When I heard Saturday Night Live’s Andy Samberg was hosting the MTV Movie Awards, I thought for a split second about whether they would be worth seeing. Hot Rod was an unwatchable mess of a movie, but Andy Samberg brought us Dick in a Box, Natalie Portman Rap, I’m On A Boat, and more awesomeness. My brother went one year and reported it was unutterably dull, but staying home and TiVo can assist with that. But I only really thought about even TiVoing it for a split second. I suspect Eminem, who walked out of the proceedings, wishes he had not even TiVoed it as well.

I wondered what remotely cool or remotely music-related movies even came out last year, besides Twilight? From all reports, the only notable events of the MTV Movie Awards evening were the premiere screening of the Twilight New Moon Trailer (which we’ll have for you here in a moment) and that grody Sacha Baron Cohen creep being dropped on Eminem. Basically Sacha Baron Cohen put on this white outfit which riffs unoriginally on the already satirical White Gold heavy metal milk commercials and shows his ass (which ranks lower than Fred Durst’s ass on the List of Asses Nobody Wants to See) and MTV flew him over the audience on a wire and dropped him in Eminem’s lap, crotch up. If multiplatinum rapper and movie star Eminem, who has the best gothic video on MTV right now, ups the MTV Movie Awards star quotient by gracing them with his presence, how disrespectful and unappreciative is it to stick an unappealing stranger’s tiny groin in his face?

If you don’t know who Sacha Baron Cohen is, count yourself fortunate, but he is basically this disingenuous pseudo-comedian who never owns his own stupid presentation. Sacha Baron Cohen always pretends that he is just playing a character, but most of his characters are exaggerations of someone trying pathetically hard to be cool. The ego protection Sacha Baron Cohen is engaging in there is so obvious, just in case someone notices that he is not cool at all, that I find him painful to watch under the best of circumstances.

I guess one could argue that Eminem plays spoof characters in some of his videos, but I feel that is deeply different because one has a sense that sometimes Eminem is clowning around and sometimes he is being raw and real. And nobody would greenlight flying Eminem over the MTV Movie Awards audience and dropping him in Bret Michaels’ lap, crotch up.

It is now the morning after and Twilight unsurprisingly swept the MTV Movie Awards with standard award show fare like Best Movie and MTV special awards like Best Fight Scene. So Robert Pattinson who played vampire leading man Edward Cullen, Kristen Stewart who played viewpoint character Bella Swan, and Cam Gigandet who played bad boy vampire James all spent a lot of time clutching boxes of gold popcorn on stage. Apparently the other music-related movie worthy of MTV consideration was High School Musical 3: Senior Year which starred Zac Efron. Zac Efron is nice-looking enough and I saw him host SNL and so I can’t say whether High School Musical 3: Senior Year was robbed when Zac Efron lost in the Best Kiss category he was nominated in which was won by Kristen Stewart and Robert Pattinson from Twilight. I’m not sure what Zac Efron did win, as even the clips from the MTV Movie Awards show this year are kinda unwatchable and IMDB shows no 2009 wins, but, when he was called to the stage by Sacha Baron Cohen, who was apparently a presenter, poor Zac Efron, being put on the spot, looked like he wanted no part of it and was considering following Eminem out of the building. Edit: MTV reports that, although most viewers missed it in the hubbub, Zac Efron won for Best Male Performance (as opposed to Robert Pattinson’s win for Best Breakthrough Performance Male Winner.)

I’m going to get on posting that Twilight New Moon trailer now, but, seriously, I think Eminem should get a Get Out of Jail Free card for pistol-whipping Sacha Baron Cohen any time he feels like it. Ideally without warning and in the (tiny) crotch area.

Some pundits are suggesting today that Eminem was not really annoyed and just acted angry as part of the gag. If Eminem was not actually disgusted, then he deserves an Oscar or at least an MTV Movie Award for his convincing performance.

Every now and then, I will use my TiVo to download a bunch of music videos. I download a bit of everything and then watch them briskly and efficiently. No reality programming in between. No commercials. If I don’t like the beginning of a music video, I fast forward to the mid-point to see if it gets better once it gets going. If not, I’m on to the next one.

