We on Award Tour: 2010 Grammy Awards

Even though music dying, that isn’t going to stop them from be self congratulatory. And even though the awards themselves are worthless (Hilary Clinton has more than The Beach Boys; Neil Young won his first ever this year… for album packaging), there are still plenty of great performances, here are my thoughts on last night’s festivities.

- Remember when opening the Grammy’s was a big thing. Prince being join Beyoncé, Madonna being backed by the Gorillaz performing in 3-D for the first time, the reunited Police, U2 even got things started last year. This year we get the most overrated thing in music possibly ever. Well at least Lady Gaga only covered herslf in soot instead of fake menstrual blood for this performance. So there’s that.

- In lieu of an actual host yet again, we get Stephen Colbert for a pseudo-monologue trashing the music industry (and they still laugh) all but pointing out how Susan Boyle managed to sell more albums than anyone in the audience (sans Taylor Swift) in less than a month then they did all year). But his bit with his daughter was the highlight, if only the cameraman was a little quicker with the reaction shot.

- Just a reminder, Song of the Year is a songwriting award. Single Ladies (Put a Ring on It) won a songwriting award. Whoa-oh-oh Oh-oh-oh Oh- oh-oh-oh.

- Who invited Jennifer Lopez? Was it just to memorialize the ten year anniversary since she wore “The Dress”? (If so, where was the twentieth anniversary memorial to Milli Vanilli winning Best New Artist?) It’s been eight years since she put out a song anyone cared about or a movie anyone wanted to see.

- And even odder, she introduces Green Day and the cast of American Idiot which didn’t really work. Had there been distractingly bad lip-syncing, it could have been something out of Glee.

- And cheesiest idea award goes to Lincoln who wants you to vote on which artist will perform in their next commercial.

- You know you are in for a great performance when before a note is played and you go “Oh snap.” That was my first thought when I saw Beyoncé standing in front of her futuristic SWAT team. Granted my second thought was “If they start doing the Single Ladies dance, I’m throwing my remote at the television.” Luckily the SDTV was saved as we get a interesting medley of If I Were a Boy and You Oughta Know. Although I could have done without the crotch grab.

- Interestingly Best Comedy Album gets a primetime spot. I cannot remember that happening before. And finally daughter Colbert finds her dad cool.

- Kings of Leon wins Best Record. Wow, for the first I think ever, I agree with the winner of this category.

- Most actors show up with the Grammy to shamelessly shill their latest movie or their CBS show, but Robert Downey Jr. is just there to call himself, “The Most Self Important Actor of His Generation.”

- Sure Blame It is one of the worst songs in recent memory, but it is hard not to like that performance. They just kept pulling out random people like Doug E. Fresh and Slash who for whatever reason starts shredding the solo from November Rain. Love it.

- Maybe not a good sign for the Dave Matthews Band for Album of the Year when they couldn’t even win the genre specific award. Which begs the question, how does Lady Gaga and Black Eyed Peas get nominated for the big award over Green Day and U2?

- Why tease that Taylor Swift is going perform with one her idols only to show video of her singing with Stevie Nicks. Huruph. The Rhiannon performance was decent enough, but hearing Nicks singing the kiddie lyrics of You Belong with Me was almost as disturbing as Def Leppard singing Swift's tenth grade poetry.

- Please stop with the 3-D television events until you perfect the art because the Michael Jackson performance was less 3-D and more just a redder version of the performance. At least it was just a couple minutes unlike the hour long Chuck episode that gave me a headache. And Earth Song may be one of Jackson’s most underrated songs along with Will You Be There. And are Jackson’s kids really that old? The boy looked like he is already in Middle School and the girl is starting to look like Amanda Bynes.

- No Kanye West to accept the Rap-Sung Collaboration. Maybe he was banned (nor was invited to perform on the Drake track). Sure he is a douche, but award shows are a little less interesting without Kanye’s ego.

- For those who want to download the Haitian relief song by Mary J. Blige and Andrea Bocelli, go to iTunes.com/target (why Target, I have no clue).

- Old dude alert! And we get our yearly lecture on why downloading is bad. Yawn.

- Adam Sandler introducing the Dave Matthews Band: it like that did that just for me. Beyoncé made a valiant effort, but Dave and the boys, had the best performance of the night.

- Quentin Tarantino may be able to make some entertaining movies but his painfully uncool and his introduction was really cringeworthy.

- Note to Grammy producers, stop inviting artists to perform songs with copious amount of profanity. No one is enjoying these performances where the censors fall asleep on their mute button for most of the song. And did Lil Wayne pull out his Lil Wayne because my screen went yellow for about thirty seconds during the performance.

- One has to wonder if Taylor Swift wins this award for Album of the Year if Kanye West doesn’t turn her into America’s Sweetheart. I thought it was going to come down to Beyoncé edging out Dave Matthews Band with Swift just as a darkhouse (and Lady Gaga and the Black Eyed Peas with zero chance).

- Here is my favorite performance of the night:

The 25 Best Movies of 2009

I am in no why a movie connoisseur, I can count the number of times I stepped foot into a movie theater last decade on one hand, but thanks to the novel of idea of reviewing DVD’s through the mail, I did get to see a few good movies in the previous twelve month, enough to come up with my own list. But do to my laziness to actually drive to a movie theatre, this is really a list of the best movies released on DVD that were released in 2009 which is why you may see some movies that were released into theaters in 2008 on the list and is missing any movie released in the last three months of 2009 (Many apologies to 500 Days of Summer that was supposed to arrive Saturday but didn’t. I’ll try to remember to include you in next year’s list. Well assuming if you are as good as people would lead me to believe.)


