The Grammy nominees were announced. Yippie. Nothing like the granddaddy of useless awards shows to make for some quality ranting.

Grammy can talk all it wants about how there's not one artist that ran away with the nominations, or how this years' field is more wide open than ever. Screw that. Does anyone doubt for one second that Bruce Springsteen will win all the important awards? It's the "Steely Dan" factor from a couple of years back. Grammy NEVER goes out on a limb -- hell, they won't even climb the damned tree -- unless there's a complete dearth of decent nominees (call that the "Alanis" factor). Alan Jackson and the Boss will clean up, because it's ALWAYS the Alan Jacksons and Bosses that clean up at the Grammys. Rather than pick the best music, you can just eliminate all the stuff that you know won't have a chance, and pick the winners that way. Let's play the process of elimination game right now.

Record of the Year. This can actually be difficult to predict, mostly because nobody even knows what the record of the year even means in an age of mainly singer-songwriters. I'll say the blandest record will get it, so that leaves Vanessa Carleton and Norah Jones. I mean bland as opposed to edgy -- "Don't Know Why" is a wonderful song, but it's really easy on the ears which will please all the voters whose tastes haven't progressed beyond Natalie Cole in the last decade. But Norah Jones will probably win Best Newcomer, so her votes will be split across the other categories, so I'll pick Vanessa Carlton here.

Album + Song of the Year. Just engrave Bruce's name on the trophy right now. Alan Jackson is the sleeper pick for Song. Grammy is always 18 months behind the times due to their asinine eligibility period, so they haven't had the opportunity to memorialize 9/11 yet, so they'll do it here.

Rock Album. Bruce again, but many voters will still have a soft spot for Sheryl Crow. Although I don't believe Robert Plant has ever won a Grammy, if so, they may pull out a corollary of the Steely Dan factor and give it to him even though roughly 0.0001 % of American human beings are even aware that he put a record out.

Rap Album. This could be interesting, since there aren't any Fresh Prince - style embarrassments for Grammy to cheese out with. I've never heard of Petey Pablo, so I think I'll pick him. But this could also be the year they pick Eminem, since he's a movie star now and everything, so some of the voters might assume this means he's safe for children.

I'd also be remiss if I didn't blast Grammy for citing the soft and safe "Dilemma" featuring grizzled rapper plus cute female armpiece, instead of the REAL Record of the Year, "Hot in Herre". Grammy absolutely loves duets, and this lets them say they've given appropriate recognition to R&B artists. Besides the infinitely higher sweatyumphbumpandgrindfactor, I'd be willing to bet that way more kids downloaded "Hot In Herre" than "Dilemma", and we CERTAINLY don't want to be promoting file sharing or anything.