Well, to be truthful, you didn't miss all that much...except this was pretty cool:
However, I'm sensing you might have felt a little left out around the water cooler this morning. Silly you: You could have saved face if you had checked in with the internets before you hit the office.
The Gods of Bandwidth, aka Crooks and Liars are providing the video "higlights" (Hint: It's certainly not this atrocity):
... and, even better, Neal Pollack's got the commentary, including these fine observations:
7:00 p.m.: Queen Latifah appears and informs us that there are four stages and five bands, and this is just the opening number. Why look! It's the Black Eyed Peas, singing the LeBron James highlight-film theme song. Is this our new national anthem? Before I can get a chance to write down another basketball joke, there's Gwen Stefani, wearing what remains of Kevin Kline's outfit from "The Pirates Of Penzance." Goddamn, that woman's got gams! She's accompanied by Eve, who looks like Whitney Houston version 2.0. Hot Asian girls, also kind of dressed like pirates, surround them. Why am I not TiVoing this? Oh, that's right. I don't have TiVo. But if I did, this segment would scream late-night freeze-frame!
Band No. 4 is the mysterious Maroon 5 with that song I hear all the time at the gym. Catchy! The lead singer looks like Keanu Reeves and the keyboardist looks like a PIRG canvasser. They won't be around next year. Uh-oh. The Black Eyed Peas are singing and Maroon 5 is playing, followed by Franz Ferdinand, a better band. Suddenly everyone is singing and playing at the same. Despite what the New York Times said this morning, it's not a mash-up. It's more like the finale of "Les Miz," with guitars and break dancing...
7:18 p.m.: Steven Tyler pays lip service to the great piano player Pinetop Perkins, who's in the audience looking leathery and wearing a cowboy hat, no doubt thinking, Boy, I was living in a garage in Mississippi while you were doinking Bebe Buell upstairs at the Mudd Club. Where the hell were you then? Then Los Lonely Boys win an award, and Perkins rolls over in his future grave...
7:55 p.m.: Queen Latifah informs us that tomorrow morning, "everyone will be talking about the next 15 minutes." Everyone who didn't watch "Desperate Housewives" or the Pro Bowl, that is. It looks like the unstoppable conversation express is being led by the world performance debut of the world's most passionate husband and wife, Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony!
He stands at a purple-lit window that fronts a set on loan from Home Depot. The set parts to reveal J.Lo, wearing a lime-green curtain held together by long strips of silver and gold glitter. She's in what appears to be the honeymoon suite at the world's cheesiest boutique hotel. There's a reason these two haven't sung together in public before. It's because Marc Anthony is humiliatingly better than Jennifer Lopez. At least with Ben Affleck, it was an even match of talentlessness; the equivalent to J.Lo performing with Marc Anthony would be Affleck hitching his wagon to Frances McDormand. I think J.Lo's handlers assume that we'll take the spiciness of their love for granted because they're Latin, but those of us who have truly felt passion cannot be deceived! They walk around the hotel room in what is supposed to be a dance of seduction, but they don't even really acknowledge each other's presence. Mike Wallace and Morley Safer have more sexual chemistry onstage than J.Lo and Marc Anthony...
9:11 p.m.: Eddy Arnold gets his lifetime achievement recognition from Billy Bob Thornton, who then introduces Tim McGraw to sing a song. Hmm. Bad Santa considers Tim McGraw "a good friend." Perhaps I should reexamine my opinion of Tim McGraw. Nope. I'm sorry, call me an indie snob if you want, but Tim McGraw is just a country version of "Tuesdays With Morrie." The song, "Live Like You Were Dying," is about a man who gets bad news from his doctor, but doesn't let that stop him from going out and doing adventure sports.
Tim McGraw, how many of your fans can afford to go sky-diving or Rocky Mountain climbing? How many of them even have health insurance? If I found out I were dying, I'd fall into a sobbing heap for about two days, which is what most people would do, and then I'd start figuring out a way to use my sympathetic status so I could sit on the Phoenix Suns bench during the playoffs. Skiing wouldn't be high on my priority list.
Hallelujah! The Good Lord rains justice down from the heavens as Loretta Lynn defeats Tim McGraw for best country vocal. Ms. Lynn takes the stage with power, grace and class, sucking any lingering stupidity out of the room. Jack White, growing nicely into his Johnny Depp phase, plays the polite young man role to the hilt. He says, "We recorded this record on Loretta's front porch, and one day she told me, 'Jack, 14 times my record got banned from country radio, and every one of those records went to No. 1. Well, this record got ignored by country radio as well. And look who's No. 1!'"
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