Monday, December 20, 2010

Backup Dancers From Hell: Black Eyed Peas - “The Time (Dirty Bit)”

We start off in outer space (which is where we usually start with the Black Eyed Peas, but I digress), with meteors or something flying about and exploding. It doesn’t look healthy at all. Then we whiz past some planets and zoom in on one that happens to have streets and buildings just like ours. Yay! The camera whizzes down these streets at an amazing rate, so we really don’t have time to determine if we like this place or not.

We finally end up in some somewhat-trashy alley, where will.i.am is standing, wearing funky space gear or maybe a futuristic jogging suit. He puts on some headphones and starts singing, and it doesn’t take long to realize his digitized voice is bellowing lyrics from one of the songs in that movie where they tried to put Baby in a corner and Patrick Swayze didn’t really care for that.

Then some Film School graduate starts jacking with the pixels of the video, making will.i.am’s face turn into little cubes. The cubes keep getting bigger until they turn into just one box with Fergie’s face in it, and she picks up the lyrics. I have no idea why we had to do that, but we did.

While Fergie BoxHead continues to warble, the camera pulls back so we can get another gander at the weird jogging suit, then the camera zooms back in on Fergie just as her vocal track starts skipping and she gets an evil expression like she just ate a Chihuahua.

Now we’re flying through some digital outer-space mess like a Galaga game is short-circuiting back in the day, and then we arrive in a nightclub. Lots of people are dancing around with their requisite hands in the air and proving that none of them really know a whole lot of dance moves. The camera maneuvers through the crowd, which takes a little bit because it’s hard to get that much hair product out of the way quickly.

Eventually we make it to will.i.am on stage, where he’s messing with turntables while skanky go-go dancers gyrate in front of fake giant computers. And here we go with more of the pixels and cubes business, making everyone look futuristic but still skanky. The pixels are fun at first, but it only takes about three seconds and you’ve seen enough. Sadly, somebody thinks we haven’t, so we keep seeing it.

And here comes Fergie, doing one of her trademark entrances where she rap-sings while strutting in high heels and touching every reachable body part with far more self-pleasure than is really necessary. Fergie works her way through the bouncing throngs of people, happily shoving extras out of the way when they stupidly step into her dance patch. I’m surprised to learn that we actually can’t see her panties with this outfit. Maybe she was tired during this part of the shoot.

Quick bit with Taboo leading the crowd in some shout-out to having a good time, then back to will.i.am, doing more of the BoxHead thing while he stands on another street. He uses his Blackberry to point at a billboard, making an animated version of will.i.am come to life and drop to the street. Then mini-Will climbs back up to the billboard and tries to look all ghetto and shifty. (I have no idea how I’m supposed to interpret this.)

Fergie starts singing again, and somebody makes a mini-Fergie pop off another billboard and start sashaying on top of a building. Great. Just what this country needs, an army of tiny Black Eyed Peas terrorizing the neighborhoods and sampling songs from the 80’s. Then the BoxHead thing is back, with everybody’s face flashing across the screenhead while Fergie’s vocal track gets stuck again. (You’d think somebody would figure out what’s wrong with that thing and fix it.)

Back to the nightclub again, where some woman is supposedly dancing but looking more like she snagged her hoo-hoo on some barbed wire. (Fergie briefly tries to keep up with her, then decides it’s safer to just snap her fingers and make her curls bounce.) Suddenly, apl.de.ap joins Hoo-Hoo Girl for a quick dance routine, then he shoves her out of the way so the camera can focus on him while he raps and shows us his Mohawk. (While he’s doing that, we see an image of someone throwing up pixilated yuck, and I bite my tongue not to make a comparison.)

And the BoxHead guy once more, releasing mini’s of apl.de.ap and Taboo, so they can run be tiny together with Fergie and will.i.am. (There’s so many exciting things to do when you’re little, like walk under doors and go on a float trip using croutons.) Nightclub again, with the music slowing down a little bit and somebody digitizing somebody’s voice so that it’s really deep. (Um, have we EVER heard any of these folks’ real voices? Just curious.) Taboo leads another group cheer, then the huddle breaks so people can go score touchdowns.

And we have more dancing, with lots and lots of pixel jackery, so that it looks like a bunch of drunken Lego People at a frat party. Fergie seems to be really enjoying this part of the song, jiggling about and thrusting her arms like she spilled hot sauce on her panty shield. In fact, everybody in the room seems to be having misplaced condiment issues, jumping and cavorting with a frenzy that will most likely lead to regret in the morning.

Brief shot of the camera dangerously close to some nymphet’s two-moon junction. It’s just not a Black Eyed Peas video unless there’s butt crack.

The song winds down and we zip away from BoxHead in the alley, traveling backwards through the streets and back out into space. The BEP’s are probably headed to the Intergalactic Music Awards, because they’re already won everything on this planet. And they might finally find someone who can fix Fergie’s vocal track…

 

Click Here to Watch the Video on YouTube.

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