Hooray for Television

As some of you may know, while in college I used to write regularly in this here online journal. This was back when people still called them online journals, so you’ll have to bear with me as I transition into the 21st Century. Anyway, I’ve decided to start updating it regularly again and what better way to kick it off than with a good ol’ fashioned awards show round up.

I was supposed to be boycotting this year’s Emmys over the lack of outrage that Amy Ryan wasn’t nominated for Best Guest Actress in a Comedy Series, but there are too many questions that need to be answered for me to stay away. For instance, can someone who is waiting to start watching Mad Men until after the current season comes out on DVD watch an entire Emmycast without being exposed to any spoilers? Will this be the year people finally confess that they too think Alec Baldwin is overrated? What will Ricky Gervais do to further win America’s heart? Is Tina Fey the greatest person since Jesus? Will someone shoot Anna Paquin in the face? Answers to all these questions (hopefully) await at the 61st Annual Primetime Emmy Awards.

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-I haven’t been able to sleep for weeks, but the moment is finally at hand: “A tired boring old show that nobody cares about – next on CBS!”
(Just to be clear, I’m talking about the Emmys)

-Speaking of CBS, you know what’s hip with the kids these days? Musical numbers.
First the Oscars, now the Emmys. I wonder if the Grammys will follow suit….

-Shows that were not featured in the “Year in Comedy” montage: It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Eastbound & Down, Flight of the Conchords, Party Down, Better of Ted. Apparently they didn’t happen this year, even though one of them is nominated for Best Comedy Series.

-Aaron Sorkin used to date Kristen Chenoweth. This just needs to be said.
(On a related note, how small does one have to be to technically qualify as a “little person”?)

-Sarah Silverman’s mustache FTW.
(Note: I really just wanted an excuse to finally use the phrase FTW only two years after it became cool to do so. Now if only someone could explain to me what the hell a LOLCat is.)

-So apparently Tony Shaloub still exists. Who knew?

-HAHAHAHA oh my God, you’ll have to excuse me because I’m just laughing so hard at that Two and a Half Men clip. HAHAHA you see, HAHAHA Charlie Sheen is like this HAHAHA oh, hold on, hold on, I can do this….he’s HAHA a ladies’ man HAHAHA and he’s in charge of raising HAHAHAHA oh my god – in charge of raising a KID! LOLOLOLOLOL!! OMG that shit KILLS ME! It’s just too funny.

-Ummm, Jon Cryer just won an award...yeah, so that happened.

-Wow, a person playing a character with multiple personalities just won an acting award. I did not see that coming.

-Wow, the girls from Gossip Girl aren’t funny and can’t read. I did not see that coming.

-Wow, I really can’t come up with a way to keep this joke structure going. I did not see that coming.
(Actually, I totally did)

Phrases that would have sounded implausibly absurd 10 years ago:
-President Barack Obama
-Two time Emmy Winner Justin Timberlake
-Academy Award Winner Mo’Nique (oh just you wait…)

-Holy shit, what a year for death. That might have been the most star-studded dead people montage of all time. Death really did some phenomenal/terrible work this year.

(And just in case you were wondering, yes, we do live in a world where Patrick Swayze gets more applause than Walter Cronkite. And that’s the way it is.)

-You know what show I would watch? Tracy Morgan standing in front of a live open mike for 30 minutes. Tell me you wouldn’t watch that shit and be on the edge of your seat for every second of it.

-Wait, the three nominees for Breakthrough Performance of the Year are a scene from True Blood, a kiss on Gossip Girl and Kris Allen winning American Idol? Those are the three finalists? For the whole year? Who narrowed it down to those three options? Oh…random people who voted on the Internet? Remind me and my blog again why we take the opinions of random people on the Internet seriously.

-On the flip side, the thing from the Internet (Dr. Horrible) was the best part of the show. O Internet, why must I have such a conflicted relationship with you?

-You know what awards shows don’t have near enough of? Awards for Jon Stewart. Seriously, if the American Music Awards gave awards to Jon Stewart I would totally watch them.

