In one of my earliest non-sports posts here, I weighed in on Justin Bieber, a young pop star I had never heard of before he showed up to play for throngs of 10-year-old girls at the Today Show studio near my office.

Anyway, I trashed him a bit, assuming he was just some run-of-the-mill record-company lackey selected for stardom for his looks and charm.

I have since learned from a source with inside knowledge that Justin Bieber is actually something of a savant in both music and weirdness. Apparently the reason Bieber’s Today Show performance was underwhelming is that he had never even rehearsed the song with his live band, but decided on a whim to play it instead of the song he had prepared. While dancing. With no backing track.

I’m also told that he is, as I suspected, closely handled by managers and mother, but mostly because he’s prone to saying particularly bizarre and downright inappropriate things. And apparently in a recent trip to MTV’s studios, he was given a Rubik’s Cube with which to entertain himself, and promptly finished it and launched it at his manager’s junk.

So maybe Justin Bieber is pretty rock and roll after all. Good luck with that, Justin Bieber. Your next challenge is to actually make worthwhile music.