The 2010 MTV Video Music Awards Preshow

Ladies and gentlemens, summer is almost done and MTV has a whole suite of new Reality Shows to debut. That can only mean one thing: it's Video Music Awards time! Has it truly been a year already since the 2009 Hate Kanye West For Being The Terrible Person He Is-athon? My how time flies when the collective hive mind of the internet has a single pop culture target to hate.

Before we get to the show, time to lay down the annual ground rules of the annual IceAnvil.com VMA recapping: I will be updating the upcoming "2010 Video Music Awards" post and this preshow post every commercial break updating you on what trivial and probably embarrassing for Viacom thing happens so you don't have to watch it yourself. I will also be updating my twitter feed every half hour or so with the major happenings in case you want a cliff's notes version of the night.

Much like the past two years, we're going to be having a commercial cage match throughout the night, counting what advertiser or TV show truly has its hand in MTV's back pocket and will lead teenagers throughout the next year to Media Nirvana. This year our competition will be between MTV Reality Shows (Especially Jersey Shore and the shows destined for quick burial/cancellation like the World of Jenks) vs. Microsoft's Halo: Reach. You might say this is an unfair competition, but I'm sure Microsoft wants to reach out to that every popular male demographic tonight. Perhaps if it becomes a landslide, I'll let Microsoft Kinect run in and join up as a tag team.

So what's on tap for tonight? Well, here in the pre-show we most likely have a tedious hour of Sway's hat to deal with. We also have a performance from Nicky Minaj which I'm sure will include a wig of some sort and a lot of funny muppet voices in her flow. Perhaps she'll take a cue from Lady Gaga last year and just show up with a muppet on her arm. Let's all cross our fingers and hope for Same the Eagle!

The main show's outlook is a bit more grim. We have a first time host this year in Chelsea Handler, a "comedian" known for barely being able to tell her own jokes without ruining the punchline by laughing at her own "wit." She has been steadily driving away viewers from her Chelsea Lately show all summer by putting on the bare minimum of effort since she dumped/was dumped by her former boyfriend, the head of Comcast who gave her the show in the first place. So this must be Viacom's gift for a shitty job done even shittier. Since 99.9% of Chelsea's "schtick" involves midgets and "I'm such a whore" jokes, I'd wager that 99.9% of what she says tonight will be censored and not at all funny.

The VMA Pre-Show has begun! And we start off by letting everyone know exactly what matters in the world of music today: the Jersey Shore and one dude watching another dude get lucky while eating a sandwich! We just rolled over to 8 PM EST here and we've already have our first technical glitch of the Pre-Show (first of many!) as Sway tosses over to a preview of the next Jersey Shore and MTV decides to ejaculate all over downtown LA instead.

We cut to a really awkward MTV News opening that I don't think Sway anticipated along with MTV News British reporter. He lets us know that tonight's VMAs are all about collaborations, a theme they could have started conveying a bit earlier than just this second. Instead we received commercial after commercial featuring weird 40s newsreels or parodies of the videos nominated or bad Chelsea Handler humor.

British Newscaster lets us know that MTV has to start the VMAs off in style, ignoring that Sway said the same thing when he brought out the Jersey Shore guys. He brings out New Jersey's own Drake, who proceeds to ramble a bit until British guy starts harping on Nicky Minaj's backside. This wakes Drake up for the first time tonight! Just when Drake's mind is finally in the game, British newscaster shrugs him off and forces him to stay behind with the fans on the red carpet.

We are being thrown around like cracked up Zsu Zsu pets tonight, as we bounce over to MTV's cheap Perez Hilton stand-in who is with Paramore. He brings up what we're all thinking: that Hayley Williams doing a rap record with B.o.B. (which they'll be performing later) she is just one step away from a full Gwen Stefani. Hayley, to her credit, laughs it off but you can see the glint of truth in her eyes as she says she's working with Harijuku Girls and Pharell.

MTV's viewers apparently picked Suchin Park's outfit for tonight and they picked an Arabian rug. She interviews B.o.B. or someone who won't talk about anything but how good Suchin looks. Yellow fever is running wild on the VMAs tonight. We cut to MTV's first twitter-jockey, who tries way too hard to force MTV's viewers to promote the show for free on Twitter. Hey, wannabe comedians and asshats, use the hashtag #IfBieberMetGaga to make all your MTV approved statutory rape jokes you can.

We cut back to Sway on this apparently never ending pre-show as he talks with Katy Perry, who is the first to mention that's she's wearing a figure skating outfit instead of a dress. She inconveniently recommends mixing free alcohol with cold medicine on Viacom's dime while harping on how sick she just happens to be tonight. She hasn't even seen Nicky Minaj's performance yet! Sway cuts her off to cut to the most important thing tonight: that Jersey Shore preview! Thank god MTV is there to let us know exactly what's driving popular music today.

Even though I added my two cents and contributed to the problem, it warms my heart that "Uncle Nino" is trending right now on Twitter but "IfBieberMetGaga" isn't.

More technical difficulties as Jay Sean's entrance/free advertising for the Honda CRZ is screwed up by the director not giving him any kind of clue on to when to leave his vehicle. He meets up with British Newscaster who continues his trend of ignoring all celebrities and musicians tonight as he wants to hit on hired female extras. As god is his witness, he's losing his virginity tonight! We continue the theme of all VJs only asking their guests about Nicky Minaj as well. Did you know she's performing on the preshow?

