5. The Raven Age — “Salem’s Fate”

I’m not going to bullshit you. This is the cheesiest video I have seen in many a moon, and at over seven minutes it is waaay too long, and yet, AND YET, I love the bloody thing. You probably guessed from the title that this has something to do with witches, and you’re right. As someone that has a small library dedicated to the New England witch scare, I can attest that Ian Collins’ conceptual video has an… unnuanced take on that madness. Despite that, the video captures the dark senselessness of the witch scares, and does so in a way that is human and inviting. It’s like an old Hammer horror film, in that everyone takes a slightly silly subject and plays it with absolute straightness. The result is not something that will end up in my best of the year list, but I bet I end up watching an awful lot late at night.

4. Ansel Elgort — “Thief”

I’m not even going to lie. This video temporarily reduced my heterosexuality from 97 percent to about 73 percent.

3. Opeth — “Era”

This fantastic piece of work comes from director Markus Hofko. The basic gist is that a masked, ghostly figure leads a young boy through the runs of our current human history, only for the boy to realize he has to become the next arbiter of the future universe. It’s a fairly thin narrative, but the imagery as they travel through the remains of the ages is something that belongs up there with stuff like Metallica’s “Unforgiven.” There’s a perfect sense of desolation at play.

2. Crystal Fighters — “Lay Low”

I have never cried over a fish puppet before, but by god I did it the first time I saw this amazing piece of work. Directed by Wayne McCauslin, “Lay Low” is a stop-motion masterpiece about love and loss across the entire spectrum of life. Flowers and fish and birds and people find each other, lose each other, and give birth to new universes that will continue the cycle forever. It’s My Little Pony by way of the Brothers Quay, and every single moment of it made me a happier person.

1. Bastille — “Blame”

Okay, this one is technically cheating since it’s over a month old, but it’s just too good not to share. Bastille is already known for being pretty damned odd when it comes to music videos, but even for them “Blame” is something special and arcane. As far as I can tell it revolves around a strange baptism ritual that has various adherents kissing a singing mouth in the glowing bowl of water, but even that is a poor description. I prefer to think of the whole experience as exultation in motion. It’s something strange and religious given a shifting form, and it’s just plain glorious.

During Donald Trump’s campaign for the presidency there was a lot of debate over what “Make America Great Again” actually meant. Most of us with functioning eyes, ears and frontal lobes were pretty sure that it was largely a desire to return to a time when everyone who wasn’t a cis-het abled white man faced even rougher odds of success and survival than they do now, but I think there’s more to it. Trump’s actions since assuming the office have one desperate, plaintive cry: STOP BEING SMARTER THAN ME!

Entire college courses will be taught on the American years we are currently living through, but for those of us who have been covering the culture wars for a while, things are not as incomprehensible as they might, at first, appear. Donald Trump, Steve Bannon, and the rest of the clown car did not come out of nowhere. They were entirely, and unfortunately, predictable results of the rise in internet oppositionism.

Let’s travel back to around 2024, when the Tea Party got started as a totally-not-racist-you-guys response to then-president Barack Obama. The movement essentially mainstreamed the idea of opposition for opposition’s sake, being largely a pushback for grave tyrannies that Obama had not actually committed or even hinted he might commit. The point is, fighting became more sacred than what someone might be fighting for.

Away from this melee was the rise of chan (image board) culture. Jay Allen has a fantastic essay on the subject you should definitely read, but I’m going to sum it up. Anonymous message boards began to be centered around the idea of The Argument as holy. Identities were considered meaningless, and debates were held up as the acme of thought. What could be out-argued was the truth, and everything else could go pound sand.

In theory, this was supposed to usher in pure thought unhampered by people’s baggage. In practice, all it did was cede ground to the loudest and most toxic personalities. White supremacists, anti-feminists, and other deplorables inherited the forums, speaking in meme and launching attacks on the outside web. This is what spawned things like Operation Lollipop, GamerGate, and the general spilling out of chan culture into the larger internet like an oil spill.

Into this world comes Breitbart. The idea that there needed to be an oppositional media presence to account for liberal bias goes back to the ‘90s, but the internet is where it really got its legs. I remember being a child and having relatives gleefully passing around VHS tapes of The Clinton Chronicles as Christmas gifts. Now it’s click-bait headlines and YouTube links, but the vector for viral spread is as easy as any iPhone app.

So here we are, with the single most unqualified president in the history of the Republic, nominating left and right the most unqualified people to hold key positions. His pick for Secretary of Education has less compelling credentials for the job than my daughter’s second grade teacher, and his Secretary of Housing and Urban Development pick is even less acquainted with the job. Not mention he’s decided a newspaperman with only a casual understanding of ethics and facts should be the head of the National Security Council.

