We got cable yesterday. Sarah and I have successfully avoided cable for over 2 years now, a remarkable feat considering the fact that her profession involves creating material for cable TV networks. It’s ungodly expensive though, right? And although there are things I wish I could see on TV from time to time, overall, I don’t often miss having another ever-present source of distraction in my life.

However, about a month ago, I came home from a run, and a dude from AT&T was hanging out in front of our building. He asked me if I wanted to sign up for faster Internet service at the same price as my current connection. I said, “why not?” Then he told me it came with cable. I said, “nuh-uh. We don’t want cable.” He said we’d get a month for free and we could cancel it if we wanted to. I said, “nuh-uh, we don’t want cable.” He said he’d throw in $200 worth of Visa gift certificates. I said, “$200 worth of Visa gift certificates, free cable for a month, and we can cancel with no penalties?” He said, “yep.” I said, “where do I sign?” Because I am one of those people who has no problem calling their bluff and canceling on the last day of service. I do not have much sympathy in my heart for gigantic corporations, and I say, if we can get free things from them, we should. Even though I know it’s going to be a 45 minute argument to get them to cancel … I am prepared. It’s worth $200.

So yesterday they came in and installed the thing. And now I have some 500 channels of information streaming into my living room at all times. Sarah put it best: it’s nauseating. It’s like having to watch other people stuff themselves full of donuts when you’ve spent the morning stuffing yourself full of donuts. There is just too much freaking choice. Too much. It’s no wonder people believe Sarah Palin can run a country because she knows what it’s like to be a mom … it is impossible to make a rational decision about anything when you spend 6-8 hours a day staring through this bizarre window of unreality. Last night the discussion topic on Anderson Cooper was “why are we talking about “the lipstick on a pig” comment?” I.e.: “why are we talking about what we’re talking about?” I mean, can a conversation be less substantial? Doesn’t that question basically simplify down to “why are we talking?”

There is one bright light in my universe of media now, however: videos. I looove music videos. I remember when MTV2 came out, and it was just like the old days of MTV, where you never knew what was going to come next. And it was good. But then they realized, again, that ratings for the original MTV and ratings for MTV2 worked on the same principle … advertisers demand programs that are longer than 3 minutes in order to keep an audience from flipping the channel. I look at it the other way, though … on a well-programmed video channel, you don’t want to flip, for fear that you’ll get caught up in something else and miss the next awesome video that is surely on the way.

The whole point, the reason why I started writing this post, was to link to this incredible piece of genius I saw yesterday.

Now, I came into the video about 30 seconds in, and I was totally unsure of whether this was a new song in an old style or a classic video that I had never seen before. It is, in fact, by a brand new band that’s been getting lots of hype - M83.

And this kind of music can do your head in … I think we like to believe that the first wave of synth-pop bands, a la Human League, were creating music that sounded like this out of pure naivete … or they used unnatural sounds because synthesizers were not yet sophisticated enough to recreate the sounds of real instruments. And therefore, any modern band that recreates that sound must be doing it out of pure artifice. And now here you have a band that’s recreating a very specific sound, and recreating the style of video that matches that specific sound, and you don’t know how to respond, because it might all be a joke, and they may very well be making fun of you, somehow.

Well, I say, go with your gut. Let’s pretend we live in a world in which synthesizers never faded out of style, and new-romantic pop is still all the rage, and I’m still playing Dragon’s Lair at Showbiz Pizza at the end-of-season party for my 4th grade soccer team. If we are willing to make these concessions before going into it, I think you will agree that this is THE BEST VIDEO YOU’VE EVER SEEN.