We have a winner! Holy shit, does anything get set off very hard in this video? HOOOOOLY SHIT, do some kids get pretty sad at 0:43? Make sure you see the big kid in the black t-shirt jump in the air, because that’ll make you feel a low amount of energy.

Couple more things: I’m not sure this room is large enough. Is it huge enough? Hmm, seems pretty cramped in there. The room is so small and acoustically dead, it’s making the band sound weak. Really weak.

Also, what kind of assembly is this? Kids running around every which way? It’s like total chaos! At one point I was thinking, “Is this a school that’s run by kids because they murdered all the teachers and parents and now this is just a regular day for them?”

Okay, but my three favorite things are:

1. Notice how sad the drummer is at 2:30, and how much he hates this song, and how disappointed he is that he’s playing this song to the adoring screams of his peers … basically, how much he’s hating life when they come back into the chorus. THIS PROVES THAT DRUMS ARE THE BEST INSTRUMENT.

2. Basically, everything from 3:04 on makes me pretty glum, LOL. Especially right after the build-up, if you can find the big kid in the black t-shirt again, and watch his/her reaction to the final chorus, you’ll be really sad and you’ll be frowning and like, “Boo-hoo, I’m so sad I’m watching this video right now.”

3. Okay, but really the best thing? Check out the drummer at the end of the song. Mission motherfucking Accomplished much? And then, if you notice the second person to hug the drummer, you’re basically gonna feel like you just read the greatest short story of all time.

FRIDAY FACE-OFFS! Get that Vitamin FFO!

Have a nice weekend.

Somebody tell Matt Drudge to fire up the “Hysteria-Siren” gifs! We have two second place winners this week!

First second place:

Bass tone of the year! Everyone in the comments is asking this guy how he got such a good bass sound. Damn it sounds good.

Second second place:

What can I say? If you’ve ever wanted to watch a gelfling-starchild perform “Kids” on her mini-keyboard from the future while hiding out in a record-store basement(?), then you’re pretty psyched right now. I am counting the days until we hear this young woman in an iPod commercial.

Friday Face-Offs! More refreshing than juice, more intoxicating than wine. TAKE ONLY WHAT YOU NEED FROM IT.

Winning video is next … get ready for sadness … you’re gonna be pretty sad when you see the next video … hope you’re ready to see a drummer who’s really unhappy …

When you finally climb to the top of the mountain, this is what you see:

He actually made the song more melancholy. I love it! Again, this is when I start wondering what the definition of a mode is. Is his melody in a different mode from the original melody? Forget about what key it’s in, I think the mode is different, too. Right? Are we dealing with a Hungarian Dorian(?) mode? Jesus, I got all these people reading my web site, can someone just tell me what a mode is, in ten words or less? I think that will open up Friday Face-Off analysis to a new level where we can get Alex Ross to write an article about Friday Face-Offs.

Also, does anyone know where I can buy a nice tall Orange-Pineapple Burstberry Wheatgrass Smoothie with extra Choco-Yogurt? I’m really craving one of those right now. (The more expensive, the better, please.)

(BONUS “Double Nickels on the Dime” funtoid: If you listen closely to the bass on “My Heart and the Real World,” you’ll hear that Mike Watt is actually playing in morse code. The message is: “I would never drive my Lamborghini Jalpa V8 without Pirelli tires.” Yes, it’s true, Mike Watt was sponsored by Pirelli tires and used Pirelli tires exclusively on all his exotic Italian sports cars. In fact, Pirelli sponsored multiple SST artists in their bid to lock in the Southern-Californian-punk-rocker-Italian-exotic-car-enthusiast market. Why do you think that when you play Saccharine Trust’s hit single “We Became Snakes” backwards, you can hear Jack Brewer chanting “Pirelli, Pirelli, they a-make the finest tires” in a fake Italian accent?) And now you know the rest of the story …

The only rule is that if you start watching this video, you have to watch all of it.

This is what Thomas Friedman is like when he’s writing a column:

Can’t you see Friedman stumbling around and dancing and posing while weird, out-of-tune guitar noodling fills his office and random words flow into his mind: “The world is flat …” “Green is the new red white and blue …” “Take only what you need from it …”

Then he runs downstairs to look at his dog for some reason (2:45), then sprints back up to his office just in time to make deadline!

Speaking of which, did you see Thomas Friedman’s latest column? It’s pretty great. It makes a lot of sense and I could really, really understand what he was talking about.

Ignore the guy in the hat who’s so into everything and just focus on how goddamn good that parking garage sounds:

If you had a tough week and decided to drive to the mall for a late movie, and then the movie sorta sucked, but you sat through the closing credits because you had nothing else to do, and then you stumbled out of the movie theatre and took the elevator down to the lower level and started looking for your car and you couldn’t remember where you parked your stupid car and then you heard these guys’ voices echoing in some distant corner of the garage, you would forget about finding your car.

You would stagger around until you found these guys and then fall to your knees and start weeping and smoking drugs and rolling around on the floor and singing along and thinking you were in a dream.

This is the best version for getting into that weird lyric: “A family of trees wanted / to be haunted.” What does that mean? Is that about the Sierra Club?

BONUS:

If that version was too maudlin, here’s the antidote. Pretty sweet remix:

Is this the most international video ever made? We got the one guy playing the doumbek, the other guy wearing the keffiyeh (Palestinian terror-scarf-thing), two Spanish-flamenco style guitarists, all going down in the middle of the night in front of a scale model of the Berlin Wall … goddamn, they should just shut down the Olympics and instead broadcast this video for two weeks straight every four years.

Also? The one girl is using a water bottle as a maraca. That’s fifty times more exciting than anything I have ever seen at the Olympics, ever. Michael Phelps? Yawn city– get back to me when you’re holding down the beat with a half-empty Poland Spring bottle.

Another exciting thing happens at 2:55 when the resident musical genius uses a kazoo as a drum fill. That is some deep musicological shit that everyone needs to start biting ASAP!!!

When I was in college and I did the whole “travel around Europe and meet strangers and hang out on the ground in the middle of the night,” I don’t remember ever getting into a “jam sesh” like this. My loss. We could’ve rocked “Two Princes” by the Spin Doctors, I think that was the hot song back then.

(BONUS “Double Nickels on the Dime” funtoid: The classic “Political Song for Michael Jackson to Sing” was originally titled “Political Song for Jermaine Jackson to Sing,” but when SST Records sent the lyrics over to Neverland for approval, Jermaine refused to sign for the FedEx package, because it smelled like Henry Rollins’ bike shorts. AND THE REST IS HISTORY …)

WHAT IS MAKING THAT SOUND????

Also, is the snare mixed loud enough? I could use more snare. MORE SNARE MORE SNARE ALWAYS MORE SNARE.

I love music.