The Justin Paradox or Happy Summertime

(originally published in Futro Magazine)

I’m gripping the wheel of my fluorescent green Lamborghini so tight I feel my knuckles going white under these eel-skin driving gloves. I’m yoking all twelve cylinders, whipping the thing across busy lanes of traffic like a misshapen and potentially suicidal tennis ball. It’s early summer. Wimbledon season.

I’m Dr. Samuel Johnson, PhD. Interdimensional playboy and semiotician to the stars. I’ve just received the phone call that every freelance semiotician both fears and craves: Justin Bieber has accidentally read the back of a shampoo bottle and is currently plunging headlong into an existential abyss.

The only part that makes any sense at all is the fact that it makes no sense, which is exactly what I expect from my crew of woefully misguided and intellectually homeless superstars. It’s why I make the big bucks. It’s why I’m sporting this outrageous ponytail. It’s why I’m…