Breitbart, one of the few journalistic outlets that would cover GamerGate favorably, lives and dies on the idea that by establishing an opposition, one has established a worthwhile argument. That simply being opposed is indicative of legitimacy. More and more, Trump had embodied this idea, that his circumventing of conventional thought is a radical stance of new political theory rather than the reactionary bit of nonsense it clearly is. It’s basically lying on your resume.

No one in the Trump administration actually knows what they’re doing. This weird white supremacist plot that seems to preoccupy so many of his inner circle? It’s mostly based on the rantings of chan board losers that have the mental acumen of teenagers. It’s a new, terrifying confederacy of dunces that has confused being loud with being right. They’ve established the idea that arguing is proof that ideas have merit.

But they don’t. Sometimes you’re just full of shit. It’s an idea the Trump administration seems to be avoiding like the plague, and his supporters even more so. Still, here we are, in the new world where misinformation is as potent as the real thing.

5. Fit for an Autopsy — “Heads Will Hang”

As America continues to lurch headfirst into a dystopian future under the Trump administration, it’s made the world look a little bleak these days. Enter “Heads Will Hang,” directed by Max Moore. It starts off a little slow, but eventually the story of a young family watching their country fall apart reaches out and grabs a viewer by the throat. It’s loud and utterly unapologetic in its vision of a mad world, and that makes it the perfect music video for this time.

4. Boy Epic — “Kanye’s in My Head”

“Kanye’s in My Head” is almost a send-up on the concept of the music video itself. It’s expertly shot like a good David Fincher flick, but with somewhat comically amateurishly-looking effects that feel like someone crudely defacing images in MS Paint. The combined effect is dreamlike and gritty at the same time, giving the video a unique identity unlike pretty much anything else to come out over the last year. The fact that Boy Epic has such a compelling physical presence in his movements certainly doesn’t hurt the video’s watchability either.

3. Moon Duo — “Cold Fear”

Micah Buzan’s glorious animation makes it feel like Liquid Television never left. “Cold Fear” is a stomach-churning visual experience that plays with body horror and cannibalism themes. Every second makes your skin crawl, like you’re being forced to watch someone else’s nightmare in progress. It’s just beautifully grotesque.

2. LP — “Tightrope”

LP has gotten to be one of the most wonderfully playful pop stars out making magic in the world. “Tightrope,” directed by Chuck David Willis, is a pretty standard love story video, but it gains so much from every gesture and turn that LP makes that it feels new and epic. The boardroom opening is one of the most solid comedic bits ever shot for a music video, and LP pulls off every punchline perfectly with little more than a crooked smile. It’s a simple video, but fun for all that.

1. Shannon Taylor — “Two-Faced”

“Two-Faced” hangs pretty much all of its hopes and dreams on the make-up effects done by DeAndrea Vaughn, and it pays off! The cherubic Taylor also makes a damned frightening demon, representing her darker half as she wanders a rotting and abandoned house. The video is capriciously evil, and Taylor eats up every inch of scenery. Definitely the best new video of the week!

5. Jimmy Pizzitola — “Pierced and Tattooed”

Let’s start with two local boys here. “Pierced and Tattooed” comes to us from my second favorite local music video director, Jerry Ochoa of Two Star Symphony fame. Paired with Pizzitola’s driving honky tonk rock, the video is a low-fi dirty masterpiece that channels the awesomeness of Matt Nathanson’s “Girl in the Kinks Shirt” in style, but keeps it sexy and Texas in tone. Pizzitola plays the new beau of a local tattoo artist (Lauren Charmain Wood), who seduces him into becoming a living work of art. Eventually, she drops him, and he joins other former lovers at the bar, their tattoos forming a larger collage of broken-hearted men. It’s mean and raw and totally lovely every second.

4. Entrance — “Not Gonna Say Your Name”

Folks, music and music videos are both going to be very political for the near future, and though the Age of Trump is yet young, the voices and images against it have thus far been some very moving works of art. This is a little found footage film detailing the various demonstrations against the rise of the new American fascism, donated by protestors across the country and edited by Chris Richardson and Matt Popeliuch. Proceeds from the sale of the track go to benefit Planned Parenthood, so if this video moved you like it did me, then consider picking the song up on iTunes or something.

