The website upgrade is coming along great. Lots of progress on all fronts this weekend. Meanwhile, our website designer, Boston architect Eric Gould, posted one wildly entertaining column, analyzing Lady Gaga's latest video. So I have a challenge for him, which I'm sharing with all of you...

Dear Eric,

There's nothing I want completed so much,or so quickly, as the redesigned website. But you're clearly having so much fun in your new hobby as a TV critic -- and doing so well at it -- that I thought, after you did so well deconstructing Lady Gaga's "Alejandro" video, that I'd steer you towards a few others that are crying out for comment, if not explanation.

So here we go: Three other videos, all current, and all by popular female artists. In one big column, or taken separately, compare and contrast. I dare you. Meanwhile, keep working on those last few TV WORTH WATCHING web pages...

1) MILEY CYRUS, "Can't Be Tamed."

One image from this video is posted at the top of this column, showing Miley Cyrus spreading her wings defiantly while being gawked at, caged like a bird. The rest of the video follows this theme, of a preteen and tweenage idol making her first steps at, quite literally, leaving the nest.

The visual symbolism of all this should give you lots of material with which to work (my mind goes straight to Barbarella, for example), but don't neglect some of the lyrics. In spots, I doubt she's singing what I think she's singing -- but there's room for interpretation.

2) CHRISTINA AGUILERA, "Not Myself Tonight."

This video clearly reacts to the Lady Gaga phenomenon, so I'll let you work through the dark range of intentionally outrageous images here -- images meant to outrage, anyway.

Some of the settings, as with Gaga, seem to go back to mid-career Madonna -- dark, smoky sets, lots of imposing stairs, period clothes, nods to Fritz Lang's Metropolis.

But other parts are just imagery for imagery's sake -- until you explain otherwise. Why are monocles suddenly popular again? What interpretation is intended as Aguilera, on all fours, crawls hungrily towards a bowl of milk?

And if there's no larger message to be gleaned from this video, and if it's not art at all, why don't I mind?

3) KATY PERRY, "California Gurls."

Snoop Dogg plays a sexy game of Candyland here, as Katy and her cute cohorts cavort around a board full of confections. In one scene, she lies naked, like a Coppertone kid, atop a cotton-candy cloud. In another, she ascends undulating candy canes that have heads like snakes. Make of that what you will.

I particularly like one dress, in which Perry is costumed in the minidress equivalent of those old-fashioned candy dots that used to come attached to long narrow strips of waxed paper. I know nostalgia probably wasn't the reaction the video was going for there -- but hey. What can I say?

But Eric, I'm waiting to see what YOU have to say about this video, and whether any of it, to your trained eye, honestly resembles art.

Is it art, for example, when she attaches whipped-cream projectile guns to -- well, she attaches two of them -- and aims them in our direction? You be the judge.

Respectfully,

David

P.S. You -- ANY of you -- can see these videos, on MTV's website. Click on the titles to see the videos.

Miley Cyrus, "Can't Be Tamed."

Christina Aguilera, "Not Myself Tonight."

Katy Perry, "California Gurls."