Personal recap of Grammy broadcast

Had to work late last night so I’m catchin up on the Grammy broadcast now.  Since live tweeting doesn’t make sense after the fact, here we go: 

Red carpet - all I remember is how stunning Rihanna looked and WTFFFF Nikki Minaj

Opening with the Boss Man - he’s def a great showman who’s written some classic songs, respect there but not feelin this song unfortunately… or his earrings, and I can’t help but think of the Sopranos and Patti’s failed career.

Not sure what to make of LL Cool J as host, suppose he did a decent job but I wish it were Common (yummmm)

Bruno Mars - what swagger! Love this guy.  Dang he can sing, dance, play, write like a mofo and he makes it all look so easy.  Dance moves??!!  Yeah, that’s how it’s done.  I love this song, love the homage to James Brown, love his hair, love everything about him.  And the best quote to open the show: “get off your rich asses and let’s have some fun”.

Alicia and Bonnie tribute to Etta James - I want more.  Bonnie is a huge inspiration to me as a woman, a singer, songwriter and guitarist. So glad she was tapped to do this.  Alicia is uber talented and beautiful, I really enjoyed this simple, stripped down performance. 

Chris Brown - lame lame lame.  Just lipsyncing and dancing around on some supersized leggos.  He beat up Rihanna and isn’t sorry about it.  Fuck this guy.  He shouldn’t be allowed in the building.  This sums it up pretty good: http://youtu.be/hU1mXS0KgqA

Reba - go back from whence you came.  Jason Aldene & Kelly Clarkson - this is supposed to be one of the ‘hottest’ singles?  Kelly actually sounded pretty good, but wouldn’t have put her in a sleeveless dress, sorry :(  And note this is where the sets start to get stupid. 

Audio - levels were warped throughout.  Whoever mixed this is either having a really hard time managing everyone’s levels or else he/she is a blind deaf and dumb monkey.

FOO FIGHTERS. OK so here’s my confession of the night: Foo Fighters can do no wrong. That’s right - I love Dave Grohl (and Taylor Hawkins too while we’re at it). 

Introduced by one of my faves Jack Black (how can you not love the D?).  The Foos are keeping it real, rockin the outdoor stage for the people, wearing what looks like they rolled out of bed in.  LOVE this song, love this band, so funny how they keep panning to Taylor on drums.  Not that I mind (at all).  Reiterating: I love Dave Grohl.  He just fucking goes for it. Like the honey badger, he just don’t give a fuck.  I want to drink beers with Dave and have an acoustic BBQ jam sesh (my bday is in July for anyone who wants to grant me this wish).

Rihanna - love.  She’s come so far. She looks incredible. Sounds amazing. True star. 

Rihanna + Chris Martin = <3  They both sound amazing here.  I love the stripped down performances, no hiding there. 

Coldplay - sad face. This is a great song with the potential to be effing epic live but the stage production here is weak, picking up a little last half of song.  Hopefully it’s one of those things that was amazing live but isn’t playing well on TV.  

Most AKWARD moment of nite belongs to Cruz & Menahan with the NCIS chick.  Duurrrr

BEST SPEECH of the night goes to Dave Grohl (again he can do no wrong): “making music is what’s most important… it’s not about being perfect, not about sounding absolutely correct, not about what goes on in a computer…”: http://youtu.be/IYCW2uH2wx8  … aaaaaand then he’s cut off by LMFAO.  Yup.  If I could bitch slap the director or producer who made that call I would. *sigh, my hero (NO pun intended).  

Beach Boys Tribute… well Maroon 5 do a decent job with the covers (I love their version of Pure Imagination: http://youtu.be/cWGeCqszY8s).  Foster the People - SUCKED.  Mark Foster must’ve been slipped some of Brian Wilson’s happy pills during rehearsal.  The Boys themselves? Sounded ok, wondering if they all really sang, can’t get image of Brian Wilson out of my head, he looked like he was on another planet.  Cut to Lady Gaga kind of ‘groovin’ along to the Beach Boys… ummm?

Love Stevie Wonder introducing Paul, but first his quick ‘isn’t she lovely’ homage to Whitney was sweet.  

Paul McCartney - slow but classy song, he always sounds good.

Common - YUM.  He should be hosting.

Chris Brown?? WHOOOOOOO is voting for this guy?  Jesus.

Civil Wars -  again, love the stripped down performances.  Who knew Johnny Depp and Jack White’s love child clone would grow up to be so successful?

Taylor, taylor, taylor… well she is cute as a button, bless her.  She can’t really sing but just enough to get by.  The broadway stage production definitely needed here to make us forget that.  She has mastered the art of making nothing look like something, gotta give her that.

Neil Patrick Harris? He’s kind of a broadway guy so maybe there’s a very loose music connection but hate that CBS trots out a showrunner to intro Song of the Year.  Ugh.