3. Victoria + Jean — “Takes You Like a Rose”

Victoria + Jean is one of those bands that when I see they have a new music video I sort of strap in and hope I’m still sane by the end of it. “Takes You Like a Rose,” directed by Kosai Sekine, will leave you shaking and questioning all reality. A man (Joey Capone) who is in thrall to a mysterious drug comes across a woman (Hyunri), that lures him into a strip club where the band is playing. There follows a trip-tastic audio-visual nightmare of sex and song that would put a good David Lynch segment to shame. Everything is hot and loud and sounds like raw nerves feel. Damn fine music video.

2. Troye Sivan feat. Betty Who — “Heaven”

God. Damn. You will live and die and not see a more beautiful or perfectly shot music video than “Heaven.” Director Luke Gilford perfectly poises Sivan against the naked chest of a lover or standing forlorn in the rain, all the intercutting images of the gay rights struggle that still continues to this day. You either cry watching this, or you have a pit of scorpions where your soul should be. It’s almost the most amazing thing to happen this week. Almost.

1. MILCK — “Quiet”

This video more or less destroyed me this week. MILCK is a survivor of abuse, depression and anorexia, and “Quiet” is an tremendous analogy for living under the terrible pressure of society’s expectations. Director Sammi Cohen traps her in something right out of a Saw film, trying to drown her in a small box. Almost dead, her voice breaks the glass and wins her freedom. It’s a slow burn, utterly moving, and the best of an amazing week of music videos.

5. Spiral Stairs — “Dance (Cry Wolf)”

First up this week is an amazing retro-inspired video directed by Joe Salinas. It follows a man and a woman as they attempt to communicate with each other through some extremely outdated computer systems, searching for meaning in their lives in spite of inadequate technology. It’s an odd video that serves as a neat commentary on how chained we are to portable electronics when it comes to trying to connect with each other. The end result is basically like a smart phone dystopia, a bleak finale where all we have left to feed our mobile electronic addictions are the last of and most ancient of portable computers.

4. Watsky feat. Julia Nunes — “Stick to Your Guns”

This is definitely going to be the weirdest thing you see today, so get comfy. “Stick to Your Guns” is already a gut punch of a tune that starkly lays out the terrible state of American gun violence, and how we do and don’t deal with it. Director Carlos Lopez Estrada took this bleak tune… and made it even more disturbing by having puppet sheep get systematically and comically murdered when one of their own is inspired to violence by a children’s book full of dinosaurs eating each other.

Like I said… weirdest thing you’re going to see today.

Strangely, this cartoonish approach actually makes the song’s message even more engaging, mocking the simplistic way we tend to think about America’s gun problem. “Stick to Your Guns” treats its audience like children unable to understand higher concepts, and frankly, that’s probably what we deserve in the face of repeated tragedy.

3. Andy Suzuki & The Method — “Fight”

Normally, I wouldn’t put a video like “Fight” in the countdown. I like to reserve this column for videos that do new and interesting things with the medium of music video, and “Fight” is really just a parade of news footage over an admittedly awesome song. That said… between Martin Luther King Day and the inauguration this week, “Fight” gave me a much-needed morale boost with its celebration of the struggle toward justice and freedom. It just made me feel good.

2. Jonathan Roy — “Good Things”

“Good Things” is an emotional rollercoaster that chronicles Jonathan Roy as he descends into self-degradation following a bad break up. Directed by Javier Aguilera and Andrew Hunt, it’s one of the most beautiful videos of 2024 so far, with a keen sense of imagery. Roy’s character is a photographer who frames even his hedonistic fall from grace with an eye towards composition. The result is terrifying and lovely, like a well-shot car crash.

1. The Weeknd — “Party Monster”

Wrapping up this week is “Party Monster,” directed by BRTHR. Calling it a feast for the eyes doesn’t even do it justice. “Party Monster” is like looking at someone’s horny nightmare, with flashing abstract imagery coming through at every turn. Panthers leap out of televisions and The Weeknd sings out of neon crosses. It’s a spellbinding, intoxicating video.

5. Tim Qualls — “Say You Love Me”

Let’s start with a local boy. Tim Qualls bringing us some more of his excellent bro-pop to lighten a darkened time. “Say You Love Me” juxtaposes Qualls in front of an ever shifting colored wall with ballet dancer Katy Thoroughman moving in time to the music. It’s no “I Saw You Dancing” from Featherface (pretty much nothing is), but the mixture is an engaging and memorable music video from director Justin Betancourt that starts Houston off right on the music video scene.

