Note: If you're looking for a review of the 2004 Grammys, go here.
OK, it’s 11:30 pm, and I have more hand-written notes that I care to actually count at this point. About 11 of you will remember that back in August, I did a little breakdown of the MTV Video Music Awards (replete with many a typo), and I thought it would be fun to try the same experiment with the Grammys this year. Hopefully inspiration will strike, but if not, there’s always the stash of Sam Adams Winter Brew in the fridge if I’m in a pinch.
Without further ado:
6:55 pm: What a way to catch up with red carpet action---Joan Rivers is standing with Nickelback. This bodes well for the unintentional comedy factor tonight. Joan says, without a pause between the two questions, “Who would you like to say something to? Who did you hate in high school?” This is how/she reminds me/of how badly she sucks.
6:58 pm: Deborah Harry is standing at another locale, fresh from sticking her finger in an electrical socket. She’s apparently going Method for her upcoming role as Cruella DeVille in the Broadway production of “101 Dalmations”.
7:02 pm: Switch over to MTV for the start of their red carpet coverage, and everyone favorite future prison bitch John Norris is live with the coverage. He’s with Kelly Rowland, Nelly, and the St. Lunatics. Marking a bold career move, Nelly is sans band aid. Oh lookie, one of the Lunatics borrowed my grandfather’s paisley suit. Nelly promises toto John that he’ll “drop a good one on ya tonight.” I hope this is where the similarities to my grandfather end.
7:07 pm: Hey look, it’s that VH1 VJ dude, interviewing Sheryl Crow, who clearly hasn’t the foggiest clue who this guy is. I could look up his name, but it is more fun to simply call him “Annoying VH! Top Twenty Countdown Guy”.
7:09 pm: Switching back to E!---hey, wait, why is Joan interviewing Paul Schaffer? I don’t even have a joke here. Just stunning.
7:12 pm: It occurs to me: Joan’s face is pulled so tight, she is currently bulletproof from the neck up. This is a Stan Winston make-up job, to be sure.
7:14 pm: Switching over to TNN, for WWE Sunday Night Heat. The Rock faces Hulk Hogan tonight on Pay-Per-View. Hogan’s sagging man-breasts are the anatomical ying to Joan Rivers’ face’s yang.
7:16 pm: John Norris with TLC. T-Boz went and pulled a “Single Black Female” on Mary J. Blige, right down to the frosted spike hair. Chili, for her part, turned sideways for a second and momentarily disappeared. Pssst, Chili, here’s a Pop Tart, eat it, for the love of all that’s holy.
7:18 pm: The walking unintentional comedy machine Sway is live with N’ Sync. Lance has that “I thought I would go into space, instead I’m always gonna be that guy in N’ Sync” look on. Chris meanwhile looks 47. Good God. Wisely, they don’t let Joey say anything.
7:20 pm: Flip to E! to get more N’ Sync interview action. I now notice that JC is pulling a Vincent Vega hairdo on the public, instantly plummeting the cool rating of “Pulp Fiction” down 8 percent.
7:22 pm: Joan with Queen Latifah. Latifah apparently up and killed the Pink Panther and wore its skin as tonight’s outfit. Latifah is a very tall woman. Her and Rivers together is a little like watching a forced perspective shot from “The Lord of the Rings”, only this is real. Fascinating. I wanna see Joan just lose it and insist that Latifah take the Ring of Power. Anyone else? OK, moving on then…
7:25 pm: Joan with Avril and her band. Joan asks Avril if her parents every thought she was crazy for wanting to sing.. Avril looks like she might cry. That’s just sad. Joan’s gone and made things so complicated for our Candian pop princess. “Canada?” asks Joan. “Is that some new designer?”
7:28 pm: Flip to MTV, no sign of Gideon Yago. MTV deported him to Iraq, didn’t they? Silly Gideon. We hardly knew ye.
7:29 pm: Sway’s on the mic, talking about how important freestyling is in the rap community. How your ability to talk on the mic off the cuff is so important. Sadly, he delivers this impassioned speech by tripping over every other word.
7:38 pm: Pink and Missy being interview. Pink has a mohawk thing going on, Missy one upped Latifah by killing the Pink Panther’s girlfriend and wearing her furry flesh as her ensemble.
7:40 pm: My two current viewing options seem to be Joan interviewing Bootsy Collins or crocodiles being birthed on Animal Planet.
7:41 pm: *Cracks open a beer*
7:45 pm: Mmmmm….frothy goodness.
