I am excited to announce, in partnership with our sister site, stereogum.com, the opening of this year's Gummy Awards ballot boxes. It is time once again to come together as a family and determine through the democratic (sort of) process what our majority-rule favorite things in this world are at least at the moment. Again this year, in addition to Stereogum's music categories, we have some pretty exciting Videogum-related categories to vote on:
Best Movie
Best TV Show
Best Web Video
Neat! We were going to offer a "Best Kiss" category, but apparently MTV has trademarked that important award. Probably. I don't actually know whether or not the "Best Kiss" category is a trademark owned by MTV, but I do know that it is a ridiculous category for an award, and that MTV doesn't even make any sense anymore. It's a channel about stupid people? And the M stands for MySpace? I don't know.
You know how the Country Music Awards are. They're basically an artist, and a perfectionist. Never satisfied, always pushing towards a new paradigm. "Let's turn this whole thing on its head," you can often hear the Country Music Awards saying. Just kidding. This year's Country Music Awards was, wait for it, wall-to-wall Kanye jokes. So that's still a thing that's going on. Perfect. According to People magazine (because I obviously did not actually watch the CMAs, I live in New York City!) there were multiple instances, although this one is my favorite (my least favorite):
Obviously, Little Jimmy Dickens, as an 88-year-old member of the Grand Ol Opry, gets to do whatever he wants at this point. Those are the rules! Anyone over 75 gets a free pass in my book. Oh, you want to say mildly racist things about the waiter at this restaurant? Fair enough. You have paid your dues. Oh, you want to give someone the gas face for showing their ankles in public? You've earned it. I'm a total stickler for letting the aged live the remainder of their lives however they see fit. So if Little Jimmy Dickens wants to live the remainder of his life making botched, worn out jokes about things he barely even understands, I'm not going to get in his way. YOU GO, LITTLE JIMMY DICKENS!
I know that sometimes my diamond shoes can get too tight, but sometimes it takes a really :( news story to remind you just HOW tight diamond shoes can really get. Like this one, in which a man in Bangladesh won a 14" color television for killing more than 83 THOUSAND rats. From the AP (via WarmingGlow):
Mokhairul Islam, 40, won a first prize of a color television for killing some 83,450 rats in the past nine months in Gazipur district near the South Asian country's capital, Dhaka. He collected their tails for proof.
"I am so happy to get this honor," Islam said after receiving a 14-inch television and a certificate amid cheers at an official ceremony packed with 500 farmers and officials. "I had no idea that the government gives prizes for this... This is an exciting moment. I will continue to kill them," he vowed.
Oh, incidentally, the "contest" is part of a national campaign to reduce food imports as a step towards domestic resolution of a national food shortage. Yay?
Congratulations, television, you did it! You celebrated yourself for three hours! To be fair, while the Emmys were mostly boring and very who-cares, they were not as boring and as who-cares as they might have been. Neil Patrick Harris did a pretty good job! John Hodgman was there, which was weird! And after a couple of early upsets (no offense to Kristin Chenoweth or John Cryer, but REALLY?) almost everyone who deserved to win the award did. So, good for them. Between that and the millions of dollars they get paid to play make-believe, things are going great.
Check out this photo gallery of the highlights, and a full list of winners after the jump.
The Emmy Awards! Television's biggest night! People dressed in expensive clothes, patting each other on the back for the hard work they do to entertain and/or insult our eyes. Seriously, I know this is television's Golden Age or whatever, we all love 30 Rock and Mad Men and Lost and Friday Night Lights, but television is also very awful! The Emmys should address this somehow. Like, negative awards. Most Despicable Manipulation of Teenagers in Reality TV, for example. Boldest Attempt at Cashing in on Something That Was Popular and Relevant 20 Years Ago. You know, meaningful TV accomplishments. But that won't happen! So, let's talk about what DOES happen. Follow the Videogum Twitter for up-to-the-minute yuck-em-ups about Marg Helgenberger's Lifetime Achievement Award, and join your fellow monsters right here in the comments!
So, you may or may not have noticed on Sunday that a child ran up on stage during Jay-Z's and Alicia Keys's performance of "Empire State of Mind." That tiny, tiny creature was Lil Mama. And today, she has (FINALLY) explained exactly what happened in the rush of excitement that is the MTV Video Music Awards (they should be called the MTV Pure Adrenalines, apparently). From MTV:
"I'm sitting in my seat two rows away from the stage, and Jay-Z is walking through this tunnel and just, like, this adrenaline rush is pumping [through me]," Lil Mama explained to MTV News on Tuesday (September 15). "He started [rapping], and Alicia Keys is going, 'The big lights will inspire you,' and really, I got emotional. Yeah, New York! Jay! I started to feel him, and I started to feel myself. I just felt the energy, and I got up and started walking to the stage. I was just rooting him on as a champion. Bigging up my borough, bigging up my brother."
The "America's Best Dance Crew" judge apologized to Jay-Z and Alicia Keys via a statement on Monday, saying the spirit of the song moved her. She didn't realize until later that Jay-Z might have been upset by her unplanned move. At the time, she thought they were all vibing with each other, despite the legendary rapper backing away from Lil Mama when she appeared.
Right. She just assumed that everyone would love for her to run up on stage and cross her arms and just, you know VIBE THAT SHIT. What? Has no one at the MTV Video Music Awards ever been out in public before? You know how Henry Darger drew penises on all the little girls in his paintings because he'd never seen female anatomy before? That's what this is like. Lil Mama is the penis on the stage where no penis should be.
Kanye West, right you guys? Classic Kanye West. While the world will always remember the 2009 MTV Video Music Awards as the year in which the Jigsaw-headed man-baby went up on stage for no reason to trample a little girl's victory speech for an award that no longer has any meaning (if it ever did), the memory that I will always take away from the VMAs came earlier, during the pre-show. It was when VJ Tim Kash announced that he had one pair of free tickets to the VMAs that he was going to give to a lucky pair of superfans. Now, you can imagine the scene. New York City. Outside of Radio City Music Hall. Thousands of teenagers packed into writhing throngs of adrenaline and excitement, who have traveled with or without their parents' permission to be here without any tickets or way of getting inside. Just to be part of this! And Tim Kash casually picks out two people from the crowd. Both of whom are in their late-30s to early-60s. "Congratulations, you're going to the VMAs," he says to the two very-full-grown-adults, who treat the prize with the same amount of reserved excitement that adults have for, say, discovering asparagus at a reasonable price out of season. HUH? Sorry, kids, this show is not for you. WE TAKIN' OVER! Parents seriously just don't understand.
Anyway, check out our VMA photo gallery to relive all your most cherished memories that you've ever had.
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