We are not even 20 minutes into this pre-show and we are now cutting to another interview/plug for the Jersey Shore as Shuchin has Snookie here. This might be the first time Shuchin has EVER towered over anyone, as she appears to be 2 feet taller than the Jersey Shore pickle troll. Shuchin calls Snookie a fashion icon and can barely read the teleprompter without laughing.

First award of the night: Dance Video of the Year! The nominees mean absolutely nothing as this award instantly goes to Lady Gaga for Bad Romance.

Second award of the night all in your eyeballs: Collaboration of the Year! The nominees are once again meaningless as this award instantly goes to Lady Gaga and Beyonce for Telephone.

They've spent 10 minutes advertising the Jersey Shore for every award given out tonight so far. Even in Video Music Awards we're paying retail prices here.

We're back from commercial with 30 Seconds To Mars, nominated for 4 awards tonight for their Kings & Queens video which, while definitely decent, MTV played maybe only once or twice all year. They re-create the video by showing up with a bunch of people on bikes and Jared Leto continues his streak of pre-show interviews where he barely shows interest in the process as British Newscaster only wants to talk about which girls Jared wants to bang. Jared Leto, consummate professional, actually tells him to shut the fuck up and notice that they have 20-25 hired extras behind them having a pillow fight happening RIGHT NOW, which is slightly more important than Jared wanting to bone Snookie.

Once again proving what tonight is about, MTV reality shows, we go back to Perez Hilton-lite who is with MTV's Jenks, who has a show where he goes around living other people's lives for a period of time. This show is totally original and I'm pretty sure it only took him about 30 days to think of this concept.

Usher is here with his creepily underage heterosexual life-mate, the Biebs! What if Bieber Told Usher No indeed. Since they are being interviewed by Sway, he pretends to know about and care about their music in lieu of tonight's theme of only harping on which female artist we all secretly masturbate to.

Oh my god, guys. Nicky Minaj is here to perform as a background character from the Jetsons with Will.I.Am and she's lip syncing it old skool tonight! They perform their song where they sample the Buggles "Video Kills The Radio Star" with almost no knowledge of the unintentional irony of performing a song with that sample on a show that's been used to promote the Jersey Shore exclusively tonight. Will joins her onstage dressed up like what the Back to the Future people thought people would look like in the year 2015 and we have a weird effect where he's rapping/singing off-key over his back-up track that was auto-tuned. It's like getting gang banged in the ears by the Black Eyed Peas! The performance really starts picking up when Minaj gives up any pretense of pretending to perform live and just starts shaking her ass into the camera. If this is any indication of what kind of night we have ahead of ourselves, British Newscaster might never ever be able to wear tight jeans again. As if saying his name 3 times causes him to appear, here is British Newscaster who glosses over the night's upcoming performances to go back to hitting on models. Someone mail this guy one enveloped blow job stat.

Now we are interrupting MTV promoting itself so MTV can promote itself so more. Perez Hilton-lite is here with the Jackass crew to advertise Jackass 3D, coming out in October and ruining the concept of 3D as innovative around the same time. They make some jokes about discharging semen and doing stunts with Bieber before they get cut off so we can see footage of the Jersey Shore gang watching a sneak preview of the movie. I wonder if the people who are employees of Viacom will like this Viacom movie! We have literally opened MTV's Pandora's Box of self congratulations and masturbation at this point.

For the record: we are now advertising the Jersey Shore for for 25 minutes for every award given out.

Sway is here with B.o.B. who I apparently confused with someone else earlier. He's only here to stand around angry as Sway introduces us to an exclusive Kanye West video clip. Man, Kanye isn't even here yet and he's already interrupting things. The video lasts about a minute and apparently lets us know that he is the only person who can save angels or Harvey Birdman's Birdgirl from random Michael Bay explosions. Come with Kanye if you want to leave!

We go back to British Newscaster with Ke$ha, who apparently is wearing a bunch of old weaves and hefty bags. British Newscaster doesn't even try to play coy tonight as he points out that she looks like trash... "in a good way" in his own words. She takes it as a compliment since she might be too stoned to care about what some British toadie has to say about her. She arrived in a Delorean which British Newscaster, not at all pretending he knows what he's doing here tonight at this point, asks if she owns. Of course she doesn't, Sir WantsToBangAnythingWithAPulse. This is an MTV award show. You guys pay for the rental of these things. This isn't even your first VMAs, you idiot. For the love of god, during this next commercial break, someone show him to a private bathroom so he can jerk it and go back to being somewhat competent.

We are moments away from the VMAs which brings us Sway's biggest interview of the night: Lady Gaga. She is cosplaying as a Phoenix Pokemon. Sway brings up the fact that she already won the first two awards, to which Gaga actually has to ask which ones since no one but myself is paying attention to this mess. Lady Gaga is actually here for a good cause tonight since she's with discharged soldiers who left due to the Army's Don't Ask Don't Tell policy. Sway cautiously avoids her cause and tosses back to the white carpet for the last time before the real show hits. We're about to have the show open with Eminem and British Newscaster can finally go pay a hooker for a quickie behind the Bieber tent. I will see you during the big show!