Blake already has Coldplay.  And the Foo Fighters.  And the Black Eyed Peas. 
He got them from Torrent sites.  And Websites.  That I’m sure the RIAA has
never even HEARD of.  Shit, I hadn’t.  That’s why I brought Blake along.  To be
my DECODER RING!  To explain what I was seeing at the Shrine.

And as we stood on the red carpet, as so-called stars started unfolding down
the runway, I kept asking eighteen year old Blake who these people WERE!  And
stunningly, after hipping me on a couple, Blake started to shrug his shoulders
and smile whenever I questioned him…you see he had no fucking idea EITHER! 
That’s where we’ve come.  To the point where the entertainment industry is
cranking out cardboard cut-outs we’re supposed to believe in faster than we can
DIGEST THEM!

Not that I didn’t know who Ally Sheedy was.  Or Molly Ringwald.  Turns out
Blake knew them too.  You see, with the advent of DVD, new generations skim the
cream off the best of our entertainment HISTORY!  But what Blake liked most
was they FRISKED Ally and Molly, whereas we just breezed by, because we had
magic passes, delivered by Tom Freston.  Yes, did you read today’s "New York
Times"?  It’s about the rich and the poor.  And for this evening, we were the RICH!

I must admit I had a hard time pulling myself away from the shrimp backstage,
but Blake wanted to say hi to this guy from the Charlotte Bobcats.  Who went
to UConn, who was rookie of the year or something in the NBA.  And it was SO
FUNNY, because we see these players on TV and think of them as men, but despite
being almost seven feet tall, this guy was much closer in development to
Blake than me.  The two talked as if they’d come across each other in the hall of
their high school.  But Blake didn’t have quite the luck with Chris Rock.  He
was standing there, just a handful of feet away.  Alone.  Speaking with
nobody.  Looking as uncomfortable and out of place as you or me.  But, just when I
was imploring Blake to get up his nerve, Chris was whisked away, for an
interview.  And, after feeling disappointed for a few moments,
we started moving too. For the hall.  For the show.  And in the sea of people I found myself up against Fred Armisen.  I had to tell him he was the best thing on SNL.  And he is.  Because he’s the only one willing to TEST THE LIMITS!  Everybody else is
playing by the rules, to insure a future career.  But Fred’s got musician
sensibilities.  He seemed truly wowed that I’d complimented him, even KNEW HIM!  And when he found us down front, far from the hoi polloi, searching for our seats
in about the tenth row, Fred treated me like a soulmate.  Like I said,
entertainment is about insiders and outsiders.  And, contrary to what is written in
the press, it’s not how you look, but what pass you wear, what your pedigree
is.  Believe me, Brian Grazer had a better seat than most of the talent.

The show?

The show was better than last year’s, which was an utter disaster.  Jimmy
Fallon was funny.  But not as funny as when he co-hosted with Kirsten Dunst.  And
he didn’t even do a song, which is one of his SIGNATURES!  But he did throw
off a few good lines in his monologue.  Like one about somebody not appearing
because they were in Africa with Dave Chappelle.  Of course Blake knew
Chappelle was back from Johannesburg, hell, he’d done sets at the Comedy Store and the Improv just a couple of nights back, didn’t I READ about it on the Web?

In our row, it was Tom and his wife, their friends the Schruers, and then us.
 We being closest to the stage.  Which was quite a sight.  Truly, tune in
just to see the set.  There are multiple rooms, where throughout the program
people were acting out scenes.  The true stars of this show were the designers. 
But, right in front of Tom, one row up, was Arianna Huffington and child.  Can
we all agree to stick a fork in Arianna RIGHT NOW??  I mean Arianna’s far from
stupid, but what she does best is self-promote.  I mean I truly can’t get
over her switching sides from Republican to Democrat after divorcing that gay
guy, but didn’t she just marry him for the money ANYWAY??  And god, she had no
clue in her gubernatorial campaign.  Like we CARE about her!  And now this
ridiculous blog.  Arianna, you’ve blown it.  You’ve shown your true colors.  You’re
not about politics, you’re about ENTERTAINMENT!  You don’t want to change the
world, you just want to be FAMOUS!  And I can’t take you seriously.

Not that I spent that much time thinking about Arianna.  Oh, I wanted to
engage her in conversation, but I was just one person too far away to be
introduced and get into it with her.  And you know that show business rule,
you must be INTRODUCED, or people will have NOTHING TO DO WITH YOU!

But I did talk to Kevin Wall’s son Patrick.  Who goes to Michigan.  He told
me, in passing, not knowing who the fuck I was or what the fuck I do, that he
was into classic rock, just like everybody else at college.  And you think this
pop shit MATTERS??

As for the show…

Eminem wasn’t even good enough to be a joke.  Rule number one, Em…DON’T
WRITE YOUR OWN MUSIC!  ONLY let Dre produce your records/create the beats/beds.  Because you might have a talent with WORDS, but you’ve got NO musical talent.  Oh, it was sad.  Him trotting out Hailie again. 
I mean give that child a BREAK!  Let her grow up KINDA normal.

Yellowcard playing "Don’t You Forget About Me"…  Whether it be the label or
the manager, let me go on record that you’ve got no DIGNITY!  This is so
NINETIES!  Believing that ANY exposure is good exposure.  If you’re not big enough
to play your own material, then DECLINE THE INVITATION!

