- Hey guys, welcome back to the classroom.
As you can see your regular teacher couldn't make it today.
He got into a bit of a golfing accident over the weekend.
So I will be your substitute.
Not to worry though, I'm one of the cool subs.
I'm not gonna make you do any work,
we're just gonna watch some old VHS
and then talk about it when it's done.
Sound good?
Cool.
So this video was sent to me by Annabeth on Twitter.
So thank you Annabeth.
It's called, "How Can I Tell If I'm Really In Love?"
And it's a surprisingly star studded PSA from 1992.
You've got a young Jason Bateman.
- Hey mom lemme help with the dishes.
- His sister Justine.
- [Both] How can I tell if I'm really in love?
- And also TV legend, Ted Danson.
- Sexual intercourse.
- Who allegedly only appeared in this as an obligation
towards his community service that he accrued
from unpaid parking tickets
which I hope is true because that's hilarious.
It also makes a lot of sense when you watch him in this
because he can't wait to get the hell out of there.
Anyway, I'm really excited to show you guys this video.
So let's just jump into it.
The fun starts right away
with this "Star Wars" style scrolling disclaimer
from the Los Angeles Board of Education being like,
okay yeah, we did make this video,
but that doesn't mean we sponsor it
or that we take responsibility
for it or that we'd necessarily endorse it.
All we did was make it, okay?
You can't pin this on us.
Such a weird tone to set before we even start, I love it.
- This is my brother Jason.
- [Jason] I've made a huge mistake.
- After a few introductions,
which are worth showing because it will give you an idea
of how jarringly this is edited.
- Hi guys, I'm Dena.
- Hi, I'm Jennifer.
- The most beautiful music starts playing.
(soft bluesy music)
So this theme song is great for several reasons.
One, it goes on way too long.
It's like six minutes long, two, the lyrics are absurd.
They start asking all these questions
which I guess they're supposed to be like unanswerable,
except most of them have very simple answers.
♪ How do the stars know it's time to appear ♪
♪ How does the sun know East from West ♪
♪ How does it shine from up above ♪
♪ And how will I know if I'm really in love ♪
- Like, I just pictured this band
in the recording studio, bringing up all these questions.
Before we start,
you know what I've been wondering a lot lately?
How do I know if I'm really in love?
That's a really good question.
I think it's different for everyone.
I know when I met my wife--
Oh how does this sun know to go that way?
Okay, I'll get back to your question in a second.
The sun doesn't move, we just move in relation to it.
I'm not moving.
No, I mean the earth moves.
You know that, right?
Please tell me you know that.
Okay Mr. Math.
Science.
If you're so smart, then explain the moon.
Explain what it is?
No, how does it know what time it is?
And what about the stars?
How did they know?
Did someone turn them on?
What if they forgot one night?
That would be so embarrassing.
No, stars are giant balls of fire.
We just can't see them
during the day because it's too bright.
Oh, from the sun?
Yes.
But how does the sun know what time it is?
How old are you guys?
30, 37.
Jesus Christ.
All right, let's just finish the song.
♪ How will I know if I'm really ♪
- So after several more minutes of this.
♪ I didn't know love could feel real ♪
- Honesty.
♪ I love the way that I'm feeling. ♪
- Fun sucks.
- And this.
♪ The only one to hold ♪
- This song finally fades out and you think, okay,
the video's gonna start now.
And then they transition right into another song
that makes even less sense.
♪ Take it from me ♪
- Okay, if you say so.
- Ted, no one said anything.
- I hear you.
- The shirt.
- Fine, you got the old guy convinced.
- Of what?
- You know, you can stop this tape anytime you want.
- Oh, thank God.
Well, that's gonna do it for today's video everyone.
♪ Watch out for your heart, it's tearing you apart ♪
- Just kidding, as much as I already wanna throw this tape
into an active volcano,
we gotta power through this because there's actually a lot
of really valuable information
in here about relationships, about sex.
