The 2nd Annual Benign Comedy Grammy Blog (Telecast)

(Scroll down to the end of this entry to see latest smart-ass quips.)

7:57pm - Good evening. By the way, if you want to know who the winners are, just hit one of the news sites. They've already updated all the winners. I get the West Coast delay. But I'm still going to pretend like I'm breaking all this news to you right now. I need the false empowerment 'cause I haven't started working out yet.

8:03pm - Alicia Keys is doing one of those from-the-grave duets with Frank Sinatra. Frank is disquietingly still, and his lip-synch track is off. It's hard to get good help these days.

8:04pm - They have glitter sprinkled all over Alicia's upper torso, perfectly proportioned. I wonder how they do that. Is it planted on speck-by-speck, or do they just sit Alicia 50 feet below somebody standing on a scaffold holding a bag of sparkle, so that it looks natural?

8:05pm - Carrie Underwood sings "Before He Cheats" accompanied by a bunch of urban types beating broken car parts with giant pipes. Ten years from now this blog is going to read like a great lost William S. Burroughs piece, and all I'm doing is reporting what I see.

8:09pm - Prince: "Frank Sinatra looked good for 150." Zing! Nice one-liner for a recluse!

8:12pm - Alicia Keys tells me it's okay to have dreams, which makes me feel a little less guilty about washing my sheets so often.

8:14pm - The Chevron station I was in this afternoon smelled like beer. It was that oddly comfortable scent of beer that you encounter in a well-worn rock and roll tavern. Like McCoy's in Olympia. Shout-out to McCoy's in Olympia. There's a gas station in Seattle that smells like you.

8:17pm - Oh, shit, it's the Time! For the first time in 15 years! It's the Time! Morris Day and the Time! It's gonna be a great show after all!

8:19pm - Oh, shit, it's the Time with Rihanna! For the first time ever! It's the Time! Rihanna and the Time! It's gonna be a great show after all!

8:21pm - Rihanna is wearing high-heeled combat boots. This is like Versace Mad Libs.

8:23pm - Tom Hanks is here, giving a career achievement award to The Band. Talk about a tough segue.

8:25pm - Beatles tribute, incorporating Cirque du Soleil and Julie Taymor's Across The Universe. I have a feeling this is going to look a lot like pasta primavera.

8:28pm - Actually the Cirque part was pretty impressive. Cap doffed, gymrats.

8:32pm - The Across The Universe presentation is chopped up across several different screens, and it makes the film look better than it actually was.

8:34pm - Cyndi Lauper and Miley Cyrus. I'm talking to Billy Ray Cyrus tomorrow, by the way.

8:35pm - Amy Winehouse deservedly wins Best New Artist. Uh, she's not here tonight.

8:36pm - Cut to Jason Bateman, outside the Staples Center, getting people to sign a petition. I'm just kidding. This is something to do with Foo Fighters. They are about to be accompanied by an orchestra conducted by John Paul Jones. It looks like Bateman is doing some sort of mini-talent-contest within the Grammy telecast.

8:37pm - Okay, I figured out what this competition is: They're auditioning hot young string players to accompany Foo Fighters later in the show, voted in by audience call-in. It's sort of like "The Devil Went Down to Georgia," except there's three of 'em, all playing their stringed instruments through distorted amplifiers. "A cello with a thyroid problem!" Bateman quips.

8:44pm - My newborn son Hank's favorite song so far appears to be "Jack-Ass" by Beck.

8:45pm - Here comes Kanye, with eight gleaming circuit boards taped to his chest, and glowing sunglasses. "Stronger." Gleaming black pyramids. The whole set looks like a cross between Tron and the Krypton scenes in the first Superman movie.

8:48pm - Daft Punk emerge in gleaming red outlines from within one of the pyramids, making it even more like Tron. Okay, that was pretty goddamn good.

8:50pm - Kanye sings for his mom. Maybe the saddest hip-hop performance you're likely to see. ("Saddest" in the emotional sense of the word.)

8:53pm - Fergie: Eaten by her own eyelashes.

8:54pm - Okay, she can actually sing a little bit.

