The MTV VMAs, 2011

August 29, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

BLACK AND YELLOW GUCCI GUCCI LOUIS LOUIS FENDI FENDI PRADA!!!1! YO! MTV gives out VMAs!!

Seriously, this is one of my favorite award shows, if only because it is consistently bonkers. I mean, most of the time it’s only bonkers in an over-produced, manufactured MTV type of way, but it’s still sort of fun if you don’t think too much about it, I think? And every once in a while something that’s actually bizarre happens. I was actually starting to get excited about this earlier today until I remembered that Chelsea Handler was the host [Edit: Wrong.]. UGH THAT DOUBLE UGH.

Anywayz, my wife Johanna and I will be competing in another of our CLASSIC winner-picking competitions. Luckily, there are only like eight categories tonight (at least on our ballot), so this should be easy enough. Johanna is also, as usual, in charge of our themed beverage for the evening. I’ve been singing (rapping?) Kreayshawn all day long, so she’s calling tonight’s drink the “Gucci Gucci.” We don’t have any Adderall to grind up and put in a beverage, so she’s making a variant of a Cuba Libre because, in her words, “it’s something a trashy girl would drink.” After her first sip she added, “I’ll only be having one of these.”

Let’s get going. Categories and winners in bold. And if Kanye does anything crazy, it’ll be in bold and also, like, 20 pt font.

9:35 – Hey, guess what!? Time Warner Cable is the worst! The tech they use is ridiculously out-of-date and barely functions, and it decided this evening to not record the first 35 minutes of this show! Now I’m going to use that 35 minutes of my life that they saved me tweeting at them about how horrible they are.

I suppose this means I missed the opening performance (Lady Gaga, I think?), so that’s too bad, but this also means that I have to hear Chelsea Handler talk less, so, win some lose some, I guess? [Edit: Wrong.] Oh, well. Deep breaths, Jared; it’s just the VMAs. This will all be online later anyways.

Johanna is hopping on to MTV.com to see the results of any categories that we missed. Let’s check in.

Best Video with a Message: We both went with Lady Gaga’s “Born This Way” and it wins. 1-1.

Best Pop Video: Johanna went with Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” and I went with Katy Perry’s “Last Friday Night (T.G.I.F.)”, because we had both forgotten that it was 2002. Since it is 2002, though, Britney Spears wins with “Till the World Ends”.

Best Rock Video: I went with Foster the People here because I have never heard of them before. Johanna remembered that it was 2002 this time, so she went with Foo Fighters, who win. 2-1 her.

All right, let’s rejoin our regularly scheduled programming.

9:35 – Jack Black, Will Ferrell, and Seth Rogen are here reprising their roles as the Beastie Boys from this thing:

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The MTV Movie Awards, 2011

June 6, 2011June 6, 2011 / Jared / Leave a comment

OK, OK, I know what you’re thinking. When I did last year’s post on the MTV Movie Awards I said that it would be my last. It wasn’t the MOST useless award show I blogged about (that honor goes to the Daytime Emmys), but it definitely felt like a waste of time. But you know what? Apparently my time isn’t all that valuable, because here we are again.

As usual, my wife Johanna is mixing us a themed cocktail. Tonight she’s going with a somewhat hastily thrown together offshoot of the cosmopolitan. Some vodka, cranberry juice, and since we don’t have any orange liqueur and we live in North Carolina where the state-run liquor stores are closed on Sundays, orange juice. I KNOW, I KNOW, it’s not really a cosmopolitan, but in the wise words of Adam Sandler’s screenwriter, “Just go with it!” [DRINK UPDATE ALERT! I was later informed that, in addition to the previously listed ingredients, the drink contains blueberry-pomegranate juice, lime juice, and seltzer. Fancy!]

She chose this because it’s red, like blood, which is perfect because TWILIGHT!!!1!!!!11! Speaking of, did you guys see that Vanity Fair article about Robert Pattinson and how he is conflicted about his fame and his crazy fans and he can’t go to a bar without bringing in the police for crowd control and basically seems really depressed, but not in a cool goth vampire way, just in a sad human being way? Anywayzzz, Johanna named the drink the “Bloody Bella.”

