The American Music Awards.

You would think I’d learn. After years of getting suckered into watching awards shows, I mean really. Can you name a good one? Have you ever been satisfied after watching one. Have you ever done anything but shake your head in disgust when the credits rolled–before hobbling off to bed, slack-jawed and numb–wondering how you could possibly get those three hours of your life back?

Me either. And yet, I can’t stop tuning in. Even though I end up feeling dirty afterwards.

And music awards shows are the worst because you can still actually get lured by the idea of hearing a band perform. A band you like or find interesting. And even if you tivo or tape it, fast-forwarding only to the performance that matters to you, the inevitable disappointment of a half-assed lip-synch or a plague of technical difficulties, a cold, apathy or crummy acoustics, can ruin your entire perspective on a performer.

But enough! I have to talk about Lindsay Lohan. It’s compulsory. I can’t NOT do it. She sucked so hard that all the Mean Girls and Parent Traps in the world cannot make up for it. She sucked from her hoochie hair to her nappy t-shirt dress to her weak-ass vocals, butt slapping backup girls and ill-conceived decision to cover STEVIE NICKS.

Yes, THAT Stevie Nicks. I bled from the ear. She was unforgivably bad. Ashlee Simpson is her new best friend.

Mariah Carey was also not good. And, she’s apparently lost her boobs. No wait, they were hanging off to the side somewhere.

At what point did the preferred American breast presentation droop? As far as I can recall, our cultural definition of attractive cleavage involved lifting–creating a shelf, if you will. When did we go all down and out? Better yet, can we vote again on that please because I seem to have missed it. Or perhaps there were hanging chads involved.

I watched two hours of the show and thank God I saw Sarah McLachlan and Cyndi Lauper’s duet of Time After Time. That was absolutely lovely. It gave me goose pimples. And of course, the producers had to fuck with that by suddenly sucking all of the color out of the room and showing them in a black & white universe–probably to anvil us with some sort of “what you are now seeing is totally retro, people!”

But maybe it’s not good that their performance was so wonderful because that’s just the kind of tease that will make me think I should watch next year’s show too. And of course, as soon as the duet was over the AMA’s went straight back to pain by promptly giving an award to R Kelly. Favorite Male Artist in the Soul/R&B category. Against John Legend. I guess Legend needs to start singing a soap opera that includes farting midgets before he’ll rate.

Gwen Stefani performing with Pharrell. Why? She came down in a fake balloon, flapped her arms around a lot in some sort of chicken dance and said, “you got it like that” about 10 times. Huh?

I watched this sober. And maybe that was the problem. Next time I will plan ahead.

Also, the expected relief of switching over to the “very special” Law & Order SVU? Not so much.

I need some pie.