Wonderful World Of MTV

Everyone remembers the cool table, or the cool corner in their high school--the place where the Gap clad boys and the lusted-after girls giggled and flirted and ate their julienne-cut carrots. Years later you ask yourself where those cool kids are now, whether they still go to Jaques Louis to get their hair cut, whether they all still drive Cabriolets.

I know the answer: Those people now work at MTV.

And that is the first thing that Soman Chainani, my partner in crime, and I think as we step off that fated train into the area of New York City that should be renamed MTV Central. The titanic offices overlook larger than life posters of a frolicking Nikki Taylor; huge windows glisten in the sun, custom designed so that everyone--and I do mean everyone --can look into the haven of coolness that few--and I do mean very few--may enter. The extent of this exclusivity we soon find out.

We swagger into the main office, and see a security guard standing front and center in front of a huge escalator. We look cool, we look official, unlike the hundreds of people ogling the plush offices in the cold.

"Excuse me, sir, we're here from the Harvard Crimson. We have a meeting with..." I try to ask the guard. I smile my cutest smile. I turn up the southern accent. He is not convinced.

"Wait dere. Right in dat corner, " he says in some non-descript accent. "In de corner." This time we're not convinced.

Soman has a camera, I'm holding a tape recorder. We look legit I think. We get past the security guard. We smile. We are cool. Teenage girls standing outside glare.

We swagger up the steps, past the gift shop, past the cheesy caf, and bump right smack dab into another security guard, another non-descript accent.

"Who are you!"He doesn't ask. He exclaims.

I feel confident. Soman looks confident. We are certainly cool enough to be here.

"We have a meeting," I say. "We're on the security list," Soman says.

Security flips through a stack of papers without really looking. "No names are on here." We try again, naming a MTV contact that we're supposed to meet. "Megan Henry," we try. He looks up. The name is recognized. Buzz.

Gigi, the secretary, is sitting behind a desk in a room straight out of the '80s. Big purple plushy couch thing, funky colors, all very modern, very Madonna. Gigi calls our contact, we are sent to the twenty-fifth floor.

We see another security guard and manage to dodge him without having to decode his accent. A row of ten or twelve elevators suddenly makes us feel very small. Kurt Loder steps out of one. We smirk, pretend we're not impressed, step on. Twenty-fifth floor please.

On the 25th floor, we come face to face with a huge poster of the three beautiful ones as we step off the elevator - Cindy (Crawford), Rebecca (Romijn-Stamos), Daisy (Fuentes) - playfully popping the corks off a bottle of champagne. I wonder if Rebecca is that leggy in person. I look at Soman, he looks at me, we both know we've managed to enter an alternate universe. Welcome to their world. And we know there's no going back. We ask the secretary to buzz our contact.

I had talked to Megan on the phone several times before I met her, and she was extremely friendly and helpful in facilitating our story on the MTV behemoth, TRL, or Total Request Live. In person, she is just as we both expect - blonde, perky, energetic, and - ah, yes, the magic word - cool. She directs us through the narrow offices, past the billiards room (yes, home of a massive pool table) and directly to the offices of Deb Savo, the Executive Producer of TRL (see interview on page ______). Megan tells us that we have until 3:00 before the TRL taping.

We peek into a few offices. Nice-looking people, sitting in front of computers, sipping latte's over their work. Techie-looking guys that don't quite fit in, working over layouts. We pass Dave Holmes in the hall. We want to linger, and try to meet other famous people, but being dorks and thus afraid of security guards and the happenstance that Megan may find us snooping, we press the elevator button and descend.

Thalia, winner of the infamous - and never-ending - "I Wanna Be a VJ Contest" clomps by in big boots and poofy hair. She looks a lot cooler than she does on TV. I can't help thinking how huge her ego must be. But it is comforting, that she too, unlike the rest of everyone at MTV, was once one of us staring at the popular crowd at the lunch table, looking at everything from the outside.

Outside, we decide to play at being real reporters. A crowd has begun to gather below the window of the TRL studio. We zoom into two girls, fourteen or fifteen years old, with C-A-R-S-O-N written across their foreheads. So, we ask, why do you love Carson Daly?