I never heard of Justin Moore before, but I just got through playing his “Back That Thing Up” video about five gajillion times. “Back That Thing Up” has what Tapeheads fans would know to call serious production values. For those of you who must shamefacedly admit to never having seen Tapeheads, allow me to illustrate:

Mo Fuzz: All this video is missing is production values.
Ivan Alexeev, Josh Tager: Production values?
Mo Fuzz: Yeah. Tits and ass.

If muscles on video vixens and tight faded jeans on singer boys are coming back in style, I think I owe some deity a sacrificial goat now! Maybe two goats for the drummer still having tattoos and a mohawk. If “Back That Thing Up” is representative of Justin Moore’s body of work, he falls somewhere between Brooks & Dunn and Garth Brooks on one side and Motley Crue and AC/DC on the other. There are at least as many appalling sexual double entendres in “Back That Thing Up” as there are in “Big Balls”. I loathe puns. Unless they are sex puns. Then I love them.

Justin Moore has a mischievous smile, an easy charismatic stance and delivery style, and a smooth Southern voice both speaking and singing. Justin Moore has enormous star quality and looks really good in tight faded jeans and a cowboy hat. I usually don’t like cowboy hats (even though my foot was once photographed with one for Playboy.) He has an uncomplicated comfortable way of moving in his country duds which just works very very well. According to The Valory Music website, Justin Moore’s parents were deeded a fifteen-acre farm from his grandfather in a 272 person town called Poyen in Arkansas. His bio includes such American small town pastimes as high school baseball and gospel choir. I know country performers tend to talk about their mad farming skillz the same way rappers represent their drug-dealing resumes. Justin Moore is kind of being pitched as both flawlessly country and kind of indie, although it sort of looks like he is a Universal recording artist and he did get an awesome music video directed by Wes Edwards and produced by Brittany Hailes.

I have lived in both Georgia and North Carolina and, when I was thirteen, there were a lot of accent fetishist New Yorkers who wanted to date me for the five minutes I really had that Southern twang, until the moment passed. There is still the occasional word I say with a Southern accent, but I do not now identify as Southern nor have I ever identified as Southern. I have never thought of country as my community or culture. So I don’t care if Justin Moore’s comically country music-ready resume is over-spun or not. Apparently Country Music Television is a little wound up about the content in the video, so too racy for CMT is certainly a selling point in my book.

I know, I know, I get all excited about some media thing. I research it. Then I have to ponder whether it is real or not. In my defense, the YouTube comments on the cowboy singer’s videos tend to be mostly girls saying they are super “cuntry” and way better than those “Playboy whores” in the “Back That Thing Up” video. Except for the one gay guy who wanted Justin to back his nice thing up into some dick. This was apparently very offensive to some country fans. Some “cuntry” girls also complained that the video was degrading to women, but they were un-eloquently debated by other posters who apparently ran the lyrics through a rap filter and felt that it was good that “at least” it was not what they had come up with. Yeah, ’cause Justin Moore is more talented than they are.

This all brings me back to what was really my only point:

There is this kinda new singer Justin Moore and his catchy and nicely performed song “Back That Thing Up” has an incredibly cool video out directed by Wes Edwards. The end.

This week internet superstar Fred got a last name, Figglehorn, to go with his new web site FredFigglehorn.com.

So the video above by Fred here has been viewed nearly ten million times on YouTube. According to sites which rank video views, each of the Fred videos have been viewed many many more times than that, syndicated across many sites. On YouTube, the format is called Imrov, although I’ve been told by industry professionals that the show segments are scripted, so I’m not sure why Improv is the category. Could just be because nobody knows how to categorize a lot of new formats which have sprung up via new technology. The show describes itself as follows:

“Fred Figglehorn, a six-year old with anger management issues and an alcoholic mother, uses her video camera against her wishes to posts videos to YouTube documenting (vlogging) the details of his love for Judy, hatred of bully Kevin, crush on Miss Amy, Bertha’s instigations, his annoying Grandma, his friendships with animals, and whatever else pops into his mind. The Internet’s All-Time #1 Weekly Series, with over 100 Million views.”

Of course Fred looks distinctly post-pubescent and not six, but it’s, ya know, comedy.

I understand that a team of around half a dozen people put these vids together. I assume some portion of the team is responsible for marketing, but I have not yet discerned what is particularly different or special about either the content or marketing or talent involved in these productions. Apparently, at least as presented to advertisers who might buy web tv air time or product placement, tween females are the number one demographic. Although, with these numbers, definitely not the only one.

