The seriousness of it grew to unbearable heights. Order broke down. Lines disintegrated as people sought shelter in the shade of palm trees and unstaffed vendor booths. Water bottles mysteriously made their way through the crowd. I actually felt pity for the numerous women who, in shortsighted enthusiasm for all things MTV, had actually worn high heels. Maybe heels help the posture and push out the chest in a flattering bit of self-indulgence, but they do nothing for the pedestals holding up one's body. I also regretted not wearing a hat, as I could feel my scalp gaining a rich, sanguine, scorched-earth feeling.

Then, a fluttering. The lines began wavering, like a flag in the breeze, and suddenly the sublimely ridiculous occurred.

Convergence.

Utter dissolution of the grid. Lines collapsed, like the French during wartime or moments of rationality. But perhaps more ridiculous was the utter disregard for the disorder on the faces of the MTV coordinators. No attempt to reorder, no marching instructions, no reclamation of meaning, symmetry, or planes of separation was made. It was a farce of the highest order, contempt for the previous four hours of wasted potential, a laugh in the faces of everyone present, including myself.

I don't often pride myself on my rebellious nature. I tend toward anarchy in thought, though I'm a straight arrow lad when it comes down to the point. But I do run a rebellious and perfidious streak that often runs very counter to my higher instincts. The celebration of such base nature is not typically my modus operandi. This day, however, I allowed my mind to run riot.

What if we were all to simply give up and go home? Leave. Make MTV pay for taking our entire afternoon away. There's no way they had five hundred extra seat fillers waiting in the wings behind us, just in case an uprising took place. The show, from a showbiz perspective, would have been lost. Or had we risen up and taken control of entrance to the theatre, the show might very well have been cancelled. After all, we are the audience. When the audience breaks allegiance to the show, does the show exist?

These were the thoughts flashing through my mind as the crowd converged into a point about twelve feet wide, where three or four staffers tried to funnel us into the maw of the theatre. Again, no order, just the hope I saw hanging in their eyes that they would not be crushed in our bid for independence. They lined fifteen up at a time in front of each door, then allowed each line to move into the building, enacting a kind of proto-order, like waiting for Godot on Planet of the Apes.

They let us in, and the cooling of the theatre was an instant relief to the anarchists' thoughts running riot in my mind. But only for so long. We were led to a section near the main stage. Every other seat had a "Reserved For" sign with a celebrity's name attached. We were to be the replacements for celebrities whose seats these were. This is the way it works: A celebrity may be required to leave his or her seat during the show, but because filling the house is not as important as making the house appear filled, it is imperative those seats are full at all times. Thus, MTV staff constantly escort celebrities in and seat fillers out, then later when the celebrity wants out, seat fillers come in. This often occurs multiple times throughout the show. Our greatest hope was that our celebrities were too busy to attend, or too drunk.

This they did not tell us until about ten minutes before the show started. In the hour while we sat and watched silent music videos play on the massive screen on the main stage, no one told us what we were to do or what to expect. We watched the chaos of preparations for a live TV broadcast occur in real time, feeling secure in our dislike of the proceedings, feeling somehow that despite being allowed into a complicated and technically brilliant operation, we were actually the ones in charge. Again thoughts of mutiny strayed into my conscious thought. I suppressed them.

Finally we were down to five minutes. The warm up guy, the MC, the corny guy hired to prep and hep the crowd into a juicy frenzy, tried to convince us we were having fun. And I suppose we were. It was just the kind of fun you have after the real fun has flown off with its friends, leaving you with a misty plastic sheen of something not quite edible or pleasant smelling, but is labeled clearly as "FUN." The show itself was merely a bookend to an otherwise blogworthy day. If you want the inside scoop on the content, watch the countless reruns, or view the highlights on YouTube. Me, I've got better things to do.

So after reviewing my experience at the 2007 MTV Movie Awards, I have only this to say: You can shine a turd till it's got a nice surface. You can even call it a diamond and stick it up on television. Hopefully when someone asks why you're polishing a piece of shite, you can tell them it's not the rocks that make the man rich, it's the straining, grunting, groaning, and just plain hard work it took to make that rock that counts.

Like I said in Part 1, I've had better times on the toilet.

Ready? Here it is.

Don't attend.