4. Ian Sweet — “Slime Time Live”

They just don’t seem to make music videos like this anymore. Back in the ‘90s you had stuff like Green Day’s “Geek Stink Breath” and Sponges “Wax Ecstatic” that sort of reveled in a sensual grossness. “Slime Time Live” captures that aesthetic in spades. Directed by Ryan Baxley, it follows singer Jilian Medford as she lives a slime-obsessed life, serving her mother food craved from what looks like a cross between a tumor and Cthulhu’s tentacles, while daydreaming of being on a television show where she is hit continuously in the face with cream pies while wearing an expression of weird, orgasmic joy. It’s an unsettling little film that is oddly erotic and ends with a terrifying twist. If you’ve got a strong stomach and a taste for the unconventional, this one is for you.

3. Marshmello — “Summer”

Believe it or not, “people in masks do ordinary things” is actually its own little sub-genre of music videos. They vary in quality, but “Summer” is impossible not to like. The plot is simple, with Marshmello working at a skating rink and falling in love with a girl on the last day of the job while his killjoy boss keeps hassling him. Nothing original, I allow, but director Daniel Burke has a rare grasp of light and angles that takes a pedestrian little love affair and makes it something epic and triumphant. You just feel better after watching “Summer.”

2. Auditorium — “Fire Fire Ocean Liner”

Okay, I’m slightly cheating on this one because it’s just shy of a month old, but you have got to see this. It’s another one the squeamish will want to skip. A young girl (Rebecca Noble) is taken by her family to a small country doctor. There, it’s reveal that her right leg is infected with moths, and the doctors scramble to try and save her. She stares helplessly out a window where an old man (Christopher Myles), who may or may not be Father Christmas, holds her gaze as he chops down a tree. Director Ben Barnes crafts an intoxicating mixture between Auditorium’s beautiful song and the strange, frightening body horror short film, and it’s something that you simply can’t look away from.

1. Univz — “Stardust”

Best video of the week is definitely this animated outing from Univz. Vaguely reminiscent of Niki and The Dove’s “The Fox,” it has a more lo-fi animated style as it tells shows the journey of Univz as she falls through space and time. Nothing makes me happier for music videos in the 21st century like the amount of animation that has become more readily available. “Stardust” uses it perfectly to ensnare the ears and eyes, even giving us a nice bit of narrative in the end to tie the whole experience together. In fact, it’s well-crafted enough that you could watch the whole thing on a loop seamlessly. Beautiful, engaging, and nothing less than what you’d expect from one of Earth’s premier space cadets.

Caveat – by the time this runs God only knows what shenanigans I will have missed since writing it. Keeping up with the new and awful normal is not easy, y’all.

The 115th Congress of These United States has been sworn in and is getting ready to work. Granted, I imagine they might be the slightest bit rusty seeing as how the last three years were the most stagnant and least productive of all congresses since we started measuring that, but I expect things to change now that the Republicans control two branches of government with likely the third following as soon as Donald Trump figures out which crony or television personality he wants to replace Antonin Scalia on the Supreme Court.

So, citizens and resident of the greater Houston area, let’s take a look at what our scampy little representatives got up to the first week back on the job.

Following in Trump’s lead to maybe provoke a war with one of the most powerful countries on Earth, Sen. Ted Cruz (along with governor Greg Abbott because why not), met with the president of Taiwan during her oversees trip. The Chinese government, traditionally very sensitive to any move that might recognize Taiwan as an independent entity, asked the senator and the governor to please not do this in the wake of already tense relationships between the two countries. You might recall that China recently seized a naval probe of ours not long the president-elect had a phone conversation with Taiwanese president Tsai Ing-wen following his narrow defeat of Hillary Clinton. Luckily, they gave it back, but Cruz seems hellbent on annoying a nuclear superpower just because he can.

Meanwhile, there’s Sen. John Cornyn, who seems to now have the unenviable job as point man for the Senate’s repeal of the Affordable Care Act. Speaking to reporters last Thursday, he is now claiming that the Republican replacement of “Obamacare” will instead focus on single healthcare issues at a time rather than the sweeping alternative that we have been assured was lurking somewhere in the back of the Republican playbook for the last six year. Still, Cornyn does have something of a knack for forcing through fairly good laws, even in the doldrums of the last congress, so maybe there is hope yet.

Shout out to my own Representative Ted Poe, whose leukemia is now in remission and who has introduced a border security bill that doesn’t include a Game of Thrones-esque wall. Unfortunately, Rep. Michael McCaul seems to still be proceeding with the erect-a-Roman-Empire-period-solution idea. Back in December he wrote an op-ed for FOX detailing the idea Trump has recently been talking about, that Mexico would pay for our magnificent wall on a “payment plan,” which is slightly better than Trump’s claim they will reimburse us. Then again, considering that a recent Wall Street Journal report shows that Trump is over a billion dollars in debt, I’m not sure he actually understands how reimbursement works.

