Spilled Secrets Scooped Up Fast: Fake Grammys! No-Show Bigshots! And, Yes, the Mystery Daddy!

by Joal Ryan

There are plenty of potential suspects here at the 49th Annual Grammy Awards in Los Angeles. The place is, after all, crawling with musicians, jet-setters and polka people.

It could be any of them. It could be none of them.

It could be I'm going loopy at the marathon that is music's longest night (and day).

But I actually think I'm on to something. And if I have to frisk Justin Timberlake to get to the bottom of the case, then so be it.

3:30 p.m. ET:  Boom! Smoke! Zsa Zsa Gabor's husband trying to throw reporters off his tail?

3:31 p.m.:  No, it's just an act warming up here at Staples Center.

3:32 p.m.:  And, no, I don't know which act. My press credential only gets me as far as being on the wrong side of the big, black curtain.

4:30 p.m.:  The Grammys begin. Really. Nearly four hours before the prime-time show, the preshow starts here. Or, actually, there—across the street at the Los Angeles Convention Center.

4:36 p.m.:  "I'm really happy to be here, because it's my first time to be here," says preshow cohost Miss Universe Zuleyka Rivera, and who I am to argue with logic?

4:40 p.m.:  The first Grammy is presented to OK Go's treadmill-celebrating "Here It Goes Again" for Best Short-Form Music Video. Only 107 more categories to go!

5:18 p.m.:  Does Justin Timberlake attend the preshow to pick up the Grammy for Rap/Sung Collaboration for "My Love"? He does not. Already trying to duck my planned interrogation, apparently.

5:52 p.m.:  I watch a Grammy winner (the director-producer of Bruce Springsteen's Wings for Wheels: The Making of Born to Run) get handed an award before stepping into the press-conference room. Strange. Shouldn't he already have a Grammy?

5:53 p.m.:  The answer is, no, he shouldn't. A Grammy flack explains that all Grammys presented during the show are props, props that are confiscated from the winners once they step off the stage. Hence, when the empty-handed winners arrive here to do press conferences, they're handed more props.

5:55 p.m.:  Sure enough, the director-producer guy (Thom Zimny) steps out of the press conference and hands back "his" Grammy.

5:56 p.m.:  I'll like to see them pull that business with Mary J. Blige.

6:19 p.m.:  A happy Ike Turner, a winner for Traditional Blues Album (Risin' with the Blues), is standing four rows—just four rows!?—in front of me. I don't think I dared get as close as 20 rows when I went to go see What's Love Got to Do With It.