Bill and jay Chou's video adventure

　　Editor's Note: Over the past few months, Bill and Jay became friends and developed a bad habit of finding live performances on YouTube, e-mailing them to each other, then wasting valuable time overanalyzing them for no real purpose whatsoever. Recently, they decided to drag others into their time-wasting vortex by forcing Grantland editor Lane Brown to regularly publish these e-mails on the Hollywood Prospectus. 　　Here's Volume 1: Mariah Carey's Greatest Moment.
Bill: Hey Jay, come back to 1992 with me — back when MTV ran Beavis and Butt-Head episodes and had homophobic roommates on the Real World. I know, I know, it kinda sounds like 2011. But trust me, it was totally different. One of their best shows was MTV Unplugged, which usually featured the likes of Squeeze, Eric Clapton and Pearl Jam stripping their music down with acoustic performances. (Semi-related: Pearl Jam submitted the best Unplugged of all time. You're not topping this or this for an Unplugged show. Sorry. The "Nothing else matters from the early-'90s but Nirvana" fans can blow me.) Since they rarely dipped out of the rock world for these shows (LL Cool J's surprisingly competent 1991 Unplugged a rare exception), I remember thinking Mariah Carey was a strange choice for the series. Back then, she was just the semi-cheesy New Yorker with great pipes who (a) allegedly got into the business because she started banging Tommy Mottola, and (b) wasn't as good as Whitney Houston.
Jay: I've always found it counterintuitive that two of the great singing talents of the past twenty years (Mariah and Celine Dion) both started off their careers as "the girl who got a recording contract by sleeping with a much older record industry guy." Is this just a coincidence? Is there something about ultra-talented young divas that draws them toward father figure types who can shield them against some of the nastier parts of fame?
Bill: This is awkward — that's how I got my ESPN.com gig in 2001, by sleeping with John Walsh.
Jay: Here's my theory: Old nasty record industry guys sleep with all their protégés. And with Celine and Mariah, both guys were smart enough to realize that they had something special and lasting that they could ride into a happy and lucrative future. When you watch Mariah's greatest Unplugged moment — her cover of the Jackson Five's "I'll Be There" — it's pretty clear why Tommy Mottola, who, by the way, also had a big hand in developing Celine's career, ended up being the record industry guy who defined so much of the '90s sound. Everything here is perfect: the intimate nightclub lighting, the crowded yet somehow understated stage, Mariah's hair, her simple, black outfit, the old bald guy playing the piano, the eight backup singers and the fact that Mariah, the Queen of the High Notes, was gracious enough to yield the vocal acrobatics to Trey Lorenz.