A Very Bizarre Night: The 2007 MTV VMAs

I was really mad when the Video Music Awards began last night, because I thought they had accidentally cut over from the red carpet to the live show too late and had missed the beginning of Britney's opening performance. I thought this because I had spent the past few weeks reading all the hype about how she had been practicing an act, choreographed by "illusionist" Criss Angel (who can't even perfect the illusion of his hair being clean, so he can't be that good), which involved her appearing and disappearing through a complex set of mirrors. There were no mirrors on the stage, and there was nothing extraordinary whatsoever about her routine. Surely they had cut off the first few minutes of her act? Did I miss something?

No, I missed nothing. For reasons I will speculate on a bit later, Britney scrapped the planned number and instead subjected the viewing audience to a painfully dull, badly lip-synched rendition of her new song "Gimme More," during which she didn't do much other than hobble back and forth, gyrate for a few seconds and flip a very natty-looking wig around. The highlight of her act was when the camera panned to 50 Cent, who couldn't hide a look of dumbfounded confusion as he gazed up at the set. Miss M, JG and I were left nearly speechless when Britney appeared to run stumbling off the stage at the end of the three minutes. If you didn't see it, try this link or this one. (I'm assuming these links will be taken down before the day is over, but who knows.)

What just happened???

As should have been expected, the excuses for Britney's behavior are flying all over the place now (as are cheesy article headlines such as "Gimme Less!"). Some say that she learned that Sarah Silverman planned to make disparaging remarks about her and her children, and that therefore she was really upset right before going on. But other sources say that Britney was told that Sarah would NOT make any references to her (even though she ended up doing so), and since Sarah went on after Britney, Britney had no way of knowing that Sarah would renege on her promise. Other sites are saying that Criss Angel's routine had to be pulled at the last minute because of insurance concerns with all the mirrors that were going to be used. Ummm.... wouldn't they have checked that out earlier - like weeks ago? Still other sources report that Britney was upset that Criss Angel was hanging out with some other woman and was snubbing her before the show. I don't buy that one either. So how about THIS for an excuse: Britney had been partying non-stop for the past three days in Vegas (confirmed by pictures all over the gossip sites), had barely practiced her routine, and was probably on some sort of drugs when she was on stage? I mean, just BACK OUT if you know you can't live up to your much-hyped comeback!?! You KNOW MTV had a Plan B ready since she's been so unstable lately... I think it would've been better for her to have bowed out and had the media go nuts speculating as to why, rather than to have proven all of her critics right with her lackluster attempt at reinventing herself. She allegedly burst into tears as soon as it was over - she knew she had blown it.

I don't know why, but I really was expecting her to do a great job, and feel oddly depressed about it this morning. I've never been a huge fan of Britney herself, but I don't want to believe all of the allegations against her in regard to her poor parenting skills (trying to whiten her children's teeth? Giving them soda in their bottles? Keeping them up late so that she can sleep in the next day?) because I didn't want to think that those two young boys were actually being put through that. Now I'm convinced - take those kids away! K-Fed (of all people) to the rescue! The whole situation is very, very sad.

It's so sad that I don't want to think about it any more. Instead, here are a few other interesting things that happened on the show:

- Shia LaBeouf announced that the official title to Indiana Jones 4 is: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. He was going on and on about how this is the first time anyone's heard the real movie title - but no one seemed to care - he barely got any reaction at all. I said to Miss M and JG that everyone in the audience was probably too young to even know what Indiana Jones is! D'oh!
- Probably the most exciting occurrence of the night was that Tommy Lee and Kid Rock got into a fight off-camera during an intermission. Now THAT would've been entertaining - show us that clip, dammit! Two total losers fighting over the love of another loser - Pamela Anderson. Either that, or they were fighting about who had more STDs. I find it HILARIOUS. The TV-viewing audience had to piece events together for themselves... our first clue was when Jamie Foxx pleaded jokingly with the crowd to "stop all this white-on-white crime" and made a reference to the brawl, saying that he would be happy to go home with Pamela Anderson instead. At the end of the show, Diddy said that he was supposed to be wrapping up the event with Kid Rock, but that they needed to "stop the violence in rock 'n roll" and that "it's not just the hip-hop artists who sometimes have problems." Kid Rock had been escorted out of the building by that time. Tommy Lee is trying to act all tough about it now, when most reports say that Kid Rock was the only one who landed punches. I demand a re-match!
- Chris Brown gave a great performance - an actual performance filled with a little bit of acting, actual live singing, and great dancing. His act was by far the best of the night in my opinion.
- In an unintentionally hilarious moment, after winning an award, Justin Timberlake went off on MTV about how they need to "play more videos" and how "we don't want to see the Simpsons on reality TV" (assuming he was talking about Jessica and Ashlee)... this was the second time he dissed all of the programming on the very channel that was honoring him with multiple awards. But the funny part was that the Moon Man was presented to him by three girls from The Hills - one of the shows Justin was railing against in his tirade. Ah, the irony.
- The closing of the show by Justin Timberlake, Nelly Furtado and Timbaland with "Give It to Me" was the second-best part of the night. Although JT was as annoying as ever throughout the evening (and some might say that he also appeared to be under the influence of something), he did make a nice speech at one point, even admitting that Chris Brown's performance was excellent. I wish he had commented on his ex's sorry state! But he took the high road. One last bit on JT... he must have really enjoyed himself last night because he just canceled his show tonight in Sacramento! Weak!
- Kanye West was so mad that he didn't win anything (again) that he has supposedly decided to never appear on MTV again. We'll see how long that lasts.

There you have it... I'm still really depressed about the show as a whole. At least there's going to be some great tabloid fodder about Britney's performance in the coming days!

- e