Justin Bieber, Nicki Minaj – “Beauty And A Beat”

  We start off with a somber disclaimer that some fool stole some personal video footage of Justin and uploaded it to the Internet, and we’re about to see some of that. I instinctively think “sex tape”, because all savvy pop stars have one of those on backup just in case the record sales drop, but I quickly realize that I don’t want to see Justin or Nicki naked. (He’s far too young to know what he’s doing and she’s already shown us all her intimate merchandise, since she rarely wears much more than some nice jewelry and yet another colorful wig.)

  But the footage turns out to be a random mess of people going cray-cray when they realize a camera is pointing in their direction (just like the trashy folks the news media always manage to find wandering around a murder scene, those bad-teeth people with jacked-up hair hollering “I was just tryin’ to buy me some drugs and there was a drive-by and somebody dead now. I found me some Jesus after that, sure did.”

  We get to see Justin playing ping-pong (or “table tennis” for the annoying politically-correct people in the audience), Justin mugging for the camera, Justin acting like a scratch-DJ in what looks like the basement of a serial killer, Justin mugging for the camera, a very odd scene with people we don’t know throwing food at one another and clearly not having any real goals in life, and Justin mugging for two cameras. At the end of all this, we really haven’t learned much, other than the fact that the person who supposedly stole this footage might not understand the difference between “interesting” and “you will not get any hits on your renegade blog site if you keep posting crap like this”.

  Then the actual song finally starts, and we are treated to a lineup of people who are very enthusiastic about standing next to a short fence whilst wearing bathing attire. Nicki comes on the soundtrack, where she name-checks herself and Justin a few times, then babbles something about money as the jittery camera tries to figure out what person, place or thing it should focus on. The camera finally settles on Justin, which is a good choice considering his people are paying the bills, and he shows us that he can sing and walk backwards at the same time. To show their appreciation for his skill, a throng of scantily-clad females are dancing around him and pretending to be at the peak of their hormonal cycle.

  Eventually, Justin back-walks his way to a nifty little bridge that spans one of the many pools at what appears to be an aquatic nightclub. (This explains the bathing attire, but not much else.) The camera pans to the left, where we get to watch several lovely lasses do some synchronized swimming, proving that Justin has an artistic side. Then we’re back with Justin, as he continues singing while more lasses circle him and just bounce up and down, an activity that passes for “dancing” these days, because people are too busy texting to actually learn any real moves.

  Then we zip over to… I’m not sure. Perhaps this is a training camp for budding Cirque du Soleil performers, but this camp is definitely fodder for some type of “before they were stars” episode on a cable TV channel. These folks are trying really hard, I’ll give them that, and there’s even some minimalist attempts at erotic pole-dancing and two very-dedicated girls who are twirling in mid-air, but I’m thinking their report cards are not going to be very good, even if they are written in French.

  Back to Justin in another part of the water park, one that seems to be owned by the male species, with lots of guys doing strenuous gymnastics, backflips and such, that would probably get a cap in your ass if you pulled that crap in Compton. Then we zip over to a very shallow pool where Justin has decided that this part of the song can only be properly praised with a line dance. He has a mixed crowd for his backup dancers, so he gets points for equal opportunity, but he might have to lose a point for his refusal to do the same dance moves that everybody else is doing. (Look, if people behind you are doing triple backflips, you need to do more than snap your fingers , just sayin’.)

  Now Justin is underwater, warbling to the camera, surrounded by more cheerleaders who have been bussed in from a local pep rally. Then they all break the surface so that four of the more coordinated cheerleaders can join hands and swim around him in a circle, which is rather festive, until Justin isn’t paying attention and backs up into one of the dolphin girls and causes her to break the circle of life. (I’m sure someone from her Union will be speaking to one of Justin’s people.) But for now, everyone is still friends, and the girls throw their legs in the air in a salute to Justin and all things a bit water-logged.

