Matt Ehrlich, our managing editor, camped out at the 69th Regimental Armory in Manhattan, every day of rehearsal, and the day of the show -- looking out for scoops, dirt, and insights into the Awards show. And into the worlds it celebrates: fashion, music, television.

Each hour, on the hour, he published a new report, featuring the dish on clothes, activities, gossip, and happenings.

I'm set up backstage now. I can still feel the pounding beat of the runway music from the show open, but I can't see it directly without sticking my head out of the curtained cubicle they've given us. It's a remix of the song that the Purple One Formerly Known As Prince will perform.

Speaking of remixes, the music that will play during the Thierry Mugler runway segment is called "Mugler Music" and contains more than fifteen samples of other songs. I heard an early version two days ago, and his press manager tells me it's been updated since then. It now starts with "Daaarling, it's the VH1 Fashion & Music Awards... Give me one." It's accompanied by whipcracks, screams, and parrot squawks.

The man who tells me this is Ted Gueffen, who works closely with Mugler on image matters. He says he was up until 5 AM this morning. I believe it. "Every single thing has to be perfect looking. It's different for those of you in music, where you rehearse everything until the performance. You can't rehearse a look- you have to perfect it." He was up last night attending to details as large as the featured model's walks, and as small as their nails.

We enter the auditorium, where the Mugler runway segment is being staged. The runway is largely full of stage managers and PA's who have been dragooned into pretending to be models. Some are natural hams, who take the opportunity to live a big life. But everyone looks like they know what to do up there. Fashion has become so much a part of what everyone knows, that we each would know how to act, look, and walk if placed up on a runway.

The other reason they look so confident is they're sure of their timing. They can be because a woman is standing six rows back from the front of the stage, by the camera platform and the teleprompter, waving a red wand. It's huge- like one of those things airlines use to wave planes down their own runways. It's a little more magical- the red lights seem to shimmer- and it looks like highlights in raspberry Jell-o. She's wielding it as a conductor waves a baton. She keeps time, gives people their cues, holds them off until then. When I ask her about it, she shrugs and turns back to the score.

"Hey man, I got enough stress here. Don't make it any harder." Dean Lubensky is our Art Director, Off-Air. He's putting together the VH1 FMA logo that's going on the podium. Standing next to him is Dan Appel, our On-Air Art Director, who's sticking logos to the microphones. Dean was home eating dinner last night at 6 PM when the decision was made to include a logo on the podium. So why are you doing this, Dean? "I was dumb enough to answer my phone when it rang last night."

I've just asked them what they're looking forward to on the show. Their answers are remarkably similar. "The credits," Dan says. Dean tells me, "the end of the show." They look tired. As we're speaking, gigantic VH1 logos are projected on the set walls. Dan looks puzzled and says, "Those don't go there." He walks away from us and jumps on to the stage.

Shana, who produces VH1's Crossroads, says she can't wait to see what Madonna's wearing. "All her designers are going to be here. It's the major dilemma of the evening." Tom Ford for Gucci? Versace? Will she return to Gaultier?

Linda Corradina, the show's executive producer, is wondering the same thing. She bets against Gucci, because Madonna wore it to a show last week. Linda's also looking forward to certain chance encounters. "Three of Mick Jagger's ex-lovers are going to be here: Bianca, Jerry Hall, and Carla Bruni. We'll see." And Madonna re-enters the picture: "She and Sean Penn will both be here. Opposite sides of the audience."

Mostly, though, she's looking forward to all the women performing on the show. "Some of the coolest women around are going to be here. k.d. lang, I can't wait to see her performance. Chrissie Hynde. And Tina. Tina's awesome."

And Michelle? "Jon Bon Jovi's butt." Michelle, he won't be here. "Oh. Then Marcus Schenkenburg. Hmph."

