The Cryin' Video, Deconstructed

I got a very important text message last night courtesy of my friend A, who informed me that the purse-snatcher in the video for Aerosmith's Cryin' is none other than Josh Holloway, aka James "Sawyer" Ford -- only my favorite LOST character ever. This is exciting news because it combines two of my favorite things: Sawyer (albeit in a shirt), and early 90's Aerosmith. I get a lot of shit for openly liking Aerosmith, but dammit, Get a Grip was a fantastic album (not as good as Pump, though). And I am only slightly ashamed to admit that the Get a Grip tour was my very first concert. Thanks, Dad.

Now, after rewatching the video for Cryin' to confirm that it is, indeed, Sawyer...

Shazam!

... I have determined that the video makes absolutely zero sense. In fact, it makes less sense now than it did when I was 13, which says a lot -- after all, I am the girl who onced asked her parents at the dinner table what a one-eyed trouser snake was, seriously. And for the record, I learned that phrase from an Aerosmith song. Full circle, nice.

So, I've decided to do a close reading of the masterpiece that is the Cryin' video, and I invite you all to watch along with me.



So. We start the video off with Alicia standing on a highway overpass wearing a totally awesome flannel plaid shirt. Then we cut to an utterly terrifying shot of Steven Tyler wearing the creepiest mask on earth. It is for this reason that I will now skip over every other scene in the video of Aerosmith playing. Inexcusable.

Next, a quick shot of 90s sorta heartthrob Stephen Dorff in bed with Aerosmith video goddess Alicia Silverstone. Stephen has a completely terrible half-heart tattoo on his hand that matches up with a corresponding half-heart on Alicia's boobie. These tattoos are just like those really cool "best friends" necklaces, only much more permanent and trashy.

Then we have a scene inside a movie theater where Stephen Dorff is making out with some floozie, and Alicia Silverstone is spying on them from a few rows back, and eating popcorn angrily. You didn't know you could eat popcorn angrily? Well you can. My question is, what are the odds that they would both buy tickets to the same movie, at the same theater, at the same time? It must have been a popular movie. Get a Grip was released in 1993, and of the top movies of 1993, only a few are suitable for make out sessions. Would you want to make out at Schindler's List? No. That would be disrespectful. So I've determined that they are either watching Sleepless in Seattle or Indecent Proposal. Of those two, it's much more likely that a man with a hand tattoo would choose Indecent Proposal. By the same token, a woman with a boob tatto would ALSO have chosen Indecent Proposal. Stephen should have known this and taken his skanky date to Mrs. Doubtfire instead.

Next we cut to a scene where Alicia is driving a badass vintage black Mustang convertible with Stephen in the passenger seat. They pull into what appears to be an abandoned train station. She straddles him, which he seems fine with, but when she goes in for a kiss, he pushes her away. Her reaction is to punch him, kick him out of the car, and speed off, leaving him in the dust. It's a really good dust cloud too. She's lucky it turned out that way, otherwise her dramatic exit would have sucked. However, she'd already determined that he was cheating on her. Why did we need to go through that whole song and dance?

Next she heads to the tattoo shop to covdr her lame heart tattoo into an equally lame mermaid.

We never get to see the finished piece, but I'm pretty sure it will end up looking a little something like this:

Ok, I lied. That's not lame, that's awesome.

Next we have a lovely flashback of Stephen and Alicia making out. This memory apparently causes Alicia's car to overheat, so she does the only logical thing: pull on a pair of jeans under her dress, and abandon the car. I think this represents her leaving Stephen Dorff, or some such nonsense.

Then she goes and gets her belly button pierced by the guy from Right Said Fred.

You know, when I wrote that, I thought I was being funny, but in fact, I am pretty sure that actually is the guy from Right Said Fred.

The excitement of getting her bellybutton pierced by a famous English popstar makes Alicia hungry so she goes to a diner to get pancakes. While at the diner, she spots Sawyer *ding!* and makes goo-goo eyes at him. When she turns away, he pulls a typical Sawyer move and grabs her ugly patchwork mini backpack. Cue lame chase scene through downtown; Sawyer trips on a lady, then Alicia karate kicks him in the chest and gets her bag back. Let me be clear when I say that this would NEVER happen in real life. Sawyer is a beast and there is no way Alicia Silverstone could ever take him down. If anything, he only let her karate kick him because he realized that she was having a bad day and he figured this would help boost her self-esteem a little. (If this were an episode of Lost, when she kicked him he would say, "Sonofabitch!" then he would look at her with a sly smile and say, "Hey, calm down, Shortstack.")

Next Alicia is using a payphone, presumably calling Stephen Dorff to tell him that his career isn't going to go anywhere after '94. Then, she stands on the edge of a highway overpass, waiting for Stephen and the cops to show up. When he gets there, Stephen tries to talk her down from the overpass, which leads me to think that maybe the local police force was really short-staffed that day. Shouldn't they have some kind of professional for the job of talking down a potential jumper? Apparently not. Stephen reaches for her hands, and Alicia takes that golden opportunity to jump backwards off the bridge, but -- surprise! -- she is attached to a bungee cord, which I always thought was connected to her belly button ring. I mean, why else would you get your navel pierced, if not to connect it to a bungee cord and carry out a fake suicide attempt? She flips Stephen the bird and laughs, and that is the end of the video. What they don't show is how stupid she feels when she needs the cops' help to get back to the top of the overpass instead of hanging on that damn bungee all day.

The moral of the story is, where the hell are this girl's parents?!? She's running around with older men, getting tattoos and piercings, abandoning cars on the side of the road, and faking suicides. Someone needs to go on Maury, and fast!