  Whoops, now we’re back underwater, where some unseen people have left behind their cell phones, strategically placed on a convenient ledge so the camera can swim along and focus on them individually. They are all playing videos of Justin, naturally, because it just wouldn’t seem right if they were featuring Dolly Parton or documentaries about poverty and bad choices. Then we head back to the surface again, so Justin can do some more back-walking along a runway over one of the bigger pools, an aggressive maneuver that causes some of the male gymnasts to backflip into the water out of partial fear and partial desire to do something flamboyant and get asked to appear in the sequel.

  Lo and behold, we have a nice surprise at the end of this runway, in the form of Nicki Minaj, who is posing in a nice flamingo-ballerina ensemble. She starts doing her usual sing-rap business, while a bevy of swimmers do something staged in the water behind her. Nicki is sporting what appears to be those pink Sno Ball snack cakes attached to her breasts, just in case we weren’t aware that she had a bosom. Justin rushes up to join her, because what young man doesn’t enjoy eating junk food?

  Nicki raps a bit, with some racy lyrics that surprise absolutely no one. Justin suddenly steps out of view, possibly to accept another lifetime achievement award, leaving Nicki to do some choreography that involves touching her hair and waving her hands like somebody forgot to monitor her sugar intake. Then Justin steps back in and pseudo-humps Nicki from behind while she purrs “yeah” repeatedly.

  Really?

  Now we’re back to that shallow pool with the line dancers, where Justin isn’t doing a whole lot other than hold the camera while the posse behind him is doing calisthenics that would kill most people who don’t have a personal trainer. (There’s one red-headed girl who is so invested in her dance moves that I’m actually a little bit scared of her and what she could probably accomplish with the right weaponry.)

  Oh wait, now Justin is actually doing the same moves. (Perhaps he got my memo?) This is satisfying for about three seconds, and then he resorts to just splashing the camera with chlorinated water. Even the producers are concerned that this might be a little weak, so we cut to more of that supposed “stolen personal footage” that kicked off this festival. It’s more of the same “this is fun but I’m not sure why we’re seeing this” business and, based on what appears to be the alcohol-fueled content of the goings-on, I’m guessing the “thief” must be one of the bartenders. Or the desperate producers.

  Cut to Justin hurtling down one of those giant tube slides, with him giving a thumbs-up and holding the camera, proving that he really can play more than one musical instrument. He splashes into the pool at the bottom, and everyone for miles around erupts into a cheering mass of celebration that he has survived, well, something that everyone else at a water park has survived. I guess it’s more impressive to ride something that gives you a wet wedgie if you have 4 bazillion hits on the Internet.

  Meanwhile, Nicki Minaj’s colorful breasts are available in a snack-vending machine near you. Just insert your coins and press D-2. Don’t expect any change, she doesn’t have time for that…

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Justin Bieber - “Boyfriend”

  We start out with images of a young woman wearing vicious-looking rings on her hand that could probably slice you open, followed by some mess about metal gears that are turning, melting icicles, and close-ups of Justin’s face. Sadly, and maybe it’s just the lighting, but he appears to be wearing a nice shade of pink lipstick. Justin, or somebody, really needs to be making smarter choices when it comes to image design.

  Justin starts the rapping part of the song, with his face shoved against the side of Death-Ring Girl. It’s actually a little creepy, but she seems fine with it and even starts writhing a bit to indicate that she really enjoys people vocalizing in her hair. Meanwhile, we’re also getting jump shots of wet stereo speakers, Justin doing some carefully staged choreography with his hands, and some confirmation that Justin has finally moved on from that questionable haircut.

  Next we have two young lasses sitting in a fancy sports car that they clearly would have no idea how to drive, both of them gazing at Justin performing on a wireless phone, their faces aglow with the fires of his sexual prowess. As they study his moves with sun-drenched lust and Justin moves into the falsetto part of the song, the video suddenly goes black and the music cuts off.

  Um, what?

  Then we fire things back up again with a giant title credit for Justin, in case you forgot who you were watching during that odd two-second break, followed by the song title and an announcement that the festivities have been directed by “X”. Maybe there really is a director out there that goes by this moniker, but my immediate suspicion is that somebody didn’t want their actual name on this thing. Uh oh.