-Between Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert, Bill Maher, Will Farrell doing George Bush, Tina Fay doing Sarah Palin, and Obama doing Obama I was already writing that the variety show montage was a leftist’s wet dream and then they had to go and end it with Barbara Streisand blowing kisses to Sean Penn at The Kennedy Center.
I think I just came a little.
Free federally funded gay marriage abortions for everyone!

-Hey it’s Ben Schwartz! Winning an Emmy! It took a lot for me to root against “Motherlover” but Ben just made it worth it by drastically raising the bar in the Most Successful Person I know competition. So congrats on that. (The Emmy is nice too I guess.)

-You know what I like best about Dancing with the Stars (well, besides none of it) – the dancing when there are no stars involved.

Reasons Jon Stewart is God
-He let one of his writers give the acceptance speech for the writing award even though he himself is technically the head writer
-From hosting the Oscars he knows how hard it is to be an awards show host, so he devoted a good chunk of his limited speech time to giving Neil Patrick Harris support and encouragement
-He kept the rest of his speech short, funny and heartfelt

-Hey you know how you think it’s an outrage that no one watched The Wire back when it was on? And how the thought of its comically low ratings makes your heart hurt in all the sad places? And how you feel very strongly that if humanity can’t support a show like The Wire then maybe we should just give up as a species and pray that in our absence something better and more deserving will evolve to take our place? Well you can’t think any of that if you didn’t watch David Simon’s Generation Kill. It was challenging, complex, complicated, and often tedious and confusing. It was also probably the best meditation and examination of modern warfare since Apocalypse Now. And it just lost the Emmy for Best Miniseries to someone or something called “Little Dorrit”

-And the award for most terrifying awards show acceptance speech ever goes to…Michael Emmerson! I’m unsure whether he was thanking his agents or threatening to murder them. I’m also unsure if what he does on Lost can be categorized as “acting”.

-Remember the days when people used the terms “nerd” and “geek” like they were bad things? On some level I think we might have swung too far on the other direction. I guess what I’m trying to say is, every now and then I need a good wedgie. We all do, dammit.

-It’s ironic that Jon Hamm is never going to win an Emmy solely because of the exactly one other drama series on his own network.

-30 Rock had a wildly uneven year and Alec Baldwin was even more overrated than usual. The Office had its best season ever and Steve Carell did some of the best non-Gervais work ever on a comedy series. So naturally 30 Rock and Alec Baldwin won again.

-And in a category I know nothing about and have no opinion on, Glen Close once again beats Holly Hunter, Zoey Bartlett, and the monster that ate Kyra Sedgwick.

-Finally, with all the Kanye jokes being tossed around, I think its worth stating that I’m starting to think Kanye/Swift might have been an inside job. I mean think about it, other than that incident it would have been an incident and controversy free VMAs. Would MTV really allow that to happen? And they learned from the Bruno/Eminem stunt that if it leaks out that it was staged then no one cares anymore. So with the Kanye thing you don’t need to rehearse it, it doesn’t take much to pull off, and everyone wins. Taylor Swift wins because it gets her in the headlines and massive amounts of sympathy. Beyonce wins because she looks like a hero. And MTV obviously wins big time. Hell, even Jay Leno wins if you want to take it that far. The question is what does Kanye get out of it? Well a rapper who releases an album of strange songs about pain and heartbreak that feature him signing in auto-tune is clearly someone who doesn’t really care what others think. He’s been trying to cultivate a rep for a while now as an eccentric genius. And in a world where people on reality shows actively try to be as unlikable and hateful as possible we certainly live in a “there’s no such thing as bad publicity” world. I mean there’s not a person alive now who doesn’t know who Kanye West is. And you’re telling me when he releases a new album with some super catchy radio-friendly jams people won’t go out and buy it? I think maybe he didn’t realize how strong the vitriol against him would be, but I don’t think it’s out of the question that Kanye would have agreed to the stunt if MTV promised him massive promotion when his next album comes out. I’m not necessarily saying the whole thing was staged, but I am saying if it turned out that it was an inside job I wouldn’t be remotely surprised. Then again I had a dream last night that Toby Keith interrupted Jordin Sparks’ acceptance speech at the People’s Choice Awards so maybe I’ve been thinking about this whole thing way too much and maybe I’m turning into a crazy person. So it’s probably best to just disregard everything I’ve said.

