Possibly the Strangest Music Video... Ever

Part 1:

There is a large, old building, a mansion or some sort of school.

There is a woman, presumably Bonnie Tyler, standing and looking out a window.

There is a ... robot bursting into the mansion/school.

There are several open doors with red curtains flying out of them.

There are students at desks.

There is an angel in a chair, holding a dove.

There are a bunch of students wearing swimming goggles and getting splashed with water.

There are ninjas practicing ... ninja. In the middle of the school.

There are a bunch of men having a really splashy toast in the same room as the ninjas.

There are two people practicing fencing in the same place as the ninjas and the splashy dinnerpeople.

Bonnie is out on a balcony thing.

The gang from 'Grease' is practicing for the sequal on the stairs leading up to the level under where Bonnie is singing.

There are a number of football players running into each other in another part of the school. In the dark.

One of the open doorways just lost its curtain.

Bonnie is running down the stairs of the school.

Hercules is practicing cartwheels/ninjitsu in the ... somewhere in the school.

The curtained doorways are blowing open in sync.

Bonnie is running down the suddenly really bright hallway.

Hercules guy is attempting to seduce the video watchers.

The splashy dinnerguests are throwing the food, cutlery, etc. around.

Bonnie is still running down the hallway.

The dinner people are still throwing things.

The curtained doors are blowing open again. Even though they were still open, like, thirty seconds ago.

Bonnie is still runnning.

Dinner people are still throwing things.

Bonnie. Running.

One of the fencers is pouring sweat out of his mask. Amount appears to be equal to half the contents of Niagara Falls.

Bonnie has finally stopped running, and is now facing fifteen or sixteen demonic robot choirboy Damien things.

One of the DRCBD things has decided to pirouette-fly towards Bonnie.

Bonnie is completely unfased.

The angel with the dove gets a close-up and appears to be the younger sibling of Marilyn Manson or Jessica Simpson with no make-up.

A bunch of guys wearing what looks to be track outfits and indian war paint are running up some stairs to the school.

Half-dressed students are singing.

Track Indians run up the stairs and start doing interpretive dance around Bonnie, who is still singing and apparently totally used to having crazy shit like this happen.

DRCBD things are moving closer to Bonnie and seriously starting to creep me out.

Bonnie is back in the middle of the Interpretive-Dancing Track Indians, who are still dancing.

The DRCBD things are doing a much slower and uninteresting version of the iterpretive dance by the Track Indians.

The Track Indians are apparently also part-time S&M slaves, as made apparent by some of their outfits.

DRCBD things still doing their 'dance'.

Bonnie is overwhelmed by the weirdness and collapses. Still singing.

Some other angel-like person thing is flapping their wings in Bonnie's face.

Bonnie is outside shaking the hands of some of the students. One of them is a DRCBD thing that apparently only NOW freaks out Bonnie, and it sings at her before everyone goes back inside the building, leaving Bonnie alone in a bad version of the Men In Black uniforms.

(Note: I've decided the only school weird enough to have all this going on at the same time and have it be considered perfectly normal is Hogwarts.)


Part 2:


I tried to write my observations in the same way as the video seems to have been made: in completely random segments, with only the recurring theme of Bonnie singing, students doing different activities and Demonic Robot ChoirBoy Damien (TM) things holding the video all together. I also deliberately made my observations fairly undescriptive, as the video has quite a bit of fog and extremely dark lighting, making it hard to see a lot of the details, especially in the case of the Track SexSlave Indians, whose complete outfits aren't entirely clear until you've seen them five or six times.

"Dear Sister..."

CAUTION: This song WILL be stuck in your head for the next twenty mins.

This Saturday Night Live skit, based on this semi-recent episode of 'The OC', made me laugh a lot more than it should've over the weekend. During my search for the fabled 'Dear Sister' skit, I encountered multiple spoofs before finally finding the above version, seemingly the only one on YouTube that wasn't recorded on someone's cellphone and therefore isn't horribly pixelated (though, admittedly, the 'Evaluation Copy' does get a little annoying). Among the spoofs generated by 'Dear Sister' fans was this 'The Office' version, and this '300' version, which is decidedly shorter than the SNL version (above) though still just as funny.

The 'Lion King' version was just plain funny. Come on, you know it is.

The 'Pocahontas' version actually surprised me when I saw it - not only is it funny, it's also almost completely move-for-move identical to the choreography of the fight between the two guys in the 'OC' version.

There were multiple 'Lord of the Rings' versions, which wasn't surprising considering what ample room for spoofing Boromir's death scene offers up. In this case, the maker of the spoof added their own twist using well-chosen clips of Legolas shooting his own arrows seemingly at Boromir as he's being attacked by the orcs.

I'm not entirely sure why I found 'Dear Sister' so funny in the first place - people shooting each other obviously isn't funny, but the repetition of having each person get shot, apparently die, then suddenly start shooting their attacker or whoever happens to walk in the room next does start to hold humor, especially when the next person walking in is all 'HAAAY GUESS WHAT OH SNAP', or picks up a note written by the first victim that lists an impossible and ironic sequence of events that viewers know has already and actually come true, and also reveals yet another ironic and mildly sequence of events that then proceeds to play out, complete with the world's strangest and possibly catchiest techno music.