Other than imp in the machine or perversity of the universe, I have no explanation for why Fred is an internet sensation. He doesn’t make my skin crawl or anything, like he does some folks, but I don’t really get it either.

Anyone want to take a shot at hypothesizing why Fred is the most popular boy in internet television?

As you all have no doubt noticed, we’ve been working on some video stuff on BlueBlood.net here. It is still in beta, but we are making it live for your viewing pleasure. Feel free to point out anything which is not working perfectly yet, because we know Blue Blood TV is in beta.

We’ve been really enjoying putting together our first segments and I’m really excited to share them with you all. For the most part, Forrest Black has been directing and I’ve been producing. We’ve mostly been taking turns shooting, kinda the same as we do for still photography. We’ve gotten some behind-the-camera assists from the always enjoyable Michelle Aston as well. We are fortunate enough to have the incredibly talented Tim Skold on board for the project to do the Blue Blood theme music. As this is Blue Blood, you probably all know who Tim Skold is, but I’ll give you a quick overview, just in case. I first came across his work when he was in a band called Shotgun Messiah, which I thought was a great name for a band. Other bands he has been in include Kingpin, KMFDM, Marilyn Manson, and Skold. His eponymously titled Skold album is one of my favorite CDs of all time, one of those rare records I can play all the way through, enjoying every single song over and over again. Anyway, I’m really thrilled about doing this video series thang, and the way it is all coming together, and feeling very creatively inspired.

Our video section is just starting out, so, when it becomes a fabulous gigantic internet phenomenon, you can say you were in-the-know when. We’ll be both highlighting videos we think are interesting and bringing you original programming. I just posted our Deathrace Jason Statham interview and Deathrace director Paul W. S. Anderson interview. Coming up this weekend, I interview musician Andy LaPlegua of Combichrist. Forrest Black interviews writer/editor Rachel Kramer Bussel about her Cupcakes Take the Cake blog (and sex.) Forrest Black and I (and a lot of our unsavory pals) attend the Coilhouse magazine launch party and I interview editor Nadya Lev. And there is tons more to come. Feel free to message me or Forrest Black directly or in public (or sidle up to one of us in a nightclub and whisper) about what you’d most like to see us do because we are just getting started.

I know, I know, some of you were probably assuming I was about to announce the launch of a giant adult video section, probably in the members area over on sister site BlueBlood.com. Over the years, just about every major mainstream adult video company, both in Porn Valley and beyond, has pitched yours truly and Forrest Black to do the pr0nz vidz for them. I’m not saying that nobody could ever make me an attractive offer on that front, if we really were on the same page with a company which wanted to make something great. But it has been my experience that these huge multimillion dollar companies will come at us saying how much they want something gothic or punk or alt or tattooed, and then turn around and say that they figure the budget can be small because they can underpay talent with tattoos or black lipstick.

One of my personal rules is that I will work for free or cheap for someone who does not have an office, if I like them and I believe in their project. If someone has a big ol’ office, I expect a pro rate and I expect the same for those I work with. If someone owns one or more buildings, I expect them not to start being cheap when it comes to my subculture and my friends and my collaborators.

But, honestly, it really boils down to art. The thing about artists is that they do not always do what is the commercially perfect thing to do. Artists do what they feel like doing. What I really felt like doing was discussing the meaning of alternative culture with Nadya Lev and what appalling horror movies are fun to sample with Andy LaPlegua.

I hope you guys like what we’ve been making because I enjoyed the creative process and I’d like to make you more videos soon.

So, I think Madonna is pretty awesome in general, but I’m vaguely baffled by her message to YouTube video. In it, she is supposedly vacuuming the set for her 4 Minutes video because apparently other people didn’t take care of it. Then she tells the world of YouTube good job on making tons of videos for her 4 Minutes single. To date, her thanks for making essentially fanfic versions of 4 Minutes video has received 3,175,135 views on YouTube.

The actual official Warner Bros video for Madonna’s 4 Minutes has only received 846,562 views. It opens with a little rap from Timbaland and most of the song is a duet and coordinated dance moves from Madonna and Justin Timberlake. Madonna and Justin Timberlake take off some of each other’s clothes during their choreography and, unlike Janet Jackson, I guarantee Madonna won’t apologize or pretend that her clothing flying off is a wardrobe malfunction.