And I love that,
because every time they say something of value,
the director immediately cuts to some kind of acid trim.
- I think guys have a lot
of trouble talking about love with their friends
'cause they have this macho attitude that they have to put
on all the time.
- So I was thinking when this teenager starts opening up
about his feelings, can you animate a giant cartoon face
that's giving him a dirty look?
Sure.
- Feel really, really good, like you can do anything.
- Hmm, we need to show that we're listening to him.
What do we draw?
What about an ear?
Genius, I knew I hired you for a reason.
- Well, that's a good place to start.
No one has a final word, but together--
- Us and you guys.
- Yeah, that's what together means.
- How can I tell if I'm really in love?
- I don't know, I don't know, I'm in the dark.
- I feel bad for this girl, Joanna,
because I feel like they edited her
in this to make her look as dumb as possible.
They put that clip in three times.
In fact, here's a compilation of her entire screen.
- A step ladder.
- A step ladder?
- I don't know, I don't know, I'm in the dark.
- Improving his grades.
- I don't know, I don't know, I'm in the dark.
- Rainbows and stars and all the fun things in life.
- I am so confused.
- If you really loved me, you'd have sex with me.
♪ You won if you loved me, if you loved me, if you loved me ♪
- It looks like we're starting to lose Ted here, Ted?
- Why don't we just toss this over here?
- Ted we were gonna talk about that.
(laughs)
- You know what?
Let's just cut to it in a song.
♪ He was OTM, yeah he was OTS ♪
♪ And she wondered if she was GIB instead of HTT ♪
- Can you slow down?
I'm sorry, what was the one before that?
♪ And my fantasy is to be ITB of my HTT ♪
- You guys are going way too fast.
♪ I'm not an EZS ♪
♪ I'm not a POA ♪
- I know that one.
♪ COS, I'll shut your OTD ♪
- On the deck?
Oh, out the door.
It's a car, right?
Okay, I was just asking.
You guys got all that, right?
Don't worry, you can just borrow my notes if you need to.
- Girls are supposed to stay virgins
as long as they possibly can.
And for guys it's different,
they're supposed to lose their virginity
as soon as they can.
- Well, guys should just have sex with each other.
Then we got a few more minutes of interesting observations.
Some good advice for young people.
- Well, you can't have a conversation with an ass.
- Let's see how long before things go off the rails again.
- It was love at first sight,
but I was only 10 and he was 17.
It's kind of stupid, but I was chasing this little fish
and we just kind of knocked into each other.
And I guess I passed out or something.
But when I woke up, he was carrying me
out of the water and that's when I fell in love.
- What the fuck?
- If you love me.
- Okay, can someone please reel in Ted.
♪ If you love me, if you love me ♪
- He won't stop singing the song,
we only asked him to do it once.
♪ You Would, would, would, would, would ♪
♪ If you love me, you would, if you love me, you would ♪
- And then right on schedule,
once again we have another very insightful segment.
This time about the difference
between good and bad relationship
- Mature love is energizing, immature love is exhausting.
- And this is probably my favorite part of the video
because I think this is a big thing
that everyone needs to hear,
which is that sometimes continuing
to be in a bad relationship
is worse than just having no relationship at all.
- You can't stand to be with the person you're supposed
to be in love with
and you can stand to be without them.
- But you're so used to the relationship that the thought
of breaking up seems too difficult.
So you continue to stay
with them way longer than you should.
I've done this before,
most people I know have done this before.
So I think this is a really valuable segment to put in here.
It's almost like they managed
to lock the director out of the room
for just long enough to cram this sensible advice in.
- [Director] Hey, you guys aren't messing
with my movie, are you?
No.
Then what are you doing?
Nothing good, and now Jason
is gonna talk to a picture of a heart.
You got it boss.
- Oh, yeah, yeah, sure, fine.
No, I understand, sure, great.
She doesn't like my hair.
(metal clangs)
♪ 'Cause she didn't like my hair ♪
- And we're still gonna leave
that really long awkward pause in, right?