7:49 pm: I heard on the radio today the phrase “multiple-Grammy nominated group Tonic”. Checked my watch to make sure it wasn’t still 2001. I could have sworn Tonic was on the road with Fuel for the “Hey, Remember Us?” Tour currently hitting state fairs in the Bible Belt.
7:55 pm: Avril and her sk8ter bois now are with John Norris. She says how much she hates playing “Complicated”. That thud you heard was her record company’s collective jaw dropping.
7:58 pm: OK, party foul. Who put Gewn Stefani’s head in a toaster oven and passed it off as a hairdo? Isn’t this a crime? Can someone check the books on this one? I demand justice!
8:00 pm: Hey, the show’s starting. Look! It’s Eraserhead! Whoops, my bad, it’s Dustin Hoffman.
8:02 pm: Whoa! Simon and Garfunkel!
8:03 pm: Whoa! We now all know why Paul Simon consistently wears a baseball cap with one unfortunate close up of his scalp.
8:06 pm: The Magic Announcers Voice promises us “18 performances, spanning all categories”, which means I best see “Best Pop Group with Slide Guitar, Vibraphones, and P. Diddy Inventing the Remix” represented, beeyotch.
8:07 pm: Popping open my second beer. I wonder who won in the “Best Rap Duo with a Currently Deceased Rapper” category.
8:08 pm: Dustin Hoffman just said “Welcome!” five times. I am praying he doesn’t sink into a Kmart monologue anytime soon.
8:09 pm: Holy crap, did he just say “Bruce Springstreet”????
8:10 pm: Wow, he’s higher than Rick James in 1978. Someone get him off the stage. Any remaining credibility that “Sphere” and “Moonlight Mile” didn’t kill is quickly being spent now.
8:11 pm: The show “Fashion Emergency” staged an intervention on Gwen’s head, which now sports a different hairdo altogether. You know you’re a true rock star when you have both “red carpet hair” and “performance hair”. Gwen is so cool. And by “cool” I mean “absolutely hot”.
8:13 pm: Hey look, Cirque de Soleil dropped by to play. The bassist looks terrified.
8:14 pm: Whoa, is she wearing camouflage hotpants? I’m suddenly very patriotic. I am ready to wage war…on that oh so fine lusciousness that is Gwen Stefani.
8:18 pm: One of the nominees for “Best Pop Group” is a group called “Bowling for Soup”. Um, who? Were they formerly “Skeet Shooting for Chili”? “Shuffleboarding for Hummus”?
8:19 pm: No Doubt performed, ergo won. Gonna keep a tally on this. One for one.
8:22 pm: Norah Jones is about to perform. I know she’ll perform “Don’t Know Why”, but part of me hopes she has a mental breakdown and starts singing “Running with the Devil”. Might spice things up.
8:26 pm: Two for two, Norah immediately wins “Best Pop Vocal”, which begs the question, Who in the hell is has released a pop non-vocal album? I’m not seeing John Tesh or Jim Brickman burning up the pop charts.
8:30 pm: Hey, check it out, it’s Marc Antony. I heard he’s living in a 2BR walkup with Ricky Martin in Astoria now. Marc’s working nights at Subway, Ricky’s playing Swing in “Man of La Mancha”. (OK, fine. YOU tell me where they’ve been for a year. I am personally at a loss.)
8:32 pm: Marc spends 2 minutes talking about Tito Puente and….then introduces a performance by Faith Hill. Huh? If a ninth grader made this kind of segue in a book report, they’d be sent to after-school tutoring.
8:33 pm: Camera pans to Faith, who is doing a great impression of a Marilyn Monroe impersonator down at Flashdancers.
8:35 pm: The number ends with her being consumed by a large ball of flame. OK, that’s just wishful thinking on my part.
8:40 pm: His Royal Velvetness, Paul Schaffer is onscreen and has completely lost control over his right arm. God, he might hurt someone.
8:41 pm: Did he just call Vanessa Carlton “funkifily delicious”???? Is that how you spell “funkifily”??? So many questions!!!! Head…hurting….
8:42 pm: It’s everyone’s favorite poster child for scoliosis, Vanessa Carlton. She’s apparently part of a singer-songwriter triptych.
8:45 pm: Triptych part two, John Mayer. He has this unmistakable look to the crowd that says, “You all want to lick me, don’t you?”
