Today was kind of busy, so here are a couple of videos I found amusing, with comments as to why they caught my attention.
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Have I mentioned that at a high school variety night I performed a freejazz/fusion version of this song? Sort of. Same bass line, and I hollered some of the words into the mic before the atonal saxophone weirdness kicked in. (I played my tenor.) I was accompanied by a keyboard bassist named Jennifer Duggleby and a drummer named Mike Murza. I doubt anyone recognized the song. Maybe one or two kids?
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Besides being totally WTF?, and besides the fact that I just ordered a copy of the complete VPN (Vermilion Pleasure Night, a notoriously bizarre Japanese late-night avant-comedy show from I think the 90s), I’ve often said that I think Japanese media sometimes seems like exactly the kind of media that aliens would make if they were trying to fake the production of human media.
Now, I’m not so sure. Freakishly dancing nurses, humans yowling in pain, and abused backsides are all pretty much universally entertaining to human beings, and when you synchronize it to wacky music, it’s unavoidably entrancing, even if it doesn’t make you laugh. You can’t help but stare in puzzlement.
It’s still a fun analogy, though, to compare Japanese TV to alien-made TV, because it has me wondering what the hell actual alien-produced TV designed for human consumption would look like. I’m guessing the plotlines would befuddle us, but there would be enough nudity, sex, violence, and cursing that nobody would much care. Sort of the equivalent of ultraviolent, talky pornography made by people on LSD or something. What language the aliens would choose is an interesting question. Spanish? English? Mandarin Chinese? A mixture? Hmmm.
Probably we’d learn something about ourselves, too, seen through their eyes? Perhaps they’d depict the free market as a religious notion? Maybe they’d make a comedy show out of the faces people make during coitus, complete with laugh track? I definitely imagine our worst traits would shine brightly — all the things we like ignore conveniently.
Or maybe it’d be incomprehensible muck!