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1 'Train Wreck' At MTV Awards Engineers Fun Comeback; Another Crashes Again

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The Tampa Tribune

Published: September 11, 2007

Overshadowed by a Britney Spears performance that became the moment of the MTV Video Music Awards, young Caitlin Upton continued to stretch her 15 minutes of fame on the awards show Sunday night.

Caitlin who?

If you blinked or ducked out for a bathroom break, you might have missed Upton, a Miss Teen USA runner-up from South Carolina who will be forever linked with America's geographically challenged.

The YouTube star who mangled the answer to a pageant question last month was on the red carpet at the MTV event.

During the program, Upton appeared on camera to make a plug for mtv.com. It was a parody of her infamous blundering answer to a pageant question about why one in five Americans can't find the United States on a world map.

During the Miss Teen pageant, she was like a deer caught in the headlights when she blurted out in true Valley Girl fashion that possibly 'um, some people out there in our nation don't have maps.'

She continued with, 'uh, I believe that our, uh, education like such as, uh, South Africa and, uh, the Iraq and everywhere like such as, and I believe that they should, uh, our education over here in the U.S. should help the U.S., uh, should help South Africa and should help Iraq and the Asian countries, so we will be able to build up our future.'

It was a train wreck, all right, but America quickly forgave her. Now we have embraced her for cashing in on the ridicule.

After all, some think our president is less coherent at times.

Upton, who graduated from high school with a 3.5 grade point average, claims she was nervous during the Miss Teen competition and didn't hear the entire question. Pageant officials probably weren't expecting a sophisticated answer anyway to the complex question.

So the beauty pageant equivalent of William Hung is now having more fun than the Miss Teen 2007 winner, who was, um, Hilary Carol Cruz of Colorado (I had to look it up).

Cruz got an easy question: Which do you prefer: Paris Hilton, Nicole Richie or Lindsay Lohan? She wisely said they are all bad role models, which is the wholesome, right thing for a Miss Teen to say.

The 18-year-old Upton has recorded an amusing geography quiz for People magazine ( www.people.com). She has an agent, and the bookings are piling up.

On MTV Sunday night, our Miss MapQuest urged viewers to vote for the best video music awards moments at mtv.com. In a scripted spiel, she noted that 'Nevada Las Vegans never have fun because some people don't have meat and I believe they should.' She also threw in a couple of 'such as' lines.

On Saturday, she appeared on ESPN's 'Gameday' in a tongue-in-cheek segment where she helped viewers find Appalachian State University, located in North Carolina.

The once-lowly Appalachian State Mountaineers were still a hot topic one week after the school laid a big whipping on Michigan.

The football team pulled off this sports miracle the day after Upton told 'Today' show co-host Matt Lauer that she planned to attend Appalachian State.

Those plans may change if Hollywood calls.

Meanwhile, Spears isn't likely to recover so quickly from her train wreck: a poor, whacked-out performance of 'Gimme More.'

Dressed in what appeared to be black underwear, she was glassy-eyed, out of step and out of sync with her lip-syncing. A clip of her performance has become another Internet sensation (but in a bad way for Britney).

Her performance opened with a close-up as she sang, 'If you're looking for trouble, you came to the right place,' which is exactly how Elvis Presley opened his 1968 comeback performance. The big difference: His comeback worked.

But Spears may have inadvertently helped generate water-cooler buzz about the MTV awards. If she hadn't showed up, would anyone care about this event? MTV has become known for its offbeat reality shows. Music is no longer the mainstay at MTV and only three categories (editing, choreography and video of the year) actually included the word 'video.'

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