Antiquing...How MTV Made Me Old


I remember when MTV was in its infancy. I remember when new videos were these magical snippets of music-turned-moving-action. I remember when Michael Jackson’s videos were these unreal productions of epic proportions and we were all in awe of his showmanship. I remember everyone trying to secretly learn the Moonwalk, even though no one admitted it. I remember when Michael got this monkey and this “date” with Webster’s Emanuel Lewis and shit just got weird for him.



I remember when Madonna got ripped a new one for rolling around on the stage of the first Video Music Awards (VMAs) in her smutty wedding attire humping the air and reclaiming her lost virginity. I saw when ‘bitch’ reclaimed her throne 20 years later in the role of the husband of that smutty bride and proved her manhood by tonguing down both Cristina Aguilera and, more famously, Britney Spears. I remember when MTV actually was music television, you know, before all those brainless reality things started to breed. Ah, the good old days!


Well, I’ll be honest, for the last few years MTV and its unique brand of awarding style, have been off my radar. I’ve been busy. Truth is that half the time I couldn’t even tell you what channel MTV could be found on any given cable service. The other half, I wouldn’t recognize it if I did, being that music videos were never on anymore!! Yeah, it’s been that kind of decade.


Tonight, because all of my television shows are on summer hiatus and because I don’t need to wake up early for work and because TV Land is showing “Bonanza”, and the WE network is showing back-to-back “Bridezillas” (more reality.....ugh!), and because I have seen too many “Golden Girls” re-runs, and because there’s nothing on DVD that I am willing to walk across the room to get, I came upon the start of the 2009 MTV Movie Awards. Instead of turning off the TV, I sat back to give the show a chance. Perhaps tonight was a good night to revisit my adolescence and to maybe see how hip I still am.


Guess what? I am so not hip. In fact, I am closer to hip replacement than hip and happening. Talk about a Generation Gap!! I am watching this televised circus, jaw on the floor, realizing that I don’t know jack about the here and now. I am wondering how many times MTV has to bleep the bleeping bleep off someone’s colorful speech. I am wondering if the sound guy who let an F-bomb from Eminem get past him will be fired. I am wondering if watching this mess is the same thing as being unable to turn away from a car wreck on the interstate. I am closer to believing that it really is.


But do not be fooled! I am not completely lost under a large rock. I do know of these nominated people and I even recognize some of the tunes blaring painfully in the background. However, I no longer ‘get’ the jokes the host is making, nor do I have any interest in seeing the testosterone-charged films being discussed or promoted, and I really just can’t care enough about the whole lot of them to grant them a bit of my time.


There’s this one kid, Robert Pattison, every time I go to the kitchen for a snack and come back, he is swaggering up to the stage to get another popcorn-topped award. Dude, you are not James Dean! Stop acting like you are – the hair, the troubled look...please get over yourself. Sadly, I know of this guy – he is the kid from this wildly popular book series called “Twilight”, written by Stephanie Meyer. Books I know...but books-turned into teen freak shows, not so much. I know the books were insanely popular. Hey, they saved my company from going under. Just kidding! The popularity didn’t hurt, though! However, do I think Pattison’s newfound fame, and that of his pretty little cast mates, is worthy of winning every single award they’re all up for? Hardly.


***Sidebar: Vanessa Hudgens looks pissed that her High School Musical film’s 15-minutes are up and now clearly replaced with the hotter, more annoying kids from “Twilight”. This makes me laugh. Ah, to be young, rich, hot and stupid in Hollywood!


Aside from this one-sided side show, is the cable network’s seemingly shameless attempt to out curse every other televised event out there. I know, I know...back in the 1980s (that’s right, I said the 1980s, when MTV was born, you brats!), MTV was known for its outrageous celebrity behavior. How far could you go? How much “shit” could you get away with on cable before the censors came a-knockin’? How many times could you bleep it out before the entire bleeping mess started to sound like nothing but a bleep?

Oh, bleep this bleeping bleep!


Jim Carrey has just won an award for his asinine flick, “Yes Man”. Does Jim make any other kind of flick? Oh, there is his first bleep – or in this case – his first dead air because he got on stage and said “Holy Sh...(dead air)” and none of us are the wiser. What could he possibly have wanted to say? And when someone mouths “f**k you” to the camera, does it count because we didn’t hear it? If I tree falls in an empty forest, does it make a sound? Oh please! What have the evil censor people kept us “safe” from during this televised smut-fest? Jim just made a comedic comment about the Swine Flu. A-hahaha! Is there anything funnier than the Swine Flu? - People sick and dying across countries. I, for one, cannot stop laughing!


Ugh! Keifer Sutherland made a joke about sperm, but he didn’t use the nice word for it. Some guy named Bruno was flown in wearing wings and an exposed pasty white ass and he fell into E

minem’s face. Em seemed pissed, like raging f-ing pissed. He and his boyz up and left. He’s such a rebel! YAWN!




Eww! They just showed a dog molesting himself. Sick!

Denzel is trying to give his ugly ass daughter a career by having her present the last award – shocker, y’all, the award went to “Twilight”!


This is beyond...


OK, I am done. I am old and getting older. I am fine with this because I was around for the “original and still the best” of MTV and these poor young suckers will never know it, as we did. When they grow up, they will have all of this mediocre crap to look back on. Something to be proud of? I don’t think so. So I will excuse my aging ass now because if I have to see one more inch of Andy Samberg's naked entrance (and I have no clue who he is), if I have to see him climb over Justin Timberlake’s face, ass first, if I have to listen to one more offensive rap (Eminem), one more gratuitous f-bomb (Hayden Panettiere) one more minute of grown people and idiot children (Miley Cyrus) behaving like complete and total a-holes, I might puke onto the keyboard.



Good Bleeping Night, Y’all!

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