But, no, really... that song's going to be stuck in your head for like, the next twenty, thirty minutes. Good luck getting it out.

This might help a bit: 'Muppets' Bloopers

Have Your Brains and Eat Them, too

If anyone was downtown Saturday night, they probably got more entertainment in their evening than they'd intended as over 260 zombies streaked down the sidewalks of Lincoln.

Starting at the State Theater on 14th and O Street and marching our way through UNL campus, the Haymarket, and, in one zombie's case, some unfortunate bystander's dinner, it was two and a half hours to remember.

At first, I wasn't even sure if I wanted to go. I wasn't sure how to get there, didn't know if the people I'd been invited by were still planning to go almost two months after the initial invitation. With almost two hours to the Walk's start, I got onto facebook and immediately found five of my friends had decided to go - in fact, they'd been at the Theater for quite a while already. My mind made up, I grabbed the most obnoxious colored make-ups I could find and smeared blood (aka lipstick) across my face and arms, as well as some green and black eyeshadow for a mildy-decayed look. Once I emerged from the bathroom, my mom simply looked at me as if to say 'Where did I go wrong?'.

Having bribed one of my other friends into accompanying me, I picked her up and we promptly headed for Burger King, where we found we were just in time to not only scare some of the customers, but also eat with my mom and brothers, who had no idea we were there. Sadly, we really only recieved strange looks from an ex-cowoker who cheerfully called, 'Have fun!' as we headed out the door.

After two years of being able to drive on my own, I still have an abysmally small amount of knowledge as far as the streets of Lincoln. Once we finally managed to reach the right intersection, we were at a loss as to where to go.

"Where do you think we should park? Do you see the theater?" I asked, trying to navigate through downtown Lincoln's hellish maze of one-way streets. My friend Katie simply pointed straight ahead, where a newly-eaten bride and groom were making their way across the street from the nearest parking lot. Question one answered, anyway.

Inside the State Theater, we were told to sign a large list of participants, supposedly so we could be tracked down if we caused any trouble during the walk. After signing in, we made our way to the back of the theater, where we were immediately swamped by over 300 zombies who made my own make-up look like a bit of over-done lipstick.

We were soon told to 'sit down and shaddap' by a rather gruesome victim of the un-dead, who explained the three simple rules of the walk: no attacking bystanders who had no giant duct-tape X's on their person (the signature of a wanna-be zombie), no scaring small children, and no touching or entering establishments.

"Also," a slightly shorter, rotund zombie announced amid the murmers of excitement, "I don't want to see any of this." He quickly slunk across the stage in a rather creepy manner, stopped, straightened, and suddenly began smiling his face off and waving frantically to an imaginary audience.

After massive amounts of fake blood had been thrown on/at us (I was covered up to my elbows in the stuff before we even left the building), we made our way outside into a back alley, where more volunteers were waiting to spray us with blood before we took off into the street. Cameramen were lined up, running shoes ready for the chase. With a cry of 'BRAIIIIINS', we were off.

At first, most people were slinking along, occasionally doing a well-timed stumble or screech at bystanders and attacking duct-tape bystanders every fifteen minutes or so, covering them in massive amounts of blood. By the time we reached UNL campus, many had started to speed up and were now jogging along ala '28 Days Later'.

"Oh my God." I laughed, grabbing one of my fellow zombie-friends and dragging her over to look. "Pirates."

Against every concievable law of coincidence, our pack of 300 zombies had stumbled straight into the middle of a Frat party, where 100 or so 'Pirates' were loading onto three buses. Most of them flew straight onto the buses, with only a handful staying out on the lawn to wave flimsy 'ages 3 and up' swords at us at full arm's length. Deciding buses didn't count as establishments, many started flailing at the windows, screaming for 'brains', 'beer', and, in one apparent Vegan zombie's case, 'GRRRAIIINSSS!'.

Once past the pirate buses, our party picked up, streaking down into the Haymarket after a short break in the commons so the rest of the group could catch up (zombies are still prone to obeying traffic laws, apparently.) We made our way down into the Farmer's Market area, passing by several bars and one overly-confident, 300 lb. woman who decided to flash the party her 'goods'.

"We said 'brains', not 'breasts'!" Came from all sides as many of the zombies suddenly became more nauseas at the sight of her own exposed flesh than our festering wound-covered own.

As our party ground down to a close, we passed the formerly-known-as-Douglas Theatres, where the Christian Dude With the Giant Cross (tm) seized his opportunity to scream about 'servants of Satan', while more than one zombie considered crossing over to him simply for kicks. As we reached our final destination, 300 bodies collapsed onto the sidewalk amid cheers of triumph and calls of 'where the hell did my ride go? Damnit!'.

"Everyone," the crowd fell silent as the head zombie stood up for a head count. "Thank you all for coming out here tonight. The final count for this year's zombie walk..." There was a general intake of breath. "... Is 261!" We all burst into applause as the Walk organizers exchanged hugs and high-fives in congratulations. The first zombie walk, organized fall 2007 to promote a downtown haunted-house, had only been 131. The numbers had almost completely doubled.

Looking back, I definitely should have gotten there sooner in order to get completely zombied-up. But who knows, maybe next year....