8:46 pm: I have it on good sources that “Your Body is a Wonderland” was originally titled “Your Body Could Stand to Lose Ten to Fifteen Pounds” but subsequently changed since it wasn’t playing well to certain demographics.
8:48 pm: Part Three: James Taylor, with Yo Yo Ma. Looks like Dustin’s operating the spot on James Taylor. Pssst…Dustin….move it a bit….stage right…c’mon, you can do it…
8:51 pm: OK, so the evolution of the singer-songwriter, according to the Grammys, reads James Taylor-->John Mayer-->Vannesa Carlton. Huh? Somehow the words “extremely incomplete” spring to mind. Somewhere tonight, Carole King and Carly Simon are pissed off, in jail, or both.
8:52 pm: John Mayer wins, making it 3 for 3 on the Performance Theory. I missed the category since I was gawking at Kim Cantrell’s breasts. Sorry.
8:54 pm: Best Rap Album goes to Eminem. He hadn’t performed yet, so I was half-expecting the award to go to Vanessa Carlton at the rate this show was going.
8:55 pm: We go to commercial. Here’s food for thought. Right now, J Lo perhaps is at the Grammies. Go over to ABC, and Chris Judd is on “Help! I’m a Celebrity!” They’re interviewing him, and he’s saying, “Yea, this whole living in the wild is pretty nice, actually. Doesn’t bother me a bit. Jennifer made me sleep in the shoe closet. And that’s when things were good.”
8:58 pm: Queen Pink Panther does the impossible and gets through an entire intro without screwing it up. They should just hand the Oscar to her right now.
9:03 pm: Dixie Chicks. AAAAAAAIIIIIIIII!!! They’re Jesus! They are walking on water! I’m sorry, Lord, about the Chris Judd jokes!
9:04 pm: Oh, apparently that’s a bunch of video monitors beneath them, showing water. That wigged me out. Nevermind. Moving on…
9:06 pm: Four for four, Best Country Album goes to the Dixie Chicks. The WWE is less rigged than this show.
9:07 pm: *Flip channel. MMMMMM, Jennifer Garner on “Alias”.*
9:12 pm: Keeping with the “OK, this makes no sense but what the hell” theme of the show, John Leguizamo introduces the New York Philharmonic and Coldplay.
9:14 pm: Before Coldpay takes the stage, a shot of the audience. AAACK! Aretha Franklin! I think she ate N’ Sync. And knitted their carcasses for a scarf. Whoa daddy. Don’t hurt me, Ms. Franklin.
9:18 pm: The lead singer of Coldplay has Paul Schaffer Syndrome, only in his case, all over his body. Poor guy. Piano playing cannot support such spasms.
9:20 pm: I just realized that the background design is simply the Visualizations program that comes with Windows Media Player 7. Savvy product placement, Mr. Gates.
9:21 pm: Watching the lead singer, I can’t help but think that somewhere in the world, Thom Yorke is checking to see if he can sue for copyright infringement on his “Twitchy Depressed English Guy” patent.
9:33 pm: Dude, did Avril just flash the audience? Cos that would be SO EFFIN’ PUNK!
9:35 pm: The Grammies hired 50 kids to stand by the stage and pretend the give a crap about Avril. Just sad.
9:36 pm: Can we feed Avril to Aretha after she’s done singing?
9:37 pm: Between you and me, I bet, like, she’s TOTALLY gone to second base with the guitarist in her band.
9:39 pm: After watching that, I’m not really feeling hella good, so I’m gonna keep on drinkin’.
9:40 pm: Hey lookie, onstage with Nelly is the Phantom of the Ghetto. That’s just…well, it’s something, I’m just not sure what it is. But I’m decently sure I don’t care for it.
9:42 pm: Won ten dollars in my own pool of “one of those girls be fallin’ down in those heels” right before Kelly Rowland emerged from the Mothership on loan from George Clinton.
9:44 pm: You know, I keep trying tog et Jenny to call me “boo”, but it ain’t working. Oh well.
9:48 pm: OK kids, no more excuses. If Fred Durst can read, so can you.
9:50 pm: Hope this doesn’t come off as racist, but am I the only one who’s never seen a black dude in Foo Fighters before tonight? I feel really unhip.
10:00 pm: Onstage: BRUUUUUUUUUUUUUUCE.
10:02 pm: I don’t think Little Steven was hugged enough as a kid, because he’s hogging Bruce’s mic, looking for approval. This is like watching a dog return a thrown stick and pant for a treat. Damnit, Bruce, give the man a hug.
