ith our economy tanking and an American invasion of Iraq seemingly imminent, I can think of, oh, about ten million things more urgent than MTV’s annual Video Music Awards ceremony. But as sheer, guilty-pleasure escapism, the VMA’s are pretty hard to beat. Sort of a Grammy’s for people who like their ready-made, backslapping industry stars younger and with less hair coming our of their noses, the VMA’s show has distinguished itself over the last decade as both definitively meaningless and hyperbolically ridiculous, as true a testament to America’s youth culture today as any.


But it’s also increasingly become a good cross-sampling of mass popular culture at any given moment. And with garage rock and post punk enjoying a significant, if not earth-shattering revival right now, as well as the anniversary of 9/11 weighing heavily on the New York proceedings, we had reason to hope for something more than the usual Homage to Fred Durst and the like.


And the 2002 VMA’s at Radio City Music Hall didn’t disappoint...exactly. Bruce Springsteen opened with a song from his new album, which—in case you haven’t heard—was inspired by the 9/11 attacks. Host Jimmy Fallon was iffy, with the easy charm he’s displayed on SNL replaced by a shocked demeanor for the duration that suggested he may have watched too many episodes of Sessions at West 54th when David Byrne hosted. But in addition to all the industry fluff, the kids were treated to several trips to the stage by the White Stripes, Coldplay and performances by the Hives (tunes, anyone?) and the Vines, performing their rewrite of Nirvana’s “Negative Creep.”


Oh yeah, and there was a lot of overblown garbage. But this is MTV, not the History Channel. You tune in expecting it. You watch for the “special” moments. No, not the tearful reunions of hair bands exhausted from one too many videos “stolen from the vault,” but the moments where somebody gets too wasted to speak coherently. In fact, 2002 It Girl, Pink did just that, with one of her three appearances featuring her pants falling so far down, I thought we might at last find out whether there’s a penis under there after all (alas, the mystery remains).


No, the best part, as always, was the zippy production itself, in particular the little “Moonman” vignettes that accompanied each award, featuring a little silver astronaut figure with a variety of household purposes -- my favorite being the Nutcracker Moonman that preceded the award for “Best Female”. If not as cutting edge as in year’s past, Moonman (a nod to MTV’s early ads) was both amusing and intriguing: a phony product of marketing that’s poking fun at a phony “awards show” that’s really just a marketing tool for a network that’s really just a marketing tool for the music industry (and we wonder why bin Laden hates us so). Essentially, it proved once again that MTV is perhaps the ultimate in American Product, as well as the corporate shophouse where the most talented people in television and video production go to cut their teeth on thoroughly disposable entertainment.


Of course, as always, the VMA’s were packed with memorable moments, but five in particular stood out:


5. Triumph the Comic Insult Dog.

Not on his best game (his Star Wars and Bon Jovi bits are a better representative of that), but Robert Smigel’s little canine friend did prove that the VMA’s were the only place you could catch Eminem letting his guard down, as he sicked the bodyguards on a cheap rubber puppet, when the French-accented lothario attempted to ask him what he had against Moby. Moby himself thought the whole thing was a joke, until, as he stated on his website, he heard Em’ call him a “pussy” off camera and say he had no problem beating up “a man in glasses.” A member of Promise Keepers Eminem ain’t, but maybe someone who informs his fans of every “a pot ofechinacea tea” he drinks in his online diary is asking for it.


Speaking of Eminem, he accepted one of his awards from sometime foe and a barely there Christina Aguilera, who seems to be using her time off to ape the fashion sense of that annoying chick in the Mitsubishi ad wearing the pink hat and jiving in the passenger seat (I think I speak for many Stylus readers when I say that actress has convinced me to buy American). More importantly, though, if Aguilera really hates being taunted by Eminem so much, maybe she should give him less ammunition, because at this rate I’m pulling for him (though his thanking MTV for playing his videos when “no one else would play them” was a little self-congratulatory; I mean, who was going to, V-66?)


