Since starting this blog I’ve learned a few things:

1. Numbered lists are extremely useful.
2. If you use metaphors in your writing, you make a met out of ap and hors.
3. A lot of music videos use dreams or dream-like imagery.

This video, “Everlong” by Foo Fighters, is all about dreams.

At the start we are introduced to this couple:

Aren’t they wholesome looking? This is like an asleep American Gothic except the man’s and woman’s positions are reversed, the woman appears to be taller than the man, and the woman is a man in a wig.

Each of them is dreaming a separate dream, that just happen to have the same characters. In the man’s dream, he returns to his youth as a punk:

Based on his buttons (specifically the one with the skull and crossbones on it) he is a total mess. He’s using an old fashioned water-closet-type toilet, but he is not alone. He is being menaced by some goons who seem to have followed him into the bathroom.

These are some grade-A goons! They both have 1950’s juvenile delinquent hair and are wearing ridiculous clothing. Why do white people look back on the 1950’s as a golden era? It was clearly the golden age of the juvenile delinquent! Yes, it was a golden age, but that’s like longing for the ‘80’s because it was the golden age of the crack epidemic. Back in the ‘50’s every time you turned around a couple of swarthy, hirsute hoodlums would leer at you from underneath their duck’s ass haircuts. Terrifying.

The goons are causing more trouble than just exposing the man to their horrifying visages, however. They start manhandling the woman.

Manhandlers! Note: manhandle is such a great word. It’s like one of those German words that is just a bunch of nouns bundled together describing exactly what the word means. Manhandle: to handle in the manner of a man.

This manhandling infuriates the man and he decides to show those goons just what kind of hand a real man has to handle other men who need to be handled in a manly fashion.

He then proceeds to beat the living shit out of them with his enormous hand.

They are beaten soundly. Onlookers, who were apparently not at all bothered by the goon-powered manhandling, are shocked by this real-man-powered giant hand manHANDling.

Having thus defeated the goons, we can move to the woman’s dream.

She is sitting in a cabin in the woods (just like the popular Joss Whedon movie, Serenity) reading a book. She is concerned, though, because the man is outside in the dark collecting wood.

OH SHIT! THE GOONS ARE HERE TOO!

Being a woman, she does not decide to grow a giant hand and beat her attackers until their bodies are limp. She is completely helpless except for her ability to use the phone. Women! Am I right?

She doesn’t take the time to think that since the man is outside collecting wood, he would be unable to answer a phone call. But wait! She is actually calling him in real life from inside the dream!

Instantly realizing that the woman would in no way be able to protect herself and unable to wake her, the man decides to try and enter her dream world.

At first he enters into every man’s dream reality, fondling (manhandling?) a group of women.

But didn’t he come to the dream world for some reason? That’s right! He has to rescue the woman!

He steels his resolve and enters the cabin wielding two logs chained together like nunchuks.

He finds the goons tying up the woman. Apparently they didn’t really have a great plan for what to do if they were successful in menacing her.

Now, despite the fact that the man marched into the cabin with the nunchuck logs, and that he spent time swinging them around in a menacing manner, he drops the logs and goes with plan A: a giant hand.

Meanwhile, the woman shows that she wasn’t so helpless after all. She can defend herself, but only when using a woman’s tool.

The couple successfully defeat the goons. Oh no! The goons are in the couple’s bedroom watching them sleep!

Everyone sheds their costumes. Check out this delightful sequence:

The fact that he pulls back his shirt to reveal his real arms underneath his fake arms is absolutely amazing.

Then, the band rocks out.

There are a lot of things to like about this video. I love that all the members of the band have major parts in the plot. Why not have half the band act as antagonists and the other half as protagonists? It’s such a good idea! More videos should use that. I also love that there are funny parts without being a joke-y video.

One thing I don’t love is the way lip syncing is handled in the video. The singer sings a few lines, seemingly at random, throughout the dream part of the video. This bothers me much like it did in Lorde’s video for “Royals” because I don’t understand the decision to sing some lines and not others. I feel like if they waited until everyone changed out of their costumes and started playing their instruments to start lip syncing it would make a lot more sense.

That isn’t too important, though. This video is so much fun and I love it.

-PTD