I must say that there are way too many things going on in Coney Island. There’s the beach, the Cyclone, Luna Park, the boardwalk, beer island, Nathan’s…it goes on. Oh, yeah, and also two stages set up for live music, but I’m sure a lot of people didn’t even know that. And I witnessed, once again, people will wait in endless lines for free stuff. This time it was for a free tote bag, and the blaring sun did not stop them.

In the end I was just happy to ride the Cyclone and get my roller coaster fix. I also got a great view of Matt & Kim’s crowd from high in the sky on the Brooklyn Flyer, one of the rides at the new Luna Park. And then, after nearly 11 hours at Coney Island, I called it a night. Until next year…

photo from www.grammy.com

The 52nd annual Grammy Awards took place tonight, and I bet you were there. Really. Because it looked like it was held in a stadium and everyone who wanted to go was allowed in. And if you didn’t actually have a seat, you were probably onstage. That was pretty much the theme of the night. The more back up singers/dancers/random people onstage, the better.  Unless, of course, you are Pink. She decided to go pretty much solo, but more on that later.

The performances covered all the elements, starting with Lady Gaga’s fire display in the show opener.  How she got Sir Elton John to agree to perform with soot smeared on his face (not to mention crazy sequined glasses) is beyond me.  Beyonce performed “If I Were a Boy” as military uniform-clad dancers surrounded her. In a nice twist, Beyonce broke into Alanis Morissette’s “You Oughta Know,” but it kind of made me want to hear Alanis sing. And I sort of felt like the Rihanna’s been doing the military thing lately. They all seem to overlap.  But for the most part, all of the performances tonight were overwhleming—there was too many people, and too much going on onstage to focus on anything or know who was singing.

But back to the elements, and specifically Air and Water.  Pink’s gravity-defying aerial performance was impressive, but out of place. For a minute I wondered if the show was actually taking place in Las Vegas.  In the end, she was dipped in water and spun around like a human sprinkler. I just hope the first 10 rows were given ponchos.

The Black Eyed Peas get an award for “Most Challenging Outfit for a Back-up Dancer.” I’m not even sure what they were dressed as. Robots? Speakers? A broken boom box? In any case, good job to all those dancers who had to move around wearing boxes attached to all four limbs. C’mon, Black Eyed Peas, what’s wrong with a leotard?

Green Day brought in the Earth by channeling a very famous street—Broadway. Apparently American Idiot is headed to a Broadway theater. Who knew? In a good promotional move, the entire cast of the theatrical production joined Green Day onstage for “21 Guns.”

So that’s all I’m going to say.  The Grammys were big, mainly because there was an average of 50 people onstage at all times, and a crowd of what looked like a million. But where do you go from there? I think that next year the producers should try a scaled down Grammys. You know, maybe at a high school auditorium, a few acoustic performances and of course the awards. Just a thought.