Grammys.

I have no interest in this topic. I mean I was slightly interested in this photo of Ellen DeGeneres aiming her nose at the "keyhole" opening of Katy Perry's dress and in the fact that Lena Dunham has a boyfriend and he's in a band that had the "Song of the Year." And I'm interested in speculating about whether it was because of the Grammys that they ran such an atrocious episode of "Girls" last night. (The last few episodes of the show had been great, but this one descended into real estate porn: The girl gets a boyfriend seemingly for the purpose of letting us see all the rooms in his expensive house. Oh, that wasn't all there was. There was Lena Dunham — in one of said rooms and in nothing but her panties — playing ping pong. That carried forward the show's theme of really awkward nakedness. That's why I had to correct myself after I said "I might as well be watching HGTV.")

"Despite the passage of time since second-wave feminism erupted in the late 1960s, we’ve somehow been thrown back to the demure girly-girl days of the white-bread 1950s."

"It feels positively nightmarish to survivors like me of that rigidly conformist and man-pleasing era, when girls had to be simple, peppy, cheerful and modest. Doris Day, Debbie Reynolds and Sandra Dee formed the national template -- that trinity of blond oppressors!"

Camille Paglia is displeased with Taylor Swift and Katy Perry.

At Obama's Milwaukee rally, Katy Perry sang "Let's Stay Together" and then ripped off her dress...

... to reveal a tighter, shorter dress that Obama's slogan/Wisconsin's motto "Forward" written on it in big letters. That was Milwaukee. Monday Obama comes to Madison, but we get Springsteen, not Perry.

So much for the hot, passionate artist boyfriend type.

Last November we were talking about a nicely done Katy Perry video called "The One That Got Away." Remember?

Don't most rich old ladies regret marrying the dull bastard who got them all their stuff and wish they'd spent their lives with the hot, passionate artist who ran off that one night when they'd had that big fight?

Don't ask me. That's not what I did with my life, but it's a fine old cultural meme — that the wives of rich men are so unhappy and that they wish they'd gone down the other road, the one with all that hot sex and emotional turbulence — and it's pithily realized in Katy Perry's new video "The One That Got Away." (I'm watching this because my son Chris emailed me to say: "I'm not generally a Katy Perry fan, but I think this new video is great and very emotionally effective.")

The One she was talking about was her real-life lost love Johnny Lewis. He's dead now, after a bizarre murderous incident:

Neighbours called police after hearing a woman screaming and witnessing Lewis attack two men with a piece of wood out the front of Davis' property, where the actor was understood to be renting a room.

The other victims - a neighbour and a handyman - were badly beaten after the tussle, which lasted between 3-4 minutes and began when Lewis tried to break into the neighbour's home, according to TMZ.

The men Lewis fought with told officers he showed 'super-human strength' and was 'phenomenally strong.' In an interview with the Los Angeles Times, the neighbour said Lewis was hardly deterred by the blows he took, that it was like 'hitting him with a fly swatter.'

Lewis, who dated Perry in 2006 and regularly graced the red carpet with the pop star, then apparently climbed onto the roof. It is unclear whether Lewis jumped or fell to his death.

He got away.

I'm glad The Grammys...

...  weren't too much about Whitney Houston dying. It wouldn't make any sense to overshadow Adele, whose night it was, who seems like a sweet person, who said "snot," which seemed to amuse the crowd immensely. I liked The Band Perry. Paul McCartney was okay, still slim and spry. Good of Springsteen to play with him in the end, on "The End." I was happy to see Brian Wilson still sitting upright... and Glenn Campbell able to remember the words as he journeys into the sunset of his life. Most of the music I could barely put up with. Lots of flashy lights. Costumes. Hugely long eyelashes. I know: It's for the kids. But this was the first time I'd ever watched The Grammys. Oddly enough. Wanted to see what they'd do about Whitney.

ADDED: And then there was Lady Gaga, always only in the audience, with her head encased in thick black netting. She didn't win anything last night, but she got to see — through that net — all the elaborate stage acts that seemed to want to be like her — notably Nicki Manaj — caught in her net. But it was Adele everyone likes now. The one lady standing center stage, emoting in music. I guess we'll be getting more of that, as the followers-on look to catch the next wave.

"Katy Perry... transforms into old woman, recalls heartbreak with Diego Luna."

Don't most rich old ladies regret marrying the dull bastard who got them all their stuff and wish they'd spent their lives with the hot, passionate artist who ran off that one night when they'd had that big fight?

Don't ask me. That's not what I did with my life, but it's a fine old cultural meme — that the wives of rich men are so unhappy and that they wish they'd gone down the other road, the one with all that hot sex and emotional turbulence — and it's pithily realized in Katy Perry's new video "The One That Got Away." (I'm watching this because my son Chris emailed me to say: "I'm not generally a Katy Perry fan, but I think this new video is great and very emotionally effective.")

I'm worried that this video will influence young girls to get their boyfriends to draw DIY tattoos of hearts on their inner forearms, but quite aside from the unfortunate tattoo incitement...

