Tom Petty – Free Fallin’ (1989)

I was never the biggest fan, but the girls in this video have great 80s hair! So sad that so many people dying today. RIP

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On the other hand, rumors of Tom Petty’s death may have been false. Oops.

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Tuesday morning, now he’s officially dead.

Riverdale

I thoroughly enjoyed the first season, and there’s a second season starting in October, I can hardly wait. This is a nearly spoiler-free review. I can’t help but drop a few hints about things that happen in episodes later in the season, however nothing major has been given away.

Riverdale is like a cross between Pretty Little Liars and Twin Peaks.

The series is based loosely on Archie comics, however it’s not based on the comics from the 1950s, or the really bad Saturday morning cartoon from the late 1960s (do they still have Saturday morning cartoons?), but rather it’s based on a re-imagined modern comic book series.

In practicality, all this means is that the main characters have iconic names like Archie, Betty, Veronica and Jughead. It was also great when the town’s all-girl band, Josie and the Pussycats (reimagined as being three black girls) performed a hip-hop influenced version of Sugar Sugar.

And above we have Archie and Veronica performing that great hit from 1980, “Kids in America,” and if you watch the video you will catch a glimpse of Molly Ringwald! The actress famous for playing a teenager in 1980s movies is now playing the mother of a teenager. Plus I already mentioned that Luke Perry plays Archie’s father. These homages to the past are so incredibly cool, but sadly they go right over the heads of today’s teenagers who are watching the show.

They never tell you where Riverdale is, but I assume it’s in upstate New York. Maple syrup is the town’s number one industry, and it’s mentioned that it’s close to Montreal, and there’s always snow on the ground during the winter, so all signs point to upstate New York.

But now, let’s get to the bad news. In order to enjoy this show, you’re going to have to deal with some extreme political correctness indoctrination.

One of the characters in the show is an openly gay kid, and you have to put up with a lot of gay making out and kissing. I know, gross! The interesting thing is how no one is ever allowed to say anything negative to him about him being gay. You’d think that in a show where you have football jocks being assholes, someone would at least call the kid a “fag,” but that never happens. The kid’s father, the town’s sheriff, and an incredibly bad sheriff at that, is fully supportive of his son’s gayness.

And while the gay kid is a presence in every episode, his purpose is just to be the gay kid, and unlike every other major character, he has no character development, and barely much of an arc, he’s just a gay accessory because someone decided the show needed to have a gay kid for some reason.

Although the town is almost entirely white (which is normal for a small town in upstate New York), mysteriously the mayor, the high school principal, and the high school football coach are all black. So three of the town’s five most important people are black. The two whites at the top of the town hierarchy are the sheriff who ineptly runs a one-man police department, and Cliff Blossom who is the richest man in the town and also a creep who’s up to no good.

Josie, of Josie and the Pussycats, dresses down Archie for having white privilege, and only after Archie admits his white privilege to Josie is he allowed to have an audience with her. But considering that Josie’s mother is the mayor, and her father is a famous musician, it’s hard to see how she is less privileged than Archie whose non-college-graduate father runs a small-time construction company on the verge of bankruptcy. Josie, and her fellow pussycat Valerie, both act like stuck-up bitches most of the time. (The third Pussycat, Melody, doesn’t get much screen time at all so I am unable to judge her. But I miss the ditzy blonde Melody from the old Saturday morning cartoon.)

The only Asian in town is a tall buffed up football player who is Archie’s main rival on the football team. Well, there have been enough portrayals of Asian men as sexless nerds, I guess the Asians are entitled to finally have one of their guys playing the town hunk.

The criminal element in town is an all-white gang called “The Serpents.” They wear biker jackets, but are never actually seen riding motorcycles.

Veronica is played by a Latina actress. She’s a coconut. Brown on the outside, but 100% white on the inside. Veronica is the hot sexy sophisticated girl from the city, while Betty is the small-town girl next door. Who is prettier? Ginger or Mary Ann?

I have my usual complaints about how the kids are supposed to be sophomores in high school, but everyone looks old enough to at least be in college, if not old enough to be a college graduate. And why can’t they hire a real lawyer to consult on the show so that characters playing lawyers don’t make statements about the law which are completely incorrect? And hasn’t anyone heard of the felony murder rule?

Elton John & the Muppets – Crocodile Rock

With crocodile muppets! Why don’t they make TV like this anymore?

What’s the song about? Not very much, it’s not one of Elton John’s deep songs. It’s just about a guy reminiscing about the good old days, which in this case would be the 1960s, when he was happy because he had a girlfriend named Suzie who wore tight dresses when they went out dancing to great 1960s rock music on the weekends.

But the 1960s sound died off, and his girlfriend dumped him.

Jonathan Coulton – Code Monkey

A fan-made video, made by splicing together clips from an existing anime TV show or movie.

