Britney's weave, Kid Rock's track suit, and other irrelevant things about the VMA's

Welcome to UnderTheButton.com, 34th Street's new blog. For our inagural post, we shall attempt to say something meaningful about our generation vis-a-vis a recap of the MTV Video Music Awards.

I remember sitting around a table at Commons during NSO three years ago discussing what we all thought at the time was the downward spiral of the VMA's.  (That was the year Diddy hosted.) We must have been pretty naive then, because as weird as this year's VMA's were, I no longer trust that they have hit rock bottom.  The obvious problem with the show is that no one watches videos anymore, or buys music, or watches live TV...and MTV sought to combat these issues by giving us an awards show that at times resembled the live action shows you see at theme parks and other times seemed kind of like a seizure-inducing YouTube video that never ended.

Britney Spears looked like her 2003 self again, save for her 2008 weave. Christina Aguilera, meanwhile, looked like Britney circa Toxic. Rhianna performed--twice--which makes me think that MTV probably has a lot riding on her continued popularity, sort of in the same way Michael Phelps saved the Olympics, NBC and the economy this summer.  (Phelps was there too.)

And those were all the people I recognized and expect to still be famous in six months.  Everyone else--Russell Brand (the creepy British host), the Miley/Jonas/High School Musical contingent, the German guy from Tokio Hotel with David Bowie hair--I either hadn't heard of or wished I hadn't.  And this is how I know I'm officially old: MTV has forsaken us to go after tweens. Tweens! People who have no recollection of a Britney Spears that was not batshit insane, people who weren't old enough to watch Carson Daly host TRL, people who were born in the mid-90's. If there's a show next year, I expect it to be hosted by a post-rehab Abigail Breslin and only available via streaming mobile phone video.