[NOTE: Watch the video before answering, and answer the question asked.]

What lesson will young girls take from this video?
	Art, beauty, and hot sex are much more important than material wealth.
	Have a hot romance with a beautiful artist, but marry the guy who'll get you all that cool stuff.
	You'll have to choose between love and money and live with whatever regrets ensue.
pollcode.com free polls

What everyone wore at the Grammys, beginning with a man in shorts...

... tight gold plastic short shorts — panties really, almost Spanx, don't you think? He's carrying Lady Gaga inside a prop left over from "This Is Spinal Tap."

More tight shiny men's pants at #25 (Ricky Martin). Justin Bieber also models the comically male, spoofing adulthood, I think, doing bagginess instead of tightness, at #36. Katy Perry, at #40, seems to be spoofing the old mishap of unwittingly dragging toilet paper with you out of the bathroom. Rihanna, at #47, seems to have collected all that toilet paper and crimped it into millions of tiny ruffles to band around her body in stripes — alternating with — apparently! —nakedness.

It's the Grammys. It's perfectly apt to dress as a joke.

"Comedian Russell Brand posted an unflattering picture today of his wife Katy Perry on his Twitter page."

"Perry may have shown her displeasure with Brand, 35, since the picture was removed from his Twitter account."

But you can see the picture at the link.

Oh, man... marry a comedian....

Avril Lavigne/Katy Perry.

What a contrast! Tonight on "American Idol." 2 guest judges, as the show did the first round auditions in L.A.

First half hour: Avril Lavigne bundled up in a hooded, fleecy jacket while the contestants and the other judges all visibly sweated. Kara DioGuardi was completely bare-armed and bare-shouldered, yet sweating. What was the temperature in there? I had to conclude they had the heat turned up for Avril Lavigne. What was her problem? She also didn't seem to fathom the project of judging the contestants. She idiotically doubted whether a guy who was a pastor could do the competition and still be true to his religion. Hey, judge the singing. Don't nose into their personal lives, or I'll nose into yours. Why were you so cold while everyone else was hot? And yes, her jacket had devil horns. Pure distraction. The important thing was that she was bundled up while the others were sweating. On camera. How did she get the power to make all of them look so bad? They couldn't have liked that.

Second half hour: Katy Perry! She's dazzling in a tight red dress with perfectly pink lipstick and rouge. And even in that getup, she doesn't seem phony at all. She's completely alert. How refreshing to see wide open eyes! And she chides Kara for falling for the soap opera aspects of a guy who grew up in foster care. This is about whether they can sing. Exactly. And when Kara tried to co-opt her into a "girl power" hug, Perry resisted. We're looking for real singing talent. Cool. Beautiful. Smart. Sharp. Great.

No contest: Katy Perry knocks out Avril Lavigne.

***

Remember when Avril shoved Kelly?

""My wife’s dead' 'Oh yeah well my eyeballs are dead.'"

The "American Idol" "tragedy off"... and other things.

I can barely force myself to watch AI anymore, but reading descriptions of the show is great fun. Yes, I know, maybe you had fun reading my descriptions of the show in year's past, but the problem there is that I have to watch it, and my current watching involves the kind of fast-forwarding that compresses a 2-hour show — why the hell is the show 2 hours?! — into about 15 minutes. I'll hear 2 seconds of a singer and know it's too horrible to watch. Even the good ones are annoying me now.

The link above goes to Trooper York. I also like Jacob at Television Without Pity. When I was trying to actually watch the show, I thought Jacob's recaps were ridiculously long and meandering. Well, the solution to that is not for Jacob to rein in his effusions and digressions. It's quite simply for me to stop watching the show and read Jacob (who absurdly gives every episode an A+):

First up we're going to group sing -- mostly seated, because of the Scott [blind guy] factor -- a Katy Perry song, "Hot & Cold," which is the third Katy Perry single that has to do with boys and girls and boys who like girls who do boys like they're girls and reinforcing gender stereotypes while congratulating itself on not doing that. Let's talk about Katy Perry for a second. I actually heard this cover of "Electric Feel" that she did, and it was totally lovely. She has a wonderful voice under all that bullshit, which makes me hate her more and not less. It's not even the horrific Diablo Cody/Betty Page cute/burlesque crap, although they do contribute to the overall '90s-ness of her, which is admittedly yucky.

The problem is that, just like this show is not so much about selling your soul as speculating against the real estate market of the place your soul would normally be located, Katy Perry took a pretty face and a fantastic voice and leveraged them against this stupid-ass dead-end offensive gender stuff: "You change your mind like a girl changes clothes" tells you everything you need to know about Katyworld, where men have minds and girls have clothes, and girls only kiss girls to impress guys because they are drunk. It's not even a one-trick pony, it's just a trick, and a cautionary tale for these kids, who have not even begun to sell out yet. Katy Perry is to sexuality what Gwen Stefani is to racial equality.

"Please, celibacy for the whole year? I'd rather die."

Can't you people tell when Katy Perry is joking?