A New Vanilla Ice Era

It goes without saying that Justin Beiber is his generation's Vanilla Ice. There is so much fuss made about the whole thing by people who hate him, people who support him, and, most oddly of all, people who claim to be entirely disinterested. Yet the truth is pretty simple, and I hear very few people discuss it at all.

I have to wonder about that for at least a moment. Ultimately it makes sense that nobody cares. Everyone is too busy pulling original agendas (and trying to make them stick to an indifferent, fractured and/or and shellshocked mass identity) to consider the wholesome, mundane, and entirely mystifying patterns that are more and more self-evident.

Problems, often doubling as patterns or effects of patterns, are just not so easy to turn into double-plus commercials. 

Inconsistent Hype Engine

I don't know if that title referred to the Grammys or Valentine's Day. In one, people you hear about stumble around like nervous robots; in the other nervous robots attempt to seduce people. Oh if only, right? I guess the Grammys are so named for the gramophone, and what this means for the music industry is anybody's guess, personally I think it's a matter of stubborn atavism.

And the lavishing of awards upon Lady Antebellum was really almost a sort of shameful display, as if the industry is aggressively courting this band. Best song, at least, should have gone to someone else. I guess it's really not worth even saying, since it was never going to happen, but it would have been fitting if Cee Lo got it. There were too many awards as it was and he put on an awesome show and "Fuck You" should be the anthem we take from 2010. It's a great anthem for just about any year, but that's beside the point.

And Gwyneth can sing! Will she ever take on a serious dramatic role, though? I guess there were more than 7 Grammy awards in 2011, now that I check Wikipedia, which surprises me. I only saw a little bit of the program and everyone showed up and bummed around uncomfortably between songs. That's what it looked like to me. Too many awards, really. I guess I just don't know anything about music, because a few of the award choices were a little peculiar. Some real upsets, apparently, and I think there's probably a few interesting stories behind some of them.

Great to see Mick Jagger, as always. I guess it really is a show that's worth checking into for at least 15 minutes unless they're doing something crazy. Maybe next year they'll have a host. And if they do, I recommend they get Mick Jagger to host. And if he hosts, I hope he decides to rock the whole thing. Then I might watch more of it.

Justin Bieber's shock was visible when he was defeated by a relatively unknown jazz chick, but Drake upheld Canada's polite image by standing up to clap angrily. That Best New Artist category seems to be pretty tough, and, despite Bieber's considerable service to the record industry, sometimes uses its discretion to award trophies to jazz chicks.

Before I even had time to process the shock, another distracting high energy performance/superficial and annoying commercial took off. For an impressive hype machine, the Grammys seemed erratically driven. There was a palpable level of hype, background level stuff, which a few artists seemed to harness very well – and I might be alone in saying this, but some of the presenters seemed uncomfortable.

Seth Rogen only told one joke. It was cool and unexpected to see him there, and his joke wasn't bad, but still. That sort of institutionalized aversion to humour, coupled with the sterilization of Cee Lo's masterpiece, not to mention the erratic direction of the awards or the misplaced Best Song award, doesn't really give me a lot of faith in the Grammys. Apparently Britain had some film awards on the same night? Seems a rather unnecessarily aggressive play, since they just awarded all their prizes to American movies anyway.