Pop Shots - Basic Arithmetic

Welcome to your weekly dose of pop world musings, and thank you for migrating over from 101d to my blog. Covering all things pop culture, this week Pop Shots is hitting you with thoughts on everything from the newest additions to the pop world, to a division between Justin Timberlake’s latest venture and what most people consider cool, to a potential subtraction from the cast of Jersey Shore, and since it’s Pop Shots you know everything is seasoned with a little bit of attitude.

* I want to start out Pop Shots by sending out a huge double congrats to Javier Colon and Dia Frampton for finishing 1-2 on The Voice. Javier took home the title, but Dia had a great showing, as well. As a longtime fan of both artists - I interviewed Javier and saw him live back in ’03, then interviewed him again when The Voice started, and I saw Dia live during the ’07 and ’09 Warped Tours when she was a part of Meg & Dia - I couldn’t be happier that they’re getting another, much deserved, shot at the limelight. It looks like they may even be collaborating in the near future as Javier has already reached out to Dia via Twitter and Dia has reached back. Javier may also be collaborating with his The Voice coach, Maroon 5’s Adam Levine. This is the exact shot in the arm pop music needs right now.

* Justin Bieber isn’t the only thing Selena Gomez is (allegedly) under. This past weekend she was under Shia LeBeouf, Cameron Diaz, Tom Hanks, Julia Roberts and some animated automobiles. No, this wasn’t a super kinky Hollywood orgy, it was just the final box office numbers for the weekend, which saw Gomez’s Monte Carlo debut in fifth, behind the new Transformers movie, Cars 2, Bad Teacher (in its second week), and Larry Crowne. When it comes to being under things in Hollywood, however, she has a long way to go before matching her Disney predecessor Lindsay Lohan.

* In a story that sounds like it should be from the distant past, but was actually from this past week, Justin Timberlake has taken a stake in MySpace. Investing a website that lost its relevancy years ago is quite the risk, especially since most people have been ignoring their MySpace accounts for years. Personally, I don’t think even the uber-cool Timberlake can bring the site back. The name MySpace has been tarnished beyond reclamation. Maybe he knows something I don’t know, though, or maybe he just wanted a quick way to hack into Britney Spears’ page.

* Seemingly everyone got into a politically motivated skirmish this past week. Lady Gaga found herself in hot water when the Michigan legal network 1800LAWFIRM filed a lawsuit alleging that not all of the proceeds from her “We Pray For Japan” wristband sales were going to help victims, as Lady Gaga had pledged on her website. Gaga has already come out denying these claims. 1800LAWFIRM should probably consider chasing smaller ambulances. Sting canceled a scheduled concert in the Kazakh capital Astana after Amnesty International informed him about what it described as a “crackdown” on oil workers there. Sting not performing is considered a human rights win by many in and of itself. Radiohead, despite being critical of Chinese government policies, is far less critical of their censored version of cyberspace, or at least that’s what one might gather from the band’s recently launched page on the Weibo site of leading Chinese Internet portal Sina.com. Weibo is the Chinese-equivalent of Twitter. No word on how the Karma Police will be dealing with this incident. Finally, Ashton Kutcher got into a war of words, and tweets, with the Village Voice after the Voice published an article that questioned the child-prostitution statistics the actor offered in his “Real Men Don’t Buy Girls” anti-sex-trafficking campaign. Kutcher posted a number of angry tweets, including ones where he asked “How many of your girls selling themselves in your classifieds are you doing age verification on?” and “Find another way to justify that YOUR property facilitates the sale of HUMAN BEINGS.” 1) I don’t think Kutcher should look forward to a positive review of the upcoming season of Two and a Half Men from the Village Voice. 2) I know he says real men don’t buy girls, but didn’t the ring he bought Demi Moore end up netting him some stepdaughters? Just sayin.

* If the rumors are true, Jersey Shore may have lost one of its sanest housemates. The eight is enough team of JWOWW, Pauly D, Ronnie, Sammi, Snooki, Vinny, The Situation and Deena went straight from filming in Italy for season four to filming at the Jersey Shore for season five and Vinny, apparently, became more than a little burned out. According to reports his fuse became short, he got into an altercation with a housemate (two to one odds if the story is true that the housemate in questions was The Situation), and bounced. If Vinny’s really gone we’re not just going to miss him, but his entire wild family that came through at least once a season to cook a feast that could feed a small army.

* In honor of the possible departure of Vinny from Jersey Shore, let’s remember when there were better times there, and all they were concerned about was learning how to dougie.


And with that, my time is up for the week, but I'll be back next week with more shots on all things pop.