Gotta launder my karma

Well, no, I don't. At least, I don't think I do.

I think of Michael Plank as an alternate-universe version of me. Not that we've led parallel lives or anything, but we have very similar tastes in music. My first thought on realizing this would normally be, "Well, that's Generation X for you", but other members of our demographically insignificant generation - including Gort, Jen, and Michael Plank's sister-in-law, Anne from Almost Quintessence - sometimes have very different musical tastes from my own.

(Which is not to say my tastes don't overlap with those others. They do, a lot. But more often than not I get even the most obscure musical references Michael Plank throws out.)

This video, which I have lifted from a recent post on Michael Plank's Content, isn't obscure. At least I don't think it is. It used to get heavy airplay on MTV back in the days when MTV etc. etc., you know how that sentence ends. It's a nice, fun little ditty, with a higher-than-average amount of BDSM imagery thrown in, and one naughty adjective cut out. The song is "Battle Flag" by the Lo Fidelity Allstars.


For some reason that song links in my mind to another, very different song. I think it's because I once put them on the same mix disc, one after another. That song is "Porcelain" by Moby.

Note: This is, I believe, an "unofficial" video for this song, though it looks all kinds of professional. I vastly prefer it to the "official" version of the video - I think it captures the feelings of longing, loss, emptiness, and hope in the face of hopelessness perfectly. I was originally planning on bemoaning my dissatisfaction with the "official" video, and was going to note that the beat brought the DNA remix of "Tom's Diner" by Suzanne Vega to mind, and that the imagery from that video seemed to fit the Moby song better than the eyeball-in-space stuff. But this "unofficial" video made such a comment unnecessary. Almost.

Finally, for some reason "Battle Flag" brings another video to mind, from the days of MTV's 120 Minutes and Alternative Nation. It's a brilliant video for an OK song. But it's by Spike Jonze, so would you expect anything less? The band is Wax, the song is "Southern California":


BONUS BONUS BONUS: Because I love this commercial (which I only ever saw once on TV) so much, and because it took me a while to think of searching for "Spike Jonze Y2K" on YouTube, I'm throwing this Nike commercial by Spike Jonze in as a bonus. This commercial was one of the things I thought of whenever I saw commercials for Cloverfield, and it probably helped inspire bits of Shawn of the Dead: