pathology_doc

I haven't seen this first filmclip since I was at school, and then it was only once. The song, of course, got plenty of airplay back in the day. The lead singer of this band has an... interesting stare and a grin that at times approaches rictus. His initial appearance is somewhat eerie, but that's nothing compared to what happens later...




Watching that filmclip reminded me of another singer with an interesting stare and a bizarre suit of facial expressions, perhaps because of the hot wire he claims they put to his head. "I could be wrong, I could be right," sings John Lydon and somehow, when you see the look on his face the first time he sings it, you get the idea that the second possibility is far more LOLishly sinister! Whatever the case, enjoy Rise:



And last - no ghosts, no weird facial features, but plenty of weirdness in every other way. In 1992, the Australian ensemble group Company of Strangers covered the Beatles' Baby You're A Rich Man, pushing very close to being better than the original, while the clip animators - no doubt placed on an LSD infusion before they began - did an extraordinarily good job of paying homage to the most mind-bending aspects of the 1968 Yellow Submarine film in four and a half spectacular minutes. If you think you've seen it all before, you haven't - but Yellow Submarine is where you saw the only other thing that was anything like it. So sit back and drink it in. You may never get your mind back, but you'll sure have fun losing it!

We've probably all heard of H.P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos, a universe in which too much of the wrong knowledge (or exposure to the wrong thing for however brief a time) can enslave or destroy the minds of the unwary (or unlucky). The victims range from those who do not want to see but have no choice, to those who feel (are?) compelled to watch in horrified fascination until their minds are destroyed (subsumed, enslaved, whatever)... all the way to the incredibly stupid (or unspeakably sinister) who go out of their way to Seek What Should Not Be Sought despite (or in the latter case because of) the consequences.

Much of this is nameless, its content only hinted at, and is more disturbing for the implications and the omissions than for what is said overtly. And so I give you... well, let's just call it Cthulhu's Video Playlist; a horrifying cornucopia of the worst that modern video music can throw at the human mind. Watch to the end, if you dare... and thank whatever Elder God might, by the time you read this in the dim distant future, have had the clips pulled in the name of "copyright". Don't let them fool you; they're doing it to save all of us. Just don't watch it all the way through when the stars are right...

We begin with this abomination. It disturbs me to think that my own countrymen were responsible for the video; and like much of Lovecraft's (hopefully) mythical arcana of doom and misery, it's catching and it... grows on you.

If you're not singing along by the end, you might just be strong enough to move on to this. I have never been able to watch this through. Hell, I've never been able to listen to it fully. You won't want to either, if you know what's good for you, but if you do - and you're still sane - you can delve deeper into the same pit of horror here.

If that wasn't bad enough, there's this and this, and for good measure there's this.

Still alive? Still sane? Still with me? Fine, let's finish you off then.

By the time you've closed the last link, guzzled the last brainbleach... you'll need something completely different. Lose yourself in something safely instrumental (clip segues into the first half of another at 2:21 or so - and OMFG I haven't seen this videoclip for TWENTY THREE YEARS - enjoy while you still can!).

So in between varnishing a footstool and sanding down some wood for a bookshelf, I was catching up with the latest Australia vs. South Africa Test cricket match on TV, and there came one of those agonizing moments when the ball and the batsman's groin take on a close association. Needless to say, that player was down for quite a few minutes and one of the commentators remarked "...he's on his hands and knees, groaning...", an accurate summation of what happens when a thrown object collides with one's testicles at anything approaching 130km/hr (protective 'boxes' notwithstanding).

I wonder what his fellow commentator was thinking, however, when he added the words "As only a New South Welshman can." That mental picture is a whole different kettle of fish (and makes me sort of glad I was born in South Australia instead).

As a reward for my woodworking efforts, and also for getting the garage cleaned up, I took myself down to one of the local cafés for something caffeinated. Normally there is overhead music, but due to an equipment fault, patrons were subjected to the Country Music Channel. And thus it was that I finally found out exactly who it was who put Warren Zevon's immortal "Werewolves of London" in a metaphorical musical blender with Lynyrd Skynyrd's equally immortal "Sweet Home Alabama" and (to his eternal credit) managed to add a half-decent melody line. The result is here, and IMO doesn't sound half bad, even if the video-clip is somewhat exploitatively centred on the topic of bikini-clad young women. But hey, what else do you expect from Kid Rock?

The other song that caught my ear was this one, from a young country & western singer called Jasmine Rae. Yet another C&W tale of broken hearts, cheating boyfriends and the end of love - but as is increasingly common these days, the tip of the cowgirl's boot has a cowboy's backside on the end of it, so to speak. And not only his backside, because the first verse of this Garth Brooks song hints at an alternative - and equally effective - placement.

Which brings me back to what I saw happen at the cricket this afternoon...