8:56pm - Love beats out Across the Universe for Best Soundtrack Album. The Beatles beat themselves. Makes total sense. You think Hairspray's gonna beat out two Beatles?

9:01pm - Can I say the first hour of the show didn't suck? For one thing, consider the bar of your typical Grammy telecast. Also consider that I'm watching this in HD for the first time, so all the sharp lines on the letters look real impressive to me. But even given the expected tricks, like "Let's Reanimate a Dead Guy" and "Prove Fergie Can Sing If Given John Legend," I have to say it was fairly rousing. I wonder what the big payoff will be. Axl Rose parting the Red Sea, that's where my money is.

9:03pm - Beyonce, doing a name-check to end all name-checks, all in service to Tina Turner.

9:05pm - Fashionistas take note: There's a waste management theme to some of the ladies' dresses tonight. First we had Rihanna wearing something that looked like frayed paper bags. Then Cher, just a few minutes ago, wearing repurposed Hefty bags. And now Tina, wearing a tight silver get-up, the top of which is tapered to look like one of those old-fashioned steel garbage cans. And I'm not saying any of this looks bad at all. I'm just sayin' it might undercut the whole "green" thing. Coming up next: Gwen Stefani duets with a trash compactor.

9:12pm - Andy Williams?

9:13pm - You know, Andy Williams wasn't that bad. Tonjia from Huh-Uh once played this song for me, Andy Williams singing a duet with this other woman -- can't remember the name of the song, or the woman -- that sounded like a sexual tryst in a phone booth. It was pretty unsettlingly cool.

9:15pm - Song of the Year: "Rehab," by Amy Winehouse. That was the correct choice. Remarkably ballsy choice.

9:16pm - I really don't want Dennis Hopper talking to me about retirement. You know who I want? Gary Busey. I figure he's probably going to level with me about retirement. He's not gonna throw me some bullshit about it. He's not going to dress it all up in po-mo doilies like Hopper. Busey's gonna come up to me in his best floral print, grab my by the collar, and say, "Look, fucker! Retirement is the only option for people like me! Forget going out gracefully! Just get out with enough plasma to get you to an Indian casino for a few hours! Just get to the shuffleboard court without needing an inhaler! For the love of God, Peggy Sue!"

9:23pm - Foo Fighters do "The Pretender" with the "My Grammy Moment Orchestra," featuring the winner of the stringed instrument soloist competition, a violinist named Anne Marie Calhoun. So far it's been all Foo and no frou-frou. Oh, wait... here we go. Orchestral break.... and that's it. Back to the rock. Except now there's an orcheastra rocking. This is how that whole Trans-Siberan thing started, kids. Be careful with your scholarships.

9:27pm - Dave Grohl's still one of the coolest guys in mainstream alternative rock. Just felt the need to stick that in here.

9:29pm - Art Brut stars in a commercial for the Sidekick.

9:30pm - I have a terrible headache.

9:31pm - Gary Busey force-feeds me some B Complex and I'm back on the street.

9:32pm - WILL FERRELL PLEASE STOP STARRING IN SPORTS MOVIES OK THX.

9:33pm - Brad Paisley doing his great song "Ticks," as the screen behind him shows computer- animated ticks.

9:35pm - Brad Paisley's pedal steel player wears a T-shirt with what appears to be the screen from a Pac-Man game on the front of it.

9:36pm - Brad Paisley's guitar is designed in a classy, sparkling brown-and-tan paisley pattern.

9:37pm - I like Brad Paisley a lot.

9:38pm - I think I have a tumor somewhere.

9:39pm - Kanye wins Best Rap Album, which seeing as how it's up for Best Overall Album, is pretty much a given.

9:41pm - Kanye talks about his recently-deceased mother, as the stage cut-off music continues to grow. Kanye: "It would be in good taste for to stop the music now." Kanye is right. Music fades out. Audience applauds.

9:44pm - Backtracking a bit: Kanye, from the stage, tells producer Mark Ronson that his album with Amy Winehouse deserves the Album Of The Year win just as much as Kanye does. Very charitable.

