Grammy Hangover

Before I get into politics for the day, I just want to make a few quick notes on the Grammys.

• I think everyone was a little surprised by Herbie Hancock winning Best Album.
• Amy Winehouse looked a little dazed during her performance, but Ringo was definitely drunker, and I'm amazed Quincy Jones could walk. He sounded like Mark E. Smith up there.
  
• I want Kanye West's glow-in-the-dark glasses.
• I'm trying to follow the logic here: You've got Tina Turner and you want her to sing "Proud Mary" as a duet with someone. You've got John Fogerty, who wrote "Proud Mary," on the bill and you want him to sing with someone else as well. So you have Tina sing with . . . Beyonce? And you shove Fogerty off in the corner to provide out-of-place segue between Jerry Lee Lewis and Little Richard?
• Can we do away with this whole "duets with dead people" thing? I really didn't want to see Alicia Keys sing with Frank Sinatra.
• MORRIS DAY AND THE TIME! Who is Rihanna and who the hell does she think she is that she can cut off "Jungle Love?"
  
• I know he's been playing with Wilco for a few years, but Nels Cline (the creator of some of the best indescribable noise I've ever heard) now has a Grammy nomination on his resume.
  
• Jason Bateman is a really snarky son of a bitch.
• Maybe there's some nuance to a song about checking your special lady for ticks, but to me it just sounds like Brad Paisley is a hick.

Special honors:

1. The WTF award: We have a tie. On one hand, you would think Keely Smith doing a duet with Kid Rock in the place of Louis Prima would be an obvious winner. But then some weird little blonde thing referred to Andy Williams (who many of you will remember as Nelson Muntz' favorite saccharine crooner) as "the O.G.," which I was informed is short for "original gangsta." Both moments were perverse, simultaneously upsetting and laughable.
2. The Mute Button award: Alicia Keys and John Mayer are bad, but Josh Groban and Andrea Bocelli got me to change the channel before they even finished announcing the names.
3. The Spectacular Cockiness Well Rewarded award: they turn up the "finish your speech" music on Kanye, who in turn launches into a dedication to his dead mother, and announces annoyedly that "it would be in good taste to stop the music now.” The music stops and the audience cheers.