AP Photo/Kevork Djansezian4 p.m. PST: Things I witnessed at the Grammys pretelecast awards handout:
- Barack Obama, beating Clinton again. This time it was Bill, not Hillary, who took the loss. At stake was the Spoken World Album Grammy, and per the rumor I'm going to start, one superdelegate.
- Johnny Cash, winning in a music video category, and ceremony cohost Patti Austin, looking around to see if there was anybody there and/or alive to accept.
- A bunch of people dressed like Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band members, marching down the staircase at the media center. Tourists...
- The show announcer, doing his best to make Nate "Danja" Hills' name sound perfectly natural coming out of his mouth...and failing completely.
- The audience members at the Los Angeles Convention Center, letting out an "Oh" when Amy Winehouse won her first Grammy, for Female Pop Vocal Performance. I'm not sure why they sounded so surprised. Last I heard, Winehouse was in rehab for drugs, not for being lame.
- Ted Kryczko, a producer on the Muppets' A Green and Red Christmas (Best Musical Album for Children), keeping it real regarding the fuzzy hands that feed him: "The Muppets hadn't done anything new musically in years and years."
- Carrie Underwood, failing to adhere to the memo and attending the pretelecast to collect her Grammy for Female Country Vocal Performance. "You couldn't keep me from getting this actually myself," she told the audience.
- Brad Paisley, another name act who didn't follow orders, picking up his trophy for Country Instrumental Performance in such informal garb that the Grammys credential hanging around his neck was his most outstanding accessory.
4:15 p.m.: In all, the pretelecast, which started about four hours before the show you'll see tonight on CBS, handed out 100 awards—seriously, 100. Fortunately, the ceremony moved along at a swift pace on account of hardly anybody who won showing up.
4:20 p.m.: Justin Timberlake, Maroon 5, Bruce Springsteen, the Foo Fighters, the Beastie Boys, the Eagles, Willie Nelson, the White Stripes and Prince, winners all, were among the no-shows. Ditto for the U.K.-bound Winehouse and the campaign-bound Obama.
4:21 p.m.: Kanye West might hate to lose at awards shows, but he also apparently hates winning off camera. West was another A-lister who skipped the pretelecast, during which he actually won three rap Grammys.
4:31 p.m.: As you've probably guessed by now, it has been a cavalcade of stars back here in the pressroom.
4:32 p.m.: Well, maybe not a cavalcade, but Duncan Sheik and Herbie Hancock were very nice, and in the 67-year-old Hancock's case, extremely well preserved.
—Filed by Joal Ryan