Instead of watching the MTV Video Music Awards last night, I told a friend of mine I'd catch the highlights later on. I really just couldn't take it. So let's recap all the wonderful and magical things that took place in New York, shall we?

- Eminem flipped off Moby and had to be held back from trying to administer an ass-kicking.
- Pink got up on stage to do her hit single "Get the Party Started" and announced in front of an in-building audience of thousands and a worldwide TV audience of millions that she was too drunk to do the song.
- Untalented teen pop skater sensation Avril Lavigne wore men's Hanes underwear that stuck out on top of the camouflage pants she was wearing. We didn't notice because she was too busy trying to bite the head off her moonman award and kung-fu kick the crowd as photo ops. (By the way, did I mention that despite the fact that she insists she wrote all her songs, I met some guys who wrote songs with the guys who wrote stuff for her?)
- Puff Da... er, P. Diddy (or whatever the hell he's calling himself these days) proved that he doesn't have a single creative bone, muscle or tissue in his body. It's like the man was put on Earth to rip off other people's work.
- Christina Aguilera proved that it was possible to wear even less in public than that infamous dress Jennifer Lopez wore a few years ago to some awards show that I can't even remember which one it is.
- And, of course, the shining moment when Michael Jackson accepted an award for Artist of the Millennium that he wasn't even given. Uhh, Mike? Look here. The woman presenting you the award... she's white, and she's darker-skinned than you are. This whole deal of you claiming you're being oppressed because you're a black man? It's a little hard to believe when you're whiter than chalk. Time to make a quick exit and fade into obscurity.

And you wonder why I watched a movie instead... This isn't MTV, this is the damned Music Drama/Diva Awards.

Like lambs to the slaughter, we are. Eager to hop on the next bandwagon of whatever Hollywood feeds us, yet, at the same time, wanting to be "different" and "unique."

You have the same-old same-old. There's months and months where it's the same mindless drivel. Then something offbeat comes along. Suddenly, it's the Second Coming! The medium is saved! Except now everyone starts to imitate the "different" and "unique" thing, making it the norm and it's no longer the alternative.

Case in point, the alternative format of music. We were all swamped with the Linkin Parks and the Limp Bizkits and all them, then lo and behold, the Strokes came along! Whoa! It's brand new! It's never been done before! (Except it has. The adjective "retro" that was so commonly used to describe it is short for "retroactive," which means something along the lines of "extending back to a prior period or time." But I won't push that point for now.) So all of a sudden, we've got the Strokes and the White Stripes too! My head's exploding with all these new-sounding bands! So what do the record companies do? They go out and find sixteen bazillion different "garage" or "lo-fi" bands, kick them to the radio stations and weeks later, we are deluged with bands like the Vines, the Hives, the Doves... the exception has become the norm, except we all still consider ourselves to be listening to "unique" music. So does that make them special just because they're different? Should we still be flocking to them?

I'm still a little mystified at the astounding success of My Big Fat Greek Wedding. No, it doesn't have special effects like all the other films out there. No, it's not a slick fast-paced action/thriller/comedy film. No, it didn't cost $100 million to make. And yet, it's #4 at the box office right now and it's sending hundreds of thousands of people to art theatres, where people are already discussing the fact that they might actually go see another film that cost less than $10 million to make and aren't playing in the local huge megaplex. Is it really that good? I'm not sure. It was amusing to me, although I have to admit that I checked my watch several times while watching it. Whether it will compel me to go see other art films, I doubt it. Whether more lemmings will go running to their art theatres to see the latest thing because of it, and whether the big movie companies will start putting out all these indie films... well, that's yet to be seen.

Resist the tide. Go see or listen to something because you like it, not because you feel you should. Be a salmon, not a lemming.

I'm sick of this. It's time. Time to get my ass in gear, and finally get to all those things that I really should've gotten to a long time ago. Time to stop procrastinating. Time to finally get my life in order. Time to just take the piles of crap rattling around in my head and dump them in the trash can. People really are right when they say that your outlook is all that matters, and that your outlook can be changed. Time to stop looking at what I don't have and start realizing what I do have, and if I want something, I should do something about it rather than sulk.

Pardon me while I throw on something loud, obnoxious and cleansing. Ministry will suffice.

