I’m a big fan of Rube Goldberg Machines. A Rube Goldberg Machine is a “deliberately over-engineered machine that performs a very simple task in a very complex fashion, usually including a chain reaction”. Of course this one also awakens my sense of collegiate pride, but this thing is honestly cool.
Usually, the end result of the machine is some sort of useful function, such as peeling an apple or something, but with as many steps as possible. This one doesn’t seem to perform a useful function, other than entertainment (and teaching!). This one embraces the entertainment aspect of these things, going through the entire history of the earth, from the big bang, to the extinction of the dinosaurs, Egyptians, Romans and knights, World War II, the space race, television, and finally takes us into the future to the end of the world (and even beyond that!), all in under 3 minutes!
Quite some time ago, there was a music video going around the net. The band was Ok Go, and the song was “A million ways”, A.K.A. “dancing in the back yard”.
[Edit: embedding has been disabled on this clip, so you’ll have to click through to watch. I highly recommend you do so!]
Okay, so 4 guys dancing around in their backyard for a cheep, but pretty awesome, music video. I really don’t think it would have been popular if the song hadn’t been good too.
But no big deal, videos like this go around the web all the time. However, Ok Go was no one hit wonder. Pretty soon another video came out, “Here it goes again”. This one became even more popular than the previous one, and established them as the masters of the “one scene shoot”, where they complete all the choreography without cutting the video, or editing. This video was even more awesome than the last, and you’ve probably seen it, though you might just know it as, “the guys on treadmills”.
[Edit: This one has disabled embedding as well, but if you haven’t seen it, you should definitely click through!]
This led to all kinds of things, and in particular, an appearance on the MTV Music awards, where they performed the dance live, with some awesome treadmills that said, “Ok Go” on them.
Not only is that video pretty awesome, but I really love the song. Again, I think that you can have the coolest video in the world, but if the song sucks, you’re not going anywhere. So the popularity of the video is somewhat of a testament to the quality of the music.
Time passed, and Ok Go disappeared from the radar. I don’t think anybody was really too surprised at that; that kind of Internet fame is like catching lightning in a bottle. They had managed to harness it not once, but twice, and they should be grateful, right? Wrong. Not content to fade quietly into the dark, they went out and made ANOTHER AWESOME VIDEO.
“This too shall pass” features all the usual stuff: a great song and one long take of something overly complicated. In this case, rather than an elaborately choreographed dance, it was an elaborately choreographed Rube Goldberg machine.
World, take note! Ok Go will not be ignored! They will continue to be awesome until you sit up and listen!
Shane Halbach 