I caught a few parts of the VMA's here and there.. A minute or two at a time. And boy did everything I saw suck. Badly. Neal Pollack's write-up of this event, seems to be about as inline with my take of what I saw as I'm likely to find. Its a perfect reference for my random ramblings..

] Chris Rock appears and does a stand-up act that's funnier than
] anything I'm writing here.

Which was funny as hell. Really.. I was thinking at this point, that I might actually sit and watch some of this crap. You know, like give it a chance and all that. Of course, now I know that it was only because I was enjoying the shit talk.. Granted, I was ranting at the time about how Rock was lame for the Eminem worship/lack-of-shit-talking. With Eminem's recent dis to Weird Al, he really deserved to get some shit for that, at the VMAs, specifically. In fact, with the benefit of hind sight, I think something along the lines of a public apology to Weird Al, and then them taking the stage together, at the VMAs, might just have been the only way that dude could have gotten back some cred with me.

Fuck Eminem, really. The Weird Al thing.. Thats all it took for me. ...and the self important bullshit he has going on. His Legacy. Phbbtttt. I'm still pissed about that!

Anyway, the VMA's lost me the first time right about here:

] Then high-priced NBA chattel LeBron
] James comes out, shills for Sprite, and drools over Ashanti. They
] gave the best hip-hop video award to Elliott, in a true stunner.

I think about 20 seconds into the dude talking about how rad Sprite was, I was out the fucking door. Hell, I all remember of what I saw of the pre-show was people pumping something.. There is a threshold for how much you can take..

Walk back in a few minutes later to:

] Good Charlotte, you are so not punk rock! You think you're so
] hot with your red Mohawks and your backward baseball caps and
] your lame tattoos! But you suck, Good Charlotte! A real punk-
] rock band does not beat-box into the microphone! Oh, my, you
] destroyed your drum set and kicked over the amps! How
] dangerous! Like you had to pay for them.

Oh yeah, I couldn't have put it better. Geez. Truly crap. As a fan of punk, and music in general, and not a 12-14 year old, this is well.. well.. almost, but not quite culturally offensive. Just really, really, really fucking bad. Good Charlotte? They got "Good" in their name? The word "Good" shouldn't be within 10 words of a mention of this band, otherwise it will cause a buffer overflow in English or something.. I donno.

] "Good Charlotte," says Chris Rock. "More like a mediocre Green
] Day." Thank you, Chris Rock.

Oh, my, Jah! Chris Rock is providing the voice of reason here. Thats scary.

Next thing I walked in on was this:

] The surviving members of Run DMC (did I
] just write that phrase?) award the best rap video to 50 Cent. In a
] classy, prescripted move, Eminem joins 50 Cent on stage. 50
] Cent thanks the people from retail and radio and "everyone who
] purchased my CD."

In particular, I remember the thing about retail. Like "and word out to everyone in retail yo, love ya" or something like that. Wish I could remember the exact wording, because it just cracked me up at the time. Seems like there is a general trend taking place.. I seem to remember that in the past the amount of time most artists spent thanking their fans and influences, was a little bit more then the time spent thanking the biz. Seemed to go more like "lots of blah fans blah music blah, and none of it would have been possible without [insert label] and all the folks at [whatever]". Now it seems to go more like "lots of blah label blah biz blah drop-as-many-biz-names-as-possible-in-a-string blah, and most of all, my fans." Might just be my perception of things, and there are exceptions, but I'm pretty sure all these people just plain suck. They know where their money comes from, and they know its not the fans they need to woo in order to keep it flowing.

Keep in mind too, that this was right after the "fallen heros" portion of the show..

] Then Justin Timberlake wins best male video over Johnny Cash.
] "My grandfather raised me on Johnny Cash," Justin Timberlake
] says. "In some cool way, I share this award with him." Actually,
] Justin, you don't. But thank you for following your publicists'
] advice and calling it a "travesty" anyway.

Well put.

This whole ordeal would make more sense if the awards used the words "Most Successful" instead of "Best".

] Metallica then performs a limp show-tunes medley of MTV's
] greatest rock hits. I picked out "Seven Nation Army," "Smells
] Like Teen Spirit," and "Beat It." Metallica plays one of its own
] songs, to slightly greater effect, but cannot undo the fact that
] they've just killed rock 'n' roll. The hall fills with silvery confetti.
] I take a deep breath and a slug of wine. And then I am free.

I tossed the phrase "culturally offensive" out at some point earlier.. Thats a very subjective term, let me give it some more context: This is culturally offensive to me.

Well, its got a damn good shot at it anyway. I didn't see this part. I'm glad too. I don't think I need to see it. I'm sure I know what happened. Metallica needs to have another bus accident or something. This time lose Lars or James..

] The headlines on the AP wire: "North Korea: Official Vows to
] Test Nukes;" "U.S. Struggles to Get More Help in Iraq."
] Meanwhile, Good Charlotte wins the "viewer's choice" award,
] which shows that I'm the only person in the world watching
] this who's not a 12-year-old girl. The leader singer of Good
] Charlotte, ever classy, says, "I just shit my pants."

I'm glad I didn't pay any attention to MTV this year. Didn't much much it seems.

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