Nicki Minaj – The Red Pen of Doom

Did you hear this song and swear it was Nicki the Minaj? I did. There aren’t many singers who can talk faster than the speed of light.

For a pop song on the radios, though, it’s not bad. And as a video, the visuals are interesting. They hopped on some kind of metal tube full of explosives, used time lapse photography pretty well and flew back home to get it on with Final Cut Pro or whatever. And it works out fine.

Also: this is the same singer who did that killer cover of LOOK AT ME NOW, which I think she did better than the original with Chris Brown and Lil’ Wayne.

I salute you, Karmin from Nebraska, and hope you keep on trying new things in Music Land. (Note: Her name is actually Amy, and she and the other main guy are from Boston, so the line she said about being from Nebraska is just literary license and such.)

As a reformed journalist, I can tell you secret things.

Number One: Coffee.

If you want to make a reporter smile, or an editor not growl at you, feed them industrial amounts of coffee.

Number Two: Stress requires unstressing.

Journalists do a stressful job for tiny amounts of monies, and they’re under the Most Insane Deadline Pressure Known to Man, which makes them look for ways to unwind.

Here are my favorite journalists finding ways to unstress.

First we’ve got Bob Herzog.

Bob’s a TV reporter from Local 12 in Cincinatti who took the thankless job of “Traffic Reporter, A Job We Sometimes Have Interns Do” and turned it onto a “Dancing King of the Glowing Tube.”

Then we’ve got WGN anchors Robert Jordan and Jackie Bange, who look quite Serious and Somber while delivering the news.

Once they hit the commercial break, they transform into silly nutballs and do a special shebang, which they’ve honed over the years to take up exactly two minutes.

Also, just because I can, the original Girls Just Wanna Have Fun by Cindi the Lauper.

The Killers once covered Girls Just Wanna Have Fun.

Katy Perry and Nicki Minaj covered it EVEN BETTER.

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This is Guy Bergstrom the writer, not the Guy Bergstrom in Stockholm or the guy in Minnesota who sells real estate or whatever. Separate guys. Kthxbai. — Guy Bergstrom. Photo by Suhyoon Cho.

Reformed journalist. Scribbler of speeches and whatnot. Wrote a thriller that won some award (PNWA 2013). Represented by Jill Marr of the Sandra Dijkstra Literary Agency.