—Henry M. Cowles

Dragostea Din Tei

O-Zone

If you put a thousand Eurotrash monkeys at a thousand homosexual typewriters, told them to write a three-minute-long porno with cameos from a cyborg and Santa Claus, hired Jar-Jar Binks and his twin brothers as the leads, and signed on an obsessive-compulsive nine-year-old to direct the whole thing, you would be the most awe-inspiring filmmaker of all time. You would also have created the music video for “Dragostea Din Tei,” more widely known as “The Romanian Pop Song That My Floormate Plays At 4 a.m. Every Night”. Hats off to you, my friend.

Holy living spirit of the Lord, is this video incomprehensible. O-Zone is flying a cargo plane (the least sexy aircraft imaginable)? But sometimes they’re on the wing, caressing each other’s hairless chests and coming tantalizingly close to making out? And at arbitrary moments, they turn into absurdist comic-book pictures (my favorite is the one of two Indians playing a soccer match against a cowboy)? And in the end, it was all a dream? What?!

Far be it from me to judge this video. All I can tell you is that you should watch it and pick out your favorite Dadaist moment for yourself. Meanwhile, I’m gonna contemplate moving to Romania, where even myself, the gayest straight guy around, can score with some hot post-Soviet babushkas.

—Abe J. Riesman