Wait, at least she didn't french kiss anyone, male or female on stage!

That's the most entertaining thing she's capable of.

Justin Timberlake's performance was also pretty good. I really enjoyed the dancing! He deserves every penny he earns!

Well it's refreshing that his dancing earned points at the MUSIC awards. Justin Timberlake couldn't play "Come to Jesus" in whole notes. He, like many sports figures, don't produce for the world a 1/100th of what they earn. If you are entertained by him, that's great. But don't put a subjective price on his worth. To me, he's worth...wait a sec...let me get my calculator out again. Oh yes...here it is. Zero. Just another fevered ego convincing the masses that he knows anything about music and HIDING, just like you seemed to understood in your last post, behind the same kind of rationalizations. "Well who are you to judge what is good? Just don't listen if you don't like it. Just hit the BACK button"

(Ok, am I now falling into the group you chastised in your last article? Well that's why I say subjectivism is evil - see I HAVE a degree in music. And like it or not, Timberlake is NOT a musician - he's an entertainer. This guy advocates music education throughout the country, and he can't play!! Maybe he wishes he had some. You've basically just done the equivalent of saying that a guy that swallows multiple colors of paint and then pukes it up on canvas is a great painter - particularly if he wiggles his ass just right in the process. (This is the MUSIC awards, isn't it? Not the DANCE awards?) I already know the answer to that. It's the latter. That's fine. To MTV - Just stop calling it "music awards." Without their producers and marketting agents, these people would be worth...*looks at calculator again*...oh...you remember the answer, don't you?

Sorry. Pet peeve. I can play circles around Timberlake while I'm in a coma. I have musical knowledge in my brain he can't possibly comprehend, and I have ethics that disallow me from preying on people that don't understand and taking their money while pretending to be something I am not. The fact that you say he's worth every penny he's paid is an affront to all real musicians everywhere. I know many starving musicians that are better than me, and therefore better than him. Sadly neither they or I can *dance* to the satisfaction of supposed MUSIC lovers. He's a whore, and you're buying him. And don't get me wrong, it isn't just Timberlake - it's 97% of mainstream musicians. It's no longer about who can play - it's about who can dance. WTF?

See, and this is why I drive home the point that I am not a musician, but a folklorist. If it weren't for tablature, I'd be hard pressed to play at a level even remotely resembling competence. And I know that, and have great respect for those who DO have the ability I lack.

But folk music is another art form altogether.

Damn, Ock.

I think Justin Timberlake is a great ENTERTAINER/musician/dancer/whatever. Lots of people do.

Do you have to music snob all over everything?

FS: I didn't see the VMAs, but I watched MTV's clip of Britney's performance. It was terrible. Her hair looked gross, she moved around like she was on tranquilizers or something, and the lip-syncing was totally off.

She is NOT fat. She has had 2 kids in 2 years and she looks great considering. But compared to the vicious Brit bod we're used to, it was a little disappointing.

And the sexier part of the routine near the end almost worked except she seemed so bored and uncoordinated.

Poor girl.

Haha, you guys take yourselves waaaaay too seriously!

And I do feel sorry for Britney in a "how sad" sort of way.

PMS much?

Well, this is a good followup to your last one FS, and Ock jumped at it.  As I cant hold a note in a bucket, I will let the pros say who is and who is not a muscian.  I just say I dont care for Brittney or Justin.

Give me Morrison and Santana.

The masses don't want music, they want entertainment. There is no room for an unentertaining musician. If the musicianship is entertaining in and of itself, that's great - otherwise, you have to add something to it. And then you have the real entertainers, the ones who only have music so they can dance to it...

Nothing wrong with them. But they're no musicians.

It's akin to one of the masses walking up to a game of Imperial or Diplomacy and saying, "Hey, is that a new version of Risk?" "Yeah, it's just like Risk, there's a board and people are playing it."

Same with music and entertainers... if you're not one, you'll get confused between the two.

Do you have to music snob all over everything?

I dunno, Texas. If you ever need to have an organ removed, let ME do it. Unless you're a doctor snob.

PMS much?

Aw cmon, TW. That was beneath the you I've come to know and love. Mari feels strongly, as do I, that there are a lot of really talented people that would love to add to culture in the way that Michelangelo and da Vinci did, but they can't because some guy with a crayola crayon has a better marketting agent. There's no need to stoop to the effective calling of names. Are you projecting?

Projecting what?

And if you think being a snot is beneath me, you don't know me very well.

Haha, and do you really think you can compare medicine to music? LMAO. I understand it's you guys' passion and life's work and all, but dayum. Y'all are just INSANE about it.

I'm sorry. I bow before you guys' intelligence. I am a slack-jawed, drooling moron and I will avoid making any comments about music or ENTERTAINMENT or Britney Spears or medicine ever again as I obviously am not smart enough to be entitled to an opinion.

I still think better of her and figure I just don't understand, or she doesn't, or we both (she and I) don't.

I'm sure I DON'T understand but I don't think it's an insult to "real" musicians for someone to want to bring sexy back while they're washing dishes or for someone to think it's sad that a beautiful girl with a lot of opportunities has turned her life into a train wreck and taken others (including innocent children) with her.

I am just not in the mood to be jumped on for having a shallow opinion. We can't all be geniuses.

Well, TW, if you read my own article on the subject you'll see I don't care about the fact that entertainers exist. I don't think that every musical experience is supposed to be some intellectual musical self-aggrandizement festival, and if you thought that, you missed the point.

1. There are a lot of really talented musicians - many of them scratching for a living.

2. Pop stars use a very few of those musicians as their "band" and they get none of the high dollars the star gets.

3. The "Pop star" is usually "made" by a producer and an image is given them by whatever conglomerate is footing the bill. They don't do it for the craft...they do it for the dollar, and the actual musicians who play the gigs get peanuts in comparison even though the star could not exist without them.

You might say that "well. without the star's popularity, they wouldn't have a gig." Sadly, that isn't the case. One shitty gig is just like another shitty gig. There's plenty of them to go around. Unfortunately, they don't pay very well.

It isn't fair because without the musicians, there would be no star. I just want respect for genuine musicians - the ones playing in the background while star X rakes in the dough. Is that wrong?