Youtube Nation: J-Pop Frodo and Intense Leg Pain
I am a creature of remarkably little sense. If I had even a fraction of the good sense usually imparted to reasonable human beings I would probably have a stable job that would require me to get up before noon and be sober for the better part of the day. Sure, it'd be less fun, but at least I'd remember my contributions to society and live healthily into my autumn years without so much as a single tissue transplant. But I am not a reasonable person. I am not possessed of a sufficient amount of sense to conduct my life as I ought to. Maybe I could have deluded myself into believing otherwise as recently as twelve hours ago, but no longer do I have that privilege. I, dear readers, just finished walking some 160 blocks, 30 of which were in my city's unique December mix of rain and BB-sized hail, to purchase a new coat from a store that was directly off of a bus line that runs one block from my apartment. Why did I walk all that way for something as inconsequential as a coat, nay, a really rather nice coat? Because I am good sense deficient and I thought it would be fun. So, because I am obviously a near-senseless mote of absurdity wafting about in this world inviting leg pain the likes of which hasn't been felt since the Trail of Tears, I'm just gonna show you a video of characters from The Lord of the Rings doing a silly dance to a Japanese pop song.
I'm not even going to talk about how ridiculous or awful this video is. No, I will not comment on the sub-video-game graphical design and how it pairs so incongruously with the fluid, possibly motion-captured dance moves. I will not rant about how the accompanying song confuses, confounds and agitates my brain so much that it causes my eyes to bleed due to a hellish sonic muddle that makes me see sound and hear sights regardless of any resulting pain either may induce. Neither will I ramble on about how the rendered Aragorn's smile reminds me more of the intentionally disturbing Aphex Twin album covers from the 90's than of anything even resembling an expression of joy.
For those who read this column regularly it may seem that I would succumb to the temptation of mocking whoever made this video for wasting an immense amount of time and not just a little talent on something as asinine and pointless as blocky representations of fantasy movie characters dancing to a J-pop song in some misguided attempt at increasingly tired "random crazy ironic" Internet humor. Ah, but you would be mistaken, for I have proven myself ill-equipped to make such judgments of sensible behavior. After all, today I proved that I literally don't have sense enough to come in out of the rain.
Were circumstances different I may have even been compelled to make some sort of bigoted joke cushioned by a postmodern sense of self-consciousness that hints at a meta-commentary on bigotry itself about the Japanese and their bizarre obsession with embarrassing choreographed dance and grating techno-pop that is somehow worse than what sufficed for European club music more than two decades ago. But things are as they are today, as evidenced by my raw feet.
No, I will not mock "The Idol of the Rings" because I know deep in my senseless heart that the scene it portrays is a perfect interpretive depiction of the central engine of my own mind. Whereas decent, normal folk are composed of internal scales for balance and meters for accurate monitoring of input, my rational thought process is composed of an ugly facsimile of Vigo Mortensen fopping around beside a diminutive version of Elijah Wood while what may be the worst song in the world plays without relent.
