Sunday, January 31, 2010

Taylor Swift wins Album of The Year at the Grammy Awards

The 2009 fairy tale story that is Taylor Swift continues in 2010. While Beyonce took home more Grammys than any female artist in Grammy history, Taylor Swift got three awards, including Album of The Year for the awesome Fearless.

Last year is seemed Taylor Swift could do no wrong, as she scored every award, major and not, that was in sight, including Country Music Entertainer of the Year.

At the Grammys, Taylor may have expected her long ride to end; it didn't. That should explain her wonderfully enthusiastic reaction to her award. (The video from that is not yet up as of this writing.)

Taylor Swift also had another dream come true when she got to perform with her childhood favorite, Stevie Nicks. The two performed songs from Fleetwood Mac and You Belong with Me, from Swift's Fearless album.



Stay tuned.

Stephen Colbert's Opening Speech bombs at Grammy Awards

Stephen Colbert of The Colbert Report is hilarious and his show is an American Cultural treasure. But Stephen Colbert's opening speech at the 2010 Grammy Awards just plain bombed. Either Stephen Colbert was before the wrong audience or he had the wrong material.

Whatever the case, watching Colbert struggle through his almost four minutes of his common "let's play the out-of-touch conservative trying-to-be hip, but not" character hurt as much as having the needle of a flu shot driven into your arm.

It was that bad.



The only part that saved Stephen Colbert from being a totally awful opening was pulling his Apple iPad out of his suit. "Does this make me cool?" He asked Jay-Z, for whom he slightly annoyed with his "What up, Z?" question at the start of the disaster. The look on Jay-Z's face was enough to make Stephen Colbert's skin crawl, and that's where it went bad. Stephen Colbert never recovered from that.

Yes. The fact that Colbert was bombing was the "in joke" but it ventured too far into his bombing actually not being funny. Colbert's humor is perfect for events like the White House Correspondents Dinner, but it wasn't a good idea to have him give the opening speech at The Grammys. Watching someone who's so talented just major league bomb at The Grammys was not fun at all.

Grammy Awards 2010: Beyonce performance wows the crowd

Beyonce's militaristic, head-banging performance was the Twitter talk of the 2010 Grammy Awards. Escorted by a group of black armored suit wearing dancers, Beyonce looked more like a super hot drill sergeant than a pop singer.

The design of Beyonce's performance brought up memories of Michael Jackson in This Is It performing HisTory. And it was very much like Emimen's 2002 MTV Music Awards performance of Slim Shady when he walked into Radio City Music Hall with an army of white men all dressed and cut to look just like him.



One thing you have to say: Beyonce is hot. No question about it. She's also the hottest Grammy winner, taking home six Grammys, the most by a female performer in one year.

Grammy Awards 2010: Miley Cyrus greeting fans with her mom

YouTube user Michalyse was one of the fans at the Red Carpet for the 2010 Grammy Awards, when superstar singer Miley Cyrus walked in and came over to sign autographs.

Miley Cyrus, wearing a short black cocktail dress, was with her Mom Tish, and not her boyfriend Liam Hemsworth. (They're not engaged, but reportedly they are still dating. Still one wonders where he was.)

You can hear the crowd, which sounds like her demographic of females 13 to 17, screaming her name. It's a very good video uploaded rapidly.



Miley was a presenter at the 2010 Grammy Awards.

Lady Gaga and Elton John get Grammy's started

The rumored and much anticipated Grammy Awards pairing of Lady Gaga and Sir Elton John happened, and go the Grammys off to a rousing start. Lady Gaga and Elton John are both piano wizards, so it was fitting that they produced a piano duet of a number of songs from past and present:


Sir Elton John had his own signature glitter glasses and both had a kind of "soot' makeup. Elton can still jam on the piano. It was cool: young and old, past and present, both massively brilliant.

Other performances that will be featured are Beyonce Rocks doing Alanis Morissette's 'You Oughta Know', Pink literally "up in the air" for 'Glitter in The Air', Taylor Swift And Stevie Nicks singing the Fleetwood Mac song Rhiannon, and Taylor Swift's You Belong With Me from her album Fearless.

Stay tuned.

Zennie62 Widget beats SFGate Widget, approaching NY Times Widget

Last year, my friend Steve Kloft (who's a consultant to several top New Media companies), came to me by my surprise having already created a widget for me called "The Zennie Abraham Widget". The best thing is I never asked for it or even thought of it. It was Steve's creation; his idea to promote me.

That's a friend.

Steve was then and still is now a consultant to WidgetBox, which I later featured in a video on the firm here:

YouTube has President Obama's full State of The Union Address

Thanks to The White House and YouTube News and Politics Editor Steve Grove, YouTube has the full, high-definition video presentation of the State of The Union Address President Barack Obama gave on Wednesday, January 27, 2010. If you missed it, you can watch it right here on video without leaving this post:



The speech was one of the greatest President Obama has made in history because it came at a time when he, and America, needed a great speech. Obama needed it to reset the course of his young presidency. The United States needed it to establish a vision of a possible, full employment economic recovery.

The problem America has suffered under is that while America's economy has grown at a three percent rate in the 2009 third quarter and at 5.1 percent in the 2009 fourth quarter, unemployment is still at high levels.

This is so because before the last two quarters of growth, America's economy was on a steady path of recession for almost two years. Job production has not yet followed this growth and credit is still tight.

The result was a feeling that America was not on the right track. But President Obama's State of The Union Address changed that. According to a CBS poll, 83 percent of Americans supported the proposals President Obama described in his speech.

The full text of the speech is presented by the New York Times, here.

Stay tuned.