When the Grammy nominations for Album of the Year were announced, I knew right then and there that the award would go to Steely Dan. It was a simple process of elimination problem. Beck: released a year and a half ago (Grammy eligibility protocol has always been supremely screwy, my personal fave is the honoring of Springsteen's "Streets of Philadelphia" in the 1995 Grammys even though it was honored by the Oscars TEN months previous and was released in 1993), and a clear case of trying to make up for lost time by missing the boat by five years with the vastly more acclaimed "Odelay". Radiohead: far too leftfield, the token foreign nominees (along with the infinitely more tame and mainstream -- at least to the Academy -- U2). Eminem: yeah, right. The Grammys might think they're hip by showering Alanis Morrisette with awards for the supposedly raw and controversial "Jagged Little Pill", but, to them, giving a top award to Eminem would be like giving the award for Best Gospel Recording to Satan. Still, just nominating the guy is a step in the right direction, because you just know that there was a significant faction of the Academy that wanted to see another old fart get nominated, my gut feeling is that they wanted the Eric Clapton/B.B. King album in there. Paul Simon: the usual mainstream awards show principles apply here. Paul Simon gets nominated because he's Paul Simon, the same way that Tom Hanks or Al Pacino are nominated for Best Actor every time they do a movie. But he's already won a zillion Grammys so there's no need to give him one here. Of course, the fact that nobody bought or liked the album should eliminate the need to resort to these political truisms, but these are the Grammys, who are probably dismayed that Will Smith didn't release an album last year so they could have nominated it for Best Rap Album and possibly allowed them to circumvent Eminem altogether. Which leaves Steely Dan. Old farts, check. Never won a Grammy = "sentimental favourite", check. Comeback album = "Santana 2001", check. These three measures easily trump more relevant measures, i.e. anybody owning or caring about the album, which nobody does. At least the Best Album award is now presented last, golly, it only took them THIRTY YEARS to figure out that albums are more important than singles nowadays. Until next year, here's hoping that the anti-Eminem protesters took solace in Mr. Mathers' half-assed embrace of Mr. John following their "we hate the guy, and we wish he'd drop dead, and we're here to recognize the best music, but let's exploit his white ass so we can keep our TV ratings high by hyping the degenerate's performance THROUGHOUT THE ENTIRE SHOW, since anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that he's one of the few people here tonight that anybody could give a crap about" performance.