The Sound of Settling

After Eminem lost to Steely Dan for Album of the Year I swore I would never watch the Grammys again. It was one of those defining moments of young adulthood where you realize life isn’t fair and existence is meaningless. To recognize this fact I went out the next day and bought an Eminem shirt and wore it to school. "Life showed me its purely random and meaningless nature and all I got was this lousy shirt", is, in retrospect, what I was trying to say. But at the time I believe my thinking went something more like “Eminem is God, fuck the Grammys”

And so I really shouldn’t be here eight years later cursing out the Grammys for fucking up their awards. And yet I am.
I just can’t leave well enough alone.

They say the definition of insanity is continuing to do the same thing and expecting a different result. By this definition (or by any definition really) watching the Grammys is insane. And yet I do it. I could say I watch for the performances, which are often really great and memorable. And this statement would be true. But it wouldn’t be the whole truth. Because deep down I also watch because I do legitimately care who wins. Now, yes, the Grammys are not relevant in any serious way. Yes, their choices are notoriously out of step and laugh inducing. But they also have gotten it right a fair amount of times (Sgt. Pepper, Songs in the Key of Life, Rumours, Thriller, Joshua Tree, etc.). And in fact if you really get down to it, they’ve probably gotten it right as many times as the Oscars have. And ever since they reformed the nominating process in 1995, the nominees have been pretty solid too. And that’s what makes it so frustrating. Every year it seems like “this is the year they’ll get it right”. And every year I end the night swearing drunken profanities at my TV.

But I keep hanging on because what the Grammys claim to be about is what I am all about:

When art and commerce join without sacrificing one for the other. When everyone, young and old, black and white, rich and poor, can agree that this thing, this piece of art is indisputaby the best. When something is simultanously the best and the most popular. The Beatles, The Godfather, The Sopranos, Tiger Woods. This is what all of humanity strives for. This is where I aim to live my life. This is why I care about the Grammys.

Also, I’m addicted to awards shows.

And so my Grammy thoughts begin:

* My one wish is to hear T-Pain accept an award so I can hear him speak in his real voice. I feel like hearing T-Pain speak without his vocoder would be as disconcerting as hearing Hugh Laurie speak without his American accent.

* If I never hear "Before He Cheats" again for the rest of my natural life I will be more than okay with that. And by the way Carrie, before you go tearing up peoples cars maybe you better look in the mirror. Because I think if I was dating a girl with your level of jealousy and anger issues I might cheat on her too. And don’t take my word for it. Ask Tony Romo.

* Has an incredibly attractive person ever looked worse than Rihanna did during that “performance” of "Umbrella"? And while we’re on the subject, can someone explain to my what’s so good about "Umbrella"? I mean it won Pazz and Jop for Gods sake. What am I missing here? I find it mildly tolerable at best. Someone really needs to help me to understand this.

* Okay on a scale of 1 to 10 how threatened do you think Beyonce is by Jay-Z and Rihanna? I’m guessing at least a 13. All I gotta say is don’t do it Jay. Listen to that Carrie Underwood song before you do anything rash.

* How does a TV show prominantly featuring Beyonce not come with a viewer discretion advised warning? I mean what’s more harmful to America’s youth – violence and nudity or Beyonce?

*It’s really disheartening to see Beyonce doing Revlon ads isn't it? So sad to see her sell out like that.

* Okay folks, not to be the asshole here, but its really not necessary to give Stevie Wonder a STANDING ovation. I’m just saying…

*Say what you will about the Grammys but any organization that gives an award to both Barrack Obama and Flight of the Conchords in the same night cant be all bad.

