35: Blur - Coffee and TV

Your brain on boot pop is a peanut size.

back to 1999, the year the Matrix

described as the peak of human civilization.

Well, that's debatable. I think we can all

agree that it was definitely the peak of

one notable music sub-genre, Britpop.

And we have a fine example today.

Join us for one anthropomorphic

milk cartons

love story of, uh, fucking hell,

that's a hard word to say. Anthropomorphic.

David, David, anthropomorphic.

Anthropomorphic.

You should just, like, say it now and then

you should put, like, the AI voice

lady to say it over here.

anthropomorphic milk pardon you won't believe what he did next are you making it comic sans

i am no no no no no yeah i remember in in primary school they said that the reason why comic sans is

you so much is because if you're dyslexic or dyspraxic or whatever it's easier to read like

i don't know it's easier for your eyes to see i might be wrong so let's try that again say the word

Anthropomorphic. It worked.

Join us for one anthropomorphic milk carton's story of love, loss and discovery.

It's Coffee and TV by Blur.

Do you feel like a chain store?

Practically flawed

One of many zeros

Kicked around four

Your ears are full but you're empty

"Coffee & TV" was released on the 28th of June 1999, where it reached a respectable

11th in the charts in the UK, 22nd in Ireland and weirdly, 22nd in Iceland.

Who knew Iceland was so into Britpop?

The song itself is about Blur's guitarist Graham Coxon's struggle with alcoholism.

He also did the vocals of the song,

which is probably why it is one of the better sounding Blur songs.

But to be honest, the bar with them or any Britpop band is on the ground.

Man, I hate Britpop.

Dave, this is your fault again.

Sorry.

We'll get into Nelly's hatred of Britpop later.

Oh, you don't like it.

Do you?

Oh, it depends.

I will judge you if you say yes, so...

I'm not a massive fan, but I feel like it's just a default due to our location,

which unfortunately is Britain at the moment.

The video was produced and directed by Hammer and Tongs,

who consists of director Garth Jennings and producer Nick Goldsmith.

The pair produced a small truckload of late 90s and early 90s music videos,

including Ash, Travis, Hot Chip and Beck.

They later went on to direct full-blown films,

including one of my personal favourites, the film version of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy,

which, as a massive Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy fan,

is actually good, even if it's not quite on par with the books.

but it's still good.

It's got a couple of jokes in it

that are unique to the film

that are hilarious.

Ford, I think I'm a sofa.

I know how you feel.

I'm getting sidetracked.

I think Saga's going to Galaxy's career.

Really good puppets in that as well,

which is another thing we will talk about.

Yeah, like the book,

I don't remember the movie Beyond,

Mos Def, so...

Yeah, Mos Def was good, isn't it?

Good Ford Prefect.

Although Charlie, who was on last time,

he described Martin Freeman

as the tuna sandwich of acting.

He's never bad,

but he's, you know,

he's just kind of,

it was all right, yeah.

That's a good way to put it.

He's, yeah, do you understand which fucking sounds about right?

The video follows a sentient milk carton called Milky,

who embarks on a journey to find the upper-mentioned Grim,

who's gone missing,

but venturing out into the big bad world

proves to be a bit more than Milky bargained for.

So can you copy and see me easily?

I've seen so much I'm going blind

And I'm playing it virtually

The social reality is hard enough for me

Take me away from this big path

Growing the creeps and marrying me

It's the meat that's not over again

We're milky.

Is milky not just going through life

like everyone's currently going through life

where it's one step forward, two steps back?

How often do you have your love interest

being stepped on to death by a giant human.

I mean, it could be a metaphor.

I mean, we all get stepped on, right?

Our love gets stepped on.

I mean, we all have a teacher who gets stepped on every day.

Keep your kinks in the bedroom away from us.

Yes.

I like how you just have to take a second,

just to stop for a second.

That's an extra podcast.

Available by request.

that's available to members only

we can't rewind we've gone too far

after hours

we've gone too far

too far

we really can't stop

everybody remembers this video

it's fucking good

the main thing I was kind of wondering

watching it is like

how the fuck did they animate the milk carton

oh I thought it was a human in a costume

it was like for the walking scenes

and like the movement scenes

where a person in a costume

and the rest was probably stop motion

because you know you have the change of faces and whatever to me it looks like a guy in the suit but

i couldn't find any actual answers on how they did it online so i'm like it's a total guess so i don't

know if there's like a combination of different things like there's a there might be a wee robot

milk carton or a puppet a puppet milk carton or something and they've got other shots of a guy in

a suit i couldn't find anything so yeah it's fucking fucking impressive it's good i guess i'll give it

If there's anyone, I don't know who hasn't seen the video, basically, this world seems

to be full of sentient food containers and milk curtains and bottles and stuff like that.