  Now we have Justin and some other folks parking their sports cars in some place where people go to hang out when there’s nothing on TV. The guys are all wearing leather jackets and attitudes, and the girls are all barely wearing anything. We get jump shots of various youngsters as they lounge in and around the fancy cars, with the guys striking poses and the girls pushing out their glossy lips to let us all know how extremely heated they happen to be.

  Suddenly, in a strongly ill-advised decision, we see Justin and several of the partiers breaking out in a spontaneous but carefully-planned dance, where he doesn’t seem to know quite what to do. Even the anonymous director realizes that maybe the world isn’t ready for that just yet, and we soon cut away to more moist lips, people riding skateboards in a violent manner, and Justin safely tucked back in that car where he doesn’t have to move his feet.

  He stays there and sings for a while, as several nearby nymphets gaze at him with voracious intensity. Eventually one of the young ladies, probably nominated because she’s wearing the skimpiest pair of cut-offs, sashays up to Justin and they immediately being pawing on one another. To make sure that we understand exactly where this might be going, we get shots of Justin revving his engine and doing donuts in the parking lot.

  I guess everyone else is really happy that the two of them will eventually be mating, because the dancing starts up again, with various folks strutting around and executing street-based moves with lots of swagger and little basis on the actual rhythm of the song. Oh, and everyone manages to remain incredibly horny, because it says so in the “script” and they all want to get paid at the end of the day.

  Some new girl drives up and gets out of her car and, based on the condition of her torn clothing, she may have just returned from fighting a really-irritated grizzly bear. She must not have suffered too greatly, because she immediately tries to dominate the dancing activities. It’s not clear if she’s also vying for Justin’s attention of if she’s just one of those girls who can’t stand it when people aren’t watching her move.

  At some point somebody must have handed Justin a guitar, because he’s suddenly playing one in some of the shots. In other scenes, he’s nuzzling Cut-Off Chick’s neck and encouraging her to use her booty in an aggressive manner. She’s more than happy to oblige for a while, then she can’t resist the lure of the dance floor and pulls Justin out into the middle of that mess for some line dancing.

  And apparently somebody sent the right memos to the right people, because now we can see that Justin has a bit more polish to his steps. In fact, Cut-Off Girl gets twirled out of camera range for a while so we can focus on Justin gettin’ down with his bad self. (There are a few random shots of some new girl sitting in a car off to one side, really using her acting skills to appear both trampy and stoned at the same time. It’s not clear why it’s important that we see her, other than to make us wonder how she got in the car with all that mess of hair she’s got.)

  And that basically wraps it up for the plot points of the video. People continue to dance, Justin continues to strum, Cut-Off Girl continues to lustily gloat that she done bagged the big prize at this here impromptu dance-off, and much of the gathered crowd manages to break into little sidebar couples, where they gaze yearningly at one another and lightly sweat.

  Speaking of the dancing, that part does get a bit more physical, as folks ramp it up and really start aiming for the crazy-eyed moves. This acceleration in activity is probably due to the fact that the sun is going down and a lot of these kiddos probably have curfews, so they better hurry up and get to the good stuff before Momma comes out on the front porch and hollers for them to get their asses inside.

  This last bit of dance fever has more of the synchronized dancing where everyone magically knows all of the choreography, probably because Justin is wearing really fancy shoes that the camera makes sure to advertise so you can order some after the video ends. And the video finally does, with a last lingering shot of Justin clutching both his guitar and the girl while they sit on the trunk of a vintage car that real people can’t actually afford…


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Justin Bieber, Rascal Flatts - “That Should Be Me”

  Note: Justin Bieber and Rascal Flatts? Are we serious with this?

  We start off with Rascal Flatts pulling up outside what we’ll have to assume is a recording studio. Personal assistants are dashing about to make sure things don’t happen to make their bosses pissy, and we have a few quick scenes of The Flatts being summoned into the inner chamber where Justin is pretending to play a keyboard even though you know he really isn’t.

  I feel compelled to report that Justin’s hairdo is even more lesbian-affirming than ever. Really not understanding the statement he’s trying to make here.

