Justin Timberlake (ft. Timbaland) – "SexyBack" (2006)

You see these shackles, baby, I’m your slave

I'll let you whip me if I misbehave

Justin Timberlake is this year’s featured Super Bowl performer, despite the fact that he seriously misbehaved the last time he appeared during a Super Bowl halftime.

In 2004, Timberlake and Janet Jackson were singing his hit, “Rock Your Body,” when Timberlake tore a piece of Jackson’s top off, exposing her pierced nipple to zillions of Super Bowl XXXVIII viewers around the world.

Janet Jackson covers up

Timberlake apologized for the “wardrobe malfunction,” as did Jackson.  But the CEO of MTV (which produced the halftime extravaganza) later alleged that Jackson had engineered the whole thing.

You can click here to read a recent Washington Post rehash of the whole story.

FYI, the Patriots beat the Panthers 32-29 that night in what was then considered to be the best Super Bowl ever.

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2 or 3 lines has never failed to correctly identify one of the songs that will be performed during the Super Bowl halftime show, and I’m confident that my streak will remain intact after Justin Timberlake performs tonight.

“SexyBack” was released in 2006 on Timberlake’s second studio album, FutureSex/LoveSounds.  (What does Timberlake have against putting spaces between words?)  It became his first #1 single, holding down the top spot on the Billboard “Hot 100” for seven consecutive weeks.

If there was a Billboard chart for “Most Popular Strip Club Songs,” “SexyBack” would have been #1 on it for a helluva lot longer than seven weeks.

Here’s “SexyBack”: 

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Justin Timberlake (feat. Jay-Z) – "Suit & Tie" (2013)

And as long as I've got my suit and tie

I'ma leave it all on the floor tonight

Shinesty is an online clothing retailer that claims to be “the #1 online destination for attention-grabbing apparel.”  

The company, which freely acknowledges that it is “not J. Crew” (and how), guarantees to sell only  “clothing your mom would hate.” 

I promise that your wife will hate it, too.  (Most girlfriends, too.)

I recently received a copy of Shinesty’s Christmas catalog in the mail.  (I wonder what this post would have been about if I hadn’t gotten that catalog.  Do you wonder about that, too?) 

Here are photos of some of the suits and matching ties that you can find in the current Shinesty holiday collection for men:

For our Jewish friends, here’s the Shinesty “Rock Star of David” suit:

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Shinesty doesn’t just sell tacky Christmas suits and ties.

It also offers “Pit Vipers” sunglasses.  (Slogan: “They want to sit on your face.”)

And then there’s the “Jeado” swim brief – a/k/a the “Daytona Dong Sarong,” a/k/a the “Ding-a-ling Sling,” a/k/a the “Miami Meat Tent,” a/k/a the “Portuguese Pud Purse.”  (Shinesty’s headquarters are located in Colorado, where recreational marijuana use is 100% legal.  That probably explains “Portuguese Pud Purse” and most of the rest of the copy in Shinesty’s catalog.)

The company also sells a lightweight, breathable, moisture-wicking, bulge-enhancing boxer brief, which it calls the “Ball Hammock.”
  

The red-white-and-blue, bald eagle-themed “Ball Hammock” is perfect for us patriotic types:

But you Democrats may prefer your undies to feature a camel, horse, snow leopard, snake, zebra, lion, or golden retriever:

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Here’s how MTV described its reality show about Shinesty, which aired this summer:

Mix 10 mediocrely-good-looking twenty-somethings with a major TV network, add some melodrama, and boom  you get reality TV.  This six-episode “docu-comedy” is not appropriate for all ages and features casual nudity, kidnappings, bikini waxes, irreverent clothing, countless weiner shaped food jokes, and a variety of other very strange incidents that actually do happen in the Shinesty office every week.

Here’s the trailer for the show:

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Right now, Shinesty’s stuff is selling like gangbusters.  But I don’t see the company being successful in the long run.  

I have to think that its typical customer is someone who orders after getting drunk at a Christmas party, and who will have a terrible case of buyer’s remorse when the clothing he orders arrives and he tries it on.  

The company’s investors include the Winklevoss twins (who co-founded Facebook), and they’re a lot smarter than I am, but I just don’t see guys ordering a Christmas suit from Shinesty more than once.  

Of course, most of the guys who will get drunk at a Christmas party this year will get drunk at a Christmas party next year, and the year after that, and the year after that.  So maybe Shinesty will do better than I think.

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“Suit & Tie” was the lead single from Justin Timberlake’s 2013 album, The 20/20 Experience.  It made it all the way to #3 on the Billboard “Hot 100.”

The music video for “Suit & Tie” was directed by David Fincher, the director of The Social Network, which starred Timberlake as Sean Parker, the man who co-founded Napster and who was the first president of Facebook.

Here’s “Suit & Tie,” which features Jay-Z:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Justin Timberlake, Oscar Isaac, and Adam Driver -- "Please, Mr. Kennedy" (2013)

I'm six foot two

So perhaps you'll

Tell me how to fit into a

Five-foot capsule

Hey -- I'm six foot two, too!  What a coinkidink!  (I used to be six foot three, but I was so much younger then . . . I'm older than that now.)

