The Only VMAs Category That Matters
So today the MTV Video Music Awards nominations were announced, with all the usual suspects: Beyonce, Eminem, Kanye, and of course Britney Spears (whose newly retoned derriere is still being kissed by MTV after the network threw her under the bus at the 2007 ceremony). Yawn. Same awards, different year.
But there is one added category that has grabbed my imagination: Best Video (That Should Have Won A Moonman). This category actually reminds me of the days when MTV played music videos, and this category will hypothetically right past VMA wrongs. Finally, here's the chance for videos that were snubbed at past awards ceremonies to get their due.
Since Muse's "Knights Of Cydonia" (THE BEST VIDEO OF ALL TIME) is not nominated in this category, sadly, my vote personally goes to the Beastie Boys' "Sabotage"--which in 1994 ridiculously lost out in ALL CATEGORIES, mostly to the awesome-but-not-nearly-AS-awesome Alicia Silverstone vehicle "Cryin'" by Aerosmith and R.E.M's subtitled existentialist mini-movie "Everybody Hurts."
This shutout so angered Beastie Adam Yauch's lederhosened alter ego, Nathaniel Hornblower, that Nathaniel famously bumrushed the stage during Michael Stipe's typically PC speech, yodeling, "This is an outrage! This is a farce!" over the injustice that "Sabotage" mastermind Spike Jonze had lost in the Best Direction category. And I was totally Team Nathaniel that night. Spike should have won.
So "Sabotage" triumphing in the VMAs' new, better-late-than-never category would certainly make amends for this undeserved snub. Plus, since Adam Yauch is currently (successfully) battling cancer, I can think of no better way to support Adam than to have him put on his vintage Hornblower lederhosen and let him accept the trophy that he and his bandmates should have won 15 years ago.
That being said, here are all the Best Video (That Should Have Won A Moonman) nominees--almost all of them better than most of the videos nominated in the major VMA categories this year:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfO9aSKsu-w
You, whore, do not know what you're doing.