The Grammy's

Last night, when I got home from the theater, I did a few things, and then I went into the bedroom to put away a basket full of clean clothes that I washed last week. While I was putting the clothes away, I turned on the television, and caught the last five hours of the Grammy awards. What? The show was "only" three and a half hours long? Huh. You could've foolded me. Anyway, I turned it on right after Jennifer Hudson performed - she was standing on the stage looking stunned, and then they went to commercial. I wanted to see her, and was bummed that I missed it; I'm sure it's on You Tube and I can check it out later. I think I missed U2, but that's okay. It might be time for U2 to go away for awhile. And take Paul McCartney with them.

At first I thought it was a joke, but then I realized that the announcer was serious when she introduced Stevie Wonder, performing with the Jonas Brothers. Up until last night, I had somehow managed to avoid ever hearing the Jonas Brothers - nor do I know their first names, so let's call them... Jonas 1 (Straight Hair), Jonas 2 (Curly Hair), and Jonas 3 (The Other One) - so they've been to me a trio of incredibly young, kind of cute-ish faces; I didn't know what they sounded like. Now I know: they sound like shit.

Stevie, held hostage by what can only be a really, really bad business deal, performed well, but come on. Those boys are just three hairdos. The fact that two of them were holding guitars cracked me up. I've seen kids at Best Buy playing Guitar Hero more realistically. Patrick was in the other room watching something else or emailing work or something, and he could hear my TV. His one and only comment was, "Man. That horn section is off." I don't think it was the horns, babe, I think it was Jonas 1's voice.

Another performer I was a little curious about was Katy Perry, but I have also never heard her song or her singing (look, I listen to Kevin & Bean or NPR in the morning, and my iPod or KPCC most of the rest of the time; I think I am not her target audience), so when she floated down in what looked like a giant suppository, wearing the Chiquita banana lady costume (and flat shoes. Come on, Katy - if you're going to take your boobs out like that, at least think about proportion and wear some rockin' shoes), I thought for a second this could be entertaining... and then she started to sing, and I thought, Nope, and went back to folding my underwear. That song is sort of cute, maybe if someone else were singing it. Like Steven Tyler (or even Kelly Clarkson. Someone with a voice). She also looked confused while she was on stage, like either she's too stupid to learn a dance routine or they just told her to run around like an idiot (if those were her directions, then hey, she did a terrific job). I was not impressed.

Also... Now, I'm not a fan of Coldplay, but I realize that I'm not the only one who found it odd that they were nominated in the same category (was it Best Rock Album? The word "rock" was definitely in there, plain as day) with... Metallica. Not only nominated, but... won, and that's just weird, fine. But. What was UP with those weird matching outfits? Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Pastel Hearts Club Band, for sure. If they were SPLPHCB, I'm not sure who was Billy Shears. Justin Timberlake, maybe. Or maybe Jonas 2.

At this point, I really wanted to go to bed, but KROQ had been mentioning Radiohead's performance all last week, and of course I was staying up for that. It took me awhile to put all my clothes away because I got distracted by Facebook (some of this message appeared originally in a strange email to my friend Barry), but then Patrick, who had been sucked in, called me from the living room, because Radiohead was finally on.

First of all, I have to say that I mentioned somewhere, to someone, a long time ago, that "Myxomatosis" would be a totally rad marching band field show, so when I saw the USC marching band on stage with them (doing a totally different song, but still... my idea) I was pretty excited. Also: all those drummers!! There was one guy playing snare, on the end...? Really cute, big smile.

(Seriously. I have a sickness. I can admit it. I think I need a 12 step program, which is interesting, because the song Radiohead performed was called "15 Step." Ha! See how I did that?)

Anyway, I thought it was a great performance, too short, and I, of course, wanted more. Unless I want to go to Mexico or Brazil, I don't think I'll be seeing them anytime soon.

I thought the Bo Diddly tribute was curious. A little short, too, and with no real introduction, kind of weird, but then again, how much more John Mayer did I want? Yeah: not that much.

After that, I kind of stopped paying attention, finished putting away my clothes and got in bed, but then Patrick surprised me by coming to bed and mentioning that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss were going to perform and that he wanted to see it. So we watched them, and they looked and sounded pretty darn good. I might even check out that album. And Alison Krauss is gorgeous. She looked amazing.

With that, we went to bed, and I overslept 45 minutes and was 15 minutes late to work. I don't understand how that worked out, seemingly in my favor... but I was still late. This morning, I've been hearing a lot of news stories about some guy named Chris Brown and Rhianna who were supposed to also appear at the Grammy's but didn't and it's some kind of... news story, but to tell you the truth: I don't know who these people are. And I don't care.

Photo is from here. Thanks, whoever you are.