August 31, 2003

The MTV Awards (or "I'm gettin' old")

August 31, 2003

eatin at the y Forget what you heard about the MTV music awards – the story of Britney, Madonna, Xtina, and the triple-donger dildo just isn’t true…as much as you’d like to believe it was. Neither is the fact that Justin Timberlake was tied to a chair and whipped by Ms. Ciccone while he was forced to watch the whole ordeal.

On the other hand, I must have been tied to a chair and forced to watch as I ended up enduring almost all of this year’s installment of “I’m getting older by the minute”, as indicated no more profoundly than when MTV parades their stable of music industry tools in front of a coked-up New York audience every year for their MVA’s.

Can anyone explain to me what the deal is with that NELLY weasel? What’s with the fucking Band-Aid on the face, anyway? Was Les Nessman really that cool that he’s owed such a tribute, or does the Band-Aid cover some secret “I’m gay” gang insignia? Maybe it’s a shaving injury. If so, you should just get a pit bull to lick the fuzz off your face, Nelly boy. I hear you can get one from the guys in Outkast! You’re some manly man, there, Nelly. It’s too bad that Nelly Furtado is way the fuck more manly than you…and she doesn’t even try! So is Nell Carter, for that matter. Give me a break, Nelly!

Was that Kelly Clarkson or Kelly Osbourne? Clarkson, the biggest tool the recording industry has seen since the invention of the tape deck, stopped the crowds on the runway with her “Kelly Osbourne” look. It seems that all of the “reality” shows are merging into one horrible nightmare, where we now have more girls going for the “Petunia Pig” look.

nice shirt, cock-knocker! Puff Daddy snagged an unprecedented amount of cheap applause by using an old Oscar trick (praising Jesus during the Oscar speech). However, the Puffy-faced one took it a step further by trying to cram as many “dead people tributes” onto his shirt and into a five minute segment as possible. Sure, the JMJ tribute was “touching”, but not nearly as touching as the fucking impromptu Adidas ad that sprung up in the front section. It’s always touching to see how corporate America gets their fingers in the pie when it can make a buck off of the affiliation of dead people and products. It is nice to know, however, that gun manufacturers don’t advertise on network television, as there are endless corporate opportunities here in the urban jungles of America. As for Puffy, his “Gregory Hines/Barry White” shirt was a less than classy attempt at a tribute, as was indicated when cameras cut from rapper 50 Cent to a shot of “father figure” Marshall Mathers III, now sporting a T-shirt of another of “his” artists’ upcoming albums.

Closing things up for the evening were the now legendary Metallica. Like fish out of water in this sea of prefab music, the Metallifux were either made to sound really shitty by roadies not used to the presence of real instruments, or James Hetfield needs to fall back off the wagon!

Their cringing tribute to “20 years of MTV” consisted of them riffing out on Michael Jackson’s “Beat It”, Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit”, Lenny Kravitz’ “Are U Gonna Go My Way”, and the White Stripes’ “Seven Nation Army”, before segueing into “Enter Sandman” and a badly detuned version of their latest single from “St. Anger”.

“St. Anger”? More like “St. Anger Management”, guys! By closing out the show with a shlock tribute to the industry which you are now such an integral part of, you made a statement to disenchanted Metallica fans like myself; that you are now a cog in the system you once despised until it provided you with your millions (wait, your resident mouthpiece tennis playing drummer already made that statement a couple years ago when he helped shut down Napster and rid the Internet of file-sharing). Fifteen years ago, you shocked the Grammy awards by showing up in T-shirts and slipping a few obscenities into “One” to serve as some sort of rebels to the establishment. In 2003, Kirk Hammett is riffing out Eddie Van Halen’s bought-and-paid-for solo from the world’s most infamous baby dangler’s biggest-selling album. I wouldn’t have believed it if I hadn’t seen it with my own two eyes. Once again, Metallica shocks the music world!

On a brighter note, Chris Rock made my day by introducing Venus and Serena Williams as “two women who have kicked the crap out of more white women than Rick James”.

Classic.