Being no good has never been so good

Aw, yeah, bitches - my girl Amy Winehouse may not have made a sweep at the Grammys last night, but she sure as hell cleaned up.



Cleaned up in more ways than one: not only did she receive a trophy in five categories, she's also on furlough, as it were, from rehab. It was great to see the academy focus on her music instead of her much-publicized personal spin out of control. 'Twas even better to see Amy put on a coherent and charming performance of You Know I'm No Good and Rehab (although everyone online seems preoccupied with her lack of dancing skills...no arguments here, but jeez - if every singer had to be a dancer as well, there'd be a lot fewer singers out there), and then look like she'd been smacked upside the head with a two-by-four when it was announced she'd won Record of the Year for Rehab.

I haven't watched the Grammys since...damn, I don't even remember the last time I watched it. I stopped watching because of the necessity to wade through waist-deep dreck in order to get to the very few good parts of the evening. Nothing has really changed since there. Even with the writers on strike and no host, the show went on for an interminable amount of time. Award bloat. It's Grammy's 50th anniversary, so there were roughly 999,748 Lifetime Achievement awards given out. Luckily for me, I watched it on DVR, so there was much fast forwarding during much boring bullshit. Aside from Amy's performance and numerous wins, some of the high points for me were:

• Beyonce and Tina Turner's duet of Proud Mary (though my favorite part of that whole performace remains Beyonce's introduction of Tina). I think Tina is a vampire. It's the only way to explain the fact that a woman who's close to 70 years old still looks like that. If that's true, then we can only hope Beyonce is also a blood drinker and will look this good for all eternity. Can I get a Hallelujah! for Beyonce's silver minidress?
  
  
• During an acceptance speech, Kanye West started talking about his mother, who passed away last November, and the people backstage started playing the "get off the damn stage" song. He stopped his speech and mentioned that it would be in good taste to stop the music now. The crowd cheered that one. I mean, come on - it's one thing to use the crook to pull somebody off the stage when they're being long winded. But he wasn't, and the happy "OK, stop talking now" music was completely disrespectful, given the subject matter.
  
  
• Herbie Hancock and Lang Lang teamed up on twin grand pianos to lead the orchestra in Gershwin's Rhapsody in Blue. The first clarinetist was really enjoying himself and his lickin' stick, if you know what I mean.
  
  
• Jason Bateman is a douchebag. No, that wasn't a favorite part of the show; I just felt the need to throw that bit of information in there.
  
  
• I now know, with great certainty, that I need never spend my time or money attending a Cirque du Soleil performance. They took perfectly good Beatles music and performed their "What the fuck was THAT?" mimery to its accompaniment. A woman in a flowing red dress swinging through the air, a little boy being moved around in a bed...now I'm very, very confused. Why can't those fuckers just walk against the wind and leave the Beatles alone?
  
  
• Morris Day and the Time reunited for the show! More than 20 years post-Purple Rain, and Morris Day can still have an onstage groom in the mirror without looking any more ridiculous than he did Back in the Day. No pun intended. I just got lucky.
  
  
• Cyndi Lauper! No, she didn't perform, but she was a presenter, and I love her. A Cyndi sighting is always a good thing in my book. Katy's Big Book of Fucking Awesome.
  
  
• I really wanted Amy to win Record of the Year, but if someone besides her had to win it, I'm glad it was Herbie Hancock. A lot of folks online were pretty upset about that today, but you have to remember that the awards are a product of the academy voters' opinions. I think people were just miffed because an album they'd never heard won The Big Kahuna.