With the addition of DirecTV to my life, I'm once again able to watch my beloved MTV2. The cool videos and artists are once again flowing into my home. I can't tell you how much I enjoy the video of The White Stripes' "Fell in Love With a Girl" -- it's made totally out of Legos. However, it all comes with a compromise. I'm once again exposed to the aggravation that is Iann Robinson. It's not so much his material that bothers me, it's his blase "I'm so cool because I'm cutting edge and not into the mainstream bands like the rest of you because I'm a metalhead" attitude. For example, the network threw him in with Sheryl Crow to get an interview with her on her new album. Granted, he might not have been the biggest fan of hers and the fact that she took him along shopping as kind of a kitsch entertainment thing to amuse the viewers might not have amused him. But for God's sake, man -- respect the artist if not the art. Telling her "well, this is better than sitting in the office doing nothing and staring at a wall" when she asks you if you're having fun is not a great thing to say. Fake it. That's what being on TV is all about. MTV's been faking it for years. Just look at Carson Daly. The man said in an interview that he hates the music that he's playing on "TRL" and looks down with disdain at boybands, but he sucks it up and doesn't talk crap about them because it's not the cool thing to do on the air. Personally, I would kill for a shot to just hang out with Sheryl Crow. The fact that he had one and he wasted it so badly just makes me angry. Another bad outcome is that unless she's very gracious about the situation, it'll probably make her angry that MTV stuck her with this guy who obviously couldn't care less about her to the point of insulting her, and it might make her come off looking stuck-up on camera. It's like being on a bad date where your date has made it abundantly clear that he's more interested in the waitress than you. You can take the high road and try to just get through it with a smile pasted on your face, or you can let it get to you and blow up at the guy at the risk of looking like a bitch.

There are a few circumstances under which I don't respect the artist or the art. I know that most people say that they put hard work into whatever they've produced, but sometimes I really wonder. Jackson Pollack has a painting hanging in the Museum of Modern Art that's worth $4 million -- it's a four-foot-long rectangular beige canvas with a red stripe painted across it. That's all. And the damn thing is being venerated as a masterpiece. Hell, I could do that, and I have absolutely no art talent whatsoever. A three-year-old could do that. And this is what we consider "high art"?