MTV VMAs 2008: Our Reaction

Russell Brand was sweating like a whore in church from the first moment he took the VMA stage and was greeted with crickets. Unlike previous years where the front rows are stars and the rest of the crowd is comprised of rabid, screaming, boisterous fans, 2008 was Bring-Your-Dad-to-the-VMAs-Day. Every time the camera panned the audience it was like a trip to an LL Bean outlet in the suburbs. They treated the show like a trip to Nordstrom with their trophy wives; half-asleep, holding the bags by the guy tickling “Unforgettable” on the piano. What gives?

Jamie Foxx screaming “Wake up, people! Wake UP!” had little effect and Pete Wentz’s schiz-y, nervous giggling and twitchy “GIVE IT UP!” yelping after his unfunny comedy bit (which had traces of David Letterman’s infamous “Oprah, Uma” riff) with wife Ashlee Simpson was like a drowning man screaming for a life preserver.

Britney Spears “Opening”…that was a joke right? Why not just say “We’re desperate for ratings so we’re going to invite Britney Spears to be the first person on stage, that way you might tune in with the vain hope of witnessing another Brit Brit train wreck a la last year’s “Gimme More” debacle.” This year, Brit looked like she made sure to eat nothing but laxatives and water for three days leading up to her grand entrance and actually took the time to wrestle on a girdle and a new weave. Woo Hoo! Hailing her return to normalcy like it’s a glimpse of Haley’s Comet, the truth is, Britney came off as so heavily medicated, she forgot what a period or a comma in a sentence means. Her monotone intro was so anticlimactic we have MTV blue balls. Yeah, she won three Moonmen, sat there like a good little girl with reunited manager Larry Rudolph and didn’t meltdown this year, but where’s the fun in that?

Speaking of no fun, Jordin Sparks needs to settle down and get a sense of humor. Her puritanical outburst over Brand's poking fun at promise rings, the Jo-Bros and chastity was ridiculous, but the fact that Brand APOLOGIZED made us cringe. We were hoping for a biting comeback, not a tail between the legs. With her uptight rigidity, Sparks proved exactly why she needs to get laid. The joke wrote itself.

Last year, Kid Rock provided quite a bit of entertainment by punching Tommy Lee’s lights out. This year, his was one of the few really great performances (Pink rocked it out too) with his hit “All Summer Long.”

On the completely opposite end of the spectrum was Christina Aguilera who choose to lipsync instead of sing a (really dope) remixed, KD Lang-esque version of “Genie in a Bottle” and her new (kind of wack) song “Keep Gettin’ Better”. She’s the last person who needs to lipsync, why did she? Was she sick or did she rupture a vocal chord? At one point we wondered if it was actually an Aguilera stand-in instead of the real deal.

While watching the show with our friends John and Jenny, we couldn’t get over how badly produced it was; Demi Moore without a mic, Shia LaBeouf almost falling down the rotating staircase, Paris Hilton looking into the wrong camera for a good five seconds, crew people in plain sight. Then John said, “Is this supposed to be Brechtian?” For those who don’t feel like Googling it, “Brechtian” style came from German playwright Bertolt Brecht who wanted the audience to see all the seams of a production so it wasn’t as immersive. Are we giving MTV way too much credit? Did the director decide to go high-brow?

One person’s Brecht is another person’s lazy sloppiness and, while we’d like to believe they had a vision, we think it might have been a severe case of the latter that made last night’s show almost unwatchable.

The appearance of our boyfriends, Michael Phelps, who was nervous and out of his element, and Zac Efron, who sprung into one hell of a foxy man overnight, couldn’t save the night.

While past years have been memorable for Madonna humping a veil, Britney with a snake, Nirvana concussing themselves with flying guitars or Michael Jackson and Lisa Marie Presley kissing (ew), 2008 will one be remembered as the worst VMAs ever.