9:45pm - Nope, I'm still sticking with my Hancock prediction. This whole evening is set up for something as inappropriately incongruous as that to happen.

9:48pm - We just had a big gospel orgy onstage that took all of four minutes and included Aretha Franklin. I was busy trying to figure out more clever things for Gary Busey to say to me.

9:51pm - Coming up soon, apparently: A duet between Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli. The entire Eastern seaboard is going to experience a giant orgasm and separate itself from the rest of the continent.

9:55pm - Coming soon on CBS: A Celine Dion special featuring guests -- this is a direct transcript -- "Josh Groban, Joe Walsh, and will.i.am." I'm not complaining, but since when did Joe Walsh get so high up on the A-list that the copywriters feel he's worth mentioning in the promo?

9:57pm - Feist, finally. It's all come to this. All that time cohabitating with Peaches, messing around with Chilly Gonzales in France, and Leslie's doing "1234" at the Grammys. Brass band backing her, trombones prominent. Then it cuts to a clip of Louis Prima and Keely Smith from 1958.

10:00pm - Oh, wow, it's actually Keely Smith.

10:00pm - Keely Smith with Kid Rock.

10:01pm - Keely Smith with Kid Rock singing "That Old Black Magic." Badly. Kid seriously messed up the timing. I don't think that matters much.

10:02pm - Who the hell dreamed up Keely Smith duetting with Kid Rock? It was fantastic. Not artistically speaking, necessarily. But a great moment.

10:03pm - Foo Fighters won the Best Rock Album award, but during the acceptance speech, Keely doesn't move too far from her spot in front of the microphone. This gives the impression that Keely Smith is now in Foo Fighters.

10:11pm - Stevie Wonder says a few words about Berry Gordy, who mysteriously has not received an Industry Icon award until now.

10:12pm - Alicia Keys is back. She's changed her look from the beginning of this show. In just over two hours she's changed her outfit and had her hair completely redone. I can't tell if her glitter has been dusted off.

10:16pm - Amazing how Alicia's "No One" sounds almost exactly like U2's "With Or Without You."

10:17pm - Dave Stewart and Ringo Starr announce the Best Country Album. Gratuitous use of the word "fab."

10:18pm - Vince Gill wins Best Country Album, which is understandable, since it's also up for Album of the Year, and is a giant 4-disc set separated into some thematic thing or another.

10:19pm - Gill has best line of the night: "I just got an award given to me by a Beatle. Have you had that happen yet, Kanye?"

10:25pm - Joe Mantegna's doing an intro. Joe Mantegna also did an intro at the Emmys. Need a go-to guy for your retirement banquet? Joe's your man. Not sure if he's busy.

10:33pm - The choices of presenters this evening have been odd. Now we got Juanes and Taylor Swift. This comes after Dave Stewart and Ringo Starr, and Keely Smith and Kid Rock. Did some people think the writer's strike was still going to be going on and refuse to commit?

10:38pm - Wrap this up. My headache's getting worse.

10:39pm - I haven't once spoken about the potential trainwreck that's going to be Amy Winehouse, soon to be performing live on satellite from London. Surely you're seen some of her more inauspicious performances over the last year on YouTube, at functions with supposedly as much posterity as the Grammys. They have not been -- what's the word -- intelligible? Anyway, I'm hoping this one's different, that she feels the love of an entire industry from across the Atlantic, and that her incarcerated husband learns how to tie a Windsor knot.

10:41pm - Aw, shit, here she comes....

10:42pm - She's doing "You Know I'm No Good." It's brilliant. First of all, good choice, considering the circumstances. Whoops, she just name-checked her husband, Blake... well, in any event, she's playing this exactly as dramatically as she should. She's killin' the camera. She's lethal... Now she's doing "Rehab." Damn. You'd never guess she was climbin' the streets at 7am looking for a Breakfast Jack. I swear she's got a stunt double.

10:47pm - Then, post-performance, she gets that glazed look. I don't know.

10:48pm - Doris Day gets a career achievement award. I'd say, "Fuck yeah!", but then Doris would charge me a quarter.

