hartwell According to the media, I'm supposed to be pissed off at Eminem. He's mean and nasty and he hates gay people (just like Dr. Laura, actually). But as I watch this video, I can't stop laughing. It's like vintage Weird Al Yankovich, but filthy. Em' appears in all sorts of different costumes as he raps lines like "I wonder which Spice Girl I'll impregnate," and "How you gonna breast feed me, mom, you ain't got no t**s." This is a perfect example of the principle I discussed earlier in the QOTSA review, except in reverse. I can't tell you how much I hated this song when it first came out. But since I haven't heard it in at least a year, I can finally appreciate how damn funny this guy is! Great stuff! Grade: B+ Madonna "Music" Director: Jonas Ackerlund Madonna says that Ali G, the British comedian who plays the chauffeur driver in this video, is "brilliant." He's the best part about this video (except maybe for the song, which is admittedly pretty good for Madonna), but I still don't understand what Madonna sees in him. The rest of the video is a mess -- and Ackerlund is usually a reliable video director (see the U2 review). Here, we don't see a lot of Madonna, except when she's sitting down in the back of the limousine, or when she's sitting down at the stage in the strip club stuffing dollar bills into women?s, um, snatches. Could this be because she was extremely pregnant at the time this thing was filmed? I dunno. But it seems to me that the quality of a Madonna video is directly proportional to the amount of time we see her wiggling her body. And since the only time we see her "body" in this video is during an incredibly stupid cartoon interlude, this one just doesn't make the cut. Grade: D+ Bjork "Big Time Sensuality" Director: Stephane Sednaoui Thank you thank you thank you, M2. The fact that you play videos like this one is the reason I waste a half hour (actually, a lot more than that) watching your channel every week. The premise is a simple one. Fix a camera to look down the length of a flatbed trailer, drive the trailer slowly through Manhattan, and put Bjork on the trailer to do what she does best, wiggling, dancing, flailing her arms, and accosting the camera. The end result just happens to be one of my all-time favorite videos -- one of the few videos that will ever get a grade of A+ from me. And that's not just because I have a crush on Bjork. Grade: A+

YAY!

Not only do I love the reprint of this post, but thanks for the heads up on the release of the new video collections! I've pretty much worn out my Michel Gondry DVD already.

Hmm, I wonder where WE'LL be going when KT and I make it to NC? The music store perhaps???

WOO HOO!