Grab me a Grammy

Not being much of a Western music (especially pop) follower, The Grammies usually held only quizzing significance to me. Partially, I attribute it to the fact that there are so many of them to hand out, much like the Olympic golds for swimming. It's easier to remember the top Oscar categories, or the sprint golds, but when you have categories like Best New Male Country and 4 x 400 medley among many other similarly titled prizes, it is excusable to be washed away with the flotsam.

Many "performers" win more than one awards - this seems to be a manifestation of the Pigeonhole Principle: there seem to be more awards than people wanting to win them, so it's obvious a few of them will take home a clutch.

But the Grammies do push a limit or two - they seem to have categories for anything that can be done with an open mouth (well, alright, almost anything!). Take Best Spoken Word for example. This year's winners included Bill Clinton and Mikhail Gorbachev. Given that Hillary Clinton won a Grammy some time back in a similar category, they're just waiting for Chelsea to say something into a tape, so as to complete the family album. But seriously, how Best can Clinton's Spoken Words get? His UnSpoken Words would be more interesting. And Gorbachev? Did they understand what he was saying? I cannot see how Bill and Mike can speak better than Pu La or Solomon Poppayya (I know I've got the spelling wrong there), but then we shouldn't kid ourselves that these are international awards.

*** We had our own version of the Gs, called the IMMies a few months ago. Needless to say, the range of music was as Indian as Bollywood is representative of Indian cinema.