4. “The King of Pop”.

Letting his freak flag fly once again in full Sgt. Peppers regalia replete with shiny metallic shin guards(!!) was Michael Jackson, presented with what he thought was the “Artist of the Millennium Award” by Britney Spears, herself dressed in clothes found under the gimp costume in the back of Rob Halford’s closet. Of course, Britney had just said that MJ was her artist of the millennium, so there was a big hubbub about what the hell Jacko had been told he was going up there for in the first place.


Come to think of it, maybe he deserves the award for the “Artist of the Millennium,” but Lord knows it isn’t this millennium, since Jackson’s only album of this millennium, Invincible, sold about 12 copies, mostly to the Japanese. I’m assuming that nation must have been spared the spectacle of Jackson taking to the airwaves some time back in an attempt to refute the charges of child molestation (apparently, gaining public trust involves obsessively talking about your penis). The Japanese must not have seen it; otherwise, they wouldn’t still equate showmanship with flying around an arena in a rocket pack (as I once saw Jackson do on TV whilst in Romania).


3. The Return of G ‘N R.

The long awaited, much rumored return to the stage of everyone’s favorite ignoramus, W. Axl Rose, confirmed what many of us had long suspected: he’s become a bloated shell of the star. Of course, part of his, er, charm was that he was already a bloated shell of a star in his prime. The man who gave us such overblown epics as “November Rain” with videos featuring him weeping and swimming around with dolphins led an entirely new band (bar Dizzy) through what at times seemed like a bad karaoke performance of “Welcome To the Jungle,” “Paradise City” and a “new” song. It was actually disarming, if not surprising, after all this time to see the icon so puffy-eyed, his voice hideously worn and off-key (though, in fairness, his monitor didn’t seem to be helping). As for the music, well let’s just say that while Buckethead holds his own, hip-hop drum loops suit Guns ‘N Roses about as well as a duet with Minnie Pearl might.


But the punch line had to be Axl’s slap-happy, “Golly-gee, Kurt” post show interview with Kurt Loder. As if seeing the former recluse with braids, burned-out and in poor voice wasn’t bad enough, speaking to Loder made Axl giddier than Tammy Faye Bakker at the Clinique counter. And if we needed proof that the “forthcoming” Chinese Democracy was going to stink worse than a raccoon trapped in Axl’s rifle cabinet, this shameless pandering was it.


2. Avril Lavigne.

When the Pop Playground favorite and MTV’s Best New Artist of 2002 took to the stage in her trademark dark eyeliner, wife beater and necktie, who knew that she was a Cyclops? Well, at least it seemed that way, since her Cousin It hair obscured her face to the point that it really could have been Shelly Winters under there and no one would have known. With a speech as rambling as anything Fiona Apple ever dropped on us and a shriek that could shatter cement, the sk8tr chick’s appearance on the 2002 VMA’s is only knocked down a notch on the top 5 because it reminded us that hot teenage girls also have to talk sometimes.


And...


1. Jack White of the White Stripes, accepting one of two awards for the evening: "Thank you, Mary Kate and Ashley."


What's next? Salmon Rushdie presenting the Pulitzer to Ethan Hawke? Perhaps the show's ultimate pop culture moment.


So, the 2002 VMA’s didn’t exactly change many lives or tell us anything of much importance. But they did say something about the state of pop music in 2002, and it wasn’t about any “buzz bands,” because painful though it is to admit, the hippest, “newest” music on the VMA’s this year sounded as if it were released during the Carter Administration. Hardly groundbreaking stuff. The kids on “Team Avril” who hang on every word of her defiantly teenaged neuroses might be an easier target, but you tell me: when was the last time you heard a record by a teenager that didn’t sound like he or she was trying to act all like an adult? As crazy as it sounds, that girl, disappointed in a boy who chose smoking pot over her, just may be onto something. God bless her shitty little neckties.