They shriek because we look rather official with our mini-recorders.

"We love Carson because he is so hot and handsome and the show is great and all the bands. We really love Christina Aguilera and Will Smith and we are hoping hoping hoping that Mandy Moore is on the countdown and Kid Rock too and I think that TRL is the best . . ."

I run out of tape. Soman has more. A mother asks me how to get inside. I shrug. Another guy breaks away from his friends and runs up to us.

"TRL is awesome because Carson is THE MAN and the show is really cool, and its great that we get to choose the videos that they play, and man can you by any chance get me and my girlfriend up there or maybe give this to Carson for us or can we be on the show, please, man?"

A man shoves his toddler in Soman's face.

"She came all the way from Puerto Rico to see Carson! She must see Carson!"

They see us walking back through those security guards, and you can almost smell the jealousy. This time, we breeze right by the security guard. He doesn't look up. But security guard #2 doesn't remember us from an hour before. We tell him to ask Gigi. We know Gigi will recognize us. Gigi frustratedly looks us up and down, and says she's never seen us before in her life. We spout off some jargon and names and one rings a bell somewhere. She lets us back in. I am happy to return to my seat on the big purple plushy couchy thing. Enter Kelly, Miss TRL herself.

Kelly is a dead ringer for Kelly Martin. She is wearing a trendy patterned shirt and long flowy skirt. I would have never been able to talk to her in high school. But she smiles wide with her glimmering white teeth and perkily asks if we're student reporters. We nod.

We are shuffled to the front of a line of about twenty girls, who I think look to be about fifteen, all decked in fuscia tube tops, black stretchy pants, and enough hair gel to last John Stamos but a few weeks. They look old, but you can tell that they are still pubescent, if only because they are still at that blessedly skinny age where their metabolism digests fudge like mine does celery.

"We're in eighth grade," she tells me. All I can think of is that my mother would have never let me wear a tube top in eighth grade.

They are squealing now, just as they squeal when we are ushered into the studio, squeal when Carson enters, squeal when the show starts. I look over at Soman and feel sorry for him. He is one of the only guys there. He looks miserable.

The actual studio is in a corner of the building, thus maximizing the view from the building's huge glass ceilings. The crowd has gathered outside, and is clamoring for a wave from Carson, from the studio manager, from us. I wave feebly. They wave back. Some are holding signs. The man from Puerto Rico is back, holding his daughter and a huge sign that says: "Carson we came all the way from Puerto Rico to see you! Let us up to give you a hug!" I'm wondering if the "us" in the sign includes the dad. From the look on his face, I imagine that it does. He looks terribly excited.

Soman and I are moved to the front of the audience and separated - probably to make the audience a little more, er, representative. The girl next to me is angry because she wanted to sit next to her cousin. Kelly tells us that she - that all of us - are going to be on TV. The girl quiets down. I get all giddy, Soman seems to sink a little bit more into depression. Enter Carson. More squealing.

Carson looks bigger than he does on my small-screen TV, wearing a lot more makeup and even more hair gel. He seems pretty smooth, reading over his lines and joking with the crew, and with Kelly. I know that all the girls are remembering their earmarked pages of Seventeen that declared the much hoped-for break-up of Carson and Jennifer Love Hewitt. The girl sitting next to Soman calls a hesitant Carson over.

"How's Quinn?" She doesn't ask. She shrieks. Quinn is Carson's sister. It frightens me that I know who she is.

Carson looks confused, as he often does. "Quinn? How do you know her?"

The girl's face crumples into tears. "Because I'm obsessed with you." She can't stop weeping. Kelly comes over to console her. Soman looks disgusted. Carson looks bewildered. He is called over to take a picture with a lovely looking family.

"That is so sweet that he does pictures! " I sigh to the cameraman.

"That's his boss," the camerman smirks. He gives me the "I do all the work around here but he gets all the credit and hot chicks" kind of look. I give him my best "I understand" look. And I really do.