I wrote about this video ten years ago after reading the NY Times article about Jonathan Coulton, but it was so long ago that maybe most here no longer remember.

There’s also an even more nerdy video based on World of Warcraft. I think the WoW video does a better job of demonstrating that the code monkey has a “big warm fuzzy secret heart.” But using a giant gorilla as a stand-in for a beta computer programmer just doesn’t work.

I like this song because there are so few songs about incel computer programmers.

What doesn’t make sense: if the computer programmer (aka code monkey) is into both Tab and Mountain Dew, why didn’t he bring the girl (whom he has oneitis for) a Tab, which she wouldn’t have been able to reject for having too many calories?

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Irma is now a category four hurricane, as of 500 PM AST Mon Sep 04 2017. South Florida still looks like a good possibility for landfall.

Paul Simon – You Can Call Me Al

This is one of the most pointless music videos ever.

Here we have a song that I find very soulful, about a middle-aged man disappointed with his life.

But in the music video, we have Chevy Chase lip-syncing the song in a manner that’s both comic and obnoxious, while Paul Simon, like a beta male, watches the much taller alpha-male Chevy Chase. Huh? It has absolutely nothing to do with the song.

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Bruno writes in a comment:

You come into a room. A faker has stolen you job. you then have to make a clown of yourself. If that is not the nightmare of middle-age crisis …

Tom Tom Club – Genius of Love

It’s very diverse for an 80s music video. I can’t figure out what the song is about, but I like it.

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Steve Sailer writes in a comment:

It’s about some girls in jail talking about what they are going to do when they get out of jail, which is go dancing. Then there is some rather nerdy listing of good dance music bands.

An excellent answer.

But still unexplained: why does the girl have purple skin? Why is the unhappy boyfriend the “genius of love” despite going missing?

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Thanks to Bruno, I’ve figured it out.

It’s about a girl who’s in jail, and as soon as she gets out she’s going to have “natural fun.” I think that in this case, “natural” means primitive. The fun that she’s going to have is sex, drugs and rock & roll. Regarding the rock & roll part, the girl only likes black genres of music like soul, hip-hop, funk, black disco, reggae.

But despite liking black music, in the video her boyfriend is white.

Bruno suggested that she has purple skin because it’s a reaction to taking drugs. I’ll go with that unless someone has a better explanation.

The stanza in the song about doing cocaine with her boyfriend was removed from the music video. As was some stuff in a nonsense language that sounds like Japanese, which Bruno says refers to the ecstasy of a cocaine-fueled orgasm.

The reason she’s in jail in the first place probably had to do with drugs. So is it smart that the first thing she’s going to do when she gets out of jail is do more drugs? But then she admits in the song that there’s no thinking involved. “Who needs to think when your feet just go?”

I think there’s some underlying racism here. Lack of thinking, lack of future-time-orientation, self-destructive drug abuse, natural (i.e. primitive) fun, is all associated with black music.

The only smart person in the video, her “genius” boyfriend, is white. Who is also “unhappy.” Primitive blacks are happier than smart whites.

Also, Steve Sailer is right, that the ode to famous black musicians is kind of nerdy, something that the black musicians themselves never would have sung in that manner. I think that’s just an unintentional paradox.

I also think it’s interesting that she says that when she’s having sex, “It is one time I’m glad I’m not a man.” It’s a rather strange insertion of feminist resentment which feels unrelated to the rest of the lyrics.

This song is a lot deeper than I had realized.

Turning Japanese starring Kirsten Dunst

The girl from Spiderman did this cover of the 1980s song “Turning Japanese” by the Vapors. It’s an eight-year-old video, but I haven’t seen it until recently.

Much better than the original music video (although though the Vapors did the song a lot better).

Rhinestone Cowboy

By Glen Campbell, 1936-2017

I remember when this song was overplayed on the radio.

I think he looks pretty skinny for a country singer. A modern-day country singer would be more obviously jacked up and full of muscle.

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The song is actually about how the singer wants to make it big in New York City. The chorus about being a “rhinestone cowboy” is an analogy for how it will feel to be famous in the big city, it’s not literally about being a cowboy.

Even back in 1975, New York City was the place where everyone wanted to make it.

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The biggest hit country song of 2016, H.O.L.Y. by Florida Georgia Line, is just a boring love song.

I think the girl in the video has more muscle than Glen Campbell. Okay, that’s a big exaggeration. But she does have a nice body compared to skinny 70s girls like Farrah Fawcett.

Mooch walking away from Washington?

Wayne and Garth do Bohemian Rhapsody

1. Did Queen predict the Mooch?

2. The scenes of driving around in some suburban area feels like it happened 25 years ago and it wouldn’t be like that today, but I can’t put my finger on why that’s the case.