Katie Perry - she has annoyed me since the beginning.  Unfortunately for me she has some big pop songs that are good.  Sounds like she’s actually belting it out here, which I appreciate. What is she wearing?  Horrible - looks like this performance is her way of saying “I should have played the Super Bowl”.  That and also her way of giving Russel Brand the middle finger.

Adele - sounds and looks like a star.  So glad they played down the staging and just let her sing.

Glenn Campbell tribute -this was fun, Glenn looked better than I had anticipated, he really owned the stage, connected with the crowd and looks like he had a great time doing it.  Shouts to my friend (and Glenn’s daughter) Ashley who is the hot blonde banjo player in the background.  She’s really cool and funny, so happy to see her up there with her family.  Hilarious pan out at end to standing ovation and then the 2 beatches sitting and texting like it’s a snore fest. 

Tony Bennett / Carrie Underwood.  Snore. He’s a classic and she’s gorgeous and talented but blech.  Couldn’t they have done something cool with him and posthumous Amy Winehouse performance on screen?

Bon Iver - Justin Vernon is a dick.  And an idiot.  After reading his interview on why they’re not playing the Grammys I lost a lot of respect.  They’re trying to make a valid point but going about it the wrong way.

“I will always love you” - moving, emotional, simple.  Jennifer Hudson looks and sounds amazing, nuff said.

Guetta - do we have to see Chris Brown, AGAIN? Ugh.  and what genius decided to go with with the glow in the dark dildos #Fail.  I like dubstep and glad the electronic/dance category is represented but don’t think it translated very well… Esp Chris Brown, whyyyyyyy? - double UGH and ECH.

Foo Fighters - to reiterate, they can do no wrong.  Looks like people are bashing on them for playing with the EDC peeps but seriously they brought the ROCK (hello anyone remember AM/Barker) and did a great job.  Also I heard they filled in for Skrillex who didn’t have time to put together a proper show.  Rocker bonus = wearing same clothes as before #realrockersdontneedwardrobechange

Deadmou5 - loved his crazy ufo platform setup, love his electrified mouseyface, wondering how the HELL he sees anything in there, at least this genre is getting some recognition.

Nikki Minaj - just. wow. This performance doesn’t warrant any more attention.  Calling this one a big Grammy #Fail 

Closing with Sir Paul - can’t go wrong with Beatles but I think stage production could have been much better.

Cut to old guy guitar jerk-off… Oye I love guitars and rock and Paul and Dave (*cough do-no-wrong) and Bruce but geez this was bad, Bruce’s guitar sounding the worst of them all.  Sadness.

And that’s all I got! My DVR cuts off after this. 

Parting thought - this turned out to be one of the most watched Grammys since the 80’s because Whitney died.  Sorry but that’s why.

“All I need for xmas is a guest list.” My rant on the ultimate @Evite #FAIL

Being the good daughter that I am, I agreed to help mom in her time of need when she asked me to put together an invite for her Holiday charity event.

Of course the first words out of her mouth were ‘I need to do an Evite’, to which my auto reply was to inform her that Evite is lame and outdated and should not be used at all, especially for a professional organization’s holiday party and fundraiser.  I suggested Paperless Post for her fancy schmancy affair and even Socializr if they needed something free but they wanted - you guessed it - Evite. 

Moving on.  First of all, importing the emails and guest list was a friggin nightmare.  Evite interface is not intuitive and took the better part of an hour to import emails from mom that were not in a csv (she’s just forwarding me random emails of tons of people that I DON’T need or want in my address book).  

BUT - being the good daughter that I am, I sucked it up and spent 45 minutes getting everything uploaded for her.  It was painstaking to say the least - emails were bunched together and Evite wouldn’t save the list until I went through EACH ONE to find the flaw.  I’m starting to get worked up just thinking about it… 

Moving ON… The design options are cheesy, dated and limited, but now mom says she needs an alphabetized guest list.  I told her it should be no problem to go into the account and export the guest list - the most BASIC of invite functions. 

But no.  Evite’s absolute colossal mega-gigantic FAIL is the inability to export a friggin guest list until AFTER the event.  Are you kidding me???!!!  

Moving On??  I’m not out of the woods yet - she needs an alphabetized list and I can’t get one from Evite.. I’ve tried copying and pasting the info but it gets bunched into one cell in Numbers.  Then there are replies with no first or last name, which won’t get past security.  Then there are the random names she is sending in individual emails.  Not to mention the fact that I’ll have to do this a minimum of three more times before the party Saturday as people get in the last minute replies.   

Moving.  ON.  

The next time mom asks me to help her ‘make an Evite’, the answer will be [a loving but resounding] NO followed up with a link to this rant and logged hours of the time it took me to help her with what should have been a five minute exercise.

Evite?  

NO.

Never again.  

Not even for mom, not even for christmas.