First (don't you hate it when it starts out "first, ..." ?), a couple of things (here he goes again):

A lot of this blog has, and may well continue to, discussed former nun Amy Winehouse. Why? Because she is news, that's why, also she is hugely talented & also she is killing herself. It's an ongoing train wreck that you can't turn away from until you have gone through the mailbags and all the stuff in the cargo car, then you've topped it off with a daquiri in the club car. Anyway, who reads this anyway? Family and/or a few friends? So who cares? At any rate, I'm going to write about her again, and yes, even I myself thought "you're obsessed, but it's Ok because it's not like Rosie with Tom Cruise so breathe easy". Anyway (again) I'm about to rant, but I'll try & make it interesting.

Yesterday I saw something on Al Gore's internet (he lets me use it from time to time - he also hates people) where Natalie Cole - you know, the has-been offspring of Nat "King" Cole - said giving Amy Winehouse those grammies (does it still use the "y" in plural form?) sets a bad example, that it's rewarding her bad behaviour.

I have two words for the girl who made it big - not known, but ... well, yeah "known" too - off her dead father, and rode his decaying coattails by recording extra vocals on the song HE made famous decades earlier, and those words are:

Billie Holiday

Yeah, that's right, you purists out there, and usually I am one of them, and I still am but I think most things are as valuable as tits on a cereal box (although it gives one something to do at the breakfast table) that's right, I said it. I'm comparing Amy Winehouse to Billie Holiday.

The grammys (a-ha! you do use the "y" in the plural form!) started in 1958, and we know this because they kept shoving "50th grammys" down our throats and 1958 plus 50 equals 2008 and also they paraded semi-corpse Andy Williams out there for us to marvel at (is he stuffed? is what I was thinking) and I guess he was the first host of the thing. Anyway, as usual I'm off track. So, Billie Holiday was pretty much Amy Winehouse in 1958 but that's not exactly why I compare the two. It's the other way around. That girl (A. W.) has a voice that quantum leapily transcends non-crackheads like Carrie Whats-her-face or Mariah Pukeness or any other absurd warbler. She has feeling and soul in her voice that was last heard in Aretha's Atlantic Records years, those being the years she made all the records anyone would remember, and I don't mean "Freeway Of Love" or "Jumpin' Jack Flash" although that one was done for some stupid Whoopie Goldberg movie with Keith Richard who was the male Amy Winehouse of his time and I wonder who laughed harded at those sessions, Keith or Aretha? And I've heard AW do jazz standards & she has IT. Period. Would anyone doubt that Lady Day should've gotten a grammy, had they existed in her heyday? SHE didn't create any new genre, which is probably the argument the naysayers today use for Amy, that she's just cashing in on an existing groove. Read back a few sentences. NOTHING THIS REAL since Sister 'Ree. And DON'T GET ME STARTED ON CHARLIE PARKER, one of the most talented & gifted junkies EVER although he DID create a genre but probably wouldn't have copped a grammy anyway because that genre he created was dubbed "chinese music" because people couldn't get their heads around it and that genre pretty much flourished in "stuff" advocacy.. But still...

At any rate, "f" you, Natalie Cole, you are NOT unforgettable. AND you were ALSO a dopehead. DO NOT SHIT WHERE YOU EAT. Her quote: "you don't just get to do your drugs and go onstage and get rewarded."

Oh really? Wanna take a poll? Show of hands? Didn't think so.