Last time I lectured you on what makes a good video. Today, I forgot all that stuff (probably due to drinking) to bring you a video about people wearing enormous block suits while walking down an infinite hallway.

“I Love It” is not a very good song and I find its lyrical content highly objectionable. That doesn’t really concern me right now, though, because I’m convinced that the song only exists to allow this video to be made. I imagine the three artists showing up to shoot the video only to realize that they hadn’t yet made a song together.

After quickly recording the first thing that popped into their heads, they shot this masterpiece:

Like good science fiction, the video drops you into a fully formed world, not bothering to explain anything. Astute viewers are able to glean a lot from what we’re given, however.

It opens with a poofy-sleeved woman walking down a glowing hallway filled with feature-less, arm-less, and legless female mannequins.

She is followed by two block men.

I love how the woman is shot from below so she looks enormous and the men are shot from above so, especially with the over-sized clothes, they look like tiny kids.

They act like kids, too. They see the woman’s butt (kind of unavoidable since they’re following her).

One of the men has a very playful look about her butt.

I’m pretty sure that’s exactly the look my four-year-old son would have on his face if he realized that he could be looking at someone’s butt.

The woman responds imperiously.

Her hugeness is only emphasized by the additional hugeness of her poofy shirt.

The playful man, knowing he is caught in the act, responds beatifically.

The men start dancing to cover up the awkwardness of the moment.

That is the plot of the video. Obviously, there isn’t much to it, but what’s there is truly a blast. You wouldn’t think that a video consisting entirely of people walking down a hallway would have a plot at all, but they make it work. I think a big part of it is how much fine they were clearly having.

As Gandhi always said, fun makes it run.

-PTD

What do Patsy Cline, Aerosmith, Gnarls Barkley, and Seal all have in common? If you said, “They all do a song called ‘Crazy’” you are both correct and unbelievably predictable. If you are willing to be a little flexible about the naming, you can even include Britney Spears with (You Drive Me) Crazy (don’t forget to whisper the part in parentheses), Ricky Martin’s Livin’ La Vida Loca, or the entire ouvre of Meshuggah. It might be more accurate to talk about the artists who never did a song (or named their band) about being “crazy” as having something in common as they’ve bucked the trend.

I’m not hear to talk about craziness, however, unless you count crazy clothes (which, honestly, why wouldn’t you?). Since this blog rebooted it’s only been updated on Mondays. As a result, some of the old “daily” features have fallen by the wayside. Today, I want to return to one whose name always brings a smile to my face: Sartorial Sursday. That series was not actually about tailoring for the most part (with one notable exception) and it actually took place on Thursday, instead of the traditional nordic holiday of Sursday.

Regardless, I’ve decided to dust off the old mothballs (is that the saying?) and bring Sartorial Sursday back for the occasional Monday stroll.

The reason, is this jewel of a gem - Crazy by Seal:

It opens with a man dressed all in white sitting in a white room.

Suddenly, a group of bestockinged women run out, as if coming from inside his body.

Then, we get our first great outfit of the video. He appears to be wearing a jacket with bumpy sleeves.

It’s hard to tell if they are supposed to be spikes in the manner of the road warriors, or if they are just meant to be texture in the way that a cable knit sweater has texture.

Then we get a head on shot of Seal in his white cloak.

In case you can’t tell, yes, he is wearing very high waisted pants with a tanktop with a very low v neck. The v is so deep cut it hasn’t met in the middle yet before it gets below the waist of the pants. A very bold choice.

Also, what is the deal with the thing he is holding in his hand? He’s holding it frequently throughout the video, so if feel like it must be a thing but it is not a thing I understand.

Get ready for a full view of that bumpy jacket:

I’m not sure what’s happening with the belt there, but I admire the way it stridently extends on both sides of his body.

Next, we see him in the same deep v tank top, but now underneath a truly enormous leather coat.

According to a search for the phrase “how tall is seal”, Seal is 6’ 4”, so I’m pretty sure that coat took 4 cows, minimum.

We even get a shot of Seal sans coat, this time playing what appears to be a bass.

To further the nonexistent plot hinted at in the opening of the video, we get more shots of the bestockinged women.

They must have blown all of the clothing budget on Seal’s clothes since they couldn’t afford to fix those huge rips.

The video ends with Seal inexplicably holding a dove in the snow.

I want to emphasize that he does not release the dove at the end of the video. That’s wouldn’t necessarily make sense per se, but it would at least seem symbolic in some way. Instead, we just get a man holding a dove in the snow. Which I guess is symbolic for something else: a kiss from a rose.

-PTD

Welcome to Satorial Sursday here on Another Flavor! Every Sursday we discuss the crazy clothing and general appearance of people in music videos.

I don’t have a ton of time so I’ll try to keep this brief. I was shocked to discover that I’d never written about Cyndi Lauper on Another Flavor, especially on a Sursday. I mean, just look at her!

Specifically, this look:

Her whole look is a combination of formal and hobo. She wears a formal prom- type dress and a formal hat. The way she has the hat jauntily tilted, though, really ruins any formality it might have had. The collar/shoulder covering thing on her dress just screams cheapness. Also, she wears chain belts on the outside of the dress. What are they holding up? Is she wearing invisible pants? I refuse to accept belts only for fashion. Finally we have her strange gloves and wrist things. Are those puffy wrist poofs attached to the gloves or separate? The overall effect is one of delightful whimsy and ramshackle charm.

Also, her hair color is fantastic. It is one of those colors that no real person has ever had. Why should we limit ourselves to colors found in nature for our hair? There is no reason.

There are some other fun outfits in this video.

I’m not really talking about the dad character, but he is wearing a real winner here. Lauper is wearing what I first assumed were pajamas. Now I’m not so sure. Is it just a really unflattering pants suits of some sort? Is it a work jumpsuit? No matter what it is, it is fun.

The final outfit we’ll look at is this one:

Those glasses are so cool. They are those terrible 1950s glasses, but are also sunglasses. She is wearing a nice red dress with punk-rock type chains on her wrists. Again we have a bizarre contrast.

If I didn’t really like Cyndi Lauper I might think that her look is a contrived hipster-ish thrift-store-based ironic joke. But she just seems to be having so much fun. And girls just wanna have fun. They just wanna. I’ll assume women want to have fun, too. But maybe not just have fun.

-PTD