Dave on Demand: MTV awards show outdoes the Grammys

What is it they say about old dogs? Every year MTV shows the Grammys exactly how to pull off a lively, entertaining awards show: funny host, minimal number of categories with awards handed out briskly, maximum allotment of stars performing big production numbers, and a pace that starts fast and accelerates.

And every year, the Grammys (even the name sounds musty) put on the same stagnant spectacle. As Peter, Paul & Mary sang, probably at last year's Grammys, "When will they ever learn?"

The Video Music Awards made it look so easy. Have Rihanna tear the roof off the Staples Center before Kevin Hart even got to his opening monologue. And Hart wasted no time, immediately riffing on the club brawl between Drake and Chris Brown, both of whom were in the house and both of whom carted off Moonmen.

Who else was there? Our Fierce Five lady gymnasts, who clearly know the lyrics to all of One Direction's songs. Gabby Douglas even took the stage for a series of somersaults to accompany Alicia Keys on "Girl on Fire."

This is where I have to make a crotchety, Grammy-like editorial statement. Did you see that Keys and her husband, producer Swizz Beatz, took their infant son, Egypt, to the show? Swizz was dandling the baby with a pacifier in his mouth while the amplifiers roared.

This is just so wrong.

Forget the lyrics from the likes of Pink and Lil Wayne that made this the most bleeped-out VMAs in history. I'm talking about sheer volume.

Take it from someone who misspent a good deal of his youth at the Fillmore East rock palace, you don't want to blow out your ears early and end up having to watch TV with earphones on and the volume turned waaay up just so you can hear the dialogue on Breaking Bad.

You end up on the couch, grousing to your nieces, "All you can hear is the commercials anyway!" But enough about me.

Alicia, Swizz - get a sitter next time.

One trend from this year's VMAs that the Grammys should not be emulating: the rash of stage-diving. First, Hart launched himself into the crowd, then Weezy did it, and finally, Taylor Swift.

Don't even think about it, Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Double or nothing. At a news conference hours after Michael Strahan was introduced as Kelly Ripa's permanent cohost on Live!, she was asked when she first knew he'd make a good partner.

She recalled an incident from years earlier, when he was still in the NFL. "I lost a sports bet to Michael," Ripa said. "He had to watch my kids. I was watching him with my kids, and he was so great, so easy, so game! He had on a feather boa and lipstick, and I thought: 'This is great! A man who likes to dress up like a lady!' "

Wait, he was in the boa and lipstick and he won that bet?

Reruns already? How much does NBC love the pilot of Matthew Perry's new sitcom, Go On? Let us count the ways.

The episode is about to get its third "special preview." The network showed it once during the Olympics, once in late August using America's Got Talent as a lead-in, and now is cuing it up again on Monday after the season debut of The Voice.

I didn't think this was possible, but I'm kind of burned out on this show and it hasn't even really started yet.

The odd couple. When Michael Clarke Duncan, the best part of the recent Fox series The Finder, died this week, I was a little surprised to learn that he was a vegetarian.

But I was shocked to read that this gentle behemoth was engaged to notorious Apprentice shrew Omarosa. That's like finding out that Jane Seymour is eloping with Simon Cowell.