Beyond Here Lies a Future of Drug Addiction, Domestic Abuse, and Poverty; Most Likely Due to Unresolved Issues With a Certain Woman's Father.

The video opens on a bright but somewhat overcast day, the upbeat tempo conflicts with the man's scowl and his dirty white wife beater (foreshadowing?!?!) he has on under his jacket. The man climbs up the steps to a trashy extended stay motel, unlocks the door and enters the dingy, dimly lit room. All the curtains are drawn and there appears to be a large chain with a padlock hanging by the door. Upon closing the door, he locks it twice from the inside as Bob Dylan's raspy voice sings, "You're the only love I've ever known. Just as long as you stay with me, the whole world is my throne." It seems likely that the man is holding someone captive and does not want her to escape. The synchronization of his actions and these lyrics imply the he is in love with the woman he is holding captive and should she leave him, his life would fall apart.
 The motel room is littered with empty bottles, reinforcing both his drinking problem and the emptiness of his life. The man pours himself a drink, pauses midway through, picks up a knife, and heads to the bedroom. He unlocks the door and slowly opens it to reveal an empty blood stained bed with ropes that have been chewed through. The man enters the room and a woman in ratty blood stained clothes breaks an empty bottle over his head, knocking him down. She leaves the bedroom and tries to open the front door only to find it locked, so she looks for the keys and as the camera follows her into the kitchen, the man hits her in the face, knocking her into the wall. The woman picks up a conveniently located frying pan and hits him across the face with it with such force it should have been accompanied with a cartoon "Kapow". The man, seemingly unfazed from this blow, grabs her and throws her into the TV, which promptly breaks just as a lamp falls on her. The woman appears dazed, but not unconscious, so the man smacks her head against the wall and she passes out. Throughout their entire fight, the camera angle stayed level, not looking up or down at either one, implying an even power dynamic, until of course the man knocks her out, and the camera angle shifts, so that he, again, appears dominant. The camera also jostled and jumped with the couples' movements throughout the fight. That, along with the sounds of the physical debacle help to reinforce how "real" the fight looks as well as emphasize the unsteady nature of their relationship.
He grabs her feet and drags her body into the bedroom, where he sets her down. The camera follows him while he picks up a syringe of some drug, and just as he turns to stick it in her, she sticks a knife in him. The camera shifts so she is now looking down on him, and rightly so seeing as she is in power now.
She leaves the apartment, runs down the stairs, stops, looks back, unlocks the car, gets in and drops the keys as she is trying to start it. Bob Dylan sings "Well my ship is in the harbor and the sails are spread. Listen to me pretty baby, lay your hand upon my head. Beyond here lies nothin', nothin' done and nothin' said." After picking up the keys, the woman realizes that her captor/lover is right outside the car window. Thankfully she starts the car and drives away before he can do anything, but she only makes it about 20 feet before she stops, looks behind her, puts the car in reverse, and runs into the man. She gets out of the car, approaches the man, lays her hand on his head, and with a final hit on the snare drum, she kisses him.
The synchronization of the lyrics and the woman getting in the car to sail away emphasize her escape, but as she stops and comes back, lyrics from earlier in the song become more important. With the repeated chorus of "beyond here lies nothin'", and Dylan's statement "don't know what to do without it. Without this love that we call ours." it becomes clear that this woman loves this man as well. The entire video, the audience assumes she hates him because she is trying to escape, but when she is finally free she realizes that she too, could not survive without their love. Their deep seeded passion for one another is what ends up saving them. If the man truly did not want her to leave, he could have shot her, or severely wounded her, but he uses a knife instead, implying a closer connection and deeper, stronger feelings. And when the woman stabbed him, she just as easily could have stabbed his chest and killed him, I'm relatively certain a court would rule in her favor. But she did not, because she loves him so deeply, and he loves her so passionately. So, they stay in a dysfunctional and abusive relationship because it is the only love they know and neither can live without it. Their fictitious relationship speaks to how intangible and indescribable love really is. Love causes many emotions and convinces many people to do crazy things. Love has many forms and this just happens to be one of them.

Rawks

Abbey begins by listing the types of rock that can be found in the Southeastern Utah soil. It is a list of observations that led many individuals and many large companies to set up mining companies in Southeastern Utah after a man struck it rich mining for Carnotite. Mr. Graham sold Mr. Husk a share of a promising plot of land and tasked him with finding the precious rock. Mr. Husk notices that his wife is becoming distant, probably because he just mortgaged their entire life and decided to move to Utah so he could dig for rocks... I'd be mad too...
As Husk rides in Grahams airplane for the first time he sees the horizon tilt as Graham avoids a tall rock formation. The land that was once on his left was replaced by an enormous blue sky and the ground on his right seemed to loom closer than ever. Graham experiences a similar shift after killing Husk. He is trying to dump Husks body by driving a truck over a cliff with the body inside, but he gets caught and falls off the cliff as well.
Billy manages to escape from Graham but ends up dying an even more painful death than he would have received had Graham shot him. Doctors try to save him but  his burns are too severe and he is too weak to recover. Mrs. Husk moves back to Texas with her daughters and is confronted by a lawyer who tries to coerce her into selling her 40% share of the Hotrock Mountain Mineral Development company at a fraction of its' total worth. From here I assume she lives a comfortable life with her daughter and the $100,000 she just got from the lawyer.

RTU 101

Hi,
I'm Roger
I'm from Menlo Park, California which I've pretty much stopped telling people because when I tell people here that I'm from Menlo Park the give me the same confused look that I give people when they tell me which tiny town in Ohio they're from. So I just say I'm from San Francisco, which probably gives people a much better idea of who I am thanks to all the stereotypes... Seriously though, I love food, I'm a huge liberal, I support gay marriage and legalizing weed, I have an iPhone and a MacBook Pro, I have pictures of the Golden Gate Bridge on my Facebook, and my Instagram account is all pictures of overpriced food that I so love. About the only stereotype I choose not to conform to is being tan (thanks British heritage).
All my childhood I wanted to be funny more than anything, I read comic books like Calvin and Hobbes and Zits all throughout my childhood and told jokes constantly and did my best to make everyone I talked to laugh... it didn't work out very well... Eventually after about 10 years of no one but my parents laughing at my jokes I became so cynical and mean that people started laughing. Awesome! My high school was conveniently located smack dab between one of the richest and one of the poorest parts of Northern California, which made for a wide spectrum of demographics in classes. That's where I learned how prejudices are formed...
I played Water Polo all four years and swam for three. My Junior year I joined the improv team so I could stand on a stage with 7 other guys and make inappropriate jokes in front of the entire school. That was pretty cool. I decided to come here because I wanted to experience something different than what I had seen for 18 years in the suburbs of Silicon Valley.
Mission Accomplished.
I've spent a lot of time on what I think should be a pretty simple blog post so I'm gonna wrap up in rapid fire mode.
I'm a Psych major, I love my Giants, I love my 49ers, I love my girlfriend, I love food, I love my friends and family, and I love sushi, so much so that it deserves to be praised in a separate category other than food in general. I hate math, I like writing, I love Psychology, and I work at a luggage store.