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.

Sharp-eyed pundit Jared Bridges noticed something peculiar while watching the latest Academy Awards ceremony. While showing the annual film collage of Hollywood personalities who had died the previous year he thought he noticed?no, that couldn?t be…Leni Riefenstahl?
“She had a greatness to her and she had amazing longevity,” Sid Gannis, a Hollywood producer and Academy vice president, told the Daily News. “There was no special debate whatsoever in the decision to include her on the list, and I personally agree with it.”
Riefenstahl was considered one of the most effective producers of Third Reich documentaries and Adolph Hitler’s favorite filmmaker. She produced Nazi documentaries during the 1930s and never apologized for her association with Hitler, claiming she didn’t know about the mass murders. Riefenstahl died at her home near Munich, Germany, in September at age 101.
Ben Stein also noticed the perverse irony: ?The evening’s bitter criticism of Bush, who liberated an entire nation from a mass murderer, and then an apologist for another mass murderer getting applauded by men and women dripping with diamonds and pearls.?
Wait a second. Aren?t these the same people who claim that The Passion is anti-semitic?
?I just checked Google News and there were only 13 news stories cited with the terms “Leni Riefenstahl” and “Oscar,” says Bridges. ?A similar search for “Mel Gibson” and “anti-semitism” yielded 3,860. Go figure??

Hollywood: Supporting Mass Murderers for more than 100 years.

Maybe someone in the peace movement should figure out that not only Bush could stop this war. So could Saddam ? by resigning his unelected post and saving his people any further sacrifice. Yet I?ve yet to see one anti-war placard allude to Saddam?s responsibilities in securing the peace.
But talk about quagmires. The peace movement, which promises so much in its scope and energy, itself remains bogged down in a minimalist program of simply and only opposing U.S. military action. That?s hardly enough. . . .
Blocking traffic when 74 percent of the American people support the war, or endlessly whining about CNN?s coverage, or grandstanding as Michael Moore did at the Oscars telling America that a president who currently enjoys (for all the sordid reasons we know) stratospheric popularity ratings is ?fictitious,? has much more to do with personal therapy than with effective politics. Continue on that tack and you can pretty much count on another four years of Bush, no matter how ugly the war turns…
Protecting the Iraqi people, as the peace movement rightfully desires, is one helluva lot more complicated than merely shielding them from the collateral damage caused by U.S. bombs. (That is, unless you really believe that America is the ?greatest terrorist state in the world,? as is so often repeated on KPFK?s drive-time shows. If your world-view is that facile, then indeed we have little more to discuss.)
Those who chant ?U.S. out of Iraq? ought to be prepared, then, to offer themselves as human shields to protect the Kurds against threatening Turkish troops (a task currently in the hands of U.S. special forces). Or as shields to protect the southern marsh Arabs against occupation by the theocratic armed forces of Iran.

Louis A. Spiegel III, was one of those who sent United Way a letter criticizing its choice of Sarandon as a speaker. He said he is not a donor and that he spoke as an individual, not on behalf of his company, Itasca Construction Associates Inc., where he is vice president.
“(Sarandon) is welcome to her opinion, and I’m welcome not to listen to it,” he said. “I’m welcome to avoid her un-American comments. She has her right to say what she wants to say today and whenever she wants to, but I have the right to do her financial damage by not attending her movies or attending anything associated with her.”