A search on YouTube for +”4 minutes” +madonna yields 2,860 results, including both the fanfic (or whatever YouTube people call this sort of thing) vids and multiple copies of the official video and various video responses to the go ahead and make videos based on the video video. This sort of viral marketing is all very meta. Will encouraging people to do more of what they were going to do anyway work to Madonna’s benefit? Will it sell more of her music, raise her stock for endorsements, or otherwise make bank?

I don’t know the answer and I’m really interested in hearing what other people think about how this will work as a marketing effort. Do you enjoy fanfic videos? Regardless, you should watch the real official video because it’s fun candy and Madonna and Justin Timberlake dancing is way hotter than most porn.

And, to the desperate, sell-out assholes who will say that Madonna’s boots in the video mean fetish is crossing over to mainstream, I have a couple of things to say. First of all, why do you hate yourselves so much? What, besides self-loathing, could make someone put huge effort into being a fetish star while believing that being somehow mainstream would be preferable? Lastly, Madonna is successful, not mainstream. I’d be pleased to help anyone who thinks success=mainstream or mainstream=success in busting out a dictionary.

For those I need not whack with the legacy of Noah Webster and those more familiar with Justin Timberlake, I’d like to leave you with some vintage Madonna sex music video. Her Express Yourself video on the official Madonna channel has only received 6,440 views to date, so I thought y’all might feel like giving it a boost.

How do you hack a hangover? Apparently this is one of the most viewed recent YouTube videos in the how-to section. Well, if you don’t count all the ones related to achieving erection, orgasm, or conception. I haven’t watched any of their social relations vids, but, if the advice is as terrible as this hangover advice, I’d recommend steering clear.

Personally, I’ve found that the most effective way to avoid feeling awful in the morning is to sleep late after a night of not drinking to excess. Then start the day with a delicious iced soy latte, a little sunshine, and a well-balanced, high-protein, low-carb, low-glycemic-index breakfast.

Failing that, I never remember to take those RU-21 pills when starting the night, but they are moderately effective. I am a very big fan of alternating beer with sparkling water during the evening and drinking the Function brand Urban Detox beverages before bed.

How do you like to start your day?

So right now FUSE is playing a block of Nelly videos. I find Nelly ridiculously hot. Hot like sexy, not hot like kindling. I’m not even sure if I like his music, but I certainly enjoy his videos. They’ve got productions values! (Bonus cool points to anyone who gets the movie reference there.)

So I was sitting there, letting the purple hair dye set in my hair, watching the Hot In Here video, and I suddenly realized that at least part of the video was shot inside a particular nightclub on Hollywood Blvd. Specifically, it was shot inside the Basque nightclub a couple blocks from me which burned down a day ago. Holy firemen of irony, Batman!

I was all trying to go to sleep at like six in the morning and I couldn’t figure out WTF was up with all the helicopters. I mean, my neighborhood has been a little weird lately, but this was just ridiculous. Turned out they were all the news copters shooting the fire and the literally two hundred and ten firemen and countless arson investigators and other officials dealing with the fire. Apparently, the building’s core was super old and had like poisonous resins or something on some of the burning wood. Not the best air quality where I live in Los Angeles for the past day.

But I really think the copters should have been blasting Nelly singing Hot In Here while they flew over my place. That would have totally made it all okay.

Fueled by Ramen recording artist Cobra Starship is a very modern band. They are currently on tour, opening for Fall Out Boy, along with fellow openers Paul Wall, +44, and The Academy is . . . Cobra Starship’s name sounds like a cross between TheCobrasnake and late Jefferson Airplane. They’ve got a song on the Snakes on a Plane and the new Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie soundtracks, ringtones available, a Glamour Kills clothing endorsement, and impressively pimped out profiles on all the good social networking sites. They even (I’m sure ironically) cover Lionel Richie’s “Three Times a Lady” and Michael Jackson’s “Billie Jean.” The CS site itself contains a sort of pseudo-ironic “typical” rockstar history, which is probably actually based on true events but liberally gilded. Band leader Gabe Saporta’s animal familiar-dictated mission is apparently teaching “hipsters to not take themselves so seriously and by telling emo kids to stop being pussies.”

