| 18/3/2011 "I swear to DRUNK I'm not GOD!" I had trouble stopping myself giggling when I saw that T-shirt. When I first learned I would have the night off on St. Patrick's Day, I looked forward to dressing up in my pretty green dress and drinking cider in an Irish Pub with a friend. But said friend was unable to. Since I still desired a cider, I decided to just go to King O'Malley's anyway for an early evening drink. And the party was already in full swing. Seriously, why is the entire world infatuated with St. Patrick's Day so much that they go full out with barbecues, costumes, shows etc? Only Britain keeps it sensible it seems, no Paddy's celebrations really kick-off until 7pm (because, you know, he's not a patron saint of England, Wales and Scotland). The point of St. Patrick's Day is that the Irish celebrate their Irishness with all things Irish, why should anyone else be allowed to hi-jack the event, especially if they have no clue what it means to be Irish? Has no one considered this? Ah well, with my night-time plans reduced to just staying in, I decided to watch the special episode of CSI that featured Justin Bieber. There really is a Bieber hate-train right now, but rather than just jumping on the bandwagon (which is what I happily did with Twilight) I'll explain that I don't hate Justin Bieber. To me he's just a very naïve baby-faced 16-year-old. No, I hate the entire record label mechanism and media manipulation that created, projected and placed him on his pedestal. His songs are all lacklustre drivel with no imagination whatsoever, but that's just a symptom of the entire music industry right now, he's a good singer. So with my viewing of CSI I wanted to see if Bieber could act. First of all, I have to describe CSI, since this is the first full episode I've ever seen. (Even though I did once see the opening to the pilot in Media Studies.) I have to say I genuinely hope no one takes this show seriously. Out of all the cop shows I've seen, this one is the most convoluted, daft, over-the-top, unbelievable, non-sensical 'police drama' ever. The characters are little more than caricatures (always a turn-off) who are suddenly appropriately stupid at key moments. There were times I was convinced I knew more about police procedure than they did. No wonder they brought in Laurence Fishburne, they needed a credible badass on the team that could...oh I dunno, ACT! His character is also far more interesting than the other cops. I also wondered why the show was in such a hurry; it doesn't have ADD-Editing but I couldn't help notice that no scene was willing to be longer than 3 minutes. What's the hurry? Slow down! (Also, I swear the pilot wasn't like this.) So can Justin Bieber act? Before I answer that, I have to explain Channel 9's promo fowl-up. All its promos made Bieber out to be the prime criminal of the show. This did 2 things: it lost the episode any suspense it could have had when Bieber's character, Jason McCann, was introduced because at first they have no idea who's planting all the bombs or who the head of the operation is (but the audience knew). The other problem was that the promo outright lied: there was a second plot happening alongside involving the court case of the maniacal serial killer Haskell, who was excellently written and excellently acted. With Fishburne being in the court, acting as both witness and onlooker, I think you can tell which plotline I found more intriguing, but that's mainly because the other cops got on my nerves. Can Bieber act? He can actually. He hasn't got much of a range mind you, but he can project the proper emotions at the appropriate time and convincingly acted his death scene (providing Bieber-haters everywhere grim satisfaction). What I did find funny was that his Canadian accent wasn't altered at all, even though Jason McCann is supposed to be from Las Vegas (lolwhat?). When I first noticed the Bieber-craze I knew that 1 of 2 viable things will happen 3 years from now: he will either completely disappear with nary an afterthought or he will mature, take more control and make much more credible music. But after seeing him on CSI it also seems likely he could ditch his music career for an acting one, since that has already happened many times. |