Samuel Bayer, director

I try not to write about things I don't like, but last time we talked about Kirk Cameron so I guess I can do it again.

Nearly 20 years ago I first saw the video for Melissa Ethridge's "Come to My Window" and even though I was just a kid in high school I recognized that it was incredibly pretentious. Juliette Lewis acts like an over-emotional spaz through the whole thing and it makes me cringe and feel embarrassed to even look at it.

Tonight, I watched Samuel Mayer's video for The Cranberries's "Ridiculous Thoughts" and it's almost the same thing, except, instead of Juliette Lewis- who should've known better- it's poor, unlucky, 14 year-old Elijah Wood. Bayer's got him in the exact same outfit (light-colored pants and white tank top) and crying & wailing like a freak.

Bayer's best known video is for "Smells Like Teen Spirit". The only movie he ever did was the remake of Nightmare On Elm Street.

I'm sad to report that he directed the videos for my two favorite Sheryl Crow songs: "My Favorite Mistake" and "Home". I've always hated the video for "Home" but I didn't know until tonight that it was Bayer who made it. If you've ever seen it then you remember it and hate it too. In it, Crow is performing at some kind of demolition derby somewhere in the South and there's all these black and white shots of audience members and you can tell they were all chosen for having some unfortunate physical feature: fat, wrinkly, bad teeth. It's like he's trying to present the people as inbred freaks but, really, it justs shows the kind of person that Bayer is. I don't like Samuel Bayer and I hate his work.