Instantly, my brain goes to what are the rules of this world?

Like, is every container sentient?

Like, is your partner talking to you as you're cooking it?

Well, like, what's the rules here?

Like the shit toy story?

Yeah.

The contents of your fridge is just alive all day.

None of the humans seem fazed by it though.

So I don't know if they know that all their stuff is alive.

When I was a child, as well as a nine-year-old when I watched this,

I always got reactions at the time that I genuinely thought that the humans didn't quite realise,

with a few exceptions of Big Susie and the motorcycle guy.

It didn't seem like, you know, the love interest that we'll speak about briefly, shortly, briefly,

as brief as their love for each other.

She was tapped on by a giant human.

It didn't seem malicious, if that made sense.

It felt accidental.

And the way it was portrayed, it always felt like,

oh, the humans just don't know this.

Because, you know, Toy Story,

maybe the motorcyclist is behind the motorcycle helmet.

It's anthropomorphic something, if we don't know.

Maybe he just wanted the milk carton.

He wasn't actually picking them up.

He was just like, oh, fuck, free milk.

But he waves at him on the way back.

So I don't know.

how does it explain

Big Susie Dove

she might have been

off her tits

I don't know

I think generally

I think yeah

Toy Story Rules

is probably a good

rough

estimate of what's

going on here

which is probably

actually just for the

three people who have

not seen the video

just to explain what

actually happens

what we're talking about

the milk carton

has the face of

Graham Cox

as like a missing

person

yeah I'm glad you

added that last bit

because the mental

image of my

It was quite different.

He had it on his bike and he's walking around,

making its hatred of humanity known.

So it basically has his face as a missing person,

which is something that has probably not been relevant since the 80s,

but you know, everybody gets that.

We see a shot of his family.

I presume his sister, though his sister looks about 27.

I don't know why she's in pigtails, but I presume that she's supposed to look younger.

And she actually is, and his parents are just worrying over this.

We get the point of like, oh, this is like a missing person.

Where is that person?

When I watched it initially, I thought he looked...

So when you're nine, everyone that is older than 10 looks older.

I thought like, oh, he's probably a teen or something like this.

And when I look at them, I'm like, all those people in their 20s,

why is there a milk carton missing person on it?

That was for children specifically, I think, probably.

Maybe not. Anyway, so Miyuki comes to life and goes on a missing person mission to find Graham

and goes through different stages of life, I guess, and loss and depression. And again,

he just finds Graham in the garage where he plays with his shitty band playing the shitty song. And

he goes, oh shit, my family doesn't know that I'm missing, although it must have been for long enough

for them to put my face on the box.

Shit, I need to go home.

I do have a question for Neo,

considering that he's...

I know we can see this,

but for the sake of our audience,

I'm currently holding the mic

like an actual microphone.

Yeah, so I'm just going to interview Neo now.

Considering that you're usually a bit of an outlier

when it comes to knowing the music we're discussed,

when was the first time you heard the song

slash watch the video?

No, I don't have the honest answer.

Was it last night?

No, a couple of nights ago, whatever.

Because in 1999, I didn't have a computer.

I wasn't on the internet.

I was nine.

I don't think I've ever seen this before.

I'll be honest with you.

What?

And as a fan of Britpop, you know, Oasis, Coldplay, The Cooks, I just miss Blur, unfortunately.

So I don't know much about them.

I know that one song that everyone knows, Song 2.

Usually when Nelly takes the piss out of you for not seeing stuff,

I'm kind of like, ah, you know, you can miss stuff.

But really? This one?

I don't think I ever have.

And I don't know why.

Well, we have a fresh perspective somehow.

So what did you think of this hot, fresh new music video?

I have a hot, fresh new music video.

I have a habit of things we look at.

I often look at them, you know, from a today's perspective.

And this is another one of those examples that it feels more modern than it ought to be.

It doesn't feel like an old video.

It's original.

It's fun.

It's not boring.

It's a great concept for a video in general.

Just overall, the concept I'm totally on board with.

It's like your classic fish out of water film where, you know, the country boy goes to the big city for the first time.

And he learns lots of lessons about life, except it stars a milk carton.

And I'm like, yes.

I did remember seeing that video when, I don't know if it came out, but it would have been around 1999 probably.

And I found it very depressing, which is a very weird thought to have for like an eight, nine-year-old who's seen it for the first time.

Not confused, but annoyed at it because I thought it wasn't, in my critique, views of nine-year-olds.

I understood what they were going for.

Like I didn't understand the alcoholism part, but I understood the lost person and this milk carton going on a journey.

Because it's a very, very simple video anyway.

There's nothing particularly difficult about what they're doing.

I just kept thinking like, man, they could have done it a bit less on the nose.

Nine-year-old me, which I remember being annoyed.

What did you think was too on the nose about?

