What is it about mental hospitals that holds such fascination for us? Is it because we all feel like outsiders? Is it because we love the idea of being able to spend our entire day in pajamas? Is it because mental hospitals ceased to exist in the 1980s? All of these are excellent reasons.

I think it is clear, though, that we all have our own, individual reasons for being drawn to them. You can see this in these two radically different music videos that take place in a mental hospital.

First we have Melissa Etheridge’s video for Come to My Window:

First off, I just noticed while watching this video that this song has the smarmiest bass playing in the world. Seriously, listen to this song and imagine the bass player smirking and winking at you while playing. I guarantee that it will fit perfectly.

The video is all in black and white and centers on this woman in a room with a window to which you should come.

The black and white video along with her angry and intense matter suggests a gritty reality. I’m a little worried that this video plays into the mentally- ill-women-are-sexy-and-vulnerable stereotype, but it doesn’t seem too exploitative in that direction.

We also get shots of Melissa Etheridge playing a 12-string acoustic guitar and singing.

I love how husky her voice is on this song! It’s like she smoked two packs of cigarettes, spent an hour imitating Rod Stewart imitating Louis Armstrong, and then recorded this song. It’s a little unclear what that amp is doing there since she is playing acoustic guitar and it doesn’t look like it is a P.A., but whatever. Gives her someplace to sit.

The worrying thing about this video is the infantilization of the woman in the mental hospital.

I understand that she can’t take care of herself and might say things that don’t strictly make sense, but she isn’t a child. She is an adult woman. What is with this drawing? It looks like the scribbles of a pre-school child with a crazy sun. I don’t understand this sun especially since the song refers to the light of the moon. I’ve never seen the moon drawn like that. Is that the norm? Just draw a sun and then scribble inside of it? Not to mention that the moon doesn’t actually have light, it is all reflected sunlight. Astronomy, people. It’s important.

Green Day has the opposite approach in their video for Basket Case. Rather than suggesting true reality with black and white, Green Day uses colors brighter than reality to indicate the false world of a person on drugs.

The video opens in a colorful world with the singer alone. It’s not entirely clear where he is, but the man in all white standing next to him with his arms crossed gives a hint.

Once the other band members arrive it becomes clear that they are in a mental hospital. They act confused and need prodding to perform their normal societal roles.

The drugs they take give a semblance of reality and normalcy, but everything is not quite right. The singer’s eyes are too green and the floor is too turquoise. The video seems to make light of being in a mental hospital a little bit, but I think the song is about feeling numb to the world. The question, “Am I just stoned?” appears throughout the song because they can’t separate their feelings from how the drugs make them feel. That seems scary.

I think these videos show two different serious views of the mentally ill. And that’s a little surprising. Is this a public service announcement to hug a mentally ill person? Are we the insane ones and they the only truly sane? Is it time to eat lunch yet? Not quite. It is too early.

-PTD

First off, take a look at this video:

In case you can’t watch it, this is a clip from the show How I Met Your Mother where Barney Stinson explains that he rooted for the blonde, evil kid in The Karate Kid instead of Ralph Macchio’s character. I’ve decided that he is right. What convinced me? Sum 41 and their music video for the song In Too Deep.

The character he is discussing from The Karate Kid is Johnny Lawrence. Johnny has spent most of his life studying karate and has become quite good at it. It makes no sense that someone who just started training would be able to beat him. This is a major theme in sports movies. Whether it is the Hawks or the team from Iceland, many movies have this same narrative of a ragtag team besting experts for no real reason. We’re supposed to cheer for these them because they’re underdogs. But what about these other teams? They have spent years honing their craft and can thus dominate less experienced opponents. Does that make them evil? Certainly not. Frequently these movies will have the talented teams do something else evil to reinforce their evilness, but I think the main reason we are supposed to hate them is that they are good.

There are good ways to handle an underdog movie. Take Rocky. When he decides to take on Apollo Creed he knows he has to work hard because Creed is so much better than him. In the end he loses, because Creed is much better than he is. His victory is getting Creed to see him as a worthy adversary, not as a pushover. That’s why his loss is still triumphant.

Another example of this done well is my favorite movie, Breaking Away. Just like The Mighty Ducks (I linked to it earlier as a bad example), Breaking Away is about classism. The heroes are poor and we sympathize with them. The bad guys are on the swim team and there is a scene where the main swimmer humiliates one of the poor kids in a swim race. Do the poor kids decide to beat those rich swimming assholes at their own game? No! The poor kids decide to compete with the rich kids at what the poor kids are good at, cycling. So when the poor kids win at the end it seems reasonable and the rich kids get to learn a valuable lesson about stopping being assholes.

Sum 41 deftly avoids these good examples of underdog sports encounters and finds themselves firmly in the bad-example-bin of history. Take a look.

In Too Deep by Sum 41:

At the opening of the video we get to meet the “good” guys and the “bad” guys. We start with Sum 41, who are supposedly the good guys that we are rooting for.

They aren’t even wearing swimsuits. But this is (for some reason, probably the song title) a diving contest! Totally inappropriate clothing.

Here are the supposedly bad guys. Notice the “No Jocks” sign in the background in case you didn’t know how you’re supposed to feel about them.

Their bodies are sculpted and tanned. They wear the appropriate swimsuits for diving.

How are the two groups characterized? The “bad” guys are gay, I guess? We get a butt slap.

I don’t think there is anything gay about touching a man’s butt, regardless of your gender. Men’s butts are awesome. Deal with it. I think Sum 41 is pretty insecure, though, so they shy away from butt touching.

We also get this sequence that is less ambiguous:

Wink.

Wink.

Point. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I love pointing! This characterization makes me love these “bad” guys. They like to touch men’s butts and then point. That sounds like an ideal afternoon for me.