I'm sorry to be so rough on these masturbatory gatherings Hollywood likes to put on every year, but like free movie screenings, the trouble, heartache, and anger that result from one's attending, or even desiring to attend, make for a sunburned neck, bitter cynicism and jaded commentary, and a messed up chi like you wouldn't believe.

I was invited to be a seat-filler at the MTV Awards show, which I thought might be fun and interesting, and at the very least, would result in many celebrity sightings. My initial fear that I would also be subject to many sightings of Lindsay Lohan's vagina was certainly one of the selling points in the argument against attending, but it was a calculated risk. I took the bait and agreed, throwing my hat into the ring and my Sunday afternoon into the toilet.

I've spent better time on a toilet, actually, so I'm not sure that's a fair statement.

We left the house at eleven–the show was in Burbank, you see, at lovely and handsomely overpriced Universal City, another self-congratulatory Hollywood amusement, by the way–and we needed to be there by noon. "Noon Sharp!" the email, the phone call, and voice mail all assured us. "Don't be late! Don't bring your cell phones, pagers, stereos, iPods, pets, candy bars, Oedipal complexes, or death wishes to the theatre, or you will be turned away!" These were stern warnings. To be sure we would not lose our coveted seat-filler positions, we emptied our pockets of anything resembling self-respect and marched to the check-in area, where a small crowd of MTV poster children were gathered like hens in a Tyson defeathering pant.

Side note: This year's women's fashion is apparently meant to emulate hippie parachutes or giant fruit costumes with holes cut out for legs and arms. I saw one girl wearing what looked like Cinderella's pumpkin coach. If there is one piece of advice I can offer the ladies this summer it is this: if you can possibly help it, try not to go outside whilst wearing these abominations. And have you considered the benefits of bras, or did you just fool yourself into thinking bad fashion choices plus gravity wouldn't get the best of you?

We arrived, were shuffed into line, and inched forward to the tent where the decision was made by the MTV gods to allow you passage or deny you in front of the chatty Cathy's already lucky enough to be selected for "Most likely to be mistaken for actual hams" award. These are the hopefuls, the dreamers, the ones who either grew up out here without a family connection, or came out here thinking they could try to sleep their way to the top, or at the very least, watch a lot of The O.C. and practice their emo hipster moves on their friends.

Check in was not the rigorous process we had imagined. Had we been terrorists wanting to fight against the depravity and complacency of the Great Satan, several hundred wannabe celebrity buttlickers would have disappeared in a cloud of smoke and fake Vera Wang outfits.

Whereupon we were placed in a line, a very strict line, a line that the MTV flunkies were diligent about patrolling every ten minutes or so, a line that soon grew seven abreast, still distinct and uniform in its way, defining the "have nots" from the "almost ares" and the "Dear God help us pleases." We were in the "Almost Ares" line, which was mostly males since all the females were pulled from our line to be put into the "Casted" line, which is MTV code for "another line, but with mostly poorly-clad females."

We stood in line for roughly two hours, whereupon they began shuffling lines forward little by little, around a building, through a hedgerow, down a red carpet, through some metal detectors, and then next to the theatre, again, MTV flunkies stressing the importance of the sanctity and integrity of the lines.

Another two hours went by. A line moved forward. The crowd gasped. Perhaps this was salvation from the sun and the heat and the ever-present din of teenage and twenty-something harpies and jock-boys talking enough hot air to add to the global warming threat. Then nothing moved for quite some time…

More tomorrow, when I complete my cynical and enraged account of my visit to the 2007 MTV Movie Awards.

The lawsuits filed yesterday charged that the dairy industry’s weight-loss campaign is based solely on studies conducted by Michael B. Zemel, a professor of nutrition and medicine at the University of Tennessee. His objectivity is “compromised,” the lawsuits say, because his research is funded by the dairy industry.
In an interview, Zemel did not dispute that he has accepted nearly $1.7 million in research grants since 1998 from the National Dairy Council. But he added: “The notion of my work being tainted because of my funding source is ridiculous. You’d have to be a fool — and a career-ending fool — to let your funding source dictate your results.”

With logic like this, the woman might just as well sue her lawyers for representing cases and causes like her own because her funding makes their support suspect and tainted. What is it about the 21st century that has increased the visibility of tools such as Catherine Holmes? Is it the internet? Is it our increased global awareness? Or is it just a genetic coincidence that appalling, narcicistic nimrods have the loudest voices?