My Murtaugh List: Too Old for the VMA's

Image Courtesy of  Pintrest. 

     First off, let me explain a few things about this post. I was home sick earlier this week and looking for something entertaining on the DVR. So naturally, I chose the MTV Video Music Awards, which has been on my DVR since August 28th. It was not just the cough medicine, but something in my head tipped me off to a very clear fact: I am too old to appreciate these awards any more.

      As you approach our 30's, you begin to list the things you can and can no longer do with pride. An episode of How I Met Your Mother outlines this theory and presented it as "The Murtaugh List." This list refers to the times when Danny Glover mutters "I'm too old for this s**t!" in the Lethal Weapon movies. Ted and the gang make a serious list of things they cannot do in their 30's. Why am I too old for the VMA Awards? Here are a few cliff notes to my list. Firstly, I don't know who about 30% of the people presenting awards. I can identify nearly all of the performers, but I can't say I like most of their music. Secondly, I keep flashing back to previous award shows and comparing things. Basically, I've seen too much.  But I am still transfixed every time Beyonce steps on the stage because I am a child of destiny.

My Murtaugh List for the VMAS: I am too old for...

1. Key and Peele hosting

VMA Hosts via Giphy Image. 

     In their defense, I like Keegan Michael Key and Jordan Peele. They won an Emmy award this year for their comedy!  But to my dismay, they were playing obnoxious characters as they hosted the show. When I see an award show, I don't want the presenters to be part of the spectacle. They were mildly funny in the beginning, suggesting Twitter hashtags for Rhianna's performance (below) such as getting Tom Brady to deflate the large cloud like structures on the stage. There were a bunch of forgettable correspondents backstage and in the cheap seats that added nothing to the coverage.

2. Rhianna's performance
     When you see the opening performance, you want to be wowed. I was disappointed and vaguely insulted by Rhianna, who received the night's highest honor, the Video Vanguard Award (like a video lifetime achievement). First of all, she and the dancers were dressed in bubblegum pink. Rhianna herself  had a waist cincher with arms unattached and dangling from the legs. They dancers had the aforementioned cloud beanbag chairs behind them, which was weird. The two songs in this first performance were Rhianna's more upbeat songs (We Found Love, Don't Stop the Music). She danced well to her music but there was not much singing. There was little singing. It was more like she was on Lip Sync Battle or emulating Britney Spears.

3. Live voting for best new artist via Twitter.
     When I was a young'n, you had to go to a website to vote.

Gif from Single Ladies' Dance Blog

4. Arianna Grande's Workout
     Unlike many other celebrity "singers", Ariana can sing. But she also is the girl that licked a doughnut and then said she hayy-ted (sic) America. She may be bold, but she is not regional. Her performance presented like a 2016  glammed-up, Olivia Newton-John's Let's Get Physical. It began with a spin bike class and ended with guys in skimpy wrestling unitards lifting barbells.

 5. Kanye West
      I know this guy believes he is the second coming, but I do not understand the appeal. Specifically I took issue with his nominated video, which the same I cannot remember and choose not to Google. Secondly,  He had a long and pointless intro to his music video, still referencing the time her cut off Taylor swift in the middle of her speech. He then proceeded to premier a video that was a rip-off of Flashdance (newsflash, the 80's workout movement is "in" right now). The part that concerns me is whether or not Kanye thinks this is a brand new concert.

Image from Giphy

6. People not showing up to accept Awards
     In the words of Stephanie Judith Tanner, "How rude." Are people like Drake and Calvin Harris so busy that they can't make it to New York for one night to accept an award that may or may not have been voted on via Twitter?

 7. Rhianna's 2nd performance (Rude Boy)
     This time she tried singing! She also had had pants, so this performance was a drastic improvement from the show opener.

8. Leave Britney Alone
It's Britney, and she's boring! I've seen her look better, first of all. She sad yellow bodysuit and very tanned back were not part of her best look. To make matters worse, this mother of two was groping her collaborator like a high school prom date. I daresay that Britney is too old for this, like a sad Vegas showgirl.

9. Using the local NYC scene as part of your performance

Image from Rockoranything.com

     Nick Jonas began his performance in a diner on 34th street (Tick Tock) and ran into the closed street across from Madison Square Garden. The street has a giant tractor trailer stage blocking the crosswalks and cars on hydraulics (not sure why that was important). When the awards used to be presented art Radio City, Eminem bravely implement this outdoor performance method 16 years ago when he led an army of Slim Shadys into Radio City. More recently,  Taylor Swift's 2009 "You Belong with Me" performance had her coming to to Radio City from the subway stop next door (see Kayne incident above).

 10. Rhianna's third performance
      I'm not familiar with this song but it was pretty awful. She began wearing a North Face-style puffy coat with sleeves that looked like an additional puffy coat. I thought for a while there might be a plastic bag on her thighs, but it turned out her thigh-high boot had flopped over her leg and it was not the same color inside and outside.