My colleague Jamieson Cox brings me a lot of joy — he is my pop culture soulmate, the one person with whom I have shared nearly all of my feelings about Zayn Malik. Today he brought me another bundle of joy: this video of Master of None costars Eric Wareheim and Aziz Ansari celebrating their time filming in Rome with a homemade music video for Kanye West's "Famous." It's one of the best things I have ever seen.
This video has everything: boogying in the streets with a devil-may-care attitude, respectfully switching to black and white in honor of Rihanna's very important vocals, confused passersby, so much pasta, two adults pretending to hump a lovely European car, and lots of different jackets.
In the 2014 film Nightcrawler, Jake Gyllenhaal's character says "a friend is a gift you give yourself." I am so glad I gave myself Jamieson. When Jamieson bestowed this video on me, my only response was "I am so freaking happy right now. So thrilled with the world and its wonders." Then I accidentally sent him a really sexual GIF through our Slack Giphy bot and requested that HR not be informed.
That stressed me out for a moment until I realized that life is but one big adventure, soundtracked by an anthem of HR violations. Life is a banger. I don't think we should all do whatever we want all the time, but I think we should all do whatever we want right now.
life is a banger!!!
This video takes me back to 2012, the summer of every person you had ever met making a DIY "Call Me Maybe" video. It might have been the best summer the world has ever seen. Did you still have hope that life could be this good again? I didn't, and now I do.
The precedent of Aziz and Eric's vacation video is, I assume, the Kardashian family vacation music videos, which makes the whole thing even more delightful.
Aziz and Eric's "Famous" also reminds me that a real music video for "Famous" is yet to come, and will probably be insane.
Everything is the best.
Here are some messages I sent to my entire family: