James Blunt and Gnarls Barkley are top winners at a disturbingly tame MTV Video Music Awards

NEW YORK — When a wooden politician delivers the best line of the MTV Music Video Awards, you know the thrill is gone.

So was the decadence, outrageousness and spontaneity that used to make the VMAs such a guilty pleasure.

James Blunt and Gnarls Barkley each took home two awards Thursday night. Pink's parody of bubble-headed pop tarts, "Stupid Girls," won for best pop video, Beyonce took home the best R&B video trophy for her booty-shaking "Check On It" and Fall Out Boy won the viewer's choice award for "Dance, Dance."

But nobody except a video choreographer's mother watches this show for the awards. Fans watch for the FCC-flaunting skits, nearly naked starlets, foul-mouthed speeches and those embarrassingly bad dance numbers.

They do NOT watch for lectures from former Vice President Al Gore on global warming. When does the phrase "here's a photo of a glacier melting" ever fit into an awards show?

Gore did get a laugh, however, when he intoned, "I actually was not intending to be here tonight, but then MTV explained that Justin Timberlake was bringing sexy back."

Somewhere along the way, the MTV Awards seemed to have morphed into the Grammys.

"This show has been lame (flatulence) for the past 20 years," Jack Black said before he took the stage for his opening sketch. "And I'm going to light the match!"

Instead, Black continued a trend.

In the opening sequence, 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. "You didn't bring the thunder. You didn't bring anything," he said during one skit, looking at himself in his dressing room mirror and unintentionally summing up the evening.

Even Lil' Kim, who once appeared at the VMAs wearing a pasty on one breast, failed to get the party started. Recently released from prison after serving time for perjury, she stripped off an orange jail suit to reveal ... something that resembled a funky business suit. Hillary Clinton has worn more revealing outfits.