MILD SPOILERS FOR THE BIG SICK AHEAD
2017 has not been kind to the American comedy. Talented actors like Charlie Day, Will Ferrell and Dwayne Johnson have headlined comedies that have ended up being some of the worst movies of 2017 thus far and more often than not these comedies have ended up producing far more boredom than giggles. Heck, I'm saying that without having seen two of the worst reviewed comedies of 2017 so far, CHiPS and Sandy Wexler. But for those like myself that were thinking there was no hope for laugh-oriented cinema this year, here comes The Big Sick, a Judd Apatow-produced feature that actually does bring a whole bunch of yuks as well as thoughtful character work and terrific performances. A 2017 comedy with all of those elements in spades? To quote Smash Mouth, "What a concept!"
"I Am Become Death, Destroyer Of Worlds." - J. Robert Oppenheimer Back on Tuesday, I wrote up on a version of All-Star someone on YouTube had made where ever word was now SOME-BODY. It was both beautiful and terrifying. The internet was now toying with the power of Smash Mouth, its obsession with the band being the sort of fixation that can only end in disaster. Ditto for the internet's obsession with Bee Movie, a 2007 DreamWorks Animation film that wasn't very successful at the box office and more noteworthy for proving a one-joke premise and an omnipresent marketing cannot compensate for a lackluster script.
Now, the same YouTube personality behind the version of All-Star with only the words Somebody sung in it has decided to play in God's domain and just merge the two of internet's obsession with a horrifying minute-long gaze into the abyss. Looking over this guys YouTube videos, his obsession with All-Star is staggering. It's as if the internets ongoing Smash Mouth mania is just the various planets spinning around the sun that is this guys various All-Star-centric videos. How he can top himself after his most recent creation, I don't know, but I'm truly scared to find out.
All-Star is utterly unrecognizable in the form it's presented in here. What has become of you All-Star? Have you succumbed to the memes you thought you could control? Have you become the very incoherent meme you were at first trying to ironically parody? Contemplating this matter further, if All-Star cannot endure in this world untainted, what hope is there for the rest of us? I hope the human being behind this entity is proud of himself. He has proven that there is only despair in this world. All that is waiting for us all in this torturous existence is misery and ironic Bee Movie memes. There is nothing else. At once, we are all Barry B. Benson and yet none of us truly are Barry B. Benson.
If I've learned anything in 2016, it's that us white people can do anything, and I mean that sentiment in the worst way possible. We can overtake wildlife refugees and suffer no consequences! Hell, a white dolt can brag about grabbing women by the genitals and can elected president! It's like we're living an Alt-Rights wet dream. And now the newest atrocity committed by white people is the newest evolution of the internet's ongoing obsession with Smash Mouth's late 1990's song All-Star. This newest piece of evolution entails replacing every word in the song with the very first word uttered in the song: SOMEBODY.
Check it out below.
I am beyond words.
What I hate about this thing most of all is how damn catchy it is. Goddamnit, why does this song work so well for whatever machinations the evil geniuses on the internet with too much time on their hands come up with??
We all know it's only a matter of time before someone decides to merge the internet's two current favorite obsessions right? Like, some kind of Bee Movie/All-Star hybrid is waiting in the wings. Perhaps our salvation from Trump's America will come in the form of this horrific Bee Movie/All-Star hybrid, a creation whose beauty unites the world over, ceases all wars and eliminates world hunger in the blink of an eye.
The 1960's had The Beatles. The 1970's had many of Queen's greatest hits. The 1980's had a bevy of hugely successful music ranging from Aerosmith to Journey. And among the biggest musical acts at the tail end of the 20th century and in the first few years of the 21st century was...Smash Mouth. A band that's mainly a punchline today and has only released one album since 2006. From 1997 to sometime around 2002 though, man, these guys were everywhere. They tapped into the zeitgeist of the era like fee bands at the time did. In fact, I'd argue their work was so linked to the era in which they were produced that it's hard for their music to work in a modern context. Not only is there not a whole lot in terms of vocals or interesting lyrics to take in, but it truly feels like only in the brief era in which they were so popular could they have flourished so greatly.
