Woke Up This Morning, Got Yourself A Goon

Yes, award shows suck, but sometimes they serve as a barometer for the industry. This is especially true for the Emmys, where network trolls still hold the power, and keep the real talent (that is, premium cable) ghettoized as much as possible. So you have a couple of rote Sopranos tributes, then James Spader takes Best Actor in a Drama. That sort of shit. Plus the production and pacing off the show were completely jacked.

On the other hand, Katherine Heigl is still pretty hot. You can scan the crowd for quality sweater fruit pretty much constantly on these things.

Tim Goodman has that and much more in his live wine-blogging of the show. It's a fun read.

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Oh, and I don't care how many jokey "I never win" skits Kanye West does to try to rehabilitate his crybaby image, if that was really his song that he and Rainn Wilson did in the Don't Forget the Lyrics (on FOX!) parody, then he sucks even worse than I thought.

N-now th-th-that that don't kill me
Can only make me stronger
I need you to hurry up now
Cause I can't wait much longer
I know I got to be right now
Cause I can't get much wronger
Man I been waitin' all night now
That's how long I've been on ya

Jesus Christ. This is the sort of stuff 7th-grade girls scrawled on their Pee-Chee folders back in the day. It's just sad and sub-literate, and completely meaningless. But to be fair, Kanye did rock the Li'l Pee Diddly outfit that somebody laid out for him. Nothing says "asshole with money" like....well, an asshole with money.

Sometimes people will trigger your douchebag radar at first, and then they either start to grow on you, or you just realize you misjudged them initially. It happens. Not with West, man -- the more this fucking guy comes up, the more he comes off as just another talentless prick using this muzak thang to get into the sweatshop industry, where sexually harassed teenagers in Saipan can crank out his crappy signature swag for thirteen cents an hour, and he turns it over at a hundred bucks a piece.

He's not a musician, or an actor, or a clothing guy, he's just a brander, which in this day and age is what passes for entrepreneurship. He's Mickey Mouse with fucking $1200 sunglasses. He'd show up to the opening of an envelope (in this case, literally) to pimp his brand one more time.

[cheesy electronic background beat with a pilfered chord or two from some old Van Halen song] Yeeeaaah, yo, come on now.

When I talk about music, usually it's about hard rock/metal, or guitar-based music generally. But I also like soul and R&B; I grew up listening to Al Green and Bootsy Collins and Billy Preston. I like good rap and hip-hop, though it's increasingly rare. But this guy is just a straight-up fuckin' hack.

Seacrest out.