  Anyway, Justin and The Flatts all high-five one another and bro-hug, acting like they are the best of friends and would easily take a grenade for one another. Then somebody hands Justin a guitar, and he starts pawing at the instrument and warbling in that nymphet way that he has. The Flatts get seated around him, pulling out their own instruments as people hop on stools. The Flatts lead singer (with his made-up name of Gary LeVox) looks especially uncomfortable being seated next to jail bait, especially bait of the same sex.

  But everyone’s a trooper, because there are bills to be paid, and they laugh it up while they… I don’t know what they are doing. Clearly the song has already been written, because we’re making the video at this point, but folks are acting like they are making the song up on the spot. Fine. Do what you must.

  Justin strums for a bit, then we get to the part where Rascal Flatts was apparently hired to provide input, but this basically consists of the gang harping “That should be ME!” at the same time that Justin does. Hmm. Could Justin really not sing this part with enough conviction by himself?

  Oh, wait, I lied a little bit. Gary Le Fake Name suddenly starts doing some improv. He’s still singing the same lines as Justin, but he does so just a bit after Justin does. This totally changes the song, right?

  One of the Personal Assistants comes wandering in, and gets all the guys to stop diddling around and follow her to another part of the studio. I guess it’s a really long journey, so they have Gary do some sidebar scenes with him singing all by himself and doing some hand movements that won’t disturb his gel-slicked hairdo. This lasts roughly 15 seconds before Justin barges in to wherever Gary is doing the extra material, and Justin jumps in on the warbling to remind us that this is HIS song. (His hair doesn’t move either, so I’m finally understanding what these two people might have in common.)

  Cut back to a scene with more Personal Assistants (how many PA’s do these people need?) grooming the guys for something important that must be coming up. (A meeting with the IRS?) Then, bam, we have Justin and The Flatts trying to look swellegant while standing around a piano and bellowing the song. I’m not really sure why they had to move to another location in the building to do this, but I’m not a music producer, which explains why the people on “American Idol” haven’t called me yet, even though they should. If Paula Abdul can do it for 8 seasons…

  Anyway, the guys keep doing whatever in front of the camera, with Gary upstaging Justin but I’m not sure that anyone realizes this. Oh wait, maybe somebody did, because we soon switch to Justin by himself in this new room with annoying spotlights lining the back wall. This lasts for only a few seconds, probably because someone other than me also noticed that Justin is wearing dog-tags. Like HE’S served in the military. We quickly cut back to the big group where we at least have people old enough to join the army.

  The main group warbles for a while, with some accent work being done by the piano player who is apparently passing a kidney stone during all of this. Then Gary hits a really high note while twirling like a windmill. I’m going to guess this is the climax of the song, but I’m often incredibly wrong when trying to determine the value of musically-unrelated people performing duets together.

  We now watch several jump cuts of everybody feeling the music in them after Gary held that dog-whistle high-note for such a long time. (Justin actually drops to his knees in another solo shot, but he might just be excited about getting to talk to Ryan Seacrest later that afternoon.)

  Then, for no explainable reason, we have everybody back in that other room where everybody first got together and pretended that they had something in common. Then we’re back in the big room with the cameras, then we have Justin by himself, then we have… I’m thinking none of this is really important at this point. I’ll just wait for something new to develop.

  But it doesn’t. We’re still jump-cutting around, with everybody more happy to be here than they should be, and Justin constantly on the verge of receiving a toaster oven from Melissa Etheridge. (Notice the way he walks. Would a straight woman do that?)

  At one point, Justin rips off his jacket and throws it on the floor in a moment of overwhelming emotional something or other. This changes nothing.

  Justin also does something involving hand puppets toward the very end of the song. I’m not even going to go there.

  Finally, things wind down with more shots of everybody pretending to have the best time of their lives, complete with dentist-assisted bright smiles, back-slapping and an astounding lack of conviction on anyone’s part. Then Justin exits stage right, leaving behind the jacket that he now apparently hates because it smells like shame…

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Justin Bieber - “One Less Lonely Girl”

  We start off with Justin doing a little dance step on some street somewhere. We’re not sure why he seems to be so happy, but he’s young and doesn’t have to worry about bills or being responsible. He starts singing to the camera, which is fine, but he keeps doing the little dance step, which is already annoying and we’re only 10 seconds into the video.