Which brings me to the Foo Fighters.  Can’t we all AGREE?  That this is a
SECOND-RATE band?  But they provided the musical highlight of the evening, the
TRUE highlight of the evening, for a minute before tape began to roll, they
played an unmistakable riff, one of the great songs of all time, full out…Van
Halen’s AIN’T TALKIN’ ‘BOUT LOVE!  Oh, it made you yearn for the days of yore,
when bands like Van Halen, never mind the Beatles and the Stones, kicked you in
the gut and took you away from bogus everyday life.

But the best performance of the show??

Mariah Carey.

Yup, Mariahfuckingcarey.  Not only would I not fuck her, I wouldn’t even TALK
to her.  And that bit with the hand, god, whose comedy routine is that, where
you’re supposed to talk to the hand?  Mariah’s a fucking idiot.  Makes Sheryl
Crow look like a Nobel Prize winner.  And if ONLY she’d stop insisting she
can write songs.  And all the superfluous dancers, god, it’s about SOUND, not
COMMOTION!  But I’ve got to say she’s got pipes.  She didn’t even overmelisma. 
She just reached down into her bag of tricks and delivered.  You might not buy
it on TV, but in person she got a standing ovation, the biggest of the night,
oh, except for Napoleon Dynamite.

Yup, turns out geeks do rule the world.  It was PALPABLE!  Everybody wanted
Napoleon to win.  John Heder, who played the title role, and the movie itself. 
And it did.  And it made you feel good.  And when we were exiting backstage,
after the final award, Movie of the Year, which "Napoleon Dynamite" won, we
bumped into the cast and crew being interviewed.  They were like deer in the
headlights.  They couldn’t even speak.  When pushed, asked what he was going to
do next, Mr. Heder said "Make a ham sandwich?"  Priceless.  You felt like you
could go to SCHOOL with these guys.  Then again, maybe not my school.  They all
went to BYU, and I hate to tell you girls, but Napoleon Dynamite himself, Mr.
John Heder, he’s MARRIED!!  And he ain’t hiding it, unlike Hilary Swank he
thanked his spouse.

And Hilary Swank introduced Katie Holmes who introduced Tom Cruise.  Are you
watching this??  This is INCREDIBLE!  Tom Cruise is DESTROYING HIS CAREER! 
Turns out that Mr. Cruise is even dumber than Ms. Carey.  So dumb, in fact, that
he fired his PRESS AGENT who kept this truth from the public.  Yup, now he’s
handled by his sister.  He talks all about Scientology, his love for Ms.
Holmes, it’s a FUCKING JOKE!  To the point where Paramount’s reluctant to make the next iteration of his "Mission Impossible" series.  Previously, a financial
JUGGERNAUT!  If you still want to fuck Tom, you’re just not paying attention. 
He was mugging, acting like an idiot, it was almost painful to watch.  And,
what’s even funnier, HE’S GOT NO CLUE!!

Award highlights?

Dustin Hoffman.  Utterly hysterical.  I was feeling sorry for him as he
jumped up on stage, feeling he was out of his element.  But he exuded irreverence
you can’t even find on the CHANNEL!

And Dakota Fanning.  The most poised delivery, the cleanest acceptance speech
of the evening.  It was like she was Chucky, or some kind of ROBOT!  Yup, she
was that GOOD!

When it was all over, we went to the party where I set Blake loose and he
chatted up the stars of the "Real World/Road Rules Challenge".  Turns out Abram’s
from the VALLEY!  They’re now BUDS!

Andy Schuon gave me a complete run-down of the new Universal video channel. 
Just about had me convinced.  Never knew he rivaled Steve Jobs in the ability
to create a reality distortion field.

Oh, a splendid time was had by all.  Yes, the event was MEANINGLESS!  Purely
hype for the movie companies that advertise on MTV.  Hell, it was PAYBACK! 
It’s hard to square, since we used to believe in these people.  And it’s not
only me, it’s hard to take ANY of the new generation of movie stars seriously. 
But, we want to live in fantasyland, we want to believe in entertainment, we
want to believe in things that are larger than life.  The fact that these
edifices are now two-dimensional and evanescent…is MTV just reflecting the culture
or CREATING IT?

We could debate this all day long.  But you know what, nobody cares anymore. 
Because MTV’s not the only culture, only one of many.  The company has tried
to build a presence on the Web, but it just can’t.  Because it doesn’t
understand its own paradigm.  MTV was built on the concept of NARROWCASTING!  But, on the Web, they’re trying to BROADCAST!  And their lunch is being eaten by kids they used to consider their audience, who are establishing blogs, trading P2P, building roads on the information landscape, forging forward on their own.  MTV exists in a walled garden, cable television, where there are only so many
slots, whereas on the Web, it’s a FREE-FOR-ALL!

And I’ve got to tell you, it’s not only hard to digest what’s going on, it’s
hard to make SENSE OF IT ALL!

So I can’t turn down a chance to go to an event like this.  To collect data
and try to acquire enlightenment.  And I learned that despite all the negative
shit we spew at MTV, the channel still has a constituency.  They, unlike the
record labels, have found a way to survive.

Here is a jpeg from Blake’s Sidekick.  Turns out you can’t hack them anymore. 
They used to let ANYBODY be a developer, and get the tools allowing you to rape and pillage.  But now, they’ve tightened that avenue up. 
Blake told me.  He knew everything.  He had our row dazzled with his little hand-held machine.  We may be ENTERTAINING the younger generation, but to think they’re blind believers would be to make a GIANT mistake.  If Andy Lack could only hang a day with Blake, he’d realize HE doesn’t control the music business, the PEOPLE do.  Then again, isn’t that the conceptual problem, corporate titans thinking they dictate to the masses?  [The picture ain’t great, we meant to snap a better one later, but life ain’t about recording for posterity, but living it, and we FORGOT!)