The American Music Awards

The AMAs.

I was so there...The procurement of the tickets is kind of a long story (suffice to say that Hye Young and I were fortunate, through the efforts of myself and the rest of the Building Government, to obtain a significant subsidy from USC, via a loophole for the funding of "cultural events of interest"). 

So on Sunday afternoon, Hye Young and I got all dressed up, and headed a few blocks downtown to the Nokia Center for the awards show. Neither of us had ever been to one, and the AMAs are especially cool because they're performance based rather than presentation/speech based. Anyway, here we are up on the mezzanine, where our seats were:

(Please note the terrible quality of this picture. But don't judge -- the ticket specifically requested no cameras be brought in, and we followed that guideline (we were probably the only ones who did!!) so all of these images are all grainy and low quality, courtesy of my otherwise-fabulous Crackberry.) 

The amazingness of that evening is just too much to put here, but I'm going to try to give you an idea of it. 

First of all, the "live" aspect of the show was an experience in and of itself. As an audience member, we felt privy to a behind-the-scenes type environment and a very participatory vibe. During commercial breaks, for instance, we got little backstage video peeks via the giant screens, and they played performance clips of AMAs past -- Paula Abdul, for instance. Michael Jackson. Will Smith. Then the announcer would lead a countdown 'til "Live!" and call for "Applause! Applause!!" a few moments before to give a really active, enthused vibe to the show.

Of course, the best parts were the live performances. Janet Jackson gave an 8-minute intro, but I'm convinced she was lip-synching. Whitney Houston was on stage live for the first time in five years. Carrie Underwood was charming as always, and Keith Urban was surprisingly good as well. But may I just say that Lady Gaga is insane?? She is destined to pull an Ozzy. She WILL eat a live animal onstage. Wait for it.

For me, at least, one of the highlights of the evening included the Black-Eyed Peas:

Fergie's kind of dancing around in front. That's Will.i.am up on the right. Let's pretend the bluriness adds to the artistic factor, shall we??

They did two songs -- "Meet Me Halfway" and "Boom Boom Pow" -- and they were FABULOUS!!!

Jay-Z and Alicia Keys did a performance of "Empire State of Mind," which is one of my favorite songs at the moment. Quite frankly, it was one of the best things I've ever seen.

That's Jay-z and Alicia Keys right there. (You can kind of see 'em, if you squint real hard...)

Until Eminem and 50 Cent got on stage. I wish I could articulate exactly how amazing it was, but there are no words. To be honest, I'm a big-time country girl these days, but I've wanted to see Eminem since I was about eleven and Slim Shady came out (I won't tell you about the phase I went through where I thought his name was "M&M". It was a shameful experience....).

You really can't tell, but that's Eminem on the left, and 50 Cent to his right, kind of facing Eminem. Yeah. Just keepin' it real with my awesome Blackberry camera...

Anyway. Just too much greatness for one stage.

And after something like that, I can't possibly see the point of discussing Adam Lambert's fiasco or really anything else at all. 

Eminem and 50 Cent were amazing. Let's just leave it at that.

(Off to brine a turkey!!)