It was just very obvious.

It was very simplistic.

it's like a cartoon

but it doesn't go beyond that

in terms of the actual content

and I still agree with nine year old me

by this point I was obviously very

exquisite and had great taste

so like my music videos

have to be a bit more refined

have a bit more

you shouldn't say choir

I want to use

my three brain cells

that I have at age nine

to use them a bit more

I think I disagree with nine year old Naila

there where i think the simplicity is one of the good things about it it's i didn't really i didn't

really clock that is actually quite sad until you said though because i'm an idiot and my brain was

just there's a happy dancing milk corn so yeah i never really clocked yeah it's actually kind of a

story when you think about it but he gets he you know he comes back gets the guy back yeah milky

completes his mission he learns a few things along the way well i think the one thing that was confused

as a nine-year-old and i'm still confused as a three-year-old is how long was the guy yeah just

in general, how long has this guy gone for?

Yeah, I bet.

He's just been in this basement with his shit band

playing this shit music for like, what, months?

And not even for saying he was like,

oh shit, I should probably call my family.

And it's done the context of like,

oh, our co-coclism takes you away from it.

But if you're going to do this,

then do it a bit obvious when you,

or like in a different way.

Like, phones existed in 99.

Maybe it's one of those things where he ran away

to follow his dream of being in a Britpop band

and he just kind of got so caught up in that

he forgot about his family

and it took the brave Milky to come wake him up.

Wake up Sheepo.

I don't know why I said that.

Sheepo being blur.

Yeah, he was so caught up in chasing his dreams

he forgot about what really mattered

and it took a milk carton to remind him.

That it didn't take long much, did it?

Yeah.

It was right there.

It was like, it wasn't the subcontext,

it was the context.

The door is full of their language

There's wisdom that you're sure

Till the words start stirring

And you can't find the door

So can you come the MTV

He's the week

I've seen so much

I'm going blind

No, I just wanted to bring to one of the later thoughts I had.

And I want to hear your thoughts about it.

The video gave me very strong Black Hole Sun vibes in terms of the video.

Obviously differently made in different contexts, but very similar color palettes and shots of

people and like kind of like the overreactions of people and faces they make and just gesturing

and all of that.

Man, this is like the either less depressing or more depressing,

depending how you want to look at it, version of Black Hole Sun.

Yeah, I never really clocked it before you said it,

but it's like, but yeah, it has a similar thing

where all the human characters are all quite,

apart from maybe the family,

but all the human characters are quite exaggerated

and, you know, kind of chewing the scenery a bit.

Lots of weird angle shots,

but I guess that's kind of the point of view of Milky,

especially Big Susie.

She's quite a Black Hole Sun-y, actually.

Yeah.

If you haven't seen the video,

Milky finds a business card for Big Susie.

The business card says that Susie can bring all your dreams come true

or something like that.

So Neo, when there's a card like this, she's pissed.

So she doesn't milk Milky?

Oh, God.

I think she didn't do her job, did she?

She's not into milk.

Should we dive into what you're thinking was there

or should we just leave that?

Up to use of my drug-induced...

I'm sorry, when I say, dear listeners, when I say drugs in use,

they mean that I have colds.

And I might have overdosed and passed it a more.

No, no.

I've been watching Breaking Bad.

And Nellie, you're high on me.

You're exactly the way they get on in that show.

God damn it, I've been told.

I could so easily ruin your career right now, Nellie.

But yeah, okay.

The point of that whole conversation came from...

No, I mean, I can elaborate, but I think it might be...

I don't know if it would be funny or more frustrating if I just run the milk come jog to the ground

without any understanding what I'm talking about.

It needs the context of our conversation last night, which we don't have.

Well, the context is that what if they were born this way, meaning that they reproduce somehow.

So how do they reproduce?

And again, paracetamol, a lot of it, made me...

wipes a bit of like the whatever milk is in his mouth and picks the box.

My mind went where I see the more induced minds go sometimes,

which is complete nonsense.

I'm like completely lost it.

And I started thinking about what they reproduce the way,

because it's milk, so it's dairy, so it's mammals.

So the way that mammals reproduce is...

When a mummy and a daddy mama love each other very much.

Exactly. They do special hugs.

Because of my point that basically the whole milk content is out of reproduced, which led to milk.

I regret nothing. Well, I regret a lot of things, but definitely not this.

I will park this and go and grab Scott to hear his thoughts on milk.

Please stand by. You won't believe this one weird trick.

I want to ask you from a scientific point of view.

Okay.

Scientific point of view, it's milk on.

The culture, the live culture in the milk

has clearly just, you know, gone off the rails now.

It's no longer just some little microbiome.

It's fully evolved into a complex organism.

So basically the good bacteria has turned into sentient bacteria.

Yes, and we no longer know if it's good bacteria or not

because it has its own will.

