Last night was a big television night for me, thanks largely to two simultaneous pop culture events: the MTV Video Music Awards and Andre Agassi’s match against Marcos Baghdatis at the U.S. Open. The contrast between the two couldn’t have been more striking.

I don’t watch MTV, having aged out of its demographic about, oh, 20 years ago. But the Video Music Awards can have some dramatic spectacle and, occasionally, pretty good music, and I like to check them out just to feel that I have some tiny knowledge of what kids these days are into. Occasionally, something totally weird and memorable happens—Britney Spears with the snake comes to mind—that’s fun to watch.

Britney Spears
Britney, before she married the snake.

But last night’s show was ghastly. First, of course, you have to indulge the paradox that a channel that doesn’t actually show videos is staging an awards show for videos. From the start, that means accepting a foundational level of artifice.

But as the show went on, I found the degree of artificiality overwhelming; I started to feel like Morgan Spurlock in Supersize Me. Everywhere you looked, MTV had stacked the crowd with employees in bright yellow t-shirts whose sole job was to scream and feign enthusiasm. Meantime, every time someone said “fuck,” which is a pretty important word in popular music, MTV bleeped it out. Um…why? This is cable, right? Or is MTV, which is owned by CBS, still haunted by the memory of Janet Jackson’s breast?

The show was hosted by Jack Black, an incredibly successful “actor” whose success makes one feel profoundly alienated from American culture. Black is nothing but schtick; compare his over-the-top, trying-too-hard zaniness to, say, the natural craziness of the late, great John Belushi. Black is irritating, Belushi is wonderful. And the fact that there was a whole segment devoted to his joke band, Tenacious D? Painful to watch.

Then there were the awards themselves: Best Ringtone? (For real, as they say, which in this case means the opposite.) And what in God’s name was Lou Reed doing onstage with Pink, other than looking awkward? I’d bet a hundred bucks he’d never even heard of the band he gave an award to. Reed was being used to give the show some street cred; he should never have played along.

As for the music—well, the new Killers song has potential, but much as I like the Killers, it doesn’t say much about the state of popular music that they are the next biggest thing, after one pretty good but not great record. The best music onstage came from the Raconteurs, who were sort of the house band for the night…but everytime they started playing, MTV would cut to a commercial. I really wanted to see ZZ Top’s Billy Gibbons playing “Cheap Sunglasses” with Jack White. (Billy Gibbons is the real deal.) But no—cut to commercial.

There were three interesting moments in the show, as follows:

1) When “Chamillionaire” won for best rap video, or something, for a song about racial profiling, and talked about how he’d been scheduled to be interviewed on the subject by 20/20, which had canceled the interview at the last moment.

2) Al Gore’s appearance. The kids get it, don’t they? Global warming sucks.

3) The weird protester who jumped onstage to talk about how MTV had refused to give him a show, then urged everyone to visit his website. “Uncool,” Jack Black intoned. Well, maybe. But I think it was the only unscripted moment on the entire show, so I kind of liked it. (I kind of liked Soy Bomb too.) Besides, it’s not like he interrupted anything important. I like Panic! At the Disco well enough, but they are deeply forgettable.


Soy Bomb and Bob
Dylan: At least one
of these guys is
weird.

After watching the VMAs, I felt like I’d eaten about four bags of Cheetos. Bleccch.

Ah…but then there was Agassi in his remarkable match with Baghdatis.

The backstory is crucial: After a 21-year career, Agassi has announced that this will be his final tournament. He’s 36, he has a bad back, and he plays a sport dominated by players half his age. He was in so much pain after his previous match, he required a cortisone shot. Baghdatis is 21; he grew up watching Agassi play.

During the first two sets, Agassi looked as if he had a handle on the younger player. Both men were socking the daylights out of the ball, but Baghdatis was making a lot of unforced errors and Agassi leapt ahead, 6-4, 6-4. Baghdatis was also hitting a lot of winners, though, and during the third set, he came to life. Repeatedly pounding his chest above his heart to fire himself up—reminding himself of where he needed to draw strength from—he took the third set 7-5. You had to admire his—well, his heart.

Agassi came back strong in the fourth set, winning the first four games. But Baghdatis refused to give up—even though only once before in his career had he come from two sets down to force a fifth set. He stormed back, winning the set, 7-5. When he broke Agassi in the first game of the fifth set, it looked like the match was over. He was on a roll, and Agassi looked tired, fading.

But then Baghdatis had to take a medical time-out because his left leg started cramping, and Agassi used the time to regain his strength. He broke Baghdatis back, and the two stayed on serve till 4-4. The level of play was just astonishing. As the match neared the four-hour mark, the two men were slugging away from baseline to baseline; one rally went for 26 shots. These guys are simply great.

And then Baghdatis started to cramp again—only this time, in both legs, and the rules forbade another medical time-out. The man was literally collapsing to the ground inbetween points. But during them, he played his heart out. His first point back after the worst of the cramps, he returned an Agassi serve for a winner. When it was his turn at service, his serve hit 128 miles an hour—after 225 minutes of play.

Which was even more impressive considering that the crowd—virtually none of whom left, despite the late hour—was passionately behind Agassi. The emotion in that stadium was palpable, powerful. You could feel the crowd keeping Agassi going, giving him strength.

And he pulled it out; he won, 7-5, at around 1 AM. It was a remarkable feat, and Baghdatis graciously recognized that in a post-match interview. Agassi, he said, was “a legend,” and you could tell he meant it. Agassi was equally gracious to Baghdatis, and deeply thankful to the fans. When one of them shouted out “We love you, Andrei,” he smiled and called back, “I love you, too,” and you know, it was just wonderful—the emotion, the authenticity, the honesty of the moment, the purity of the connection between Agassi and his fellow New Yorkers. Agassi was so clearly moved, it was impossible not to feel the same way.

A wonderful night in sports—and a reminder that, for all the artifice in our popular culture, there are still moments when we can revel in the beauty of excellence, the humanity of struggle, the joy of community. There is still that; there are still heroes.