It's the end of the year, which means that at any given moment someone is being handed an award for something–because, you know, it's the end of the year, and there's all this airtime to fill, and people like awards shows, right?
Well, that's not exactly true. People don't like the actual awards shows nearly as much as they like criticizing and making fun of awards shows with a group of people. But while the big, significant awards shows (like the Oscars) or the big awards shows that think they're significant (The Golden Globes) are endlessly ridiculed and scrutinized, there are more than a few smaller, completely pointless, and totally insignificant awards shows that fall through the cracks of public ridicule and scorn each year.
Well, no more! Welcome once again to Awards Shows You Didn't Know (Or Care) Existed, a feature that seeks out the less significant awards shows and holds them up for the public ridicule they so richly deserve.
First up, last night's American Music Awards, the music awards show that makes it that much easier for Chris Brown or Rascal Flatts to impale themselves on a tangible, clear, pointy representation of their mediocrity.
Out of all the trophies of all the meaningless awards shows, the sharp American Music Award pyramid makes the best weapon. But by any other measure, the AMAs are a gigantic, sucking, black hole of a failure. The host (Jimmy Kimmel) could have been sleepwalking through the whole show and been funnier—at least then there would have been a pratfall or two in place of the lukewarm Jonas Brothers jokes. The award categories only have three nominees each, and seem to exist only as a vague hook on which to hang the performances. And the performances fell into one of three categories, all of them terrible: 1. Medleys no one wants 2. Songs that are like shoving marshmallows in your ears or 3. 'Splosion time!
Christina Aguilera opened the show with a much hyped (by one of the Pussycat Dolls, the woman from Dancing With The Stars, and intrepid entertainment reporter Tuxedo Jacket N'Jeans during the nightmare of a preshow) medley of 6 of her greatest hits. It was like a death march down memory lane, complete with frantic, vaguely Louis-Armstrong-esque grunts.
You can tell she's a great performer by the way she keeps putting on and taking off accessories while maintaining her un-melodic yell-sing.
Other performances that fell into the "medleys no one wants category" were Ne-Yo, Natasha Bedingfield, and New Kids On The Block–whose medley proved you're never too old to crotch grab and sing "Girl, I'll be your boyfriend" on the AMAs, even when you're clearly 15 years past too old to do those things anywhere in public.
Representing the "Songs that are like shoving marshmallows in your ears" category were Leona Lewis, Alicia Keys, Taylor Swift (don't ask), and for some reason Sarah McLachlan–each of whom left their own special, barely visible mark on this thing known as blandness. The smoke machines at the AMAs were working overtime to make the visuals as vague and limp as their music.
And of course mixed in with various awkward interludes of Jimmy Kimmel chewing his microphone (You would think after hosting this show for five–yes, five–years he'd be able to hold a microphone. Or maybe he just didn't want to put any effort, no matter how small, into hosting. Who can blame him?) there were the aggressive, shouty, pyrotechnics-happy performances. After all, what's an awards show without some 'splosions? (Answer: a slightly more tolerable awards show.) Rihanna, The Jonas Brothers, Pink, Kanye, the Pussycat Dolls, and Miley Cyrus all performed in full-on seizure-vision. Only Miley, however, flailed around as if she were having a seizure in seizure-vision.
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Clearly, she has a great future. Twenty years from now, she'll be back on the AMAs grunting through thirty seconds of this song while furiously adding and removing accessories in an age-inappropriate medley of her greatest hits. Of course, we'll all be living underwater by then so television broadcasting might be impossible and we won't have to witness it (fingers crossed).