September 15, 2009

Out of the loop

I'm watching Jay Leno's grand opening on NBC last night and as usual he's cracking me up.

A while into the show, he brings on Kayne West, the rapper, who he congratulated for not backing out of the appearance after what happened Sunday night.

West sits in a blue chair next to Jay and he's contrite. It looks like he's going to cry when Jay asks him what his mother would have thought of his behavior.

So there I am feeling out of it because I have no idea what West did, an act I realize everyone must know about because Leno doesn't even explain what West is apologizing about.

I go to Google and find that during the MTV Video Music Awards at Radio City Music Hall something wild happened.

Taylor Swift, the young country singer, was just starting her acceptance speech for her surprise win for Best Female Video.

West bounded onto the stage and took the mic away from her.

"Taylor, I'm really happy for you and I'm gonna let you finish, but Beyonce had one of the best videos of all time," West said.

After his outburst Swift stood there looking lost. The crowd applauded Swift. (To see the thing on video click this MTV link.) She didn't get to finish her speech.

"Poor Taylor," writes Elizabeth Snead in the Los Angeles Times website. "First Joe Jonas dumps her by phone. Now Kanye West spoils her VMA memory!"

Poor Grier, I say. He knew nothing about the mic-grabbing incident. He didn't even know Joe Jonas dumped Taylor, by phone no less. He didn't even know who Joe Jonas was. In fact he wasn't really sure who West was.

To his everlasting credit he had heard of Taylor Swift and liked Beyonce, who was sensational as she sang "At Last" at President Obama's inaugural ball. This is a photo of that.

And I did see Serena Williams tell the foot-fault-calling line judge she'd like to stick "this [expletive] ball down your [expletive] throat."

That drew a one-point penalty that sealed the victory Kim Clijsters was about to win on her own.

Of course none of these outbursts came close to the level of offensiveness obtained by Representative Joe Wilson, a South Carolina Republican, when he shouted "you lie" during the President's health-care speach to Congress last week.

Getting back to Sunday at the MTV awards, Beyonce came to the rescue. It turns out she won the Big Kahuna Video of the Year, which is a bigger deal than Swift's award. Beyonce turned her time over to Swift. (See the picture below.) Pretty nice of her. And now you're up to date on the latest news in case you're as out of it as I am.

1 comment:

  1. Hey, you are more out of the loop than me, and I live much further away from Hollywood...

    Actually, we are neck and neck. I heard about the MTV incident, but I didn't know who Swift was.

    ReplyDelete