What happened to the VMA’s?

I had the unfortunate opportunity to watch the Video Music Awards last night on MTV. The VMA’s used to be my favorite awards show. I loved watching the awesome performances. I loved rooting for my favorite videos. I loved voting for the viewers choice award. I loved seeing the seemingly random pairings of celebrities, like Martha Stuart and Busta Rhymes. I loved knowing that were going to be surprises and speculating when those surprises might happen.

Last night had none of those things. Every performance was worse than last. I don’t think I had actually seen more than a handful of the videos actually up for awards. There is no viewers choice award anymore to vote for. The people present with the exact person you think they are going to present with. And there was no not one surprise. We all knew Brittany was going to open the show but not preform. We knew that Kanye was going to close it. It was even completely obvious who was going to win. It was so incredibly obvious that MTV made a deal with Brittany’s people that if she came back to the awards this year so they could have ratings they would give her every award she was up for and not show her hideous moments from last year.Russel Brand was really poor. He wasn’t the worst, *cough* Christian Slater *cough*, but he was pretty bad. He couldn’t shut up about the Jonas Brothers and their purity rings or Bush. (For the record I’m not fond of either, but come on.)

The worst performer of them all had to have been Lil Wayne. I cannot stand Lil Wayne. He grosses me out with his tattoo’s, hair, clothes, pimp attitude and teeth. Usually one of those things alone won’t disgust me, however, all together they make me want to puke. I’m pretty sure that one of his many tattoo’s on his hands says “Skeet”. If you don’t know what skeet is you probably don’t want to. I’m not sure why anyone would want to tattoo that on themselves. Anyway, about half way through his performance I realized that I hadn’t understood one word he’d said so far so I decided to pay more attention to figure out what he was yelling about and why everyone there seemed so excited to hear it. Well, I still didn’t understand. However, I did notice that he was bleeped at least 10 times and that he must think his crotch is something spectacular. I only say the later because he couldn’t keep his hands off of it. He would take his hand off and almost as if there was a strong magnet attached to his crotch, his hand would snap back to the previous position.

Well, the performances used to be good. People used to put thought behind them. They wanted to have the best performance of the night. They actually tried and cared what the public thought. So please enjoy my top 5 performances from VMA’s past.

5-Mc Hammer- U Can’t Touch this. This was my jam. I actually think think was everyone’s jam in 1989 & 1990. I love everything about this performance from the 100 people on stage, to the costumes, to the white people in the audience loving every moment of this song.

4-Brittany Spears- I’m A Slave 4 U. Ah, back when Brittany was publicly sane. I loved this song. My roommate at the time, Deidre and I used to jump on the table in our dorm room and do this dance. I remember watching this with Deidre and us swearing that her top was going to fall down. I still don’t know how it didn’t.

3-Madonna- Vogue. I remember watching this live and thinking how great this was. 18 years later it is still great. Everytime she snaps the fans open I want to squeal.

2-N*SYNC-TIPY, Bye Bye Bye, It’s Gonna Be Me.- Nsync sure knows how to put on a show. The TV screens were brilliant, the dancing was brilliant, the singing was brilliant. I hate that Nsync does not exist anymore. I’m still holding out for a reunion.

1-Bon Jovi-Wanted Dead or Alive. This obviously has to be at number 1. It was so great that MTV decided to do a whole show around the “unplugged” concept. Not to mention I was so in love with Jon Bon Jovi at the time. I had life size poster of him in my room and my goal in life was to go see them in concert.