Sum 41 wants us to dislike them, though. Being gay is meant to be bad. Classy guys. How do they show their side? I think a closer look at the people with the “No Jocks” sign gives us a good idea.

Ugh. They look unbearable. It’s like they looked at a series of pictures of Avril Lavigne to come up with their whole identities. A boy scout uniform? Bright pink hair? A tie on a woman? Okay, I like the last one but Annie Hall came out in the ’70s. I’m not sure it is still cool. I guess these are the people we are supposed to sympathize with.

Anyways, in the video the two groups dive back and forth. It becomes clear that the “bad” guys are much better divers. Probably because they are wearing the appropriate clothing, are in good physical shape, and have a lot of practice diving. It becomes clear that the “good” guys have no chance of winning.

Suddenly, something terrible happens.

This diver, after years of practice, suddenly slips on his way to the end of the diving board. He falls into the water.

All that work destroyed by a little accident! My heart really goes out to him.

Then we see the final diver for the “good” guys.

He suddenly reveals that he is wearing an appropriate swimsuit. Maybe he has been practicing!

At this point we see a Ralph Macchio sign in the crowd indicating that Sum 41 know what they are doing here.

The guy proceeds to do a ridiculous jump back and forth between multiple diving boards which probably isn’t even legal under the rules of diving.

The “good” guys win and the crowd goes apeshit.

That’s the story. Doesn’t it seem like we are rooting for the wrong guys? Shouldn’t the people who practiced more win? Are we really supposed to think that gay people are that bad at everything?

This isn’t the only thing the video does wrong. At the opening there are sensitive lyrics but the singer has an inappropriate look on his face.

It makes it seem like the singer doesn’t even know what his song is about.

The video does a few things right, though. Sum 41 aren’t even good enough to screw everything up. There’s this score that a diver gets which promotes the band and reminds you of what you’re watching.

Sweet.

There’s the guitar player coming out of the pool like Poseidon for some inept two-handed tapping.

I like it! I wonder if his guitar got ruined.

Then there is this exchange where a woman blows a kiss to the guitar player.

His response?

That inexplicable frowny face pretty much makes up for everything.

Keep this in mind next time you watch an underdog sports movie: Who deserves to win? It certainly isn’t Sum 41.

-PTD

“The ham sandwich theorem takes its name from the case when n = 3 and the three objects of any shape are a chunk of ham and two chunks of bread — notionally, a sandwich — which can then all be simultaneously bisected with a single cut (i.e., a plane).” - from Wikipedia

Wow! They (who?) say open with a quote and I sure picked a doozy today. I think I’m going to throw the clause, “notionally a sandwich,” into some of my conversation and see just what kind of friends I make.

Today is the first edition of Free-for-all Friday where I let my inhibitions run wild and write about whatever catches my fancy. I’ve been thinking a lot about sandwiches lately. Ham sandwiches in particular. What is it about a ham sandwich that makes it the go-to ‘wich? Muslims and Jews don’t eat them, for one thing. That can’t be the only reason, though.

There is also no real standard for what constitutes a ham sandwich. You have ones like this:

That seems like mostly just two pieces of bread that might have something between them. On the opposite end of the spectrum you have this:

That’s really more of a pile of meat than a sandwich. Finally, there is this:

That is practically a work of art. But would you eat it?

Which brings us to this video:

The video seems to be for children based on the name.

However, the letters are talking about how they are so hungry. They can’t eat. Is it because they are too poor? Is it because they are letters and letters, obviously, can’t eat? Is it because the bounds of their mouths sometimes move past the edges of their bodies? This does make us wonder where anything put into they mouth would go. I think children would be terrified by this gang.

Anyways, they decide to sing about sandwiches and they’ve gotta do it…

OLD SCHOOL! No child would understand this.

One of the sandwiches they sing about is the BLT, which for some reason in this song contains cheese.

That’s crazy, right? Does every sandwich need cheese? It isn’t the BCLT!

The song does bring up the ham sandwich question. Naturally cheese is included.

Based on this song a ham sandwich is two pieces of bread with ham and possibly other ingredients (cheese, mustard, mayonnaise). That is our definition.

Armed with this, we can immediately reject the band Ham Sandwich (possibly Ham SandwicH?!?) who appears to be from some sort of foreign country where they speak English. Since this is ostensibly a music video blog you may watch a mildly interesting video for their song Ants:

It’s fine. In it an ant makes dinner and then is foiled in his suicide attempt by a human woman.

Okay, now I think we are ready for our top 5 list, alluded to in the title of this post. I’m proud to present Another Flavor’s Top 5 Ham Sandwiches. As is traditional, we will start from number 5 and work our way up to number 1.

Number 5 :

I like that this ham sandwich is coming soon. It is important for sandwiches to arrive promptly when desired.

Number 4 :

Is this ham sandwich grilled or something? That seems amazing. The cheese looks melted and a bit greasy, but in a good way.

Number 3 :

I feel like there’s something interesting and exciting happening here. Is everything shredded up and all mixed together in there? I don’t know but I’d love to find out.

Number 2 :

This ham sandwich is boldly frank. There is something about the thick slices of tomato and big folds of ham that is really exciting. This sandwich is not fancy, but it is lots of what you want and nothing you don’t.

And now, the ham sandwich you’ve been waiting for, Another Flavor’s Top Ham Sandwich. Number 1 :

This one is really for connoisseurs. Is that a sesame bagel or just a hearty sesame roll? The round shape goes well with the [pile-of-ham approach](http://www.theguardian.com/football/2013/nov/24/premierleague- westhamunited) to the meat. It appears that there is no cheese to distract from the flavor of high quality ham. Excellent looking sandwich. WOOOOOOOOOO!

I’ll be back on Monday. Have a wonderful weekend.

-PTD