It could be bad bacteria now.

Who knows?

It could be complex moral bacteria.

I'm not clear on how the actual leg movements and stuff would work.

Oh, it just, you imagine like it's some kind of slime mold fungal thing

that has full control over like different appendages

and it's just some giant colony organism,

which essentially all organisms are anyway.

We're just colonies of cells and don't worry about that

and don't let it keep you awake at night.

Oh, you haven't thought the bulk of milk comes here.

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

This is where milk come came from.

Okay, so clearly, clearly it's trying to spread the colony to other colonies now.

Yeah, that's how that works.

It's part of its natural life cycle.

Yeah, it's his budding phase.

It's just letting off some spores

and those are going to turn into new milk people.

Good to know.

They might need a host, they might not.

Who knows?

That's for you to find out

if you're willing to take some of the milk come.

Maybe it's like spreading from sentient milk carton

to like normal milk carton.

The normal milk carton becomes a sentient milk carton.

That's just like flower phase.

It's a normal milk carton.

And then it needs time to like grow arms and legs.

And eventually it stands up.

It's like, I'm ready to go now.

It's kind of like halfway between the thing and fucking the last one.

Yeah, it is.

Yeah.

It's just like, is that a milk corn?

Or is that a thing that is going to come alive?

Could be both.

All right, cool.

Have fun, guys.

Oh, no, he's leaving.

Come back.

Come back, T-shirt.

That was Scott from Sentient Milk Corner.

I'm surprised that he actually had a full

own like full growth

like theory and like knowledge

on how would that work

he always does he's like

he's reliable

yes he's a reliable

source of scientific information

we like Scott

Milk Heaven how does that work in terms of religion

Milk Heaven well I mean

they're taking quite a

traditional Christian approach where you know

the Milky Dyes and you know

is it turns into an angel, which is great, which is lovely, which is actually quite sweet.

Brings this depressing video to a nice sort of closure.

Also, how does that work in terms of deities?

Like, do they see, is Milk God a milk box as well?

Or is it just the God God?

Milk is a white, off-white colored liquid.

And the video shows us going into the white.

So milk's going back to where milk belongs.

Maybe it's just the same for all creatures,

be the human, animal or milk carton.

Okay, final points.

David, go.

We've devined deeper into this video

than I've ever really thought about it before.

I previously just thought of it, of the music video with the happy little milk carton, but

there's more to it than that.

So, you know, nothing's ever as simple as it seems.

Favourite and worst parts, the happy little milk carton again.

And the worst part is people being mean to the happy little milk carton.

Fuck those people.

Don't be that guy.

Best parts was, I like when I got on the motorbike.

That was fun.

I mean, how does a milk carton stay on the back of a motorcycle?

That pushes it too far for me.

That has hands.

That's tiny hands.

Little hands, little hands.

No, a little hand doesn't work like that.

How would you know?

Well, actually, he has the lactose intolerant in the room.

Yeah, I don't know a thing about him, though.

And for a lesson as a home, Neil has gigantic hands.

He doesn't know how it feels to have small hands.

And I guess, worst part...

Twice the size.

Twice the size.

Of a normal human being.

Yeah, twice the size.

We're built differently in Ireland.

worst part. I didn't

like the way... What's

the lead singer Blair called?

Damon

Amoncia. Why not?

The way he drinks his milk. That seems

like he just murdered his

milk and didn't even look at

it. He didn't even know what he was drinking.

He's not seen a safety

video about don't drink random

liquids. Even if you're thirsty, it could be acid.

He just drinks his milk.

I thought that was a bit odd. He basically just

found a random carton of milk on the street

well on the window

he didn't check the date

he just fucking went for it

down for milky

doesn't like that

doesn't like that

he could have

he could have paid more attention

to his mil

so my final point

the video is very well done

and has an original idea

regardless of what

nine year old me thought

it's cool

it's well done

it has really interesting shots

very competently made

favourite part

the video reminded me

to text my mum

which I did

and then she responded

sending me pictures

of her getting

being on wine tasting in somewhere in Czech Republic with her friends.

So there you go.

And the worst part is...

Sorry, I'm just taking off my notes.

Worst part is milk, apparently, according to my paracetamol-ridden brain.

No, actually, the worst part is a bit pop in general.

Just put it to rest.

Set it on fire.

It's 24.

There's better music out there.

Well, there was better music in 99 as well, but definitely now.

So sorry, y'all.

Take a look at the show notes for links to today's video.

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also email

gone2farcast

at gmail.com

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we did one

yeah

you may have noticed

that episode releases

are sporadic as fuck

but we are still

doing them occasionally

but just

adult life is difficult

and also you don't pay us

so fuck you

we get to do whatever you want

bye

bye

bye

Wave at the microphone.

Thanks, your parents.