Pork and Beans

My post entitled "Another Reason American Music is Dying" elicited an unprecedented volume of responses (2 comments), so I felt that it would be irresponsible of me to not present the counterpoint to the assertions made there.

I intend this post to be both a music review and a social commentary. To start, I ask the reader to view the following music video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=muP9eH2p2PI

Don't read any further until you have watched the video.















No, really, don't read any further until you have watched the video.





Okay. Thanks for finally following directions. The video you just watched is "Pork and Beans" by Weezer. This is the first single from Weezer's highly anticipated Red Album.

This is one of only a few mainstream American bands that is still worth listening to. I also love the Foo Fighters. One of the reasons I like these bands is that they don't take themselves too seriously. Watch that video. Look at that mustache and cowboy hat on the album cover to the right. That is not taking yourself too seriously. For evidence of the Foo Fighters not taking themselves too seriously, please see the video for Learn to Fly.

For my actual review of the Pork and Beans video, I want to talk a little about all of the crazy web-based and pop culture references in this video. The reason I wanted you, the reader, to watch the video first is so that my comments about it would not spoil your enjoyment of the video by making it too cerebral.

The entire video, debuting on YouTube, is making fun of YouTube videos! It starts with the band, each at their computer in their bedroom, being recorded by the now-ubiquitous webcam. One of the quarters of the screen becomes a mildly familiar fat kid with headphones (I'm sure he had an earlier 15 minutes of fame embarrassing himself by singing off-key or something), then switches to the famous "Dramatic Gopher."

After that, we have the now hackneyed dork who thinks he's a ninja and hurts himself, a nice ongoing nod to the Diet Coke and Mentos Experiments, followed by 155 T-Shirts Man, and I'll spare you the link, but is that a spoof of Britney, or Chris Crocker spoofing Britney, and then followed up with now classic "All your base are belong to us."

After that we move on to "Miss Teen USA South Carolina," (Sorry my S.C. relatives, but this girl is a blight on your fair state) which awesomely morphs into light saber play. You have to love the producer at 1:38. Is that really Kevin Federline? Nice to see that he can make fun of himself, but does he get the joke?

Daft Hands lead out Daft Bodies on the chorus. The final crazy scene of the video has the instant internet classic "Charlie the Unicorn" in the background followed by PB&J. There are probably more new-media pop culture references in there, but I'm too lazy to strip them all out and find the links. From what I've got here, you get the idea, though. Anyway, the song is really catchy, and has a nice nerd-rebel message. To end my review of the video, I will use one word: Brilliant.

Now to the brief social commentary. The reason the Pork and Beans video works is that my generation all watches these crappy videos and YouTube and constantly sends each other links to the latest outrageous vid we think we're so hip to have stumbled upon. We quote Homestar and say stupid words in daily speech like "p0wned," and just generally have turned into a homogenous bunch of sheep who all consume the exact same media. I hardly watch TV like I used to. I catch the episodes of Lost and The Office on the ABC and NBC websites.

My little brothers don't even watch TV besides sports, they just collect videos on their video iPods. They are the ones that introduced me to Chaaaarlie.