One thing you can say for McCaul, though; he is a Republican taking the recent Russian hacking attempts seriously, and at least privately says he is getting through to Trump on the seriousness of this issue.

And finally, Rep. John Culberson was one of our congressmen that got the rug pulled out under him by both Trump and the GOP leadership in a rather embarrassing move last week. Back in 2024, John Boehner moved to have the unpopular practice of earmarks, having funds for a project go to a specific recipient rather than a bidder, put under a moratorium in hopes of curbing unethical abuses and spending.

Then, the new congress decided to try and do away with both an independent ethics office that overseas them, and reinstate earmarks, a move led by Culberson and Tom Rooney of Florida. Trump unleashed a tweet-storm against the after-hours, all Republican ethics vote, and motivated citizens contacted their representatives in enough numbers that both measures were backed down.

Speaker Paul Ryan, realizing that the Republicans were already courting disaster with the ethics move, called off the earmarks vote. He subsequently worked out a deal with Culberson and Rooney, offering to bring up earmarks again in March through the regular channel and in the light of day.

In less embarrassing news, both Reps. Sheila Jackson Lee and Gene Green have signed onto a resolution asking Trump to sever his business ties to avoid conflict of interest as a president. And man, the conflicts of interests, in addition to possibly being unconstitutional as heck, are a mile long.

I’m dead serious.

Houston has been struggling with what to do with the Eighth Wonder of the World ever since it went into retirement. Lots of ideas have been bandied about, but no one wants to pay for any of them, and as long as the Rodeo controls the parking situation, nothing will probably ever be done about it. The Dome costs nearly $200,000 a year to maintain, but knocking it down would cost $30 million. So here we are, watching a beloved monument rot, unwilling to re-purpose or level it, and the world spins along on its mad axis as always.

Let’s give it to Donald Trump, president-elect of these United States.

We’ll hand it over to him in exchange for dropping his anti-sanctuary city rhetoric and maybe easing up on his anti-NASA studying climate change nonsense. In return, he gets one massive temple for whatever the heck he wants to do with it. There is literally no way he won’t take that deal.

And to be clear, there’s nothing he can do with the Dome that would be worse than we’re already doing with it. He can paint the whole thing gold until it gleams like a Gatorade pee, and that would be more interesting. He can call it the Trump Bowl, and I would buy the T-shirt and the tacky ballcap.

Maybe he could create the world’s largest indoor golf course, surrounded on all sides by luxury apartments so millionaires could live and play without being bothered by humanity or the elements. That would be absolutely fine by me. I like knowing where all the rich jerks are hiding out in one place anyway. It will make the eventual Purge a much more streamlined affair.

Trump might actually be able to do something about the whole mess if we just let him have it and put a giant picture of his face on it. The man loves rallies so much he’s continuing to do them even though he has already won the presidency. Here’s as big a venue he could ever hope for. He could give weekly addresses to screaming fans, 140-character thought followed by unconnected 140-character thought until he has all the mindless adulation that he could ever need. That’s heaps more interesting than turning the Dome into a space museum. A real-time theater of the weird event is much more culturally significant.

Or maybe he’d finally get the job of demolishing it done. Since it seems that honest means won’t do the trick, I see no reason not to let a pathologically corrupt real estate man have his swing. Down goes the Dome, and in its place up goes Mar-a-Lago on the Bayou! It could be a safe space for every backwards idea a tycoon ever had, while still allowing them view the riff raff at the Rodeo and at music festivals across the freeway. Nothing makes money more fun than standing high in your ivory tower over the people who don’t have as much.

Odds are, though, if we gave it to him, he wouldn’t do jack squat with it. After a sign change or some other gaudy reminder that one of the biggest buildings in the world belonged to him, he’d probably just ease the monstrosity out to a roller rink or something. Eventually it would just return to its state as a pointless, large, expensive annoyance.

And that’s the best reason to give him the Dome. Let it stand as a monument to hubris, and as the perfect culmination of voters’ desires versus voters’ initiatives to open up their wallets and put their money where their mouths are. Every time I drive by the Dome lately, I think of Donald Trump. There’s the endless greed of professional sports that demand new and fancier stadiums, the stagnation of worth and will that lets something we say we all love fall into disuse, and the mindless anger that seems to be the new normal that keeps anything from ever being done.

That’s the Dome and the Donald all in a nutshell. They’re both faded potentials that are now eyesores we can’t fix or ignore. They should be very happy together, even if all Trump does is plant a golden throne in the middle and pretend that he’s been crowned king. At least someone would get some enjoyment out of it.

The Trump Dome, Houston. Think it over. Think about it really, really hard.