Much Ado

So, the fallout from the Adam Lambert at the American Music Awards thing, huh? Interesting.

I actually saw the performance. Unlikely given the fact that I’m fairly anti-award show. And also, given the fact that most of the acts up to that point were pretty meh. That chain coat that Alicia Keys was wearing looked like she stole it from a Fly Girl. Probably Jennifer Lopez, because she was obviously digging in her old Fly Girl costume closet. And when even I, who would lick Billy Joe Armstrong from nose to toes, find Green Day’s performance a bore, you’ve got problems. Pretty much only Gaga broke the malaise miasma that hung over the AMAs.

Then we ended with Adam Lambert. He tried. But let’s face it, the kid has a lot a larnin’ to do when it comes to big stage performance. He got a little big for his britches and would have probably pulled it off if he’d scaled the entire performance down by half to a quarter. But, points for ambition. Which is more than can be said for most performers Sunday night.

Which leaves us with the “acting out” behavior. As far as the boy-on-boy kiss, I did not really realize that he was kissing a boy. In fact, my thought was, “For a homosexual, he’s really snogging the heck out of that girl. Too many Katy Perry plays on his iPod?” But I approve of Universal Love Gods, and actually thought it was a little edgy that he was shmenking a girl. So, I have to admit I’m a little disappointed that he was just kissing a boy. Yawn. Way to play to type.

Which leaves us with the rather blatant simulated oral cop (as they’d call it on the SVU). That was in poor taste (ahem), and way over the line for the AMAs. In his own stage show? Certainly and brava. On MTV? Borderline, but it is cable so go for it. But miming a blow job on network television, that’s just not cool. And it wouldn’t matter whether it was a guy or a girl with their face smashed against his groin. I’m just hoping it was an artistic miscalculation, and not just a cheap publicity move timed to coincide with his album dropping. Adam has enough talent to make it on just being a cute guy with a great voice. Knock ‘em dead with your pipes. Not by faking getting . . . oh, nevermind.

[Sidebar note: Why are all of these people so phenomenally poorly mic’ed? Seriously. If we expect people to actually perform, without artificial help, go to the trouble to make them not sound like they’re singing through a tin can.]

Shaking the dust off our feet and hightailing it on out of here

You know what? The Naughties are coming to an end! That’s right 2010 is right around the corner. Frankly, yeah. I’m dang tired of this decade. It’s been some new damned thing every year. And I haven’t liked much of it. Buildings falling, bubbles bursting, cities washing away, super viruses, melting glaciers, and people just going flat-out out of control. And if decades have characters, I don’t think this one’s going down in the books as one of the more likable ones.

Maybe we should be making a “new decade resolution” and just agree that there are some things we just need to leave behind in the 00s. Like the fact that we lost track of the fact that Gordon Gecko’s “Greed is good” was meant ironically. Or the fact that even if you can afford it, $15,000 really is too much to pay for a purse. Or maybe there really is such thing as too much bling, and Over the Top is just over the top. Or if you need an SUV to carry all of your kid’s sports equipment, maybe your kid is playing too many sports. Or that it’s okay to grow up, and you can have fun as an adult too. Or maybe porn stars and strippers really shouldn’t be fashion role models. Or it’s okay to not get something you want. Or that polite is not a synonym “uptight.” Or that the cell phone is not a life support system; you can put it down. Or maybe “keeping it real” just ends up being just as fake.

Everybody seems to kind of go into a new decade with a new vision, and a disdain for that’s “so last decade.” I’d really like to think we’re all gonna blink on January the 1st, and think, “Wow, did that really just happen?” And we’ll wake up out of whatever fever dream we’ve been living the last 10 years. I don’t know what the Teens are going to look like. But, jeez. We can do better than this.