February 11, 2007

Party Ben Pre-Live-Blogs the Grammys

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This will be so much easier than actually watching the thing.

8:00 PM – Ceremony opens with alleged “mashup” of Gnarls Barkley and the Dixie Chicks. There’s some confusion because Gnarls Barkley are in Dixie Chicks costumes. Randy Newman saves the day by descending from ceiling to sing 15-minute extended version of “Crazy”

8:16 PM – First Award, for Best Spoken Word Album. It’s a tie: Al Franken and Jimmy Carter! They accept with a witty back-and-forth that puns “tied” with “apartheid.” Polite laughter

8:19 PM – Reba McEntire and Diddy emerge as presenters. McEntire: “Hey Diddy, can you believe it, the Police are here!” Diddy: “Hold on, I gotta call my driver!” Slightly less polite laughter

8:23 PM – Carrie Underwood wins Best Country Song for “Jesus, Take the Wheel,” forgets to thank him in acceptance speech. Camera shows Jesus in audience smiling uncomfortably. Guy behind him pats him on back. You kind of get the feeling maybe things aren’t going so great, like Jesus heard a suspicious message from Buddha on the answering machine and you can see in his eyes this kind of confirms everything. Of course he forgives her but it just seems like she’s already moved on

8:27 PM – John Mayer and Tony Bennett perform “Candle in the Wind” accompanied by a montage of moments from the life of Anna Nicole Smith

8:43 PM – Chamillionaire wins Best Rap Song for “Ridin’,” sends Weird Al to accept

8:58 PM – Earth Wind & Fire peform theme song from “Snakes on a Plane” with Samuel L. Jackson, and, inexplicably, Melissa Etheridge

9:22 PM – The Flaming Lips win Best Alternative Album. Wayne Coyne attempts to crowd surf in giant bubble, “accidentally” crushes David Spade

9:40 PM – Neil Young wins Best Rock Song; rambling, embarrassing acceptance speech actually converts most liberals in audience into Brownback supporters

10:24 PM – Pussycat Dolls win Best Pop Performance. Camera searches audience in vain, but no-one has any idea what they look like

10:44 PM – Police perform medley of “Roxanne,” “Every Breath You Take,” and, awkwardly, “Don’t Stand So Close to Me,” accompanied by same Anna Nicole Smith montage

10:58 PM – Record of the Year goes to James Blunt; thanks fans because “they’re the ones who really are beautiful;” 90% of viewers experience fatal brain hemorrhage. Casualties in the high single digits

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WE'LL BE BLUNT

It is astonishingly hard keeping a newsroom afloat these days, and we need to raise $253,000 in online donations quickly, by October 7.

The short of it: Last year, we had to cut $1 million from our budget so we could have any chance of breaking even by the time our fiscal year ended in June. And despite a huge rally from so many of you leading up to the deadline, we still came up a bit short on the whole. We can’t let that happen again. We have no wiggle room to begin with, and now we have a hole to dig out of.

Readers also told us to just give it to you straight when we need to ask for your support, and seeing how matter-of-factly explaining our inner workings, our challenges and finances, can bring more of you in has been a real silver lining. So our online membership lead, Brian, lays it all out for you in his personal, insider account (that literally puts his skin in the game!) of how urgent things are right now.

The upshot: Being able to rally $253,000 in donations over these next few weeks is vitally important simply because it is the number that keeps us right on track, helping make sure we don't end up with a bigger gap than can be filled again, helping us avoid any significant (and knowable) cash-flow crunches for now. We used to be more nonchalant about coming up short this time of year, thinking we can make it by the time June rolls around. Not anymore.

Because the in-depth journalism on underreported beats and unique perspectives on the daily news you turn to Mother Jones for is only possible because readers fund us. Corporations and powerful people with deep pockets will never sustain the type of journalism we exist to do. The only investors who won’t let independent, investigative journalism down are the people who actually care about its future—you.

And we need readers to show up for us big time—again.

Getting just 10 percent of the people who care enough about our work to be reading this blurb to part with a few bucks would be utterly transformative for us, and that's very much what we need to keep charging hard in this financially uncertain, high-stakes year.

If you can right now, please support the journalism you get from Mother Jones with a donation at whatever amount works for you. And please do it now, before you move on to whatever you're about to do next and think maybe you'll get to it later, because every gift matters and we really need to see a strong response if we're going to raise the $253,000 we need in less than three weeks.

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