  Luckily, the camera pans away so we can see the rest of the street. It’s a typical small-town setting, with businesses here and there, and an obvious lack of gangs and crack houses. We focus on one of those places where you can drag your clothes in and wash them yourself, so apparently something major is going to go down among the suds.

  Here comes the starlet of the show, a pretty youngster (naturally) lugging a laundry basket with only about three items in it, so she obviously doesn’t understand things like economics and time-motion studies. She flits her way in the door and encounters Justin, who just happens to be sitting there playing his guitar. (All the hip young people practice their music in public washing areas.) He ogles Flirtina like she’s the hottest thing to ever carry a container of dirty panties. (In fact, he’s so lascivious with his leer that he would have been arrested if he were a few years older. But I guess horniness is cute when you can’t drive yet.)

  Back to the street outside, where Justin sings some more, and seems to be really invested in touching his chest with what he thinks is conviction, but looks more like he’s got some serious congestion. Back inside, Flirtina is prepping her undies and catches Justin giving her the eye. She smiles back, and Justin plays his guitar. (There’s already so much sugar in this thing that they should be running a Diabetic Alert across the bottom of the screen.)

  Street again, with more chest-touching and that little dance step that is no longer interesting in any way. (Can you seriously tell me that Paula Abdul wasn’t available for some pointers?) Back inside again, with Flirtina pretending to blush and clearly not getting anything clean while she plays eye-tag with Justin. Then she grabs her basket and leaves (what? forgot her quarters?), but not without obviously dropping something red on the floor. (Something tells me she no longer qualifies to wear white. Just sayin.)

  Justin sees the droppage, and scampers over to snatch up the scarf. But instead of chasing down Flirtina and returning what might be her favorite article of clothing, one that she intends to wear at her wedding later that night (it could happen), Justin just stands there and grins to himself, a nefarious plot hatching somewhere under those deadly bangs of his.

  Next we see, Justin is hanging up signs with arrows on streetlamps and such, and convincing passersby and street vendors to participate in whatever he has planned. What could The Bieber be up to? We find out when Flirtina enters the laundry facility again with a new load of wash. (She was just here. How dirty can she be?)

  Once more, she doesn’t really focus on her task at hand, and instead is peering around the place trying to find the guitar-playing teen that she suddenly can’t live without. When she can’t find him, she considers joining a convent, then returns to her basket. Then she spies a note on the wall. “I have your scarf. If you want it back, find me!” She grins ecstatically and dashes out the door, leaving her laundry behind, because nobody ever steals things in those places, right?

  And I guess it doesn’t even cross Flirtina’s mind that the note she is now clutching is the same kind that a serial killer would use. Maybe Flirtina doesn’t watch “Law & Order”. Or the news. Or the back of milk cartons.

  Flirty starts finding the cute little signs that Justin’s assistant has drawn, bearing slogans like “I will buy you expensive chocolate”, “I will shower you with kisses” and “Please sign this pre-nup.” Flirty also encounters some bonus gifts like candy, flowers and a puppy. These things are handed to her by shop-owners who are willingly promoting underage hanky-panky. Times change, right? Back in the day, you had to sneak out in the middle of the night for a few minutes of groping with your squeeze. Now the grownups are apparently reserving the hotel rooms for you. (Maybe it’s the frequent flier miles.)

  Eventually, Flirtina makes it to the end of the trail, dragging along about 500 pages of crayoned paper, so you know she’s a bit tuckered. Flirty wanders into some building where Justin has arranged for candles, strings of pretty lights, and the absence of any responsible adults. He puts the missing scarf around Flirty and then they nuzzle. This causes Flirty to have flashbacks to all the nice presents and livestock she picked up on the way over. They hold each other as the music fades…

  Now I think I’ll go watch “The Blue Lagoon.” It seems to be calling to me…


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