Vanilla Ice Breaks Up MTV's Party

By DAVID BAUDER AP Television Writer

NEW YORK (AP) -- It somehow seemed fitting when Vanilla Ice trashed MTV's lame party.

The network recently gathered four comedians for a smirking review of the 25 lamest music videos, as determined by viewers voting online.

The "winning" videos, to be revealed on the cable network starting Saturday at 1 p.m. EDT, will be exiled from MTV forever, their unique form of artistry never to be seen again.

"25 Lame" is an appropriate exercise, perhaps even overdue. The network, a teen-ager itself at age 18, has seen video style go through enough changes to have a real history of its own. With MTV now refreshed and focused again after a few years of drifting, it's a, good time to look back.

Unfortunately, "25 Lame" is something of a missed opportunity, and it's hard to know who's to blame: The viewers or MTV itself.

The three "lamest" videos -- skip the rest of this paragraph if you want to remain in suspense -- are by actors who were moonlighting in music: Eddie Murphy, Arsenio Hall and Don Johnson.

Now that's just too lazy. Such vanity projects are by definition lame; there are good reasons why actors act rather than sing. And nobody even remembers seeing these videos.

Wilson Phillips, Gerardo, Hammer, Debbie Gibson, Nelson ... they all make the list. Well, sure. It's easy to call them lame. A bold move would be to go after some cringe-worthy moments of people who count. Everyone loves Bruce Springsteen and Courteney Cox, for example, but have their careers ever seen a lamer moment than "Dancing in the Dark"?

Here are some suggested spoof targets: rap stars with messiah complexes, or those who think a video is worth beating someone up over (Puffy? Are you there, Puffy?). Or lumpy stars who cast gorgeous models as their girlfriends. Or lo-fi rock bands who think out-of-focus camera shots and black-and-white photography make an artistic statement.

Instead, comics Jon Stewart, Denis Leary, Janeane Garofalo and Chris Kattan sit around making fun of musicians we already love to laugh at. Some videos were so dull, and unfamiliar, that they couldn't think of much to say.

Into the buzz saw strode Vanilla Ice, now a punk rocker using his given name Rob Van Winkle. He was delivering a copy of "Ice Ice Baby," the glossy hit even he admits he can't stand anymore.

"Do you want to be called Vanilla Ice? Mr. Ice? Rob?" a producer whispered to him backstage, before he went on the set.

"Rob," Van Winkle answered.

He watched "Ice Ice Baby" with the four comedians, who resisted mocking it with Van Winkle sitting next to them. At its end, he was handed a baseball bat for a symbolic crushing, and cryptically said he would give a taste of his new stage act.

Van Winkle shattered the video but didn't stop there. Another swing laid waste to a table, sending a shower of popcorn to the floor. He stalked over to a Debbie Gibson mannequin, which went sprawling after a direct hit between the eyes. He raised the bat over his head and prepared to hammer a VCR, but held back. Garofalo cowered in a fetal position, her arms protecting her head.

When he was done, the studio set looked like a living room trashed by a tornado.

"Mom said not to have a party while she was away," said a shaken Garofalo, who chain-smoked her way through the rest of the taping, "and now look -- the house is trashed."

It was a wonderful moment, precisely because it was the only real mystery of the afternoon. Was Van Winkle just playing around? Was he really mad, taking vengeance on MTV for making him a star and then making him a joke? Was he nuts? No one was really sure.

"I'm so ready to get rid of that video," he said later offstage. "Every time I go somewhere, it's ding ding ding ding-ding-ding-ding."

He used to be bitter toward MTV, and even descended into a drug-fueled suicide attempt five years ago. Since then, he has come to realize that whether you're being praised or ridiculed, it's only showbiz.

Nobody bothered cleaning up after Van Winkle, and the countdown ended with only one more incident. This happened backstage, when cameraman Peter Abraham had a sickening revelation while watching Don Johnson's "Heartbeat" video.

Abraham remembered working on the video's set a decade earlier as a production assistant, lugging equipment around and getting a hernia for his trouble. Fortunately for him, unlike Dweezil Zappa, Paul Shaffer and Johnson, the evidence of his participation wasn't preserved on tape.

"Kind of brings you full circle, eh?" one of his colleagues said.

Abraham responded with an expletive.