10:03 pm: Over in the corner, Clarence wishes for the 4,326th time that Bruce had written a sax part for this song. Next to him is a guitarist who has the look and build of Samwise Gamgee. Aretha’s looking at him and shouting, “Get in my bellay!!!!”
10:04 pm: Camera is scanning the crowd during Bruce’s performance, and catches a glimpse of Peter Gabriel, who apparently ages in dog years. Hoo boy, that’s a slap of mortality for ya.
10:06 pm: Whoa, Bruce lost after a great performance to the guy who wrote Norah Jones’ “Don’t Know Why”. He looks like Jonathan Franzen’s dorky cousin. Well, he probably hasn’t been laid in years The least society can do is give him a Grammy.
10:08 pm: As we cut to commercial, we seen winners of awards before the TV ceremony, in such categories as:
“Best Song Written While on Crystal Meth”
“Best Attempt to Keep Ja Rule Off Yer Damn Record”
“Best Gospel Tribute To Satan Album”
10:15 pm: According to his Ja-ness, Ashanti’s been inspiring us during this time of terrorism and strife. All she’s currently inspiring me to do is change the channel.
10:17 pm: The imagery of Ashanti “inspiring” that playground into the earth will haunt me forever. Who came up with this?
10:19 pm: What in the…wait wait wait, where did the kids come from? Was Michael Jackson supposed to sing this number originally? *chugs 16 beers* Easily the worst number of the night. This is a career killer.
10:20 pm: At this point, I’m actually praying for Ja Rule to show up. That’s how bad it is.
10:29 pm: N’ Sync doing the tribute to the Bee Gees. Watching my boy JT, fresh off his ass-grabbing performance with Kylie in London last night, pretend like he still wants to be in the group. It’s a bravura performance.
10:31 pm: Ooooh, he’s so cute when he’s on the beat box. Pardon me while I find a handy noose and/or shotgun.
10:36 pm: Cut to commercial… “And the winner, announced earlier, in the ‘Best Showering of a Girl with a 40 in a Short-Form Video’….”
10:40 pm: Eminem onstage with The Roots and two backup rappers. I wonder if anyone’s gonna tell the one stage left that his mic isn’t on. Maybe we shouldn’t. He looks so happy.
10:43 pm: Aretha and Bonnie Raitt are presenting. Poor Bonnie can’t get near the mic due the fact that Aretha went and ate The Roots as they tried to leave the stage.
10:45 pm: Norah Jones wins Record of the Year. I’m waiting for Eminem to rush the stage, clock Norah with a steel chair, and align himself with Vince McMahon.
10:56 pm: I’m taking “12 days” in the office pool of when Coors Brewing Company picks up this Sheryl Crow song “You’re an Original” for it’s national marketing campaign.
10:59 pm: You know, I love Norah Jones as much as any musically ignorant Caucasian, but she’s gotta have naked pics of all Grammy voters at the rate she’s winning awards.
11:03 pm: “Coming up next---the Grammy for ‘Best Artist Who Isn’t Norah Jones’”.
11:05 pm: *Scans over volume of handwritten notes. Silently weeps.*
11:07 pm: The President of the RIAA, Neil Portnow, speaks about clarion calls and cultural touchstones. If bullshit could be a useable form of energy, this guys’s speech would have solved our nation’s dependency of foreign oil.
11:11 pm: As his first clarion call for using music as a form of healing and understanding, Neil shows everyone who’s kicked the bucket in the last year. God, this is tasteless.
11:14 pm: Aaaah, cool, the Clash tribute. You know, Neil says music is not in trouble, but listening to even a cover version of “London Calling”, I’d say it is indeed in trouble, since this was by far the most intelligent, impassioned, and melodic piece of music played all night. Even the performers seem possessed by the piece of music. Truly amazing to behold. And it wasn’t even produced by The Neptunes. Go figure.
11:20 pm: Nearly four and half hours and six pack later, we’re almost done. Up to give away the Grammy for Record of the Year is Elvis Costello, Michelle Branch, and Peter Gabriel’s grandfather. Whoops, it’s actually Peter, my bad.
11:21 pm: Norah to the shock of no one wins. Five for five. We’ll apparently never see the video “Academy Voters Gone Wild” that she has stashed and ready for mass production if she didn’t win.
*******
Thanks for making it through all of this; I hope you enjoy my take on things. I’d love to hear what y’all thought of the Grammys.