Actually, I thought she looked pretty good in that blue dress, and considering how action-packed this was, she sounded pretty good too. For the VMA’s.

Dare I venture to say that this sketch is also an allegory of our own twisted relationship with Britney? I don’t. But I do admit that I haven’t seen Britney sparkle like this in quite some time.

Thoughts on the show?

8:16 – The show closes with Kanye’s Big Surprise: some fireworks! And now Russell Brand is incoherently yelling about what a wonderful evening we just had. I’m pretty curious to see how this all translates to television, but from where I’m sitting it was…something. Thanks for hanging out with me, and sorry for the unexpected interruption. Now I’m gonna go drink myself into a stupor and try to take The Jonas Brothers’ virginity. Good night!

8:14 – Our man Kanye, sporting a big broken heart on his sleeve, is closing out the show by premiering his much-discussed new song, which features way too much singing and not nearly enough rapping. Everyone’s been buzzing about the surprises he supposedly has in store for us with this, but so far, I’ve got to say: pretty boring. Maybe a laptop will appear and he’ll suddenly start liveblogging himself. That would be awesome.

8:10 – “Olympic gold medalist” Kobe Bryant introduces the Video of the Year nominees. Wait, they still make music videos? Because this is the first time I’ve seen any of these. The nominees are Britney Spears, Chris Brown, The Jonas Brothers, The Pussycat Dolls, and the Ting Tings so everyone loses. Everyone except BRITNEY, who wins again! She’s celebrating the one-year anniversary of her Legendary VMA Meltdown by taking home three awards from the very same show? Ladies and gentlemen, we’re witnessing the dawn of the carefully constructed Return of Britney Spears. It’ll be all you read about in the tabloids this week. She’s normal again, you guys!

8:00 – Kid Rock is performing some song that uses the music from “Werewolves of London” and “Sweet Home Alabama”, but with lyrics that are somehow even more stupid. Good to see he at least bothered to wear one of his nicer track suits.

7:57 – Holy sh*t, I missed the Motherf*cking LaBeouf!?!? I WILL NEVER FORGIVE YOU FOR THIS LA FIRE MARSHALLS!

7:52 – Britney wins again! MTV apparently owed her big time for all those sweet high ratings last years. Paris just kissed her. Gross. If Lohan had made that a menage a trois, the world probably would have exploded. Brit just thanked God again. The Big Man upstairs always has a heck of a night at the VMA’s.

7:51 – You guys, I assure you that Paris Hilton looking towards the wrong camera onstage before mumbling a couple words looks WAY funnier when you see it live. She put in a big day.

7:49 – Celebrities I secretly smelled while waiting to get back inside the show: Paris Hilton, LL Cool J, Slash’s wife, Busta Rymes.

7:43 - OMG, Zac Efron andn Lauren Conrad – mere inches from each other! They always have the most beautiful babies together in my dreams. Tokio Hotel just won the Best New Artist award. They’re so weird-looking. They make those Slipknot dudes look like conservatively-dressed Republicans.

7:39 – Okay Xtina is performing, rocking what appears to be an outfit made completely out of spandex. The wierd thing about seeing this live is MTV keeps shooting from wacky camera spots that I can’t see. So while I hear that beautiful voice of hers, I can’t actually see what she’s doing. Oh there she is. In front of a stage that appears to be a futuristic rendering of Seattel. Okey-dokey then.

7:35 - You guys, I’m SO SORRY. I went to the bathroom, which is outside, and while I was relieving myself of all the Red Bull and mood stabilizers, the LA Fire Marshall decided to block the doors and not let ANYONE back in, including myself and TV superproducer Mark Burnett, who was wearing a scarf and kept reminding the unsympathetic door-keeper that he was Mark Burnett. But I’m back now. What did I miss?

Read the rest, after the jump!

6:57 – Paramore is performing on a stage they just set up in front of us, but thanks to the trickery and MAGIC OF HOLLYWOOD, it will liok like they’re performing at a club on the Sunset Strip as you watch it on television. Special effects!

6:46 - Lohan and Ciara just came out to hand out the Boring Awards for Best Dancing at the VMA’s or something. I can’t really see her from here, but the stench of vodka and lip gloss is unmistakable.

6:42 – Lil Wayne just came down the glass staircase. White pants, no shirt, and a whole lot of bling. Everyone here’s going crazy for him. There’s something strangely compelling about this funny little guy crawling around the stage with his undies hanging out. Weezy seems like the kind of guy it would be fun to be pals with. Now T-Pain’s chasing him around the audience! Bee Tee Dubbs, T-Pain and I buy all our clothes at the same store.

6:40 – F*CK! Michael Phelps had his back to those of us sitting here in the nosebleeds. I can, however, see the teleprompter he’s reading from like a champ. But the good news is it’s WEEZYTIME!

6:36 – This is why DJ’ing is the most bullsh*t job in the world. DJ AM is basically being paid some retarded amount of money just to stand around and text message some starlet he’s trying to sleep with to stay relevant.

