9:19

The Grateful Dead don't have a Lifetime Achievement Award yet? I mean, until now?

Gnarls Barkley. I like. What's with the pilot uniforms? It's awesome.

9:16

This Chevy ad stinks. The Hot Pockets ad, on the other hand, rules. And here's why: After the family gets the hot pockets from dad, they all turn towards eachother and laugh. I love when that happens in a commercial. I also love when that happens in my real life.

9:12

The Dixie Chicks don't actually make me want to support the war in Iraq just to spite them, but I am thisclose.

Did you like how Seal had to appear with Karl Lagerfeld?

9:05

Shakira is wearing some wierd-ass gold breastplate. And I don't mean gold-covered. I mean solid gold. Her sole talent is belly-dancing. Not that I am casting aspersions, since i can't even do that.

Wait, is this Indian? Egyptian? Latino? What.is.that? The back-up dancers have a certain Gladiator look to them, with their gold-plated bellybuttons.

Wyclef sucks so bad I can't even think of anything funny to say. His belt is gold and he possibly has some sort of Palestinian prayer cloth around his neck. Not sure. Or is that a flag from Shakira's fake-ass Egyptian-Hindu-Spanish country?

9:00

I am almost certain that John Mayer thanked Jim Jad-wee-zee-ak. AKA The Bagel Miser. Who is AWOL from ROTC still, as far as I know.

8:55

Wow, this whole medley is just unlistenable. I don't really like John Mayer but there's gotta be better material in his repertoire. I bet Jessica Simpson thought he would go for her. She's seen too many make-over teen romance movies. You know the routine: popular kid remakes nerd, nerd gets popular, ditches popular kid, who has fallen for nerd. She thought she could do that. But she mistook what kind of nerd he is. He's the kind of nerd who can get the kind of girls he goes for, girls who are applying to graduate school.

8:57 - Poor Nelly Furtado. She has to appear with Pussy Cat Dolls to give an award. How the might have fallen.

8:52

Or maybe its just that she's saddled with one of the worst songs I have ever heard.

8:49

I am not one to talk but this child here is flat. I have never heard of this person. Corinne something? With John Mayer and John Legend? We'll call her Girl John. She's lame.

8:46

According to the crawler, the Flaming Lips won something. Best Engineering, Non-Classical for At-War with the Mystics. Hmm, sort of throwing actual musicians a bone there. I suspect the remaining Doors would have preferred their lifetime achievement award be delivered by the Lips, but we can't always get what we want. (I guess that's a different 60s rock band).

The stage is hideous. Like its left over from a VH1 Best of This Week Awards show.

The baby is crying AGAIN, so I may need to stop. Plus I am not sure that even I can keep up this frenetic pace.

oooooh, Stevie W. looks uncomfortable up there by himself.

8:40

The woman behind Beyonce has a nest of sticks and leaves on her head.

Oop, MJ just won another thing. Blige that is. Michael Jordan does not appear to be nominated for anything.

8:37

Justin again. This is so embarassing. He has a little penlight camera that he's holding in front of his face so his song is sung like right up in the camera and his nose looks prominent and it just sucks.

8:38 - Oh, Pink is the best they can do to honor The Doors. Fuck you very much, say the remaining members of the band.

8:33

Justin Timberlake just looks scuzzy. Sorry, but it's true. Lose the, uh, coffee cake crumbs on your face.

Live! Grammy Blog!

In order to keep my attention on the Grammys, I thought I would live blog it.

8:24 - Mary J. Blige. Why does she need a Grammy when she's already arrived? And by "arrived", I mean "sitting in front of Prince." Her thank you list was exhaustive but I suspect she'll be back. She already thanked J.C. so I guess that leaves us The Father and The Holy Ghost for best R&B Female and best R&B Duo.

Why is the plural Grammy "Grammys" and not "Grammies"? I guess that sounds like "grandma" and "nummies", which is NOT something I want to conjure.

8:31 - Idris Elba sighting. He was choking on takeout Chinese take-out in the ad for the new Tyler Perry movie. He still looked hot.

