It’s the VMA’s! Hooray!
As usual, the award show begins with the red carpet nonsense that people only interested in clothes no one is going to wear ever again. It was absolute chaos in only the way MTV can bring you with the type of ham-fisted confusion that absolute amateurs do best. It was chock full of interviews full of people completely out of the loop on current events (dude from Twilight I’m looking at you), an odd moment where Lady Gaga started the evening in strange outfit #1 of 4 for the evening, escorted by the one and only Kermit the Frog, a staffer vying for the title of the next effeminate John Norris sans complete thought and of course, an interview with Green Day, because we still care(?). What was even stranger was when they had legendary astronaut Buzz Aldrin on stage reading the nominees for Best New Artist because he was the inspiration for the infamous Moon Man trophy.
And then the show starts with Madonna coming out, mercifully with clothes on and berates us the public for demonizing a man that slept with children. Sure, he made Thriller, but he slept with boys aided by “Jesus Juice.” And then his sister Janet produced a medley of his songs with a slew of dancers doing his moves and ended the performance where she was removed from the song “Scream” that she and Michael did together, and she danced and sang her parts live on stage.
Following that they presented the award for Best Female Video which was won by Taylor Swift. The spotlight was then quickly stolen by an irrate Kanye West who proclaimed that Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” was better crushing Swift’s hopes and dreams of finishing a speech. It was fine though, because she’s bumbling and boring. All of this was righted at the end of the night when Beyonce won Best Video for said song, but called Taylor Swift to the stage so she could finish her speech.
Lady Gaga did a performance of her new single “Papparazzi,” continuing in her very strange ways of the evening. Muse played “The Uprising” in the theater across the street, the overrated Green Day performed their new single that isn’t really worth discussing, Beyonce did “Single Ladies,” Pink performed “Sober” high above the crowd while doing impressive acrobatics and actually singing, and Jay-Z closed the show with “Empire State of Mind” with Alicia Keys.
Not many actual awards were given out, ten at the most if not less for a show dubbed an award show. The focus was more on actual performances and the death of Michael Jackson. Granted, the man brought MTV to the forefront with his “Thriller” video and the rest that were to come, but what had he done for MTV lately? Maybe that’s a rough question, but again, you don’t see O.J. Simpson being worshiped and respected on NFL programming every Sunday. And you certainly don’t hear about MTV or VH1 talking about Phil Spector.
The show tried to end on a high note, a powerful moment, a great performance by Jay-Z, only to have it stolen by a girl from the audience popping up on stage drawing the attention. Buzz Aldrin attempted to make a joke during the pre-show that was actually quite foreboding. He said, in space you never hear your pee hit the bottom, and this year’s VMA’s proved yet again, that the entertainment business has a never-ending bladder. So, the celebration of Maxim-moving-photoshoots is over, and I still don’t care.