The show is about to start. We are roused to applause by a dinky and wholly unnecessary "Applause" sign. These girls would applaud for anything. My ears start to hurt from pre-pubescent screams. I get in a few shouts here and there, but my voice starts to hurt and my hands burn from clapping. I'm too old for this.

It's cool to watch a live show, to see how everything happens, to think that you could yell out something and instantly 1 million viewers could hear and see it. Kelly glares at those talking and silence falls as Carson gets the show going. He seems less charismatic in person, a little tired, a little ready to go home. The first video on the countdown in Metallica.

Kelly asks for volunteers to request a song. On TRL, at random intervals, emails pop up plugging songs, as well as faces of people saying why they requested a certain video. I want to do Backstreet Boys - the girl next to me looks like she's about to cry again when I say that. She does Backstreet Boys. I get 98 degrees. Soman decides to gear up for Christina Aguilera. Kelly nods as I practice what I'm going to say.

During a commercial break, Carson chats with Kid Rock on his cell phone. It's just another phone call for Carson, but we all sit in silence, impressed and anxious to overhear. Girls ask him to sign dollar bills, t-shirts, old receipts, anything that they have on them. One girl in a binding tank top gets him to sign her hand. A smart-ass friend of hers reminds her that she'll have to wash her hand eventually. I can't tell whether the girl is going to cry or punch her friend in the nose. She rubs the writing to her face.

Soman had noted that an hour and a half would be a long time to sit there and watch without being able to get up. I had disagreed then, but soon I understand. My eyes start to droop. I start to get jealous of the girls in tube tops because my turtleneck is starting to get really hot. And itchy. But, alas, finally, my turn comes to request my song. I haven't been so nervous since my sixth grade flute recital. My fifteen seconds of fame. My fifteen seconds of fame. My fifteen seconds . . .

"And 5, 4, 3, 2 . . ." the stage manager points at me. I clutch the microphone.

"My name is Deirdre Mask and I'm from North Carolina, and I wanted to request 98 degrees because I think that they are sooooooo hot!!!" I cheer. The girls cheer. I'm finished. Watching the video, they look hotter than ever. So many beautiful people. Sigh. Soman is up shortly after. He requests Christina, and comments on her utter "fineness." Cheers. Squeals. Still 40 minutes to go.

Rage Against the Machine, who were playing a New York arena, come on the show to promote their gig. They look a little awkward, they pace around for a while, and it's pretty obvious that this isn't really their thing. We cheer some more - since that's our only voice and we figure it might earn us an autograph or an interview. MTV offers a duel between a person on the street and a caller for tickets to the night's show. Apparently, a bunch of girls in the studio know the caller from school. "That's Matt, oh my gosh, that's Matt!" they shriek. Matt must be hot. One of the girls is hysterical. Kelly glares at her again.

The countdown has a lot more diversity than I remember. The show has a bad reputation for having a lot of squeaky-clean boy bands and Britney Spears lookalikes. But several of the bands show a lot of diversity, from Juvenile, to Metallica, to Destiny's Child and a premiere of Kid Rock's fantastic new song "Only God Knows Why."But this is the era of Nick Carter, of course, so the Backstreet Boys hold the number one and the shrieking girls up the decibel level one last time. The show wraps, we wave goodbye to Megan and Kelly, the woman at the coat check compliments my sweater, we are ushered out into Gigi's place, and we head past security guards 1,2,3 into the fresh, and rather uncool, New York air.

For the first time in the whole day I don't care about how I look or what I'm saying - which gets me thinking about how much of MTV is image related. Actually, it's all image. Image isn't necessarily a bad thing - and if there's a time and place for it all, it's at MTV. The smiles, the bleached hair, the big purple plush couchie thing all are too conspicuously engineered, too much of a cover for something bubbling underneath.

With this realization, the cool kids don't seem nearly as cool, just better at pretending. I could compare it to Alice in Wonderland - sliding down the rabbit hole into this alternate universe. The trip is fun, the company pleasantly eccentric and entertaining - but isn't it nice to return to the land where JC Penny and roller-skating rinks still cut it?