* A meeting I would have like to have been at:
Executive #1: Okay so who do you think the best people would be to present the award for Best Rap/Sung Collaboration?
Executive #2: How about Taylor Swift and that dude Juanes who barely speaks English
Executive #1: Perfect!

*Hey did you know Akon was once a con? Yes, a real life convict. So when it was time to chose a moniker it was either 'Akon" or "Areallyshittyrapper". True story.

* Okay if you’re not standing for the Beatles tribute then you don’t deserve to be there. That might have been the best thing to ever air on CBS. Speaking of which…

*Holy shit! Cirque du Soleil performing to "Day in the Life" on CBS! Middle America just got very confused. What’s next DAFT PUNK?

* Holy shit! It's Daft Punk!! Live on CBS!!! Hurry up kids, get in the fallout shelter, the apocalypse is nigh!

*Ah, George Lopez introducing Brad Paisley. That’s more like it. You can come out now kids….

* Alicia Keys and John Mayer together! If I was black or a woman I would have just came right now.
(I just realized I don’t know the proper conjugation rules for the verb “cum”. I know F. Scott Fitzgerald used to have the same problem.)

* Speaking of my black girlfriend Alicia Keys…
Top 3 Reasons to Listen to the Radio
1.) “No One” - Alicia Keys
2.) “Love Song” – Sara Bareilles
3.) “The Pretender” – Foo Fighters

Top 3 Reasons Not to Listen to the Radio
1.) A loss of faith in all humanity
2.) The soul crushing sound of utter ineptitude
3.) Fergie

* Shockingly, SHOCKINGLY, Will.I.Am’s performance was painfully awful. I didn’t see that one coming.

* You know who I trust with my retirement savings? The crazy dude from Blue Velvet that’s who.

(I wish I could go back to 1969 and tell audiences coming out of Easy Rider that one day Dennis Hopper would be doing ads for a large financial corporation. The 60s would have ended right then and there)

* Wow Scarlett Johansson and Natalie Portman are in a movie together. That would be huge if only it were still 2003. Alas, it is not.

* I wonder how they cast the finger for the iPhone commercials. Is it the same finger for all the ads? Is someone the official finger of iPhone? And what was that audition like exactly? Were they looking for someone from Julliard?

*Kanye is the MAN. I cannot possibly make that word bold enough. You know what we were talking about earlier about being both the best and the most popular. Watch this video and youll see what I mean. Looks like that time spent hanging out with Bono is really paying off.

(As good as that was, his acceptance speech moments later was even better)

*Speaking of acceptance speeches...

Id never heard her talk before but wow shes really British isnt she?

*Now I know there are those who will make jokes about her performance or her speech or her general state of semi-coherence, but I found the whole thing strongly moving in a way I cant quite articulate. I mean you gotta be rooting for her, even more so after last night. I make jokes about literally everything, but even I dont feel right touching this one.
(I will say though that I've watched that clip at least five times now and every time "ray RAY" cracks me up.)

* Okay so before I go I have to address the Herbie Hancock fiasco. Yes my jaw did literally drop. Without exaggeration it took about 30 seconds to even register what had just happened. That is what shock feels like. And that is also what pounding the last nail in coffin of relevancy feels like. Congratulations Grammys. I hope you’re proud of yourselves. I think that undoubtedly goes down in the annals of Grammy lore along with Milli Vanilli, Christopher Cross, and Tony Bennett MTV Unplugged. You also ended my string of outrageously premature yet accurate Grammy predictions. In the past I predicted Speakerboxxx/Love Below would win Album of the Year and that Future Sex/Love Sounds would be nominated for Album of the Year months before either album was even released. This year I said Amy Winehouse would narrowly beat Kanye for Album of the Year back in March. Well to get my self back on track here’s my prediction for next year. The song Kanye does about his mother’s death will not only be his best song ever but it will be the first hip-hop song to win Record of the Year. And 4th time will be the charm, as he’ll finally win Album of the Year. And while we’re making predictions, Heath Ledger will also be nominated for Best Supporting Actor for The Dark Knight. Take it to the bank, and remember you heard it here first.