1. Funny People

2. Gran Torino

3. Pineapple Express

4. Drag Me to Hell

5. Inglourious Bastards

6. Slumdog Millionaire

7. Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist

8. District 9

9. Up

10. Extract

11. Dead Snow

12. Role Models

13. Watchmen

14. Zach and Miri Make a Porno

15. The Lucky Ones

16. My Name Is Bruce

17. Fanboys

18. Angels & Demons

19. Monsters vs. Aliens

20. I Love You Man

21. Orphan

22. Sunshine Cleaning

23. Taken

24. Observe and Report

25. The Good: Live Hard, Sell Hard

57 Channels and Only This Is On vol. CX

Quote of the Week: Dan, somebody’s going to have to stick their finger up your butt and I think we’d both prefer it to be Jillian. (Dr. Sands, Mercy)

Song of the Week: Informer – Snow (How I Met Your Mother)

Big News of the Week: TV at Great Prices: To avoid having to talk about Tiger Woods again, I have moved the Deal of the Week up because Amazon is currently is having a TV on DVD sale with sets at the lowest I have ever seen anywhere. Here are some shows that I highly recommend that should please any television fan on your Christmas list, or just want it for yourself (click here for the full list of almost 300 deals, and not these prices are only for a limited time and most of the series sets have equally low individual seasons):

Veronica Mars - The Complete Series ($62.49)
Friday Night Lights 1.x ($14.99)
Rome: The Complete Series [Blu-ray] ($83.99)
Chuck 1.x ($17.99)
Rescue Me 1.x ($20.99)
Deadwood: The Complete Series ($97.49)
The Big Bang Theory 1.x ($19.99)
Pushing Daisies 1.x ($19.99)
Dead Like Me: The Complete Collection ($42.99)
Dexter 3.x ($18.99)
How I Met Your Mother 1.x ($14.99)
Everwood 1.x & 2.x ($38.99)
Chuck 1.x [Blu-ray] ($29.99)
Pushing Daisies 1.x [Blu-ray] ($23.99)


The Big Bang Theory: Always a good episode whenever there is a heavy dose of Penny and Sheldon interaction and Sheldon teaching Penny physics that failed as bad as I expected (hopefully there is an upcoming episode where Penny tries to teach Sheldon something which on paper should be even funnier). You can download The Big Bang Theory on iTunes.

Castle: The last time I wrote about this show I complained how whenever an actor I know shows up I instantly figure out they are the killer. And wouldn’t you know it, this episode had two (Riley Finn, the second Buffy alum in a row, and Shawn Hunter) and neither turned out to do the crime. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Castle on iTunes. Also be sure to check out my chat with Stana Katic.

Mercy: I liked at her Veterans meeting, everyone else there looked disheveled and dressing one step above a homeless person, but Ronnie struts in looking absurdly hot in a designer coat. Gotta love television. You can stream recent episodes on Hulu. You can also download Mercy on iTunes.

Real World-Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins: Well that sucked. How can you go so slow on the balance stage that five people can pass you, even after falling off and having a one stage lead. Hopefully the show puts a moratorium on inviting Kenny, Evan and Johnny because they have made their last couple challenges lame. You can stream recent episodes over at mtv.com. You can also download Real World-Road Rules Challenge: The Ruins on iTunes.

Survivor: Samoa: Now that is balls. Russell pulls out the hidden immunity idol and puts it around his neck and then doesn’t even play it. They should have voted him out just for that. They should do more of these double eliminations (with two separate tribal and immunity challenges instead of the two for ones like they have done in the past) as it can beat the doldrums that some of the later episodes have in a season when there are fewer people around. You can stream recent episodes over at cbs.com.



Community: That may have been the greater brawl in the history of television and almost as gay as the one my high school production of West Side Story, where I played Hispanic #3, staged. And yes you read my role right, I didn’t go to the most diverse school in the country. You can stream current episodes on Hulu. You can also download Community on iTunes.

Free Download of the Week: Holiday Sampler (iTunes): Last week I pointed you to Amazon’s 25 Days of Christmas Music and now iTunes if getting in the giving spirit with this twenty song sampler featuring holiday cheer from Weezer, Sarah McLachlan, Musiq Soulchild, Barry Manilow, and Stephan Colbert. Yes Stephan Colbert singing Another Christmas Song (that’s the title of the song).

Video of the Week: It is disappointed that Adam Sandler didn’t put out a proper video for any of his three versions of The Chanukah Song, but this Neil Diamond version more than makes up for it. Here’s hoping Neil gets around to recording the full trilogy.



Next Week Pick of the Week: Survivor, Thursday at 8:00 on CBS: Thanks to Russell, this season started out very exciting, but thanks to the ineptitude of Galu, it went downhill after the merge as none of them realized that Russell was getting them to vote out their own until they realized that they no longer had the majority. Hopefully Jaison and/or Mick wise up and we get some fireworks in the final two episodes and not just lie down and let Russell walk away with a million dollars.