REGURGITATING THE GRAMMYS

The mere thought of watching the Grammys Awards was puke-making. For a minute-by-minute wrap of Sunday night's show, we left it to summa cum laude student of pop culture Ryan McGee, who traditionally records his impressions online in real time at Wading in the Velvet Sea:

8:02 pm: So lemmee get this straight: The producers figured the best way to start off a show honoring the last year in music is to have a medley of pre-1985 Prince hits? 8:03 pm: Why is Beyoncé up there? Maybe she's about to win a Grammy. Let's see how many times the "artist performs, then instantly wins a Grammy" phenomenon happens. 8:04 pm: This is all a bit like watching Ike and Tina, only in this case, Tina could whup Ike whenever she felt like it. Seriously, Prince is so short, he could be in Matchbox 20. 8:10 pm: Wow, shocker. Beyoncé won a Grammy. Wow. I'm stunned. Yawn. 8:13 pm: OK, so we have a Dave Matthews/Vince Gill/Pharrell Williams/Sting supergroup covering "I Saw Her Standing There". Wonder if this supergroup idea will be a theme. I'm nominating George Clinton, Yo Yo Ma, and Lance Bass to do "I Am The Walrus" right here and now.

In "My Man Godfrey" Eugene Pallette once said: "All you need to start an asylum is an empty room and the right kind of people." That was 68 years ago. He's still right.

February 9, 2004 10:19 AM |

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Me Elsewhere

'WILD SIDE' STILL ROCKS 

Nelson Algren was one of the great American authors of the 20th century, it is no exaggeration to say, and among the most neglected. Consider his underrated classic, "A Walk on the Wild Side." The title -- popularized and co-opted as an idiomatic phrase by Hollywood and Madison Avenue (institutions Algren loathed) -- is familiar to most anyone who speaks English or knows Lou Reed's lyrics. But the novel itself? Hardly.

BUSTER KEATON REVISITED 
Buster Keaton: Tempest in a Flat Hat is not a biography. "This book is merely a fan's notes," Edward McPherson writes in the introduction, although his publisher ignores the disclaimer and calls it a biography on the cover. In fact, the book is a bit of both, a difficult combination to bring off unless you're David Thomson, who set the standard with Rosebud, his penetrating rumination on the life and career of Orson Welles, which was nothing if not a distillation of every obsessive thought he ever had about the myth and the man and all his movies.
LAUREN BACALL, STILL SALTY AT 80 
When Lauren Bacall writes that her singing voice ranges "somewhere between B minus sharp and outer space," she's being candid and funny. It's not every stage star with two Tony Awards for best actress in a musical whose vocal talent offers so little promise. (OK, Harvey Fierstein excepted.) Still less would one admit it.
THE STARS ACCORDING TO BOGDANOVICH 
Peter Bogdanovich's superb collection of movie-star profiles and interviews -- a sequel to Who the Devil Made It, his interviews of top film directors -- begins with an affectionate tale about Orson Welles that reminds us just how intimate the author's connection to Hollywood's greatest has been. But contrary to what we've come to expect from dime-a-dozen celebrities and celebrity interviews not worth two cents, the tale avoids bromidic egotism and journalistic platitudes.
SAMMY'S WHITE DREAMS 
Four decades ago Lenny Bruce sentenced Sammy Davis Jr. to "30 years in Biloxi," stripping him of "his Jewish star" and "his religious statue of Elizabeth Taylor." Now we have two new biographies of Davis that spring him from ridicule, if not from doubts about his legacy, and restore a measure of dignity to a black entertainer whose huge fame and success never overcame his devout wish -- indeed his lifelong effort -- to be white.
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