I've been talking to Amy Scott and AJ Hammer again. They're two of our on-air hosts. They don't know where to change for tonight. The women's room (which used to be the men's room) is incredibly cold, and there's a pretty good line of sight from the production area inside. I invite them by my backstage cubby for a few minutes chat and a quick change tonight.

As I say goodbye, I blow 'fashion kisses' to them. A woman passing by notes my technique. "Nice 360 two-armed ollie kiss there." Thanks. She tells me she's been practicing her royal family forearm waves, 'so I don't get carpal tunnel.' She says she's changing in the women's room in a stall. "Sure, it'll be cramped. But at least the models won't see me."

Models have no such compunction about changing in public. They have no shame- nor should they. Their bone structure is impeccable- and you can see pretty much the entire skeleton on most of the women.

I've headed back to the model pit, as it's called. It's more brightly lit than the Hadean depth the name evokes. There are also more hats than most artists' conceptions of hell. Like many conceptions, on the other hand, there is no shortage of vinyl suits. Hanging on the racks, they look like exoskeletons on giant bugs, I note.

"That's what Mugler calls models," one model wrangler tells me. "Insects. Spiders. Bugs." She says it with the sort of glee that children use to report parental punishment of their siblings. No one can really envy a model's position more than those who have to support them. These women in the pit seem to have more attitude than the models themselves. And yet one tells me she doesn't understand why anyone would gate-crash a model pit. "It's boring if you're not working it." She must expect me to believe she sees no glamor in it.

Raymond, one of the VH1 News team writers, catches me as I come out. Asks me if I saw anyone back there. I say I was most intimidated by the guard at the door, until she saw my pass. He says that Marcus Schenkenburg and Michael Bergin work out at his gym downtown. "Now that's intimidating."

Elton John's performing his numbers as I write this. He's been here for an hour. I was sitting in the front row until a moment ago. One of the two songs is an old favorite- made new by its appropriateness for the show. The closing number looks to be good. I hope everyone gets the joke. Trust me and watch.

I'm sitting here when Karen Fontes, our director of Programming, sits next to me. When the song ends, she leans over. "I've always wanted to see Elton John in concert and I never have." It's like being in the front row at a concert for 20 people, I tell her. "It's amazing," she says. She's blissed out. Elton's wearing a full-body suit that buttons down the front like a big pair of Doctor Dentons. No flap in back though.

As we sit and watch them rearrange the stage for the next song, Matt Debenham rushes over. He's been helping with the logo for the podium. He taps Dan, the Art Director on the shoulder. He's looking for the equivalent of face powder- to keep things from looking too shiny on TV. "Do you have any dulling spray?" he asks. A man turns around and looks at him. "I think you've had enough."

The music starts again. The aisles near the stage are filling up. Tina Turner walks onstage and hugs Elton. "Tina looks great. Look at her hair!" We can't. We're too busy looking at one of Elton's band members. He's a white guy with a 6" Afro. "He's got a skunk patch," Michelle notes. I turn to Geoff Whelan: what instrument does he play? I thought he was a roadie; he doesn't have an instrument. Geoff looks up at him. "He's general rhythm." I crack up.

As Elton John's set ends, Jean- Paul Gaultier is present in the audience. He claps. Elton drops from the stage and goes over to chat. Then Gaultier hits the stage to rehearse with Iman.

It's at this point that Michelle arrives to dish. She knows I'm looking for tidbits, and she's found one. Gleefully, she relates the following story: she herself in the women's bathroom downstairs as the stand-ins for the supermodel strut all were changing. They're all dancers from the MTV show The Grind, on a day-off. As they change, they talk. One asks, "What's the circumference of a square?" Michelle says there was silence for a few moments. She says she was waiting for a punch line. A tentative voice then ventured a guess: "Well, wouldn't it be the radius?" Another awkward silence prevailed. The conversation quickly moved on to a debate as to what Madonna's first performance was.

Michelle finishes the story and walks away, leaving me standing inches away from Jean-Paul Gaultier. I am introduced. I tell he he looks great. "You should have seen me last week. Why weren't you in Paris?" I was, I tell him. "Oh. I don't remember what you were wearing." What will you be wearing? "Oh. Something subdued. A nice quiet skirt or something." He goes back up on stage.

Eric Stoltz is also in the audience, waiting to read through his lines. A talent escort stands by him, beaming. She's clearly thrilled to stick close by him all day. "Where's that Stephen Weber kid?" he asks, jokingly. Weber's in his trailer, he's told. "He has a trailer? He's come far." They stand around a couple of seconds. "So, we're just waiting on the model?" Yep. She's here, someone says. They head off to the other side of the audience. Twenty seconds later, the beaming escort realizes Eric has disappeared. "Where'd he go?" She rushes off, leaving me alone.

At least the FMA logo is up on the podium. It's attached with duct tape. I'm sure it's very stable.

I rushed through my last entry to make it to the floor for the dress rehearsal. It was to start at 3 PM on the dot. "Make sure you're in a seat on the floor for the opening number," one man who's going to usher tells me. "You'll never make it to your seat once the number starts. The go-go dancers take up all the aisle space." They are rather burly.

So I'm in my seat for the 3:00 start. At 3:15, a voice booms over the house PA, "30 seconds to Go." Then, a minute later, "1 minute to Air." It's getting further away. By the time the show starts at 9, we should be ready to start the dress rehearsal. Finally, at 18 minutes past the hour, we hear a count. "45 seconds. 30. 15. 10, 9, 8..."

"You don't have your go-go boys!" a talent coordinator hisses to a camera operator. They turn up within a minute; "there they are," she says. "Wait. We're missing one."

He comes rushing in, sequined g-string clicking, still pulling on his wristlets. The opening number is eye-popping. Many of the supermodels have shown up, finally. They hit their marks, more or less, by the second run through. But time has been lost. By the time host Steven Weber is introduced, we have to skip his lines and go straight to the presenters.

During the first commercial break, I talk to VH1 Online's Technical Producer, Mary K. She's figuring out how to get pictures up to AOL most rapidly before, during and after the show. We make arrangements, she looks over the row of models, asks me who one is, and sighs. I spot someone I know by the production table and head over there.

Steven Weber, bored on stage, is making idle chatter with the director- he, through the microphone, and the director responds over the house PA system. It's like he's Moses, and God's talking back. "How's the family?" Weber asks. Chuck Vinson, the director, says, "they're dead. We're taking your levels down, Steven."

"Great," Weber mutters into the mike. Jeanne Beker, on screen in the background, bends close to the camera to peer into it. Unmanned, it crops the top of her head as she takes us out to a commercial.

My cheeks are still smarting. I've been gang-smooched by a team of go-go dancers. It happened like this:

My question for the hour was, tell me your nightmare cab story. I asked Jett Kain, an Associate Producer that question. "You mean you didn't hear about it?" No. His words began to run togther as he got more excited. "Oh. My. God. I had been stayingupallnight until fourinthemorning doing ticketswithPam. I went to the VH1 offices before comingdownhere, and I hailedacab on Broadway. As I openedthedoor, and begantogetin, everythingwentblack. Oh. My. God. Next thing I knew, total strangers were slappingmycheeks and asking if I was OK. I got some sleep finally." You deserved it, Jett.

I walked over to one of the Mugler go-go dancers, to ask him the question. "Who's that?" he asked me, pointing to the woman onstage. Chynna Phillips, I told him. "Who?" I explained the web of relationships, from her husband Billy Baldwin, to her mother Michelle. "I'm Brazillian," he confessed. "I don't know these things."

"That's Karl Lagerfeld," he hissed, suddenly. I nodded. He held up a rather expensive looking camera. "Take my picture with him, please?" Sure, I said. I started walking. He didn't. Come on, I said, waving him on. "I'm too shy," he stage-whispers. I'm not the one wearing a bikini made of crystals stolen from a hundred chandeliers- and nothing else but wristlets, I replied. I pulled him over to where Lagerfeld was standing.

