2009 VMAs; or, You Call This Music? Get Off My Lawn!

That's right, I'm back. After a long hiatus of not doing very much at all, I decided to kick the ol' blog back up. Not so much to specifically talk about the VMAs, but when such a trainwreck of pop culture happens in front of you it's hard not to talk about it. So let's get started!

I'll be honest, I enjoyed this year's show much more than recent years. I don't know why, but I more or less knew what was going on this time. Much less of the "Who's that girl? What does she do again?" than before. Madonna's tribute to Michael Jackson was weird and stilted, but this is the star of "Swept Away" we're talking about so that's no big surprise. Her perceived relevance will never cease to baffle me. Then the show immediately reached its high point of the evening, if not the decade, when Janet Jackson performed a duet with the video from "Scream." Classy, touching, and really entertaining.

I enjoy Russell Brand's style, but in this situation he makes me feel like I'm nearing the first drop of a roller coaster. I'm not sure what's coming up; it'll probably be fun, but maybe someone's going to die. His crack about the Jonas Brothers ("They have to forgive me; they're Christian") was actually really funny without being too personally aggressive. And Brand truly buys the stuff he's always spouting about love and togetherness, and you can't fault a guy for that. Given his complete lack of regard for network execs and people's opinion of him, I did hope he'd lay into Kanye for the rest of the show, but I guess he handled that alright.

By the way, Kanye West is a whining, dripping, ungrateful, fetid douchebag. And I mean that in the meanest way possible. And that's about all I've got to say about that.

Pink (or I'm sorry, is it P!nk?) had a fantastic performance, and Green Day turned what I thought was going to be a control booth-nightmare ("I want as many people on this stage as we can get right now") into a fun party moment (go back on your DVR and watch Pete Wentz run out to Billy Joe like a high school girl with a big grin on his face). A few performances reminded me of the state of the industry, though, when the fiance or I remarked that "she actually can sing" or "she's actually singing right now." No, Beyonce, we are not talking about you, so go back to being classy with Taylor Swift.

A word on Lady GaGa. Did she get her own dressing room at Radio City? Did that entail one of her people calling ahead and telling the stage manager, "Lady GaGa will be wearing no less than four batshit crazy outfits and will need space in which to store them and be wedged into them." Or did she run to the bathroom with a dry cleaning bag every fifteen minutes? Is she really sticking around? Really? We're all buying this?

So yeah. I hadn't even planned on watching the show last night, much less did I remember it was on til we flipped over there. Not a bad way to kill a Sunday night I suppose. Now back to another year of forgetting what the "M" stands for in MTV.

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