6:32 – Insider secret: I’ve been on the lot for the last couple of days and MTV has rehearsed this “girls running through the streets and screaming” moment about 100 times. It was sort of hilarious listening to the state director yelling at a bunch of tweens through a megaphone, telling them to go slower lest they stampede themselves to death in a hysteric fit of Jonasmania.

6:30 – This is the first time I’ve ever heard The Jonas Brothers. They’re sort of like Jack Johnson, only adorable! And there’s three of them! Why do they have to be outside!?! Curse you and your silly Brooklyn set pieces, Paramount Lot!

6:28 - Chris Brown somehow beat out Lil Wayne for Best Male Video, and even seems to know that sh*t belonged to Weezy. He sure is a nice kid, though.

6:26 - You know, from where I’m sitting about 400 yards away, Demi Moore looks kind of like a hotter Audrina Partridge.

6:17 - Best Female Video. Britney’s nominated! If this were the award for Best Opening Of An Awards Show In Less Than 15 Seconds, I’d say she has this in the bag. BUT WAIT! MTV, in all their infinite wisdom, gave her the actual award. She’s getting a standing ovation – even from Pauly Shore! The acceptance speech was short, gracious, and without any inappropriate outbursts or tears.

6:15 - Jamie Foxx just came out, yelling and saying “yeah” a lot and doing a spot-on impression of a coked-up T.I. I smell a biopic! Also, he gives his full unconditional support to the ladies.

6:08 – They just introduced Russell Brand, but the guy who stumbled out looks more like that weird German lead singer of Tokio Hotel. His accent sounds like the first half of My Fair Lady. He just asked everyone to elect Barack Obama. While I support the sentiment, I don’t know if Barack really needs the endorsement of someone who looks like the love child of Keith Richards and Amy Winehouse.

6:03 – There’s smoke and and crazy dancers and Rihanna’s on some scary looking ancient egyptian rolling stage thing. Now she’s on stage, and these dancers are doing all manner of choreographed S&M. I think I might be hallucinating. This stuff is definitely meant to be viewed from the safe distance of television.

6:01 – Show’s starting. Showing us a pretty funny sketch with Jonah Hill and Britney Spears. He’s trying to make out with her and stuff. Aww sh*t, here she comes….she’s on the video screen, making her way here….she’s walking up the stairs, she looks sassy, confident. Aaaaaaand here she is IT’S BRITNEY BITCH! Sparkling! Shining! Not looking ridiculous or falling down! Three or four short sentences, DELIVERED FLAWLESSLY!!!

5:57 – Just saw Perez Hilton, all the way down on the floor, a solid 20 or so rows in front of Pauly Shore. HAHAHAHA but guess who just sat down next to Pauly? Joe “Creepy Dad” Simpson.

5:48 – More on the seating chart: Jonah Hill is sitting a few chairs down from David Byrne, which is sort of surreal. Also Pauly Shore is only like 5 rows in front of me, the blogger. Poor guy.

5:37 - Oh my god, you guys – the liveblog is coming from INSIDE THE HOUSE! I’m now sitting in Stage 16 on the Paramount lot, where in just a few minutes the big show is scheduled to begin. I took an iPhone picture to show you guys the lay of the land from where I’m sitting, literally the very back row, a Siberia reserved for lowly bloggers and anyone else who ever said anything mean about Lauren Conrad. The inside of the place is, in a word, shiny. Everything appears to be a reflective surface, even the people. There are more waiters with trays full of champage than there are people here. Basically, this is probably what it looks like when Diddy dreams at night. I’m gonna go try to grab some of that bubbly so I can work up the courage to go give Michael Phelps a man-hug.

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.

• Lead a candlelight memorial ceremony where the stage from the 2007 VMA’s is symbolically demolished and set on fire, save for a plaque placed on one of those giant moon men in remembrance of what we all lost that day.
• A campy encore of “Gimme More” performed by Britney, Perez Hilton and a bunch of trannies from Reseda who call themselves The Pussycat Dudes (there’s no way this will happen – MTV hasn’t been that cool in years).
• A giant 4-way make-out sesh with Britney and all the dudes from Human Giant.
• Ask Russell Brand to check yes or no about if he wants to get her pregnant.
• Rebel against her handlers by just going ahead and busting out an impromptu performance of “This Little Light of Mine”.
• A serious, sober political plea in which Britney expresses her support for Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin and all her little babies, but then gets pimp-handed by P. Diddy.
• Some pills.
• Have some kind of relapse freakout and just start showing off her junk to any camera that happens to be pointed at her.
• Seize the high-profile opportunity to have a frank discussion with K-Fed about their future as parents.
• Do some kind of sh*tty sketch with Mike Meyers (as Austin Powers) trying to find the lighter side of the fact that she spent the better part of the past 12 months acting like an unhinged lunatic.
• Shock the world by behaving in a sane, lucid, reasonable manner.

To find out what DOES happen, and what we have to say about it, be sure to check into BWE.tv all day this Sunday, September 7th, when yours truly will be bringing you live blog reports from the field at the VMA’s in LA.