- Someone loves me.
- I think--
- The editing here is just relentlessly nonsensical.
- For two years I went out with this guy.
He was the football player, I was the cheerleader.
We were cute together,
we took good pictures together.
- I'm sorry, who is this?
- If there is a special love with a certain girl,
she could be looking like a toad,
she can be a princess and you could still love her,
and that is love.
- To put it simply,
love is when she'd be looking like a toad.
- On the good side of love is the ultimate fulfillment.
And when you're totally fulfilled,
it's as if you're on the planet Z of funness
- I love how casually he said that,
planet Z of funness,
a thing we all say here in the 90s.
I used to be unplanted F of badness, but not anymore.
- Planet Z, yeah.
- Let's see, been a while since we heard anything
from you Jason, got anything to add?
- Interest, intrigue, infatuation, love.
- What?
- Staircase, staircase.
Oh, what?
- I'm glad they kept that.
So then buried at the end
of this video is a solid 10 minutes of information
about teen pregnancy, which no teenager will ever see
because they turn this off 30 minutes ago.
- Yes.
(chuckles)
- My biggest takeaway from this video
is that whether it's 1992 or 2020,
whenever an adult tries to send a message
to a child in a way that they think will relate to them,
it always backfires.
Like I'm still reasonably convinced that this--
- Pokémon Go to the polls.
- Cost Hillary the election.
It doesn't matter how good your message is,
if the way you deliver it makes you look like this guy,
no one's gonna take you seriously.
And then my second biggest takeaway from this video
is what I consider to be the icing
on top of an already insane cake.
I was curious to read more about this guy, Sol Gordon
because he's featured pretty heavily in this video.
And when I read what I thought was his obituary,
it took three days to pick my jaw off the floor.
Now in this article, it says he died in the year 2000.
It goes over some of his life accomplishments,
it's an obituary
but here's what really made me pause.
This spectacular event in Gordon's life occurred in 1991,
which would be one year before this video came out.
When essentially he was the target of assassination.
Two women extremists tried to fire bomb his house
but he heard the commotion in his basement
while reading the Bible, went down to investigate
and in his excitement threw the Bible at them,
forcing them to drop the bomb
and then they exploded.
So I'm like, okay, you have my attention,
but it's such a crazy story.
I had to make sure that was true.
So I tried Googling keywords from it to find evidence
of it somewhere else, nothing.
You think that maybe a news outlet
at some point would have picked up
on this spectacular event.
But no, as far as I can tell, it's only in his obituary
but I'm still thinking like, well, it has to be true.
Otherwise, why would they put that in there?
Then I kept reading and the next paragraph,
they talk about how the super fascist party
won the 1988 election.
And I'm like, okay, I know that that didn't happen.
I definitely would have heard about that.
So what the hell is going on here.
Turns out, you're ready for this twist,
Sol Gordon actually died in 2008
and this is a fake obituary that he wrote himself in 1980.
So everything in it is entirely untrue.
He made it all himself, which is actually even more bizarre
than if all of this actually happened.
So to sum everything up,
"How Can I tell If I'm really In love"
is what happens when you take the ramblings
of an already crazy person--
- Did you see his muscle?
- Give them to a director who's
in the middle of experimenting with every drug
and make a video that's only still relevant today
because Ted Danson forgot to pay a parking ticket.
And that's the 90s.
♪ Watch out for you're heart, it's tearing ♪
- And that was fun.
Sorry to cut things short,
but it looks like the bell's gonna ring
in a couple of minutes,
so we have just enough time to hear a word
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Before we wrap things up here,
I just wanna give a little speech.
It has always been my dream to be a first grade teacher.
And after how well today went,
I feel more confident than I ever have
that that dream is gonna become a reality.
And I just want to thank each and every one of you,
because without you guys this never would have...
(bell rings)
You guys are leaving?
No, that's fine, I was done.
I was done talking, so it's okay.
All right, I'll see you next week.