NOTE:  I know there are a lot of grammar nerds who read 2 or 3 lines.  FYI, "six foot two" is correct -- if you don't believe me, click here.  If you still don't believe me, consider this:  "Five foot two, eyes of blue/But oh! what those five foot could do!"  I rest my case.

ANOTHER NOTE:  I had quite a tussle with the ol' spell-checker over "coinkidink."  Did you know it is the classical Latin pronunciation for coincidence?  

Inside Llewyn Davis, which was written and directed by Ethan and Joel Coen, is a movie about a folk singer who is having a tough time making a name for himself in the Greenwich Village folk-music scene of 1961.

The movie is currently in very limited release in the U.S.  (It goes wide later this week.)  So it's almost certain that you haven't seen it yet.  

But 2 or 3 lines has seen it.  2 or 3 lines saw it at a press screening in Washington, DC, last week although 2 or 3 lines did not attend that press screening as a member of the press.  

That's about as much as I'm going to say about that -- anything more about that evening will be provided strictly on a need-to-know basis.  (2 or 3 lines works in mysterious ways, its wonders to perform.)  The last time I looked, you mos' definitely did NOT have a need to know.

Llewyn Davis (Oscar Isaac) and friend

I liked Inside Llewyn Davis a lot.  Most of the time, my opinion of a movie is highest when I'm in the moment -- after a few hours or a few days of reflecting on it, my enthusiasm may wane a bit.  The opposite is happening here -- the more I think about Inside Llewyn Davis, the more I think I like it.  

But that doesn't mean I would expect everyone to like it.  I think many people who will see it will walk out and say, "Meh."

One of the highlights of the movie is its soundtrack was produced by T-Bone Burnett.  He also produced the soundtrack for the Coens' O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which includes the traditional American folk song, "I Am a Man of Constant Sorrow."

The Inside Llewyn Davis soundtrack contains a number of traditional folk songs.  (Davis offers this definition of a folk song: "If it was never new and never gets old, it's a folk song.")

But it also contains "Please, Mr. Kennedy," a brilliant and hilarious original song about a reluctant astronaut who pleads with President Kennedy not to send him into outer space.  

Here's the scene from the movie where "Please, Mr. Kennedy" is performed by Oscar Isaac (who plays the title character), Justin Timberlake (who plays a folk singer who is a friend of Llewyn Davis), and Adam Driver (who plays a third folk singer).

Click here to read an interview of Burnett, Isaac, and Driver about the writing and recording of the song.

I said that "Please, Mr. Kennedy" was an original song.  But strictly speaking, it's not an original song.

The "Please, Mr. Kennedy" songwriting credit lists not only T-Bone Burnett, Justin Timberlake, and Ethan and Joel Coen, but also Ed Rush and George Cromarty.

That's because Rush and Cromarty, who recorded as the Goldcoast Singers, wrote a song called "Please, Mr. Kennedy" (which released on a 1962 album titled Here They Are! The Goldcoast Singers) that is essentially the same song as the Inside Llewyn Davis "Please, Mr. Kennedy," but with new lyrics.  Click here to listen to that song.

But that's not the whole story.  

In 1961, Motown released a single by Mickey Woods that is also called "Please, Mr. Kennedy."  It's a pretty big leap from that song to the Goldcoast Singers' song, but it is also about a guy asking President Kennedy not to draft him -- not because he is opposed to the war, but because he wants to marry his best girl first.  (The singer would also be satisfied if his best friend -- who he suspects of having designs on his girl -- were to be drafted at the same time.)

And you can go back a little further still.  The Mickey Woods' "Please, Mr. Kennedy" may have been inspired by Larry Verne's "Mr. Custer," which was a #1 hit single in 1960.  

"Mr. Custer" is sung by a private in the 7th Cavalry who begs General Custer to leave him behind if he insists on fighting the Battle of Little Bighorn:

There's a redskin a-waitin' out there

Just a-fixin' to take my hair
A coward I've been called 

'Cause I don't wanna wind up dead or bald

The Inside Llewyn Davis "Please, Mr. Kennedy" has been nominated for the "Best Original Song" Golden Globe.  But it won't be nominated for an Academy Award -- or it won't be unless the Academy committee that nominates songs for the "Best Original Song" Oscar changes their rules.  That's because the Academy's rules limit eligibility for that award to a song that "consists of words and music, both of which are original and written specifically for the motion picture."  

Forrest Wickman of Slate is not happy about this state of affairs because he believes that the Inside Llewyn Davis song is an adaptation that is "transformative" -- which happens to be a term of art that is fraught with significance for copyright lawyers (and which won't be explained further here because you're not paying me $670 an hour) -- and that represents a "form of genius" equal (or superior) to that of creating a song from scratch (if such a thing is really possible).

