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?