Grammy Night

If you are not currently watching the Grammy’s, change the damn channel! I generally despise award shows and all the crap that is on them. When it comes to the music genre of shows, they usually are the best. I don’t like the AMA’s because the awards are based on sales and radio play. Not to mention winners are notified in advance. In the past, MTV has always put on the best shows with great performances and what not, but this years version was pure crap. The highlight was Justin Timberlake calling out MTV and asking to show more videos. Damn skippy JT! “Pop Culture” television can no longer call themselves “Music” television. If you like performance, as I do, the Grammy’s have been the best I have seen overall in several years. The music has been fantastic, the audio mix has been perfect, no lip synching, and very few award acceptance speeches. Kanye got dissed by the producers during his speech, but he fought back and he won to the ovation of myself on my couch and the audience in the Staples center. He got rushed with music and called them out on the air. In my opinion, if you’re going to give someone an award on TV, let them have their moment and ramble on as long as they want. Don’t hand out an award if your on a time crunch. I don’t remember anyone rushing the Giants during Lombardi trophy acceptances.

The highlight of the night, for me at least, will be the performance of the Beatles songs by the Cirque show Love and Across the Universe soundtrack performers. I had chills… A close second so far was Kanye West’s performance. It was innovational, entertaining, and impressive. However every performance so far has sounded just perfect. Except Fergie, she was off and pushed that song too hard vocally. Also, please learn to annunciate! Aretha looked awful, but even her gospel music performance impressed me. It’s not over yet, but I’ll actually stay up to watch until the end this year.

The Grammy’s this year did it right, it’s all about the performances. No host and the usual 100 costume changes with campy jokes, and not many stupid presenters with HIGHLY awful jokes. I look forward to hopefully buying some of them on iTunes in the near future. This is the template any music awards show should follow in the future.

NBA Game

I managed to score some free tickets, thanks Ed, to the Lakers/Magic game Friday night. Since my wife was sick, I took the girls and my wife’s girlfriend to the game. Yes, you read that right. The girls had never been to a game and through most of the first half they just sat in amazement at the spectacle that is professional sports. We went to a baseball game in New York last year and they loved it, but there isn’t quite as much going on all around you at a baseball game. The non-misses and I enjoyed the action with Kobe and Dwight Howard along with seeing Tiger Woods, Chris Tucker and Jonathan Silverman in attendance. The kids did great sitting on our laps and it was a fun time all around. So parents tae advantage while they’re still young/small enough to get in free. They’ll do better than you might expect.