My Justin Bieber Screed

I've been meaning to write this post for a long time, and was reminded it of it last night after having another Justin Bieber conversation. If you're reading this, you probably hate Justin Bieber. I say that because it's the general reaction I've been getting from my friends and other people my age and, honestly, I don't get it. I mean, Justin Bieber's music is bad. I'm not here to defend his music. I don't listen to it, and the few times I have, I haven't liked it, but that's beside the point.

Look, there are always going to be Justins Bieber. Pre-teen girls have to be in love with someone, and that someone is always going to make bad music. Pre-teen girls just have terrible taste in music. It doesn't matter how cute the guys from Animal Collective are, they aren't getting a grade 6 fan-base.

(By the way, I'm not trying to be sexist here - pre-teen boys have terrible taste in music too. I was listening to FM 96 (London's The Edge) non-stop at that age, as we all were.)

So yeah, Justin Bieber isn't a new concept. It was the Backstreet Boys and then 'N Sync when I was that age. It was the New Kids on the Block before that. Hanson was in there at some point. Now it's Justin Bieber, who took over for the Jonas Brothers. Justin Bieber is just a fact of life. But he's a fact of life that absolutely doesn't concern people in my generation, so I just don't understand why ADULTS care how good his music is.

Even if you do want to debate the merits JB, I think he stacks up pretty well to his predecessors. Groups like BSB and 'N Sync were money-making monsters created by record labels (same with the Spice Girls - remember when they were created? Something crazy like 10,000 people auditioned, and it was so publicized, the Spice Girls were superstars before we even knew who was in the group).

While J-Biebs is clearly a product at this point, his rise to fame was somewhat more organic - he was discovered through Youtube videos of him singing covers. It may seem like splitting hairs, but I think there's a big difference between being "discovered" and auditioning for a group that would be formed one way or another.

Secondly, I like that he's actually a teenager himself. Somehow it seems disingenuous to market a boy band of 20-year-olds guys to 12-year-old girls. Bieber is 16 now, but he was "discovered" at just 13, having already become popular on Youtube.

Now, some people have pointed me to videos where JB has come off as arrogant, stupid, annoying, whatever. He's not perfect. But at the same time, anything he says or does is magnified quite a bit, and nobody's on their game 100% of the time. And he's so ridiculously popular, I can understand him thinking he's the shit. He basically doesn't know any other way of living! Finally, he's been the victim of a LOT of ridicule and mean-spirited internet "jokes" (4chan is bunch of assholes, I don't care if funny stuff comes out of there occasionally), and, fame and money or not, that can't be easy. On the whole, he doesn't seem like a bad guy to me.

Now, while I'm baffled and disappointed by the hate JB receives from people my age, I fully endorse it coming from anyone under the age of 18. Just as falling in love with teen pop stars is part of growing up for some people, rejecting what's popular is part of growing up for many others. I hated the Backstreet Boys and 'N Sync when I was a kid, as most boys did (and some girls too, let's not leave them out of the hate-fest!), and that was part of my childhood identity. So hate on, kids! But the day you turn 18, or graduate from high school, or, well, somewhere around that time anyway, you're not allowed to care anymore.

(Then you can care again when you're a parent and you have to deal with positive and negative influences and all that stuff, but I have to imagine innocent teen pop stars are the least of your concerns when you're worrying about violence and sex and stuff.)

I am a little worried about the Biebs. Where does he go from here? He's going to lose his pre-teen fan-base at some point, and his reputation with non-pre-teen girls has pretty much been forever tainted, no matter if he actually becomes a good musician at some point. There's a little hope, though: did you hear about that crazy band with one of the Hanson dudes, the Smashing Pumpkins guitarist, and a guy from Cheap Trick? I have no idea if they're any good, but that's kinda cool. And, obviously, Justin Timberlake is the gold standard for terrible pre-teen pop musicians becoming amazing artists. Let's hope JB's hilarious SNL sketch with Tina Fey last year is a portent of future success.

Of course, maybe I'm just trying to defend my Hallowe'en costume.

Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego? Real-Life Edition

On Saturday, I heard about a "Real-Life Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego" scavenger hunt type thing. It sounded fun, so I texted a few friends, got one interested, and we met at King and Bay in downtown Toronto for the event.

We were given a piece of paper with six locations scrambled using a cipher, which were pretty easy to decipher. It instructed us to find informants in six locations: the Eaton Centre, Commerce Court, Hockey Hall of Fame, the Metro Convention Centre, First Canadian Place, and 32 Dundas East. After finding the informants, we were to receive clues from them, solve some sort of puzzle, and then get a clue regarding CS's final location. Presumably, in the end, we could combine all the informant clues to solve the mystery. Additionally, the instructions revealed that all the informants were stationed in the underground PATH network.

