The New Ike and Tina Turner

Hey, we're not trying to be up-to-the-minute gossip hounds here, we didn't even know these two were dating, and we barely know who Chris Brown is, but the story of Brown's alleged beating of girlfriend Rihanna has captured the attention of the entire country. According to many reports, Brown allegedly beat the holy crap out of Rihanna on the night of the Grammys.

Wow. We didn't know that O.J. Simpson, while looking for the "real killers" of his wife, Nicole, had the free time to set up a Young Celebrities' School for the Art and Appreciation of Domestic Violence.
.
So we're thinking, okay, that's it, if this whole story proves to be true, that's it for Brown's dating life. No woman will go within miles of him, right? He'll be looking at a future life of closeted prison sex with his male posse, or a retirement to a country farm where he'll strike up a strange but lovely relationship with an ewe named Maisie. Right? Wrong! Luckily for Brown, there are plenty of women out there with just as many mental health issues as he'll ever have. Have you noticed how many women line up to marry mass-murdering serial killers in prison? In fact, Rihanna, herself, according to some reports, is already trying to retract some of her original story in which she implicated Brown as her assailant.

Calling Dr. Phil!!

2009 Grammy's: The Day After

Well, we weren't alone in our disdain for the Grammy Awards show last night. Most of the critics and entertainment commentators are, this morning, calling the show an "unmitigated disaster". We couldn't agree more.

The show had desperation written all over it. In order to try to attract an audience, and more importantly, a demographically-important audience of young people, the show featured a truly sorry line-up of singers, Miley Cyrus, Justin Timberlake, The Jonas Brothers, way too many rappers, Katy Perry, Jamie Foxx, (yes, Jamie Foxx!), who we suppose appeal to some segment of a younger generation. And even more horrifying, they paired these lightweights with living legends, i.e. Timberlake with Al Green, The Jonas Brothers with Stevie Wonder, Jamie Foxx with Smokey Robinson and Duke Fakir. It was sad. To say that no one brought down the house would be a monumental understatement. The Baltimore Sun today reports, "Justin Timberlake has no business on the same stage with Al Green." Holla!

There were some nice moments, Jennifer Hudson's emotional performance, Adele winning Best New Artist and Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's very deserved win of Album of the Year, (pictured above).

But a few nice moments didn't keep the show from being disjointed and all over the place... a veritable mess. Better luck next year, Grammys!

Oh, and after hearing that Chris Brown was being held for assault of an "unknown woman" last night, and therefore had to back out of his scheduled performance on the show, it's being reported this morning that the woman he assaulted might have actually been his girlfriend, Rihanna, who also dropped out of the show at the last minute. Ouch!

The whining from the Tween Generation has already begun, just like when Diddy whined when he lost a few years back to the soundtrack from "O, Brother Where Art Thou". One blogger said that Plant/Krauss's win was just an example of the Grammy's preference for "age over relevance". Okay, look, you little dumbass, we get it that your understanding of music and music history doesn't reach back further than, oh, say, the year 2000, but if you really think you're going to make an intelligent argument that Robert Plant and Alison Krauss's individual careers are not "relevant" to the production of important popular music, well, after we stop laughing, we have to tell you, that's one argument you're going to lose.

We also heard last night, in the wake of Robert Plant's successful trophy haul, that Led Zeppelin had never won a Grammy. We still don't know if this is true, we're trying to look it up, but we also heard that The Who never won a Grammy, either. Wow. We do know that Elvis Presley only won three Grammys, but all for his gospel recordings, none for any of his Pop/Rock records. So all kidding and personal preferences aside, this should probably tell you something about the real validity of a Grammy Award. It's probably best to take it all with a huge grain of salt.

2009 Baftas and Grammys: Postmortem

Okay, we're exhausted from covering tonight's Baftas and Grammys, minute by minute, so let's finish this thing off and go to bed.
.
The Baftas were pleasant enough, and even fun at times, but let's face it, when you're one of the last movie awards shows of the season, there are no surprises left. All of the different movie awards organizations nominate the same people each year, and the same people win the major awards at each show, so by the time the Baftas and Oscars come along, we already know who's going to win everything.
.
As for the Grammys, we just mentioned earlier tonight that the only reason to watch was for the live music performances. Every year, there is always one or two really remarkable musical "moments" that has everyone talking the next day. Right? So what the f**k happened this year? We don't think we're going out on a limb here to say this was definitely one of the lamest years for performances in a long, long time. We honestly can't remember the last time a Grammy Show didn't have one single memorable performance. Jennifer Hudson's emotional performance of "You Pulled Me Through" in which she dissolved into tears at the end was the closest this show had to a "moment", but even that was only because everyone was well aware of her personal tragedy.
.
News agencies are now reporting that Chris Brown and Rihanna were supposed to perform on tonight's Grammy show, but dropped out at the last minute, Brown was being held by the police for investigation of an assault charge, but it was not known whether Rihanna, a girlfriend of Brown's, dropped out of the show because of Brown's troubles or for her own reasons. Either way, we seriously doubt if either of these two performers would have been able to deliver the kind of roof shaking performance this year's Grammy show desperately needed. We don't know who the producer of this year's show was, but if we were part of the Grammy organization, we'd start looking for a new one for next year.