Why I Hate the New Coldplay Video

Yesterday I started Infinite Jest.

There are tons of more impressive-sounding phrases I could use to say that. And that book deserves them all. But its worthy of so many of them, thousands and thousands of them, that after a certain number, the grandeur cancels itself out and is rendered meaningless. So I'll just state the (most) obvious- It's fuckin awesome.

Status: page 30 out of 1079. Go team.

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This weekend has been ludicrously awesome. That's all I have to say about that.
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I hate the new Coldplay video for Life in Technicolor. Which makes me very sad because it used to be my favorite off that album. And I tried, really *tried* to like it. But the following could not be ignored:

a) The freaking CHEESY new lyrics for a song that was perfectly gorgeous as an instrumental.

b) That they were trying way too gosh-darn hard to be whimsical.

The video starts off with a cute little British family throwing a birthday party, just after everybody's gathered around for a Punch and Judy puppet show. There's (of course) a cute little British version of Olive Hoover, and she just happens to be carrying a fake Coldplay biography, called Playin it Cool (aw! look at us being punny!)

I was actually on board for this part. And for the next part, when the show started and miniature Coldplay gradually popped out from behind the curtain.

aww lookit'em.

I was expecting it to just be the instrumental, which would have been cool, to break music video rules and have a song (gasp) without singing. I knew Chris Martin would eventually pop out, and I was okay with the awkward puppet version spinning around like the human version usually does. And then he started singing.

And then he started flying.

And then the Punch and Judy stage expanded into an arena stage.

And then there were pyrotechnics and puppet Evel Knievels flying across the stage.

And then puppet Chris Martin started crowd-surfing.

And then puppet Coldplay flew out in a helicopter.

And then Caroline vommed.

Some things don't *need* all the remixes and bells and whistles and over-the-top-ness. This would have been a perfectly great video if it didn't try to top itself in EVERY SINGLE SECOND. It's frustrating too that so many people blindly love Coldplay now, and will thus blindly love this video.

*sigh*

Rant over.