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Last night's MTV Video Music Awards were a bit of a gong show, but not necessarily for the reasons we were expecting. For weeks, pop oddball Lady Gaga promised fans and media rubberneckers that the performance she was planning for the VMAs would blow our collective minds. She claimed her vision was "rooted in New York-style performance art," and that she'd been planning the stunt for "months and months."

Gaga did her best to commandeer everyone's attention right off the bat, surprising folks on the red carpet with her choice of date. While Muppet-human relationships are strange to begin with, Gaga's decision to make out with Kermit the Frog was even more unnerving given that she recently decapitated a colony of Kermie clones for one of her insane outfits. One feared that by night's end, her escort might suffer the same tragic fate.

Her performance of the single Paparazzi was certainly histrionic. While Gaga's fond of name-checking Andy Warhol, I'm not sure there was a clear link between her gory shtick and the stylized, deadpan work produced in the late artist's Factory. The Paparazzi stunt found Gaga in a blonde poodle wig, oozing blood from her chest as she staggered and stuttered, pretending to have been mortally wounded while dancers clad in white spandex looked on.