The Coens, Burnett, Timberlake, and Oscar Isaac put in hours and hours overhauling the song entirely: In addition to adding the countdown at the beginning and Driver’s ad libs, Burnett himself wrote "10 or 15 verses."  The Coens then "edited and refined and changed" these verses.  Together they kicked around and recorded multiple versions over the course of weeks, before the performers finally shaped the final version under Burnett and the Coens’ direction.  It was a perfect example of the kind of "creative interaction between the filmmaker(s) and the composer(s)" that the Academy explicitly values.

But the Academy’s rules, as they exist today, don’t reward this kind of creativity. In fact, it’s dismissal of this kind of creativity that prevented the Academy from recognizing classics like "Gangsta's Paradise" and "Fight the Power" from Dangerous Minds and Do The Right Thing because they used samples. 

I couldn't agree more.  

Once again, here's "Please, Mr. Kennedy":

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Coolio -- "Gangsta's Paradise" (1995)

As I walk through the valley 
Of the shadow of death

I take a look at my life 
And realize there's nothin' left

You're probably wondering why I picked this song to feature on 2 or 3 lines today.  That's a fair question, and I'm happy to answer it.

A couple of weeks ago, I somehow stumbled across a link to three Youtube videos of Justin Timberlake and Jimmy Fallon performing medleys of brief excerpts of well-known rap songs on Fallon's late-night talk show.  

The third so-called "History of Rap" video is only five minutes long, but the boys manage to squeeze in  snippets of 18 hip-hop classics -- "Sabotage" (by the Beastie Boys), "Baby Got Back" (Sir Mix-A-Lot), "Bust a Move" (Young MC), "Jump Around" (House of Pain), and many others -- in that five minutes.    Right in the middle of the video is twelve seconds of "Gangsta's Paradise," which wasn't nearly enough to satisfy me. 

Here's the aforementioned video.  It's really, really good (as are the other two):



Before we talk about "Gangsta's Paradise," I have a brief story about Jimmy Fallon.  When I shared this video with a young woman who works in my office, she told me that she once had a date with Jimmy Fallon.  I think this was quite some time ago -- before he had his own TV show, and before he did Fever Pitch, a godawful 2005 movie (co-starring the godawful Drew Barrymore) in which Fallon plays a devoted fan of the godawful Boston Red Sox.

The second-worst scene in Fever Pitch is when Barrymore's character gets sick and throws up during her first date with Fallon's character, who wins her heart by brushing her dog's teeth after the dog eats the vomit.  The worst scene in the movie is when the Red Sox win the 2004 AL pennant over the Yankees.

(Gag me with a spoon!)

Anyway, Fallon and my young friend had only one date.  (I don't think she threw up during the date, inspiring the scene in the movie, but I don't know for sure.)  I told her that Fallon struck me as a bit of a tool, so she shouldn't feel bad.  She agreed that he was a bit of a tool, but then pointed out how much alimony she might have gotten from him now that's he hit it so big.  I tried to comfort her by telling her there are plenty of rich tools out there that a beautiful and accomplished young woman like her can squeeze a heapin' helpin' of alimony out of.  I think she felt much better after our conversation!

"Gangsta's Paradise" is the most memorable thing about the 1995 movie, Dangerous Minds, which starred Michelle Pfeiffer as an idealistic teacher at a ghetto high school in California.  It's sort of a poor man's (or poor woman's) To Sir, With Love.  

I don't know about you, but Michelle Pfeiffer never did much for me.  I liked her in Dangerous Liaisons and The Age of Innocence, but both those movies are period pieces -- her characters never really came alive for me.  (By contrast, Deborah Winger's characters always seemed very real to me -- they had an essential personality that Pfeiffer's characters seem to be missing.)

Coolio was born Artis Leon Ivey, Jr., in Compton, CA, in 1963.  "Gangsta's Paradise" was a huge international hit, reaching #1 not only in the United States, but also in the UK, Australia, New Zealand, and a dozen European countries -- including France, Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and all the Scandinavian countries.  (For some reason, it only made it to #29 in the our neighbor to the north.  What's your problem, Canada?)  The song won the Grammy for "Best Rap Solo Performance."

Coolio

Coolio's career peaked shortly after "Gangsta's Paradise" was released.  Recently he's become a regular on reality TV -- last year, he finished second in the Food Network's Celebrity Cook-Off, and just a couple of weeks ago, he was on ABC's Celebrity Wife Swap.  (As the Romans would have said, "Sic transit gloria mundi.")

If you have 42 minutes to waste, here's a link to the complete episode of Celebrity Wife Swap featuring Coolio.  

"Gangsta's Paradise" is nothing we haven't heard before.  The singer is a young African-American man who's trapped in a ghetto, living on his wits -- with a little help from a few guns and his homies.  He's self-aware enough to realize that he'll never walk away from his gangsta's life, despite the very real dangers that accompany it -- he's too hooked on the money and the highs.  "I'm 23 now, but will I live to see 24?" he asks himself, knowing that the answer is "probably not."  

Here's the official music video for "Gangsta's Paradise," which features Michelle Pfeiffer and a number of shots from Dangerous Minds.  

Click here to buy the song from Amazon: