dante's tenth circle of hell...britney's "comeback"

some thoughts on the MTV VMAs

i didn't watch the mtv video music awards on sunday night. i tried to, honestly i did, but i just couldn't do it. i tuned in for about 5 minutes of the "pre-show" and just couldn't take it anymore. i had too much oxygen flowing to my brain in that moment, so much so that it rendered me incapable of taking in such a human shitshow.

seriously, i don't know how anyone could stand to watch it. maybe such is a sign that i'm getting old. maybe i just don't get it anymore. maybe when i gazed upon the tv set that was beaming all those shitteous images into my mind and all i kept thinking was, "what an earthshattering parade of douche," maybe it was i that was the true douche and all the people that i thought were douches were actually cool and i'm too much of a douche to realize it.

i doubt it.

so i missed the main attraction and the one and only reason that i was even tuning in in the first place, britney's "comeback" performance. i'm almost ashamed to admit that i was tuning in for that in the first place, but c'mon, who doesn't enjoy a good trainwreck? my suspicions that her performance would be a trainwreck were confirmed when i immediately became besieged with emails and text messages at about a quarter past the hour uniformally asking "OMG did you see that trainwreck britney on the VMAs?"

and a trainwreck it was. i'm not going to even post the video of it because you'd have to have been out on a three hour tour with a man named gilligan to have not caught brit's act the other night. in the event that you have indeed been on a three hour tour with a man named gilligan, you can find the vid here.

the first words that entered my mind upon seeing the clip of her performance on gawker the next day were "anna," "nicole" and "smith." i also seriously wondered if howard k. stern had watched this and whether or not he was plotting at that very moment to swoop in and take over as her "manager."

the girl is painfully, obviously, completely bat-shit crazy AND an addict. MTV knew this going in. they also knew that her act was going to be a disaster and they allowed it to happen. host sarah silverman had jokes already prepared that were daggers aimed squarely at her performance. mtv exploited her essentially. even worse, we all, myself almost included, bought the spoiled goods that they were selling. what kind of an indictment is that on us?

alex balk posted something about all of this today on gawker. though balk's analysis of this whole saga was interesting, the thoughts of commenter "mediahohoho" were equally astute. here's his comment in it's entirety...

Interesting analysis, Balk, as usual. Here's one thing you missed, though: she's flying solo. I mean, let's face it. This girl's career is the product of other people. There is nothing inherently special about her; not her voice, not her dancing ability, not her looks. Go to any high school and pick out the head cheerleader. Give her some voice lessons, have the best, most cynical talent in the music biz write some snappy songs for her, teach her to dance, style her up in some slutty outfits that would make a child pornographer blush, put her in heavy rotation on MTV and you have Britney at the height of her career. She has no life, thoughts, opinions of her own, but the girl has the simultaneous talent of selling records to pubescent girls while engorging the sick fantasies of adult men.

Now, take that same pop music phenomenon, give her a drinking problem, some bad judgment about romantic choices, total fucking ignorance about birth control and/or a giant gaping maw where the unconditional love is supposed to go, and a delayed adolescent rebellion, and you have Brit-brit circa 2007. She's going it alone and it shows. Sure, she rakes in about $800,000 a month from her past successes, but money ain't smarts, as any Hilton can tell you.

What's startling to me about all this is us. Except for a few cases (think Elvis and the Beatles) real live grown ups didn't used to listen to teeny bopper bubblegum music. That, over the last 20 years, it's become acceptable for people who should fucking know better to listen to this mediocre, over-produced crap says a lot about America. It's as if we worship youth so much that it's the only fucking value. Art, and especially music that goes beyond the "gimme gimme gimme" teen angst of a typical pop song, is the rightful purview of adults; it still gets made, but it doesn't get any play by a totally youth-obsessed media.

In the same way, our response to 9/11/2001 was incredibly juvenile. Yes, it hurt. Yes, it was horrific. But it really is true that the world's history is filled with horrific events, both man-made and otherwise. Earthquakes, floods, typhoons, hurricanes, tsunamis, holocausts, killing fields, ethnic cleansing and politically motivated bombings go on all the time: no one's immune. Even, as we found out that day, us. But that awful, awful day didn't give us a fucking monopoly on suffering. And it certainly did not give us the right to go tear-assing around the world killing people because they're a) Arab b) muslim and c) gave us the finger. Real, grown up nations don't do that.

They also don't sit around on a Sunday night watching a drunk girl stumble around a Las Vegas hotel stage for our amusement. Unless she's really hot, that is.

and then there's this guy's take on britney's performance. and yes, it is a guy...



i have no words.

another development that took place at the VMA's was the scuffle that broke out between pam anderson paramours kid rock and tommy lee. tmz was actually able to wrangle some casino security camera footage of the altercation for their tv show.

i just don't get it when it comes to any of these three people. who would want to fuck any of them? they're all human petri dishes of social disease. i imagine puss just dripping from their genitals the second either of their undies come off.

and then there's loudmouth, asshat kanye west crying like a little bitch. he claims that he is done with mtv after not getting an award for the second consecutive year. video of kanye's hissy fit emerged this afternoon...



hearing this reminded me of something that a friend of mine who works rolling stone as a person who coordinated photo shoots once told me...that of all the prima donna musicians and celebrities that he'd worked with over the years, the worst, HANDS DOWN, was kanye fucking west. he was rude, condescending, notoriously late and just thought that he was some sort of fucking god.

to hell with em all!

ok, who am i kidding?! i'm semi-fascinated with all of this tripe.


senator larry craig trapped in the closet

one of the most disheartening things to me about the whole larry craig saga was the fact that the daily show with jon stewart was on a two week vacation break when the story broke. it's at times like these when i most look forward to watching the comedy central show to see how they will mock and skewer the mighty in washington. they finally returned from vacation last night and picked right up with the larry craig story. the result, a sendup of r. kelly's trapped in the closet, was hilarious.




ditka check

will leitch over at deadspin caught mike ditka fondling his package live on the air during ESPN's monday night football coverage last night. isn't ditka a spokesman for viagra or levitra or that other dick drug? maybe that would explain this...


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i hope that guy remembered to buy the lube

i found this photo today on dlisted. it's a close up of a shopping bag being carried by madonna that contains something called the "purple penetrator" strap-on.

fucking great! bend over guy ritchie!

note to madge...request non-see-through shopping bags from now on.


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a funny fucking bud commercial

how i haven't seen this until a friend sent it to me over the weekend is a mystery to me...