visual synergy: meet the press

Wait, there's a war going on in Iraq? I was too busy watching Bill O'Reilly discuss the cultural significance of "Firecrotch." This a brave new age of journalism, brothers and sisters! Deboned, defanged, and with record levels of cross-promotion! Why not segue from a report on new prosthetics for war amputees, complete with footage of the new Bionic Woman series, to a Big Pharma-sponsored health report on the dangers of EEBPS -- Excessive Eye Booger Production Syndrome -- and how you can ask your doctor about Sleepiseedimox to cure it? (Side effects may include diarrhea, eye rot, or excessive production of eye boogers.)

Others may lament this sorry state of affairs, but not I. I get my news from music videos.


Ice T - Lifestyles of the Rich and Infamous - "Mr. Ice? What was it like working with Judd Nelson and Richard Belzer? Do you still have 'your twelve gauge sawed off'? Any word of a Body Count reunion tour?"


The Tubes - Talk To Ya Later - Suddenly I'm feeling a strange urge to fire up the Atari 2600 and play some Megamania.


Don Johnson - Heartbeat - Here we see an actor pretending to be a musician pretending to be a reporter pretending that The Magic Garden of Stanley Sweetheart never happened.


Adam Ant - Goody Two Shoes - A music video classic featuring the familiar (and portentously tragic) Antean theme of persecution, as well as an appearance by Bond Girl/scream queen Caroline Munro as the female reporter sporting the insanely huge pair of spectacles.


Naked Eyes - Always Something There to Remind Me - "Switched on Bacharach" or "Soft Cell minus the sleaze," if you will.

For me, this song is a most potent nostalgia-inducing totem, its synthesized bell peals are capable of evoking a flood of half forgotten childhood memories, including the location of the AT-AT Driver action figure I misplaced when I was eleven. I'd stop by North Woburn and retrieve the poor thing, but the tree stump I hid it under has been cleared away to make room for a massive subdivision.

Naked Eyes - Always Something There to Remind Me (from Burning Bridges, 1983; also available on The Best of Naked Eyes, 1991)