New York ? Where are Eminem and Triumph the Insult Comic Dog when you need them?

Despite Shakira’s ever-gyrating hips, Justin Timberlake’s “SexyBack” and the obscured image of a naked midget, Thursday’s MTV Video Music Awards had about as much spontaneity as an episode of “Cribs.”

“You didn’t bring the thunder. You didn’t bring anything,” host Jack Black, looking at himself in his dressing room mirror, said during one skit, unintentionally summing up the evening.

Pink’s parody of bubble-headed pop tarts, “Stupid Girls,” won for best pop video; Beyonce took home a trophy for her booty-shaking “Check On It”; British crooner James Blunt won best male video for his “Beautiful”; and Fall Out Boy won the viewer’s choice award for their clip “Dance, Dance.”

But nobody but a video choreographer’s mother watches this show for the awards. Fans watch for the eye-popping moments: FCC-flaunting skits, nearly naked starlets, foul-mouthed rockers and rappers and those embarrassingly bad dance numbers.

Somewhere along the way, the MTV Awards seemed to have morphed into the Grammys. Christina Aguilera, who previously shocked our senses as the dirty Xtina, looked downright classy as she performed a low-key ballad. And there were no malfunctions whatsoever during Timberlake’s perfunctory show kickoff.

“This show has been lame farts for the past 20 years,” Black said before he took the stage Thursday night for his opening sketch. “And I’m going to light the match!”

Instead, Black continued a trend. He had a promising bit that poked fun at the show’s increasingly staid reputation. Painting himself as the man to inject life back into the VMAs, he took to the stage in a moonman outfit – which caught fire.

But Black’s shtick quickly got old.

Beyonce got some points for at least trying to do something that resembled a show-stopper. Singing her call-to-arms, the anti-cheating single “Ring the Alarm,” she appeared on stage wearing a sexy trench coat and a searing gaze.

But while her voice was in perfect form, the performance was disjointed, and the out-of-place dance number in the middle seemed to rip off the choreography from Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” almost 20 years earlier.

Still, she managed to keep things interesting – which could hardly be said for the rest of the evening. At one point, the crew from the MTV grossout show “Jackass” gave one of its members an electric shock, jolting his system.

If only they could have delivered a similar dose to the whole telecast.

Oh yeah – the awards.

In the early going, Best Male Video went to James Blunt for “You’re Beautiful” and Best Hip-Hop Video went to the Black Eyed Peas for “My Humps.”