Thinking time was of the essence, I hopped on my bike and sped towards the Eaton Centre while my partner Jimmy ran alongside. We then proceeded to spend about half an hour looking unsuccessfully for the Eaton Centre informant - for one thing, the EC is connected to several branches of PATH, all of which are extremely busy, being connected to the Eaton Centre and a couple of subway stations, and since we hadn't encountered any informants yet, we didn't know what to look for. Eventually, we found tiny stickers on a set of doors saying something like "anywhere but Sears". We decided this was a pretty clear indication to look in and around Sears, but (spoiler alert) we never did find the EC informant, so whether those stickers were even related to the scavenger hunt is unclear.

After giving up on the EC, we went to the next closest location, 32 Dundas East, which, as it turned out, was an address that didn't exist (the correct building was 10 Dundas East). I'm not sure if they had ciphered the numbers 32 in addition to the letters, but if they had, there wouldn't have been enough information to figure that out. Furthermore, the complete location was listed as "32 Dundas East, 5th Floor". There was no 5th floor, so we looked for a while on the 3rd floor, thinking they might be including the two basement levels in their calculation. That failed, but eventually we stumbled upon the agent... on the first basement level (second floor from the bottom).

We should have been annoyed by the misleading instructions, but we were just relieved to finally find our first informant an hour and a half into the event. The agent told us he needed to know the price of a plane ticket to Johannesburg, so I went in search of travel agencies while Jimmy went back to search the Eaton Centre some more. The first travel agency didn't have anything listed, so after a few minutes of fruitless pamphlet-searching, an employee asked me if I needed anything. So I asked her for the price of a ticket to Johannesburg. Obviously, her first question was "when?", because plane tickets are not fixed prices. I had anticipated this ambiguity in the clue, but wanted an answer to bring back to the guy anyway, so I said "tomorrow". She was confused.

After explaining the situation several times, I finally got a quote and went back to the guy. He told me I was wrong, obviously, but after telling him how I got the answer, he straight up told me to go to a different travel agency. Unfortunately, he didn't tell me which one, so I went to a second incorrect agency and wasted 10 or 15 minutes there before meeting up with Jimmy again. Jimmy had a brainwave and remembered a third travel agency nearby, though clearly the third-closest to the location of the informant. That travel agency had a deal to Johannesburg on their window, and this proved to be what the informant was looking for. How we (the solvers) were expected to know to go to this particular travel agency is beyond me, and if it wasn't for Jimmy I would probably have wasted the rest of the day on this search.

At this point it was pretty late in the competition (it was to be three hours long), so I decided it was imperative to split up if we had any hope of contending. I sped down towards Front Street and hit up Commerce Court. That clue was easy; the agents were easy to find, and I just had to decipher a couple of scrambled messages using the same key as before.

Next was the Hockey Hall of Fame and, once again, a quick and easy solution. That agent was an "actor" who had a problem - he couldn't cry on command, and asked me to show him how. So I started pulling out my nose hairs. After fake crying out in pain and faking some tears (I was sweaty from running, it was easy) I started on another nose hair, and the guy was like "dude, okay, that's fine!"

At that point I was feeling good; if Jimmy got one or two we might still solve this thing. Then I went to the Metro Convention Centre and spent 45 minutes looking for the informant. The PATH network doesn't go into the MCC; it just connects via the Skywalk (the passage from Union Station to the CN Tower). So I figured the agent would be in the Skywalk, but I walked up and down several times and didn't see anyone remotely agenty (one thing I will give the group who organized this is that the agents were in costume and in character). I also ventured into the convention centre itself on several occasions, even though the informants were supposed to be firmly in the PATH. Inside the MCC I encountered some sort of bizarre balloon convention. Seriously, there were all these well-dressed people... and then a large number of people carrying classic multi-coloured bunches of balloons. It felt like I was at the premiere for Up or something. Needless to say, my ratty clothes stood out and I was gently asked to leave (even though there had been no security I had to sneak by or anything).

Eventually, I gave up on the convention centre and met up with Jimmy who had given up on the Eaton Centre for a second time and had found the agent in First Canadian Place. That agent sent him to Union Station where a sub-agent was waiting; we found that guy and returned to FCP with the clue answer only to discover the FCP agent had left his location, permanently, about 15 minutes before the end of the competition (and we encountered other groups experiencing the same frustration).

Jimmy had to go, but I was interested in at least getting some closure, so I went to two of the locations where I knew agents had been. They had left, but it was after six at this point, so that was understandable. Less understandable was the lack of people at the starting location. I thought there would at least be someone announcing the end of the competition or the winners or where the after-party was or something, but it was desolate. So I thought to myself: "um, okay, I guess I'll just go home now?" I was pretty disappointed; I was expecting an after-party at some nearby bar, or at least, as I mentioned, some kind of closure. None was to be found.

All in all, I had fun at times, but we spent most of the three hours looking for agents rather than solving clues, and it just sort of petered out at the end. Pretty disappointing, on the whole.