Brief History Of The Foam Finger

The 2013 Video Music Awards will be remembered mainly for one thing: Miley Cyrus molesting a foam finger, as well as "twerking" with some giant teddy bears and against Beetlejuice. She subsequently may have killed the tradition of the foam finger as we know it. We've had a week to digest it all. Let's give the foam finger some love with a brief history.

It all started back in 1971 when Steve Chmelar created one during High School out of paper-mache instead of foam. He did it for the Iowa High School basketball finals, and a picture was snapped by the AP.

Geral Fauss then decided to create some hands and sell them at the 1978 Cotton Bowl game between Notre Dame and Texas. In 1979 he started a company called Spirit Industries that manufactured the very first foam versions.

They started appearing at stadiums all over in the 1980s for all the major sports teams, and the rest is history. It spawned custom versions as well, such as the "Hook 'em Horns" shape used by University of Texas fans. Non-hand versions became available as well, such as the foam tomahawk and foam talons.

And now of course in 2013, nobody will be able to look at one again without thinking of Miley Cyrus and her Hellboy shaped hair simulating sex with one on a stage. Original creator Steve Chmelar stated, "She took an honorable icon that is seen in sporting venues everywhere and degraded it. Fortunately, the foam finger has been around long enough that it will survive this incident." Well, it may survive, but we won't look at it the same anytime soon. So, you probably know way more than you ever wanted about the history of the foam finger. You can thank Miley, she was just being Miley.

So Miley Cyrus Had Sex With a Foam Finger...

Mtv held its annual Video Music Awards (VMA's), because they haven't started giving them out to Teen Moms yet. During a performance of "Blurred Lines" by Robin Thicke, Miley Cyrus basically had sex with a foam finger on stage after twerking against Thicke (dressed like Beetlejuice), and subsequently killed the sports stadium tradition for children around the world.

If you missed it, you may be in luck, as anyone watching this catastrophic event needs to go out and get checked for crabs. Why couldn't she defile a Vuvuzela instead? Those are way more annoying than foam fingers, i'd rather those be burnt for all eternity than the foam finger. Oh, she also humped a giant Teddy Bear before that performing her own song. After watching her with the Foam Finger, you almost forget about that part, which is saying something. Though I'm still wondering whether its real or if Al Qaeda dropped acid into our water supply and we imagined it all.

Some other "highlights":

-Lil Kim morphed into LaToya Jackson.

-Jared Leto somehow compared Kanye West to Jimi Hendrix, which led me to change the channel in protest. Comparing them is like comparing getting those aforementioned crabs to getting a billion dollars. There is none.

-Justin Timberlake and Nsync performed together, minus the "sun in" bleached 1998 hair. It was the worst kept secret of the summer.

-Will Smith and his kids Jaden & Willow were just as confused as the rest of us during Miley's performance, which was a far cry from the "Carlton Dance".