MTV Video Music Awards

Well, I watched the Video Music Awards last night. Boy, what a freaking waste of time.

I make it a point to watch the VMA's every year because it's a serious cultural thing...people talk about the performances, they talk about the videos that won and the show is usually well done and funny. My hopes were up this year when I saw the list of performers and I saw that Jack Black was the host.

I remember several years ago, Jack (before he was huge) hosted the MTV movie awards with Sarah Michelle Gellar and it was awesome. They did these great spoofs of movies where they actually re-did scenes from the big movies of the year and they were funny, inventive and just great. And Jack truly is a funny, funny man...not to the height of Will Farrell quite yet, but funny.

Last night, he was not funny. With the exception of the one Tenacious D moment when KG decided to join the Black Eyed Peas because Jack didn't "bring the thunder". Otherwise not so funny.

The jokes fell flat, the videos this year were passe' and overall the show had glitch after glitch. And worst of all were the performances. The Raconteurs were one of the highlights and they were really not good...they acted as the house band, so you would hear little pieces of songs here and there then it would cut out...but is sounded like the on-site audience probably got some pretty good music from them.

Beyonce performed and it was one of the worst performances I've ever seen. It was over-the-top, cheesy and worst of all skanky. She tried to rap and she did the strangest, wierdest, stupidest dance routine I've ever seen. Then she stripped and was lifted up about 50 feet in the air. And I found myself wondering, whatever happened to just singing a freaking song? Just sing the song! And pick a better freaking song than that piece of crap, for goodness sake.

Christina performed and even she was bad. I've never heard her give a bad performance and she was missing notes, her voice cracked...oh, it was not good. Now, with Christina you never get a horrible performance because her voice is that good. But it was as bad as you get with her.

The presenters were stupid and cheesy. There was nothing funny. And the little gags they tried to pull sucked. Britney & Kevin were supposed to present an award via sattelite, and they did this cheesy bit where they acted like they didn't know the camera wasn't on and then their 6-month old song supposedly drove off in a small car. HAR-HAR!! So funny!

Then they presented Hype Williams with a lifetime acheivement type award and the tribute to him sucked worse than just about anything, culminating with Missy Elliot showing up on stage in a kid's version of a Hummer, wearing what looked like a black blow-up plastic balloon. Unfortunately, she was too fat for the little go-cart to actually drive her, so Timbaland had to push the car to the other side of the stage. Nice. That's brilliant.

Panic! at the Disco performed and it proved my suspicions that their lead singer can't sing worth crap. He was out of key half the time and couldn't hit the high notes...and the song he sang (I Write Sins, Not Tragedies) doesn't go that high. I'm dissapointed because I actually enjoyed that CD, but I think I'll have a hard time enjoying it now.

The one redeeming performance was the show closer when the Killers performed their new single from their new album. It was great. I was impressed by the band's new redneck image...it was actually kind of cool. The drummer looked like Jason Lee in My Name is Earl and the lead singer had a molest-ache, while the guitar player was sporting a nice afro, a la Chris Sligh. But actually the song was really good (very U2-ish, without ripping them off) and the performance was actually nice to watch. I'm really looking forward to their new album now.

So, overall, I would say that the show sucked about as bad as the show can suck. But I'm sure MTV will spin it as the best VMA's ever...but then that's what they do, I guess.