I guess Cobra Starship’s genre is Self-Deprecating Post-Emo? I don’t know. The salient point for Blue Blood readers is that Xanthia Doll appears dancing her yellow-clad booty off in their new video for their long-windedly-named single “Send My Love To The Dancefloor, I’ll See You In Hell (Hey Mister DJ)” from their album, While The City Sleeps, We Rule The Streets. Xanthia says, “I’m so happy I’m in it! It was a lot of fun to be a part of! Just look for red hair and a bright yellow jacket and you’ll see me! Wheeeeeeeeee!!!!!!”

Xanthia’s positive attitude is a lot of fun, but I have to admit that I like my rockstars to truly own what they do. If I were more familiar with modern emo, apparently Cobra Starship’s Gabe tapped a number of big deal emo folks to work on the project. An emo allstar band slagging off emo kids for being pussies is, you know, emoriffically ironic. I’d be more versed in emo if it could stand up and be proud of what it is, instead of hiding behind irony, self-deprecation, and pretending they don’t really mean whatever it is they are expressing. Emo adults need to stop being such pussies.

But the video looks fun with Xanthia in it:

It seems newsworthy to mention that an online video for Marilyn Manson’s new music video is apparently going to be online for only another day or two. The new single is called “Heart Shaped Glasses” and features romantic lyrics about erotic cutting and Manson looking like he is feeling his inner rockstar. Most coverage of the video has been rather frantic speculation on whether Marilyn Manson and actress Evan Rachel Wood are actually having penetrative sex in the opening scene of the seven plus minutes long vid. It is totally irrelevent to the final product whether or not his penis was actually in her vagina, as neither is visible, but the two manage to communicate wonderful chemistry between them on screen.

When I saw the movie Seven, I kept wanting them to turn the damn lights on. It seems like it would have been much more obvious that Kevin Spacey was the killer if they hadn’t been doing investigation and forensics with flashlights, when there were perfectly good light switches nearby. I felt a little bit like this during much of the video for “Heart Shaped Glasses” when I watched it on the German video sharing site ironically enough called Sevenload. The actual Marilyn Manson site links to an IP with no real site on it and a much higher resolution version of the video. Everything is much clearer in the version on Manson’s site, although the lighting is still colored and moody. The interface on the Sevenload version is much more user-friendly though.

The video kicks off on Sevenload with the artist introducing the clip and, linked off his site, it goes straight into Manson and Wood writhing around and kissing passionately. This is pretty hot for around two and a half minutes. The initial makeout scene includes some very light choking. Somehow I think iTunes still won’t have any problem billing for the music video download down the line. The video is then interrupted with one of those talky interludes that musicians who want acting roles like and nobody else enjoys. The two of them are in a car and she tells him to drive faster and he takes altporn style polaroids of her with a kitchen knife and a schoolgirl skirt. This scene is where the heart shaped glasses referred to in the song’s title first appear. They then move to a club scene where Manson is rocking it old school and a sorta normal looking girl in the audience is watching from behind her heart shaped glasses and touching herself with hands covered in interestingly incongruous driving gloves. This I believe is Wood in a sort of fifties looking good girl dress. I don’t think she’d be good casting for the part if she weren’t Manson’s paramour, but the chemistry between them is so powerful that it more than makes up for it. I think the moody lighting, which might otherwise be a bit much, makes her come across a bit darker too.

The main concept of the video revolves around, aside from hipster sunglass, romantic cutting. So the club scene, err, cuts back and forth to a blood-drenched black bed and shots of a sort of heart shaped tattoo with a lightening bolt S on Wood’s thigh. I don’t know if the tattoo is real any more than I know if the fucking is real. Doesn’t matter because it works for the video. Oh yeah, then they drive off a cliff Thelma and Louise style. I loved Thelma and Louise so much that when my friend Blue Blood writer Shariann Lewitt and I saw it, Shariann told me that maybe one of us needs to learn to drive better. As Wood steers with her foot in Manson’s video and they still drive off a cliff, I think Shariann was mistaken about the requirements.

Anyway, the song is okay and I like the flow of the lines:

she’ll never cover up what we did with her dress, no
she said, “kiss me, it’ll heal but it won’t forget”

When I am elected Benevolent World Dictator, there will be a lot more videos in this vein and they will be available for more than a week.