A Kim Smith clone appears. As she munches her Cheerios in front of the TV, Hard!Sell!Justin, who is half Justin and half Max Headroom, pops up on the screen. He informs her that the album will be out July 24th. Can we get tape of him as Max Headroom, eating his words, later? Because you know they'll push it back.
Kim Smith is so surprised she drops her bowl of cereal! Several Cheerios fly away and- oh! Look! Martha Stewart alert! They're suddenly in the shape of Ps, and Os, and… another P! Well, color me astonished! It spells POP!
Yo! B-B-BT.
Wow. Hang on. I have to go get some…
Okay. Back. Had to take some Dramamine. Because, WAYNE, all the fucking jerky camera shots were making me nauseous. But it's all good. Picking up on the Max Headroom foreshadowing, the first shot is all Justin, all the time. Oh. Actually, the whole video is. Justin's on a big spinning disc thing, surrounded by frozen-in-time breakdancers. Hey, do you think they got the Airforce Crew to do this, or is NSYNC too lame for them? Did they have to borrow Jorge from Christina?
Justin's wearing a leather shirt. Oy. And a wristband. Chris! I told you to stop that! Your evil influence is corrupting innocent young lads. I hope you're happy. Justin is also wearing a shirt that has a guy on it. Couldn't make it out. First I thought it was Mohammed Ali. Which, you know, would make sense for Whiteboi. But it seems to say "Gladiator" at the bottom. Dunno.
Cue JC. He's wearing… leather pants? Not sure. There's a fucking codpiece. A codpiece. I bet he watched Shakespeare in Love and thought: "I got to get myself one of those. Keep my, uh, performance… anxiety strapped down." And his shirt is sheer, I think. Weirdo.
Having said that, JC actually looks more normal than he has for many, many moons. Hell of a note, really.
In the Pop club set, beautiful people are bopping around and randomly freezing in place. One of the chicks is wearing a kind of net sweater with big holes in it over a flesh-toned shirt. There are two big holes strategically over her boobs. Yeah. I did a double-take. Are you saying you didn't? Liar.
Lance gets the first half of his four seconds of solo screentime. He's in a white room with more dancers. He looks dorky and uncomfortable. Loserass.
Chris, on the other hand, gets to spin records for his solo time. Sigh. You know, there was a meeting before the shoot. And it went a little something like this:
Justin: "Well, since I'm the hub of the world, it should be all about me."
JC: "But I'm the number two fan favorite! Where's my time? I need me time! I need everyone to look at ME!"
Chris: "You're actually number three in the ranking."
JC: "Shut up."
Joey: "Yeah, since Lance got all hot."
JC: "Shut up."
Wayne: "Guys, guys. We need to give JC solo time. He has a verse."
Justin: "Oh. Yeah. Forgot. Right."
JC: "How could you forget?"
Justin: "Well. When Wade and I wrote Pop, we kind of. You know. Wrote it for one voice."
Wayne: "Moving on, what about the other three?"
Justin: "I like Chris. I think he should get to do whatever he wants."
Chris: "I want to sit in a big glass box full of maggots!"
Wayne: "Or not."
Chris: "Or I want Carmen Electra to give me a lapdance!"
Justin: "Good call!"
Chris: "Thank you, my brother."
Wayne: "Or how about he pretends to be Funkmaster Flex?"
Chris: "Wayne, you're a fucking GENIUS."
Wayne: "I know. Can you dim the lights? It's hurting my eyes."
Joey: "What about me?"
Justin: "Dunno."
Chris: "Don't care."
Wayne: "Hmmm. Well, you're the slut, and you're gimpy. Whaddya say we park your fat ass on a couch and surround you with ho's?"
Joey: "You are da MAN!"
Wayne: "Lance. What about him?"
Chris: "Dunno."
Justin: "Don't care."
Joey: "How many ho's?"
Lance: "JC? Jayce?"
JC: "What?"
Lance: "Aren't you going to say anything?"
JC: "Uh, no?"
Lance: "Oh. Oh. I thought. Oh."
JC: "Fine. I guess you can, like, stick him in a room somewhere. He can… dance. Or something."
Lance: "With boys?"
Wayne: "And girls!"
Lance: "Oh."
And that's how it happened. Justin is Justin. JC is JC. Justin's got Chris' back. They needed to park the wounded one they all felt sorry for. And, well, no one really likes Lance.
So, yeah, Chris spins the wheels of steel. Jesus. I'm so not buying that. And yet, he can apparently spin, can't he? Then why doesn't he look even vaguely like DJ Lethal? He just looks like a dumpy little guy pretending to scratch. Which, of course, is exactly what's going on.
