musictubes.

You may or may not know this about me, but a large part of my childhood and adolescence was spent in front of a television. Whenever I tell people that Tim and I don't have cable, a part of me feels the need to quickly explain that I am not a pretentious hippie at heart - that a piece of me will always be a television fiend just like the rest of the world.

My family used to eat home-cooked meals (or buckets of KFC) while watching Wheel of Fortune and instead of "family game night," we had TGIF. I watched Inspector Gadget before I left to catch the bus for school, MacGyver when I got home, Alf while I did my homework, and, if I was really sneaky, Married w/Children, while I pretended to be asleep on the couch while my parents watched it.

Although television often got me through the daily grind of school work and extracurricular activities, my fondest TV memories are from my adolescent summers. On a typical weekday in the summer, circa junior high, I would roll out of bed around 10 and immediately turn on MTV. MTV, like mainstream radio stations, often played the exact same videos at the exact same time of day. One summer I awoke each morning to the smooth melody and mind-blowing rhymes of Skee-Lo's "I Wish." I would watch music videos through the morning, and only deviate periodically to check out Whose Line Is It Anyway? or MST3K over on the ComCen.

The other night, James Mann and I rekindled our love for watching music videos one after another in visual-audio bliss as we sat on my couch and looked up some of our favorites on the youtubes. It all started with a conversation about those old CD clubs that offered you 16 CDs for a penny, and 1 CD for $145. This led to a conversation about Wilson Phillips, after which we immediately looked up the video to their 1990 hit, "Hold On." We then watched Mariah Carey's "Someday" because James claimed it was her first hit single, to which I countered by queing her actual first hit single "Vision of Love." We then watched about 4 seconds of her new video "Touch My Body," but quickly switched because we realized how much it sucked (especially when juxtaposed to hits from her popstar past), but also because we remembered that Paula Abdul video with Keanu Reeves, "Rush." We then remembered that the best music video ever made was NIN's "Closer." Then we remembered when Johnny Cash covered NIN's "Hurt" and watched the first part of that video, but then I think Jim started to tear up watching Johnny's old wrinkly sad face, so he suggested we move on to some newer vids. So we watched some sweet videos by my new favorite band, CSS. They make good videos...I like "Alcohol."

In conclusion, if you haven't just sat and watched music videos in awhile, you should dedicate some time to it tonight. You won't regret it.

Feel free to post your favorite music videos in the comment section.