When the Dust Settles

How many daddies will little Danielynn Marshall Smith Stern Birkhead van Anhalt have? And wouldn't it make a hilarious movie? Zsa Zsa's husband could be played by Tom Selleck, and Howard K. Stern could be played by Ted Danson, and Larry Birkhead could be played by, umm, the other guy.

Shhh, Don't Tell Him

Here's the Valentine's gift I have picked out for Mr. Scobie:

The sad part is, our bathroom is nowhere near large enough for this get-up. Ah well, a girl can dream. By the way, that's the Roto-Rooter Pimped Out John.

New Data!!

New evidence has been discovered of humanity's innate corniness! Proof that Valentine's Day pranks are the new rage! That teenagers have been "intimate" since before Jesus!

Restore NASA's Budget

When astronauts have the time to don wigs and diapers, embarassing themselves and our space program in the process, it's time to dig between the cushions of America's couch for some spare change to restore NASA's budget. Send them to space, or don't, but just keep them busy enough to stop them from engaging in sophomoric stalking, writ painfully large.

Finally

Props to Brian Schwartz of Toledo, OH, who, unlike Alanis Morrisette, understands the meaning of irony.

It was so cold that Toledo, Ohio — 5 above zero at noon, up from 4 below — even closed its outdoor ice rink. "The irony is not lost on us," said city spokesman Brian Schwartz.

If it weren't so bitter-ass cold, I'd say Toledo seems like a good place to raise children, teach them how to to ice skate, and how to properly use popular literary devices/modes of collegiate humor.

It's Just Like a Mini-Mall

This is the first song to push Irreplaceable out of the permanent Muzak in my brain, finally.




Thanks KML and thank you, God, for the day you brought video technology to Alabama.

Too Lazy to Blog

I haven't written anything this week because I have been just too lazy to blog. I've even had good(ish) ideas, but been too lazy to even search for links to support them. How lame is that? There's nothing lamer. I am too lame to engage in even the lamest blogging. But I will give it a shot.

The thing that's been on my mind this week is all the good new words and phrases I have come across in the past few days. For example, this New York Times article concerns French government efforts to fight "banalization" in French culture. Apparently the French are up in arms (or s'insurger, as the case may be) that mega-stores are taking over the tonier parts of Paris. Great word. What took them so long? But my question is, is banal a French word? Mon dieu! I believe that the French word for banal is poncif. That would make this trend "poncification". La voila! Double Mon Dieu! Poncification means "to pronounce a word is a deliberately poncy/french way. Target, a crappy superstore becomes t'argey." Pretty tautological, as problems go, no? So to make banal is to make French. Good luck, Mr. Chirac, coming up with a governmental solution to this problem. Still, banalization = good word.

Elsewhere, I read this: "vomiting from places other than your mouth". It's in Please Read Before Suing, in the Shouts & Murmurs column in the New Yorker. I laughed out loud when I read that, possibly from disgust and surprise.*

In my laziness, I cannot remember the other great words I read this week. Sorry.

One other thought on the use of words. This week, T&A Lady sparked quite a discussion about what a gal should call the man she marries. I even outed her, umm, dude as a, umm, guy. Anyway, it reminded me of a good rule of thumb, generally applicable: Would you be able to call someone by that name to a federal judge? This was the gauntlet question to my own dude back when he wanted to name our first child Buckaroo. Mr. Scobie acquiesced, and the rest is, well, whatever it is. My "husband" admitted he couldn't introduce his child as Buckaroo to a federal judge. So, T&A Lady, how would you introduce your fella, if you had to (again), to a federal judge?

* Also in The New Yorker this week is a piece by Ryszard Kapusciski. Kapuscinski died recently, but I had been thinking about him. In college, I read Shah of Shahs, the Emperor and The Shadow of the Sun in rapid succession for no reason other than they were among the best books I had ever read. I swore I would never forget them, and then I did. Any time I hear about Hallie Selassie or the Shah of Iran, I have this vague feeling I once knew something about them. But how often is that, right? Anyway, read one of these books.