Just when I thought U2 couldn't get any cooler.

When he picked up his best original screenplay Oscar for Almost Famous, I remember Cameron Crowe describing the movie as a love letter to music and his family.

That's what U2 has done with the "Window in the Skies" video: unwrapped a Whitman's Valentine sampler to pop music and everybody who loves it. Leave it to Bono and the boys to take oh-so-postmodern concepts like sampling and mashups and turn them inside-out, revealing their gooey, nutty center. I love how they connect the dots from Louis Armstrong to Jay Z, with stops at Johnny Cash, Keith Moon, Franks Zappa and Sinatra, and Elivses Costello and Presley to prove what we've suspected all along: Rock and roll is a palimpsest.

After half a dozen viewings, I gotta say the Flavor Flav "To love I rhapsodize" moment is my favorite. For now. What's yours?

Thanks to Dennis for the link.

UPDATE: Turns out the clip's director, Gary Koepke, is an ad guy. For an agency that, IIRC, works on Hummer. But whatever.

The Force Is Strong In This One.

Despite being unrivaled in pop culture as The Coolest Thing Ever when it debuted in 1981, MTV has long since fallen off the radar (mine and, I suspect, everyone who was mesmerized by its novelty). Needless to say, I haven't looked at the channel since sometime in the late '90s; I know for sure that I’ve never seen a minute of any MTV Movie Awards telecast, either.

So I’m all the more grateful to Amelie Gillette at The Onion A.V. Club for posting this on her blog, The Hater.

I really can’t explain what I find so appealing about this. Or why I’ve been replaying it like some kid with a 45* of “Saturday Night” by the Bay City Rollers. It’s a terrific neo-soul pop song, sure. And the Star Wars costumes are a delight, not least because they're all old-school, Episodes IV-VI characters. Thank god they resisted the urge to put Cee-Lo in Mace Windu garb.

Mostly, I think it’s the complete lack of acknowledgement that they’re in SW gear. I love how, instead of Look at us, we’re so cool with our Wookie drummer and our Rebel backup singers, it’s just, Listen to us, we’re a really tight band channeling Sam Cooke by way of Was Not Was. If the song were anything less than the real deal, the whole thing have come off as desperate and cheesy. Y’know, pretty much what you expect from the MTV these days.

While this hasn't done much to revive the stature of MTV (in my eyes), I will say unequivocally that Gnarls Barkley, Cee-Lo and Danger Mouse all have a new fan.

*For all you whippersnappers out there, this is a reference to a cultural artifact that pervaded in the early days of the republic. Before the dark times. Before the empire: A grooved, double-sided vinyl record, or “single” that played on a “turntable” at 45 RPM. An elegant medium for a less digitized age.