The People’s Choice Awards, 2011

January 6, 2011February 17, 2011 / Jared / 3 Comments

2011 has begun and another awards season is here, and we all know what that means; Johanna and I must resume our award show winner-picking competition. If you’re sensing a lack of enthusiasm on my part, that’s due to the fact that tonight we’re starting with The People’s Choice Awards.

I don’t know about you, but I was under the apparently false impression that this was a real award show. I mean, I knew from the title that it was voted on by the “people,” so the actual winners are inevitably going to be terrible. That’s no excuse for the list of nominees, though. No real award show in 2010 has any reason to nominate Jackie Chan for anything, right? The categories themselves don’t even make sense. Two of the TV show categories are “Favorite TV Obsession” and “Favorite TV Guilty Pleasure” and the nominees for both seem pretty interchangeable. And Mad Men apparently doesn’t qualify as either an “Obsession” or a “Guilty Pleasure.” At least we finally get to vote for our “Favorite TV Doctor.”

I’m having trouble even figuring out who the target audience for this show is. This is key, because since this is a winner-picking competition, I need to know what type of person was doing the voting. So, judging from the nominees, this is basically the MTV VMAs/Movie Awards except it’s aimed at the dorkier tweens and teens. Also, there is probably a lonely housewife factor that I need to consider. Noted.

If you’ve been keeping score at home you’ll remember that I pretty handily trounced Johanna in the 2010 competition. Of the eight award shows we’ve done this for, I won seven of them. It’s a new year, though, so we’re wiping the slate clean and giving her a chance to redeem herself. Let’s get started. As always, categories and winners in bold.

9:00 – No one told me this was hosted by Queen Latifah. Although, to be fair, no one said anything about this show to me at all, ever.

9:02 – She’s opening with a cover of “Dynamite” by Taio Cruz. This is officially Johanna’s favorite opening to an award show. I’m busy scanning the audience to see how many celebrities are actually in attendance to try to see what I’ve gotten myself into.

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The MTV VMAs, 2010

September 13, 2010December 18, 2010 / Jared / 3 Comments

The VMAs! I actually didn’t watch them live last year and then regretted it when I ended up spending the next afternoon catching up on the videos of the bonkers performances online and reading all about the Kanye backlash. I was assuming that MTV and I had mostly diverged in our musical tastes and was overlooking the fact that this isn’t really about the awards, it’s about the spectacle.

Now, with the long-running award show winner-picking competition between Johanna and me, there’s absolutely no way I could miss it. Filling out our ballots proved relatively difficult. We both employed a strategy of spreading the awards around to as many artists as possible, because we figure the whole thing is rigged and MTV is going to want to get as many people as possible up on stage. So, I basically just picked randomly.

Let’s roll. Since this is the VMAs, Johanna has tried to mix us a cocktail that a young person might enjoy. She’s combined vanilla vodka with Diet Coke, and we’re drinking it out of glasses we appropriated from our favorite bar in college, Jimmy’s Woodlawn Tap. She initially wanted to call it the Sorority Slut, but we workshopped it and came up with the Mean Girl, which is more fittingly high school. As always, categories and winners in bold. Also, I unfortunately don’t have MTV in HD, so these photos look awful. Apologies.

One last thing. I’m going on record early here saying that I guarantee they have Taylor Swift “interrupt” Kanye’s performance. It’s going to be awesome.

8:19 – I have the pre-show white carpet on in the background (yes, white carpet), and all of the sudden Sway starts giving out awards! WTF?!

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The Grammys, 2010

February 1, 2010August 28, 2010 / Jared / 4 Comments

Last year was the first time in forever that I actually watched the Grammys. I was drawn in by the commercials advertising the killer lineup of performances, and it pretty much lived up to the hype. It was worth sitting through the whole show just to see Radiohead play with the USC marching band. Plus, there was all the Rihanna/Chris Brown drama to follow.

This year I don’t think I saw a single commercial for it. So that doesn’t bode well. Plus, I printed out the ballot, and it is just ridiculously bad. I’ll discuss in detail as we slog through this train wreck, but it almost seems like they are trying to piss people off with their nominees.

Anyway, Johanna and I will be competing again in a winner picking game. As usual, I pick who I think is going to win, not who should win (in a lot of these categories, none of the nominees deserve to win). Out of principle, I did not just pick Taylor Swift in every category, even though she’ll probably sweep the night. I did, however, pick a Marley in two separate categories. Let’s get it started. Categories and winners in bold.

8:01 – “Oh Jesus,” says Johanna as Lady Gaga kicks off the night. This is a little too Broadway for my tastes, but God bless her. She looks like a character from Tim Burton’s upcoming Alice in Wonderland. I should also say here that I’m really surprised that they didn’t start with some Michael Jackson thing. I guess MTV stole their thunder.

8:04 – “Everybody’s going googoo for Gaga,” says the weird emcee. And now here she comes on some weird double piano with Sir Elton John. WTF is going on right now? This is like if Disney Imagineers were trying to show me what an acid trip would be like. Again, God bless her. She is talented. She deserves to win in all four categories in which she’s nominated tonight, but I doubt that will happen.

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