Enough of that. JC's up again. He's moving through the Tunnel of Love! He's being pawed by ho's! He has total Headband Hair. Fucker. You know, JC is starting to believe his own hype. I don't care what anyone says. He is not hot enough (Headband Hair, people!) to warrant being pawed by random chicks. Forget it. If I see JC at a club, I'm not smitten with the urge to stroke his chest. At most, I'd go "Is that… are you wearing a codpiece?"
Back to Justin. Because we're not seeing enough of him, I feel. Ah! My favorite line! He speaks eloquently of the ice around his neck. In a fabulously cool moment, he's wearing a necklace that reads "Celebrity" and it explodes in a hail of diamonds. Wayne, you go wit yo bad self. And several hundred hours of post.
Lance gets three more seconds in the white room. I accidentally freeze the tape just as a chick wearing a very very short shirt is in front of him. Her shirt, I notice with great horror, appears to read "NUDE" across the shoulders.
Jesus. No one's fucking buying it, Lance.
Then Lance does a "freestyle" dance move. I've seen him do it before, in the dance sequence of the IGBM video. It's the move where he swings his arms to the side, swings them up in front of him, sort of crosses his wrists, and points. It's fucking annoying.
You know what? In my own personal NSYNC ranking, Lance just replaced JC. As most annoying member. I'm sorry, Bassman. But I fucking hated your ass for all nine seconds I could see it. With a passion.
Joey's solo time! Yay! He's… on a couch. Surrounded by ho's. Dude, you know, someday this just ain't gonna be cute anymore. You need to work on a new gag. But, anyway, he's bopping around like a total freaker, and trying to look angry, but I just think he looks like he took some bad speed. And seated beside him is the chick with the holes over her boobs.
I've got ten bucks that say she helped Joey limp back to his room and didn't leave. Any takers?
Ah, the dance break. They dance. They morph. I like it. Then, suddenly, I notice that one of the Justin incarnations is wearing that leather racecar-driver jacket he wore at the IMAX premiere. I frantically scan the shot for evidence of JC's ladypants, but can't find them. Don't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
Am relieved. Because they suddenly launch into a fine bit of air guitar and their loser quota is suddenly filled. (aside- I happen to know that "quotum" is the singular of "quota", but fucking Word tells me it doesn't exist! Bill, you undereducated 'tard.)
They hump the floor. I, apparently alone out of all the world's womenfolk, do not find this sexy. I kind of go "gee… that's sort of… over-enthusiastic. You're gonna hurt somebody. And for once, it's not gonna be you." But that's about it, to be honest. Oh, and I also laugh at them for believing they're incredibly sexy. But that was pretty much a constant thing.
Then they do that stripping thing. You know. They take off their very outermost layer of shirtage and the crowd goes wild, because, hey, you never know, you might spot two square inches of Justin's skin if you look close. The only problem is, they're still doing the morphing thing as they strip, and the end result is kind of laughable. Because at several points, one or the other of them is stripping off a shirt that ISN'T FUCKING THERE. Yeah. That's HOT.
Pffft. Losers.
Back to the club scene. Suddenly, in what gets my vote for Coolest Moment, a random buy on a BMX jumps through the shot. Dude. Coolness. Never see that at clubs I frequent, but, hey. It's a good trade. Because I also never see boys in codpieces.
In an effort to stretch this song from its original paltry three minutes, they added a looooooong scene of Justin beatboxing. It's shot like Peter Gabriel's video for Sledgehammer. Niiiice ripoff, Wayne. And in case we're totally fucking retarded and never made the connection, behind Justin float his fellow losers, redone in Lichtenstein style.
Pop. Pop Art. Geddit? In case you rode the short bus this morning, they keep doing it. Again. And again. And again. For a minute. Yeah. We got it. Pop. Pop Art. NSYNC is pop. NSYNC is art? Life imitating art? No, wait! Justin is pop, ergo Justin is art. Maybe? Not sure what point you're trying to hammer home, buddy.
The camera zooms out from Cheerio!Chick's eye. She smiles, sated, her life now illuminated with the knowledge that Chris looks kind of cool if you pixelate him enough. And, oh yeah, that Justin is the center of the universe. Because as the big man says:
"Pop is everything."
- Andy Warhol
Uh… okay, man. Okay. If you say so. But for the love of God, no one tell Justin. 'Cause that's what he thinks already.
Back to Reviews
Back to the Shaaa-zay Cafe