I asked Lagerfeld if we might take a picture of him with the go-go boys. By this time, another had come over, hoping to muscle in on the action. I told Lagerfeld they worked with Thierry Mugler. "Of course," he smiled. He had the fan. I hoped he might shield one bikini with the fan, but I was disappointed. I took a few pictures.

Afterward, both go-go boys oriented on me like a pack of sharks. They had told me, as I stood there waiting, how influential and impressive Karl was. They were meeting a legend. And I had the proof. Thinking they just wanted the camera, I started to hand it to them. I was completely taken by surprise by the shower of kisses that rained down upon me. Though there were only two of them, they were so husky, I felt surrounded. The crowd cleared, and I felt to make sure they hadn't knocked my jaw off. It was there, a little scuffed by 5 o'clock shadow, but intact.

Because of my go-go dancer encounter at 6 PM, I didn't get to finish the results of my questioning about NYC cab nightmares. The reason I asked, I should explain, is because I was investigating the dressing rooms. They're not glamor dressing rooms. They're very workaday- simple, and not terribly well decorated.

I had talked to Kelli (girl-Kelli, as she's referred to on walkie-talkie, to distinguish her from boy-Kelly, who bitch-slapped Anna Wintour in his dreams) about them. She's in charge of keeping them stocked and presentable, and supervises a large staff whose job it is to put food, drink and other amenities in the rooms. I asked her what the most important element was. I thought she'd say water- everybody wants water. Boring. Dumb question. I was wrong.

"Flowers. Roses. Make it smell nice." Gaultier told me earlier about the 'smelly man,' whose job it was recently to make another awards show smell good. He was imported from Brussels, I believe, in order to spray the auditorium with a special mix of perfumes just before the audience was let in. I noted that the candy that had graced the crew food tables for days was present in bulk in Kelli's office.

But why have dressing rooms at all? This is New York, not Los Angeles- traffic isn't the nightmare it is there. Barbie, from the Talent department, told me why. "It's 'cause of the cabs. If we let sixty models loose in cabs and let them go home between rehearsal and the show, at least ten percent are going to have cab nightmares and not show up on time." Of course. "So we have dressing rooms here."

Frank Micellotta, our photographer, told me he's had enough cab nightmares. "I have press plates. I can park almost anywhere. Smart, huh?" Smart.

As I cruised backstage with a small box of candy I picked up, I passed a gaggle of models. Naomi Campbell hailed me as I walked by. "Ooooooh, candy!" Yep. "Can I have some?" Um, of course. I gave her some gum. Do you want some chocolate? No thanks.

I gave Naomi Campbell a stick of gum. Did it make my day? Not really. It's old hat to me. As a child, I gave the Bee Gee's a whole pack.

She's arrived. Actually, they're all here. Turn on your television. Turn to VH1. It's about to happen. For the past hour there's been a crowd gathered in the back of the house. They refused to take their seats so they could schmooze for forty minutes.

The buzz is big. One man tells me his wife heard people talking about it in her gym. When a promo came on the gym's TV, a few people rushed off the stairmasters, crying "it's already starting?" They were led back to their places, reassured that it wasn't happening until 9 PM.

Which is now. Backstage, it's madness. Space is tight, which only accentuates the pressure. The people who earlier couldn't decide whether to preserve their dignity and walk or rush about in a panic have given up their dignity. They're rushing around in a panic.

And I feel secure. For one reason. After my earlier encounter with Naomi Campbell (7 PM), I realized, if we want to lure models in to chat with us, we have to have candy. So I headed back to the dressing room supply room and for a kiss, Kelli gave me a boxful. I'll be the belle of the ball- the supermodels will love me. And they'll chat with you. So tune in- and log on:

9 PM Eastern for the show
9:30 for the live chat backstage.

Be there.