Today, MTV announced that the premium cable channel VH1 Classic will be rebranded as MTV Classic. The station will shift from airing programming such as classic rock music videos and R.E.M. documentaries to old MTV shows like Daria, Jackass and MTV Cribs. This is another example of how MTV is being murdered by its parent company Viacom.
A specter is haunting Donald—the specter of Tupac.
Last night, MTV’s True Life featured two people in their 20's who are HIV positive and dating. The picture was at once bleak and hopeful—both Jonahs, 22, and Lexi, 24, are undetectable and yet face other people’s reservations (if not outright bigotry) regarding their status. And still they persevere. In the clip above Jonahs gets rejected after disclosing his status to a guy he met online.
Luke (aka Vadim Black) and Ben (aka Sean Cody’s Sean) (links NSFW) are two straight-identified guys who make their living by doing gay porn. They were both profiled on last night’s True Life: I’m a Gay for Pay Porn Star. They were both extremely firm on their heterosexual orientation (no doubt because their line of work calls it to be questioned regularly, certainly from the outside, but probably internally as well). My takeaway is that these guys are really straight, or they’re by now very gifted at mimicking the kind of ennui that comes from performing sexual acts one wouldn’t otherwise have interest in for money.
Beyoncé closed tonight's VMAs with a 15-minute medley that spanned almost her entire BEYONCÉ album—she performed at least a bit of almost every song, though "Pretty Hurts" was represented only from a snippet of Harvey Keitel's dialogue from the video, "Superpower" played as an instrumental over the snippet from Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie's TED talk used in "***Flawless," and "Heaven" was nowhere to be found, except for in our hearts.
Hello, gang. As you may or may not know (or care), tonight are the MTV Video Music Awards. The red carpet has begun, and boy is it a fun one already. We're here to walk you through the night, listen to your good jokes, and in general keep each other company during these times.
"When I met Taylor and when we got married, he looked like a Backstreet Boy," said Kim, 28, a marketing director at a local airport near Fredericksburg, VA. She meant that as a compliment. You see, her relationship has since been hijacked by her husband Taylor's barbecue-sauce trap of a beard that he grew, "fell in love with," and then launched a Facebook campaign to keep after she told him to get rid of it. He kept it and named it Beardimus Maximus.
This weekend, MTV ran a mini-marathon of three episodes of its best show (possibly ever), True Life. Though the episode title "I Want Respect for My Sect"4 seemed to hint at a portrait of militant Mormon fundamentalists, the actual show was even more off the wall (as if that seemed possible before it aired). Instead, it profiled a vampire (who says she was born that way), a furry (but not for "perverted" reasons), and Hannah, the Juggalo woman ("Juggalette") in the clip above, who struggled with the fact that her strict, Christian father did not approve with her upcoming Juggalo-themed wedding ceremony. He was fine with her getting married—he even accompanied Hannah and her Juggalo husband, Jeremy, to a ceremony at City Hall—he just didn't want to take part in the whole Juggalo thing. It wasn't, according to him, a traditional wedding.
"A lot of people follow me because they like my attitude, and a lot of girls think I'm cute," says 16-year-old Brady, who was profiled on an episode of MTV's True Life this weekend called "I'm Famous Online." Brady, you see, is suffering from the affliction of thousands of Instagram followers (at the time of taping, he had about 54,000 — now he's up to over 183,000). His tale of woe includes superficial associates, fame leeches, and a near-constant state of uncertainty regarding his true friends. He doesn't even know if his follower-turned-girlfriend is legit!
She won’t stop. Or maybe she can’t stop. But at the MTV Europe Music Awards in Amsterdam on Sunday, Miley Cyrus continued her desperate plea for relevancy. Not only did she exchange twerk spankings with a dwarf, she also lit up a joint on stage after accepting the Best Video gong for “Wrecking Ball.”
It's been just over 36 hours since Miley Cyrus stuck her tongue out at the pearl-clutching world of knee-jerk moral outrage, but someone already went and wrote a song that puts the entire manufactured fiasco in perfect perspective.
In the past, there's been a certain ceremony to the public sexual awakening of pop divas.
It seems everyone hated whatever it was Miley Cyrus was doing at last night's VMAs, but MSNBC's Mika Brzezinski really, really hated it.
Taylor Swift's "shut the fuck up"—memorialized here in GIF form—was directed at her ex-boyfriend, One Direction's Harry Styles, who was at that moment on stage. But it's a pretty good review of the entire VMA experience:
Stephen Colbert has shed more light on last Tuesday's episode-long Colbert Report response to MTV barring Daft Punk from playing his show. On comedian Paul Mecurio's podcast, Colbert explained that there was trouble with booking Daft Punk from the start — they didn't want to perform "Get Lucky" or be interviewed (since part of the Daft Punk members Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo and Thomas Bangalter's schtick is that they are robots who do not speak). "I’m beginning to see why they don’t do TV," Colbert recalled thinking weeks ago, during the negotiations for the proposed appearance.
