Pop Tart

Sometime during my last year of law school, my friend Sharon told me about LaunchCast. Part of Yahoo! Music, LaunchCast was one of the first internet radio experiments. The system allowed you to rate music and these ratings would guide the music player to play music that fit your tastes. I approached it with significant doubt, but was pleased when the radio player tailored itself pretty quickly to singer-songwriters that were either angsty lesbians or troubled, sensitive white boys. It was perfect.

Until I explored the video player. Unlike the radio, which is a complete crapshoot, the video player lets you select the actual video you'd like to watch (which, according to my sources in the music industry, is not something the record labels like so much). When that first video is over, the player proceeds to play others based on your preferences. The video player, much more than the radio, has led me to a lot of really great music. My only complaint, if any, is that it tends to get caught up on the specific genre in which you start it up. For instance, when I was on a Kanye kick, it insisted on playing a lot of lesser quality rap and hiphop that ended up just being annoying. (Still, I suppose my Shakira video viewings led to such Spanish-language marvels as Rebelde and Chayanne, so I can't complain.) But my Launch (or Yahoo!) player had never done anything to me like tonight.

While it amuses me that Beyonce named her CD Bidet, I really enjoyed the first single and wanted to hear the newest, "Ring the Alarm." It's pretty intense -- she screams the chorus through distortion -- and pretty darn catchy. As you might've realized earlier from my preference for angsty lesbian singer-songwriters, I like the music produced by angry women. This is no exception. Beyonce is at her best on this track and she owns the video, which cuts from scenes of her being interrogated all in white to her being dragged down a hallway by soldiers while wearing fabulous thigh-high boots. It's really a stellar effort by Ms. Knowles.

But anyway, that's not the point. The point is that activating the video player means that it will attempt to entertain you for as long as possible with videos that, I suppose, are determined by your previously rated artists. After two viewings of "Ring the Alarm," I was treated to Fergie's new single and then Kanye's video for "Jesus Walks." I was entertained but, it being 1am, I thought it might be time to hit the sack. I was about to close the window when Jessica Simpson's "A Public Affair" came on.

Full disclosure: I like the song. In fact, I downloaded it while studying at Starbucks in Caldwell, NJ during the last few days before the bar. I pull no punches about that. [OH MY GOSH! They're playing the video again!!! NOOO!!! They're not. They're playing the stupid "Fan Only" version. Ugh. Yahoo! thinks it's cute to let fans send in videos of themselves dancing to songs. They cobble this sad, sad footage into a "Fans Only" video that they show with unfortunate regularity on their website. It's terrible. I'm not trying to be mean, but it ends up being a sad amount of mildly fleshy women wearing too little clothing and queeny, unattractive dudes vamping like mad. Not cute.]

The video for "A Public Affair" opens with -- get this -- Jessica Simpson, Christina Applegate, Eva Longoria, and Christina Milian riding in a car together!! (Is anyone else as excited I immediately was?!) So, they're chatting and, suddenly, the camera switches to their driver, PLAYED BY RYAN SEACREST! (Anyone FLIPPING out yet?!) Then, they arrive at a roller rink (!), go inside, and find ANDY DICK BEHIND THE COUNTER!!!!! (WHAT IS GOING ON!?!? HOW CAN ONE THING BE SO PERFECT!?!?!) The video keeps slipping into the fantasies of the characters, the best of which is a moment where Jessica Simpson and Christina Milian (who, in my opinion, is absolutely stunning) are licking the sides of Andy Dick's face. Throw on top of that a really hot, unexplained love interest for J. Simp and I'm totally sold.

So, yeah. It's the little things that make life worth it.