Stoned, period.

Anyone catch JT's HBO concert? Disappointing, if only because it felt like an even more attenuated version of the show I saw live last February. Dan nailed it (although he gives Janet too much credit): "He seemed way too impressed with his own ability to switch from piano to guitar and whatnot. Maybe he really just wishes he was a singer-songwriter," which was my impression too. Madonna didn't pick up a guitar until nearly twenty years after her first album, and she's got enough sense to tell her cameramen not to bore viewers any longer with footage of fingers on frets (btw Justin hasn't played a solo as unexpectedly thrilling as the two-note masterpiece of inspired ineptness that was Madonna's Neil Young-inspired solo on the Drowned World tour's version of "Candy Perfume Girl"). A lot of this hype is our fault. We think the boy wears stardom so well that we overlook the fact that for every "Dick in a Box" or note-perfect Jessica Simpson imitation we get gangsta puerility like Alpha Dog. Then again, if the kid had stopped reading his own reviews he wouldn't have walked into the studio with Simon Le Bon.