Why yes, I did catch some of the Grammys last night. Here are thoughts I had:

• Kanye West is certainly not afraid to look ridiculous. He was pretty good, although I’m not clear on just what Jamie Foxx had to be there for.

• Sly Stone… I mean, wow. A platinum blond mohawk and a shimmering gold Elvis suit (with popped collar). Does it even matter that it was almost impossible to hear him, that he hunched like he was suffering from severe scoliosis, or that he left in the middle of the song to the obvious confusion/disappointment of everyone on stage and in the audience? Answer: No, it doesn’t matter. With this appearance he made the decade-plus hiatus worthwhile.

• Kelly Clarkson is seriously the winner of not one but at least two Grammys? And they’re important ones? I don’t profess to understand or even care about the shallow wading pool that is true pop music, but that doesn’t seem right to me.

• Coldplay… you guys are elevator music. Stop trying to “rock.” It’s never going to happen.

• Jay-Z and Linkin Park performed the “Numb/Encore” fake mashup from the album MTV cynically put together to ride the mashup phenomenon without any of that artistic creativity crap. I mean, the song’s fine, but isn’t it about time for Jay-Z to either retire or admit that the Black Album was just a joke? He’s been performing music from it for like 2 years now! Enough already! Just wear your damn suit and smoke cigars, Jay!

  But anyway, they were doing the song and I was looking at Jay-Z’s t-shirt and saw there was a face on it. So I sat way up close to my non-HD non-widescreen non-awesome television and tried to figure out who it was. Was that… nah. It does look a lot like him, though… But why would Jay-Z be wearing a t-shirt with John Lennon’s face on it? Does that make a lick of sense? And then came a moment I will never forget. The weasely-looking singer from Linkin Park started singing the chorus from “Yesterday.” I was thinking, oh, this is bad, but then it suddenly got somewhere between seven and a million times worse. Paul McCartney came out. The guy was dressed all in white like Puff Daddy at a Notorious B.I.G. memorial, singing along with the guy from Linkin Park (to recap–Paul McCartney is the surprise guest for Linkin Park). What made it worse were a) they couldn’t harmonize at all and b) McCartney was gesturing in a hip-hoppy kind of “I’m down wid it” sort of way that I’ve got to believe caused the entire nation to cringe and say to itself “oh, no…” This whole fiasco gets my vote for weirdest/awkwardest/most embarrassing moment of the night.