So a co-worker recently got me hooked on Starbucks iced mocha frappuccinos, though I can't actually say it without thinking of that one scene in Zoolander where Ben Stiller's three male model friends all yell out, "Orange mocha frappuccino!" in unison. Given that I am trying to lose weight and that I've found some disturbing numbers in quick things that I thought would be better for me but aren't -- such as a McDonald's milkshake which turns out to have more fat than an uncut 16 ounce steak -- I figured it might be time for me to actually look up the nutritional information on the frappuccino and see whether I really should be going without it.

I can't find the nutritional information. Anywhere. Starbucks has apparently kept the lid on their nutritional information so tightly that no one seems to know just what's in their products. I find it odd and a little suspicious that a company that has such a hold on all of us does not willing offer up caloric and fat count on their beverages. They probably don't want us to know, because the 50% of Americans who are dieting at any given point in time might freak out and riot if they actually knew how bad these products were for them.

I've always found it interesting that as real as animators -- especially in the recent CGI films like Shrek and Toy Story -- can make everything inanimate look, they never get actual people quite right. Background objects like trees, bushes, furniture, buildings and signs look exactly as they should, but animated people have that certain lack of reality that I just can't put my finger on.

And with that nonsense, I roll off to bed after a couple of very long days and wonder what the morning will bring.

I really have to apologize for my lack of content. And lack of thought-provoking content, for that matter. I'm experiencing a bit of a brain drain... have been for a little while, actually. I think my head needs to process some non-music related information.

The problem with finally getting a job in music -- even though I like my job and I'm happy there, finally I'm happy at a job! -- is that I'm surrounded by it 24/7. Music is no longer just a hobby, it's a job and a way of life. I make friends in the music industry through work. We discuss music. I listen to music in the car, while I'm working out at the gym, when I'm at home, at my desk at work... I always have to have something on in the background.

It's consuming. It's to the point where I seriously have to condition myself not to talk about my work or music, because once you get me going, I won't stop. I've told friends not to ask me about work, or if they do, make sure I give a one word answer and move on. It's not that I don't like talking about music, it's that I want to make sure I don't become so one-dimensional -- I enjoy being a well-rounded person who people like to talk to about many different things.

It's disturbing how American-centric our culture is. We're supposed to take pride in our accomplishments as the most kicking-ass country in the world and how we whup everyone in the technological race -- and we educate our children as such -- but the truth is, we usually get beaten in the invention race. But when we do, we just distort and hide the facts a little.

Case in point: Ask any American schoolchild (or even adult) who invented the car and who was the first person in space, and they'll probably tell you Henry Ford and Alan Shepard, respectively -- if they even know, since American schoolchildren these days (and even adults too) are displaying an alarming lack of knowledge. However, that's incorrect.

Henry Ford didn't invent the automobile. Gottlieb Daimler and Wilhelm Maybach invented the first gasoline-powered automobile in Germany back in 1889. Karl Benz invented a similar model the same year, and both models were available in America before Henry Ford invented his Model T in 1896. Yes, Ford did invent the assembly line, but he didn't invent the car.

Alan Shepard wasn't the first man in space either. Our former arch-nemesis the Russians beat us there by a couple of months when a guy named Yuri Gagarin was launched upstairs. Hell, they put a woman into space almost 20 years before we did, and they were also the first to launch a satellite into space.

So the next time you see that Ford commercial talking about the Great American Tradition, realize that the tradition actually came from Europe. However, if you really want to feel patriotic, the next time someone asks you what you are, tell them you're American instead of launching into a full-on explanation about how you're 1/3 Irish, 2/7 Japanese, 1/4 Polish, 2/5 Russian and 1/2 Italian.

Watching bad movies is usually not that amusing, but when you're at the gym and you're looking for something to make the time go by a little more quickly, it helps. It doesn't help when the movie has been dubbed into Spanish and then edited for broadcast TV.

However, it does provide amusement when you're reading the closed captioning (this is the gym, after all, we're all wearing headphones) and someone in the movie swears. His mouth says, "Shit!" His closed-captioned text says, "Maldicion!" -- which translates literally into "bad word."

Hollywood.

It's not just a place. It's a living, breathing entity. And everyone around here is a part of it. I realized that tonight when I spent 20 minutes trying to figure out why my server at the bar I was at looked so familiar. And as soon as I asked him if I'd seen him somewhere, it clicked. He played the kid, Jesse, in The Ref -- one of my favorite films.

Somehow, the cosmic balance of it all seemed skewed tonight.

There's got to be some kind of city ordinance about what time what particular work can be done. For the second morning in a row, I was awoken just shy of 8AM because of really loud noises going on either above my head or outside my window. Yesterday morning, it was someone dropping heavy objects on the floor of the apartment above my room. This morning, it was someone weedwacking the shrubbery surrounding the apartment building next door.

