All the Justin Bieber News You Can Use

Mike Allen writes in Playbook yesterday:

"E-MAILS WE DIDN'T OPEN: "Did you see this on TV?" ... "Why Obama Can't Save The World" ... "Enter to win a date with Justin Bieber!"

Well, I opened that Justin Bieber e-mail. Not only did I open it, I entered the contest. And not only did I enter the contest, I won the contest! We're having our date tonight at The Cheesecake Factory! I'm pretty excited. I'm going to order the Seared Tuna Tataki Salad, but I'm going to take home half of it, because the portions are so huge! And I'm going to get Justin a peach smoothie!

Is it just me, or is Gmail not filtering the crap the way it used to?

And in other Justin Bieber news, James Parker, writing in this month's Atlantic, provides the key to all Justin Bieber mythologies:

This year, just in time for Valentine's Day, came the Bieber movie, a full-length in-cinemas-everywhere life-of-Justin 3-D epic called Justin Bieber: Never Say Never. Commercially speaking, this is rather remarkable. No one ever made a movie about Nik Kershaw. Perhaps, in preparation for the event, you already purchased your special $30 pre-release package (includes glow stick, bracelet, souvenir VIP laminate, and purple 3-D glasses). Never Say Never is Bieber's Truth or Dare, his ABBA: The Movie, his (in a way) The Man Who Fell to Earth, and it follows other works of Biebography in emphasizing the up-from-Nowheresville side of the story. Proclaims the trailer: THEY SAID IT WOULD NEVER HAPPEN. (Did they?) THEY SAID HE WOULD NEVER MAKE IT. (Who said that?) Whatever--the point is that Bieber overcame the odds. Born in 1994 and raised in Stratford, Ontario, with only his huge and unmistakable charisma to help him, he dramatically rescued himself from a null state of non-superstardom and Canadianness.