10:49pm - Record of the Year -- Amy Winehouse! She looks stunned. Terrified. The Dap Kings are crumbling around her. Oh, crap, she's gonna say something about Blake. Get your DVRs ready.

10:50pm - "This is for London, 'cause Camden Town is burning down!!!" Oh, God, she's unhinged. The punkest moment we're gonna get at the Grammys, I'm afraid.

10:52pm - That leaves Album of the Year. I'm thinking about changing my prediction.

10:53pm - No. If I fall, I fall with integrity. I had good reason. I still say Herbie Hancock wins it. Live by the blog, die by the blog.

10:54pm - I gotta do a playlist of all this stuff for work in the morning. I need Geritol.

10:55pm - And Billy Ray Cyrus. I gotta research for the Billy Ray Cyrus interview in the afternoon. Damn. This is ridiculous.

10:56pm - Then I go on paternity leave.

10:56pm - And I also volunteer for the elderly. I give them freebase equipment.

10:57pm - Neil Portnow, Recording Academy President! Leagues hipper than Michael C. Greene! More powerful than a tech industry lobbyist! Faster than a speeding file-sharer! Able to leap tall table settings in a single bound! Look -- down in the diamond lane! It's a lawyer! It's a concierge! It's.... Neil Portnow!!!

11:00pm - They're officially overtime.

11:03pm - Just remembered the name of that Andy Williams song: "You've Got What It Takes." Seriously, it's an erotic time-bomb of a song. Check it out. And buy his sweaters.

11:04pm - Aforementioned/threatened Groban/Bocelli duet. This one's for you, Carmella Soprano. Suburban New Jersey, you are so gonna need a cigarette when this is over.

11:05pm - I need to either drink more coffee or more water.

11:12pm - Seriously, this headache is classic. Okay, here we go.

11:13pm - John Fogerty, with Little Richard and Jerry Lee Lewis. Hey, the last John Fogerty album Revival was plenty good. Jerry Lee is not playing piano. He's sitting at it, but he's not doing anything.

11:14pm - Now Jerry Lee's singing "Great Balls Of Fire." He's doing as little on piano as he has to. I'm going to go ahead and give it to him. Don't think we're gonna see him kicking over the piano bench.

11:16pm - Mr. Penniman, on the other hand, can still obviously play. He's doing "Good Golly Miss Molly." The lineage from Little Richard to Prince should no longer be in any doubt at all.

11:21pm - That Art Brut Sidekick commercial again. "(We have) a biodiesel tour bus -- runs on blubber." Very good.

11:22pm - I want to drop out of society and join a neo-pagan nature cult in the Scottish isles like in the original version of The Wicker Man.

11:24pm - "Professor" will.i.am does one-half of one verse of "Mack The Knife." Then raps. Then does "Strangers in the Night." Then raps some more. Then does "Don't Worry Be Happy." Then does U2's "Beautiful Day." Then raps. Then stops.

11:26pm - I feel not one sense of warmth for will.i.am and likely never will.

11:27pm - Usher and Quincy Jones. Here goes Album of the Year. And it's...

11:28pm - HAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!! HERBIE HANCOCK!!!! I CALLED IT!!! I CALLED IT!!!!! DID YOU HEAR ME CALL IT??? I FUCKIN' CALLED IT!!!!!!!!!!!!!! AAAAAAAAH!!!!! YOU DOUBTED! YOU CAJOLED! YOU TEASED! BUT YOU DIDN'T CALL IT! WHO CALLED IT?? MEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE!!!!! AAAAAAAA-HAAAAHAAAHAAAHAAAA!!!!!!!!!!

11:29pm - WHO'S YOUR PROGNOSTICATOR???? WHO'S YOUR MOTHER-FUCKIN' PROGNOSTICATOR?????? ME!!!!!!! I'M YOUR GODDAMN PROGNOSTICATOR!!!!!!!!!

11:30pm - WEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE ARE THE CHAMPIOOOOOOOONS, MY FRE-EEEEEEINDS!!!!!!!! WOOOO-HOO! I CALLED IT!!!!!!!!!!!! I CALLED IT!

11:31pm - Eh, but Amy shoulda won.

Good night.