Also as usual, we’ll be competing in a winner-picking competition. I’m pretty sure these awards are based entirely on online fan voting, which is always fun. Particularly when the people voting are in a completely different demographic than I am. I miss being in the 18-24 demo so much! It was a lot of fun. To paraphrase Kanye West, no one demo should have so much power. Particularly when it’s such a stupid demo. Remember how stupid we were? Yikes.

Categories and winners will be in bold. I’d like to ask you all to send your prayers and goodwill out into the world for Johanna, because she really needs the win. I’m worried she’s going to lose interest; she’s already threatening to boycott the ESPYs. The ESPYs! Can you imagine?

All right, let’s go! Take it away, Jason Sudeikis! I’ll just be sitting over here mentally preparing myself to hear my wife talk all night about how much of a crush she has on the host.

9:00 – MTV starts off on the wrong foot with me with the reminder that Chelsea Handler hosted the VMAs. You’re better than this, MTV! Oh, wait, no you’re not. I think I’ll zone out for this opening bit.

9:05 – Not as good as last year, MTV Movie Awards! I like you, Jason, but you’re no Aziz.

Also, no one in this audience cares enough about Arnold Schwarzenegger’s infidelity to warrant one joke, let alone six of them or whatever you just did.

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The MTV VMAs, 2010

September 13, 2010December 18, 2010 / Jared / 3 Comments

The VMAs! I actually didn’t watch them live last year and then regretted it when I ended up spending the next afternoon catching up on the videos of the bonkers performances online and reading all about the Kanye backlash. I was assuming that MTV and I had mostly diverged in our musical tastes and was overlooking the fact that this isn’t really about the awards, it’s about the spectacle.

Now, with the long-running award show winner-picking competition between Johanna and me, there’s absolutely no way I could miss it. Filling out our ballots proved relatively difficult. We both employed a strategy of spreading the awards around to as many artists as possible, because we figure the whole thing is rigged and MTV is going to want to get as many people as possible up on stage. So, I basically just picked randomly.

Let’s roll. Since this is the VMAs, Johanna has tried to mix us a cocktail that a young person might enjoy. She’s combined vanilla vodka with Diet Coke, and we’re drinking it out of glasses we appropriated from our favorite bar in college, Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap. She initially wanted to call it the Sorority Slut, but we workshopped it and came up with the Mean Girl, which is more fittingly high school. As always, categories and winners in bold. Also, I unfortunately don’t have MTV in HD, so these photos look awful. Apologies.

One last thing. I’m going on record early here saying that I guarantee they have Taylor Swift “interrupt” Kanye’s performance. It’s going to be awesome.

8:19 – I have the pre-show white carpet on in the background (yes, white carpet), and all of the sudden Sway starts giving out awards! WTF?!

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The MTV Movie Awards, 2010

June 7, 2010August 28, 2010 / Jared / 2 Comments

I don’t usually watch the MTV Movie Awards. It’s not like I think I’m too good for it; I love these MTV train wrecks and was really upset when I realized I had missed the most recent VMAs and had to watch it online. But the Movie Awards show just isn’t usually on my radar.

This time around, though, Aziz Ansari is hosting, and since I am both a fan and a Twitter follower of his, I’ve been looking forward to this. As I was setting it up on the DVR it occurred to me that I should compete with Johanna in a winner-picking competition like we’ve done in the past with the Oscars, Grammys, and Golden Globes. I went looking for a ballot online, but shockingly was unable to find one. I guess not as many people participate in office pools for the MTV Movie Awards as they do for some of the other awards shows. I decided to make my own ballot, so I went to the MTV site and looked up the categories. And that’s when I really got excited about this.

Best WTF Moment. Biggest Badass Star. Best Scared-As-S**t Performance (MTV’s asterisks, not mine). Plus, I’m pretty sure that the winners were all determined by online polls. So, to correctly pick winners, I have to put myself in the mindset of a fifteen-year-old girl. I haven’t even heard of some of these movies, let alone seen them. This is going to be epic.

Just a warning, my usual strategy of taking photos of my actual television for these live events works out even worse when the show is not in HD. And Time Warner Cable down here does not have MTVHD.

Let’s get started. As always, categories and winners in bold.

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