2004 Teen Choice Awards: Your Guide to the Fetal Position

Meet Sharin Foo, the new CEO of KMart. Raiding her past brilliantly, the erstwhile Raveonettes bassist tapped the band's "That Great Love Sound" to appropriately fizz up the embattled retailer's rep with the kids, the muthafuckin' kids. The resulting ad campaign depicts the dimpl'd and dishy stars of the WB's "7th Heaven" and "Reba" smiling from behind their mom jeans and oxfords. Foo's licensing coup proves that, if Yankee youths love anything more than belly shirts and Adam Sandler, it's traditionalist Dutch rockers with a hard-on for the Ronnettes and the Jesus & Mary Chain. Sharin Foo – a girl for all seasons!

2004's Teen Choice Awards were nucking futs. With David Spade occupied as a pitch man, hosting duties fell to Fox reality darlings Paris Hilton and Nicole Ritchie. Dull jokes were made regarding their penchant for potty mouth; incredibly, no one mentioned how much Ritchie looks like the mischievous gremlin on the box cover for Ken Russell's Gothic.

As you'd imagine, this year's event was filled with love for the "OC" and Lindsay Lohan, arguably, um, the two biggest things in youth culture this year. But the TCA's also gave major props to WB vehicles like "7th Heaven" and "One Tree Hill," shows that should be subtitled "Teen Hotties in Trouble." I wasn't aware that anyone watched "One Tree" – every time I came upon it, there was a brown haired guy and a blonde haired guy arguing while playing basketball badly. And "Heaven," well, "Promised Land" for adolescents doesn't beat out the "Screen Savers" marathon airing on G4/techTv. But that's me. Actors from the programs caused the already ecstatic Teen Choice audience to scream at even higher decibels, so they're evidently quite the rage with the braces and retainers set. Nice headgear, kid – who do I make this out to?

JoJo will kill us all. Lodged in the top twenty of the Billboard Hot 100 and bringing back the golden age (1999) of Christina Aguilera vocal trills, the starlet's "Leave (Get Out)" is unsafe at any speed, since it's a song about a skeezin' boyfriend ("You left her number on your pho-wo-wo-wO-OO-oo-ne!") sung by a girl who barely makes the ninth grade. JoJo pranced around on the Teen Choice stage, lip synching "Leave" like a seasoned pro, which she essentially is. There's no grace period with these types anymore, no time to be simply a "child star." The days of Dickie Roberts are gone, the line between "America's Most Talented Kid" and coldly professional carbon-based cash machine completely obliterated. Good luck, JoJo – you're the latest real life version of "Six Feet Under"'s Celeste, the leaner, meaner in-betweener birthed from Britney's teat, the vacuous embodiment of all that is glitteringly wrong and criminally provocative about every next minute of today's teen culture. You better run girl; you're much too young, girl.

Was "50 First Dates" that great of a movie? Has "50 Fist Dates," its inevitable porn mirror, been made yet? Like those shows on the WB that I never watch, the Adam Sandler/Drew Barrymore vehicle was a huge hit at this year's TCAs. Sandler took home a few surfboards for it, and even worked in a decent joke about herpes. Other big winners included Steve Perry nose worshipper Ashlee Simpson, as well as Blink-182 for their horrid "Miss You," which somehow manages to be monotone and whiny all at once. Ashton Kutcher sightings were conspicuously mild. Whereas last year's show was alight with trucker hats, 70's cheekbones, and mid-forties pubes stuck in his teeth, the 2004 TCAs only gave Kutcher an award for...well, he was onstage with a surfboard for something or other, before giving the thing away to a civilian with the "worst seat in the house." Aw. Sorry ladies – at a post-show press conference hosted by Kmart's Foo, Kutcher was mum on whose bed his boots have been under. Definitely not Brittany Murphy's – Yow! Someone get that poor girl a hogie!

Kutcher's quiet night is just one example of the cyclical tweener world. (Ja Rule would be another – wait, who?) From the meteoric rise and inevitable Kools 'n' Big Lots spiral of JoJo, to the show's horrifying ritual killing of Randy Jackson (seriously – by the buzzsaw of Leatherface, no less!), each year's Teen Choice Awards is just the latest trash and cash tally sheet. What to expect for next year? Infants with implants, Lenny Kravitz in a sitcom with Manimal, and a very special tribute to that cutie Adam Brody, who dies tragically in a laudanum-fueled cab accident.

JTL