What Culture Has Wrought, The Grammys

http://wmbriggs.com/blog/?p=3258 ^ | William M Briggs

[mattstat]

The guy walked up to me and said—well, what he said started with a word not often seen in print. He ended his two-word phrase with a “you”. Far from being insulted, I was instead so overcome by his artistic brilliance, by the sheer eloquence of his remark, that I organized an ad hoc street committee so that we could vote this gentleman a major award.

The man, whose named I discovered to be Cee Lo Green, gracefully accepted our honorarium but said he thought it was misplaced. He explained that he wasn’t speaking to me, but that I happened to be in earshot at the same moment he was practicing a speech he hoped to give at this year’s Grammy Awards.

Turns out that that phrase was also the title of his new record, and that this record was nominated for Record Of The Year. Whether he won the coveted prize or not, Green planned to unleash his art on the Grammy crowd because, he reasoned, they seemed to enjoy hearing it.

He thought his chance of winning good. His colleague Eminem had used this same phrase liberally on his own nominated record, but that gentleman did not peg to the trick of including it in the record title itself. Further, the other three entrants used the phrase sparingly or not at all.

I asked if he could hum a few bars of his tune, so that I might gain a better appreciation of its merits. He started,...

[WestwardHo]

May I correct your spelling? It’s “rot”, but you knew that, already!