I'm remembering a scene from L.A. Story where Victoria Tennant asks Steve Martin what time loud noises -- in this case, loud sustained booming sounds -- are acceptable. He replies, "Between 9 and 9:15." I always thought that was the general time acceptable for all loud things to begin, despite the fact that my alarm doesn't go off until after that, since that's when normal business hours start. There's too many out of work actors and musicians in this town who stay up until all hours of the morning and then sleep until noon for heavy yardwork to be acceptable before 8AM.

It's going to be one of those days, I can tell already.

LOS ANGELES -- In an inexplicable accident, a resident man's head exploded while he was using the facilities at a local gymnasium. The man, who has been identified as the Blogger from Reality Remixed, appeared to have reached a point where he could take no more.

"I don't know what happened," cried a young woman who was using the elliptical trainer next to his at the moment of the tragedy. "He was running on the machine like a madman and I heard the loud strains of some kind of rock music coming from his headphones. Then his head blew up. It seemed too much like the script I read a few days ago."

People close to the blogger noted that he had been under stress lately, and that the man had had problems adjusting from the East Coast to the West Coast. "He made derogatory remarks all day about ranch dressing," a co-worker said. "And he had been complaining that there weren't any Dunkin' Donuts within a few thousand miles."

"I think when he saw that group of attractive L.A. women all wearing Spandex, it was just too much for him," postulated one of the trainers at the gym. "Tragically, this happens every now and then with transplants."

Services will be held at Canter's Deli on Fairfax Boulevard in West Hollywood, where mourners are encouraged to eat pastrami & corned beef sandwiches on rye, black-and-white cookies and almond horns in memory of the blogger. Homer Simpson will be making an appearance.

So Queens of the Stone Age put out an album called Songs For the Deaf. Unfortunately, a group of English people took them a little too seriously. Apparently, a group of 37 deaf people showed up at a concert QOTSA was giving in Hull, Wales, expecting a special event for deaf people. They walked up to the club entrance and began signing at the doorman, who ostensibly didn't understand what they were trying to say. The group was rather upset, especially since some of them had specifically contacted the club regarding the night for Songs For the Deaf.

D'oh.

Sometimes I wish I didn't have such a rather uncommon name because then there'd be a song out there with my name in it. If any of you bloggers are rock stars, write a song with the name "Keith" in it for me, will you? Thanks. Oh, and I'd appreciate it if it were a complimentary reference... not something like "Keith frolicked with the town goat/So we ran him out of the county."

The lottery never seems as popular as when it breaks some incredible mark. The California state lottery is up to around $85 million now, and people are buying tickets left and right. I went down to the little convenience store in the building I work in so I could buy some gum, and I had to wait like 5 minutes in line because so many people were buying tickets. People were picking up $20, $50, even $75 worth of lottery tickets.

It's not the chances that matter to people. It's the dream. It doesn't matter that the chances of any ticketholder winning are about the same as getting hit by lightning while having a penny that was dropped from the top of the Empire State Building slice through your arm at the same moment as you're contracting leprosy and getting humped by a chihuahua. People will still see themselves up there on TV, accepting that oversized check, buying that big luxury home and yacht and retiring.

Me, I'm planning on going into work tomorrow. And the day after that, and the day after that. I didn't buy any tickets, and I didn't think of going in on the office pool until it was too late. So that dollar that I didn't spend on the lottery can buy me a pack of gum again in a few days.

But there are days when I do dream about that oversized check and what I'd do with it.

After a 13 1/2 hour workday and a couple of martinis at the ever-popular Liquid Kitty, my brain is mush. Here's all that I could come up with to furnish you with fresh content for the morning:

It aggravates me when people do things on TV that are so pathetically fake. I happened to catch the first minute of that reality dating show "EX-treme Dating" where the people's exes also accompany you on the date (and I say the first minute because I turned it off as soon as I saw who was hosting it). That wretchedly annoying Jillian Barberie started the show by holding a conversation on her cell phone, then saying into it, "Ooh, I'm sorry, I've got to go. Later..."

Of course she wasn't really on the phone. You think that the show's director would actually allow her to take a call on her phone right as they were taping? Of course not! Yet there she is, pretending to be speaking to someone. How fake is that?

Tomorrow: How we were able to find conclusive proof that Al Roker is an alien.