So I’ve successfully infiltrated the 2008 MTV Video Music Awards. I’m currently holed up in the dark confines of the press compound here on the Paramount Studios lot, awaiting the beginning of the red carpet arrivals pre-show, watching the raw footage from the MTV camera people outside on the carpet. It’s too bad they don’t broadcast this stuff, because watching a giant pack of paparazzi screaming their heads off at lesser Hills personalities is pretty hilarious.

As you can clearly see in the photo above, I’m having SO MUCH FUN passing the hours here in the press bunker. I’ve been giving fake press conferences, pretending to be Lil Wayne. I tried to roam around the studio lot, hoping to find a giant prop storeroom, from which I could steal long-forgotten treasures from the set of Bill & Ted’s Excellent Adventure, but my quest was cut short by one of the MTV press ladies, who looked like she might decapitate me with her clipboard. I do not bother to tell her that the Defamer guys are already running amok on the lot, making a mockery of her precious security efforts.

So now I’m back in the press pen with the other sunlight-averse members of the media. Let me bring you up to date on the LA weekend so far. Last night I went to the Rock Band II show with the Plain White T’s and Panic! At the Disco at the House of Blues to benefit LIFEbeat, though I’d say the event’s best performances came from the random drunk audience members who thought it would be a good idea to go play Rock Band, poorly, in front of a bar full of people. Panic! At the Disco came in at a close second. After that, I went to the Roxy for the Rhapsody party, at which T-Pain regaled us all with song. He is amazing. Also I met New York from Flavor of Love and told her the only reason I don’t audition for her dating shows is out of fairness for the other competitors, because she would clearly love me most.

So what else? My arrival on the Paramount lot was greeted by a large elephant being hosed off by some dude near the red carpet, as one would naturally expect. Our MTV brethren at Buzzworthy have been entrenched here all week, relentlessly covering the various rehearsals and preparations that go into putting on a spectacle of this magnitude. Apparetnly Britney is in the building.

The Jonas Brothers are going to be performing on a large outdoor stage that looks like Brooklyn, albeit a Brookln where a horde of crazed tweens run wild through the streets.

There is a giant monster truck in the parking lot that says Tokio Hotel all over it, though no one seems to know why.

Kanye West is performing in the giant take from that part in The Truman Show where Jim Carrey is on the boat and realizes the world isn’t real. I’m hoping MTV’s big surprise is that reality as we know it is non-existnant and that we’re all just supporting characters in a big reality show about Kanye.

T-Pain just showed up to the red carpet on that elephant, and John Norris is freaking the f*ck out about it.

We’ve lost our video feed in the press room, and now the screens are all just broadcasting a rerun of The Hills. LC is having a salad and complaining about something, like always.

Wait, video feed is back, and the MTV news host is struggling to conduct a conversation with Stephanie Pratt. Neither of them seem to be very good at words.

I’ll be live-blogging from inside the show starting at 9pm ET, but in the meantime, keep checking back for my random commentary on the various things that happen until then – after the jump!

I snuck out again and managed to get over to the main stage, where I passed Audrina Partridge, who looks surprisingly hot in person, though was flanked all sides by unimaginable douchebags. Also, her teeth are whiter than John Norris trying to interview T-Pain.

Whoever decided to put MTV newsman Sway up in the action news copter clearly has a sense of humor.

What you can’t see is me, directly offscreen, having a raging joygasm over being in the presence of such supreme glorious amazingness.