However crappy your year has been up to now, there is a very good chance that Rick Pitino’s was worse.

Granted, unlike you, he still lived in some moated castle on a hill somewhere, wearing custom Armani suits while doing his yard work (or, more likely, paying someone poorer than himself to wear Armani suits while doing his yard work for him). But also, unlike you, he had to admit to a courtroom full of media and his family that he jizzed down his leg at the end of a 15-second sexual tryst with a grasping, desperate muppet. If you, also, endured such a thing, then I humbly concede the point.

Pitino’s much-publicized extortion case was a bounty of Schadenfreude for haters, many of us wearing our XXXL Kentucky sweat-dresses, but it was also extremely sad to watch.

There was a time not that long ago when Pitino — Macy’s parade float-sized ego and all — was one of the sport’s coaching jewels. A savior of one of its elite programs, a national champion, a basketball innovator and a genuine personality who was both recognizable and marketable, Pitino was the “It” coach of the mid-1990s. I mean, we’re talking the only non-Bobby Knight on-court coach in Blue Chips, for crissakes. This, friends, is approaching hoops immortality.

But as damaging to Pitino professionally as his off-court shenanigans were, the fact that his team just wasn’t very good was nearly as much of a problem. Because last year’s team was supposed to be pretty good and they stunk. But having recruited or let his staff recruit blue-chip talents that lacked character and character guys that lacked talent, Pitino seemed stumped as to how to squeeze quality out of such crappy and unlikeable players. Never have I seen a coach exude such palpable hate for his own players as Pitino did last February and early March. And whether it was his team, his humiliating drama or both, the man started to show signs of cracking. He looked just terrible, appearing to diminish significantly game-to-game — sometimes even within a game — all of it culminating in a skeletal, pallid Pitino stalking the sidelines like some sad-sack goblin, fiddling with his absurdly large 1996 title ring and contemplating his life in hell.

Despite the lurid summer months, a return to basketball appears to have improved Pitino’s outlook tremendously. After the trial ended, Pitino finally stopped calling impromptu and monumentally ill-advised press conferences and kept his mouth shut. Louisville, perpetually desperate for a winner, gladly moved on and both town and coach seemed to revel in a return to something approaching normalcy.

It got even better last Tuesday, when his supposedly middle-of-the-pack Big East Cardinals — now shed of most of its underachieving personnel — humiliated media darling and top-20 ranked Butler, 88–73, at Louisville’s swanky new KFC Yum Center. That Butler looked thoroughly un-rank-worthy is immaterial to the benefits in exposure and distraction Pitino — and his program — receives from the win.

It’s a good time for Pitino to resurrect his image through basketball, which was the only reason he was famous in the first place. Putting aside the restaurants and endorsements and motivational speaking tours and focusing on what he does best is really his only option now. The less he reminds people of how far he’s fallen personally by hawking local used cars or mega-Krogers, the better.

This season, he says, is a bridge year to next season, when a slew of top recruits are slated to arrive. But Pitino is always playing spin. And he’s almost always done his most impressive work with teams that needed an identity, a group of players that had to, either by mediocrity or design, subjugate themselves to the team. And he has just such a team right now, devoid of stars but not devoid of hustle and talent.

If Pitino could wrest a better-than-expected season out of his spare parts, the national basketball media would be waiting with pursed lips. Because the national scribes still love them some Pitino, and they love a redemption story even more.

While the climax of Pitino’s tawdry affair made for the best tabloid reading, he was not the only coach to have a miserable off-season. And, amazingly, his summer wasn’t the worst one among big-time coaches. Pitino may have suffered a large blow to his personal credibility, but his program remained untouched by scandal. The same cannot be said for Tennessee’s Bruce Pearl, whose inability to tame his own insecurities may have ended his run in Knoxville just as things were beginning to get interesting.

At a time when he should have been talking up his team’s remarkable run last March to within a few points of the school’s first Final Four, Pearl was instead sitting wet-eyed in front of a feral horde of media, trying to apologize for lying to the NCAA and trying like hell to avoid losing his job.

Having intentionally misled NCAA investigators about a recruit’s visit to his home and gotten caught, a clear violation and then a clear intent to deceive, Pearl then had to mea culpa hard and hope that his performance as coach would outweigh his personal foibles. He’s lucky that last year’s team went as far in the tournament as it did, and that Tennessee’s football program is in even worse shape, as it probably saved him from the guillotine. Stripped of off-campus recruiting and fined by the school, the SEC announced Friday Pearl would be suspended from his team’s first eight conference gamedays. The NCAA has not yet rendered judgment, so he’s hardly out of the woods. Still, he has his job. For now.

Never one to shy from that fine line between fan adulation and public ridicule, Pearl has got to be about out of chits at this point. The heady days of painting his chest and attending women’s basketball games for attention are over. Thanks to his own savvy and determination, Pearl presides over a top-20 program now. Not that he appears to totally realize this.

And cheating is about the only thing — other than a return to a Volunteer legacy of sustained averageness — that will turn his job to shit. The irony here, of course, is that the same go-getter instinct in Pearl that made him famous once made him a whistle-blowing do-gooder, nearly ending his career in its infancy. Only after the passing of years and the producing of winning teams at off-the-grid locales did he get his shot at a major program, and it would be doubly devastating to him to get run out of that job for evading the rules. But evade them he did.

The coming clean thing was vintage Pearl, a teary self-on-the-sword bit of showmanship on par with his No-seriously-I’m-here-supporting-the-team chest-painting stint, which was really a ham-handed snaking in on Pat Summit’s hard-earned success. Ever attention-cognizant, this latest case was one where his own bravado and audacity played against him, bringing him more scrutiny than might have happened to a more genteel personality. Roy Williams has never hesitated to drop some tears, but he’s also never been stupid enough to ask people to lie to the NCAA, nor admitted complicity in anything untoward. Ditto Coach K. And those guys aren’t without a few run-ins with the authorities themselves. Pearl, instead, handled it like the nouveau riche glad-hander he is, and it may still prove fatal to his career. At this point, his grasp on his program’s future looks dicier than a leisurely drive with Tyler Smith.

Pearl’s Tennessee team has been wearing the weight of the unknown on its shoulders so far, eking out close wins over Belmont and Missouri State and looking for all the world like a group that has other things on its mind. The Volunteers are supposed to be a conference contender this season, and there’s plenty of time to round into form, but they’ll need to shrug off Pearl’s woes — and his absence on the sideline for half the conference season — if they want to be a factor in a brutal SEC East.

Pearl, like Pitino, would do well to focus on his job and stop trying to sell his bona fides. He’s arrived. You know that by the fact that he still has his job despite his numbnut behavior.

Speaking of numbnuts, ask Bobby Gonzalez about arriving. Actually, on second thought, don’t.

Since being hired following a promising stint at Manhattan, ‘Gonzo’ never really turned the corner at Seton Hall. The school tolerated his “last angry man” act on the assumption that his reckless guile and coaching acumen would outmatch his less charming tendencies, but that proved untrue, just as it proved untrue that you can’t be too much of a dick for even the New York media market to stand. Gonzalez managed to do what not even All-American penises PJ Carlesimo and Latrell Sprewell could do in losing Gotham’s basketball press. Well played, dude.

Of course, it’s still mostly about winning. Seton Hall was trending perpetually mediocre. Then Gonzo had run-ins with the media and then with his own athletic director, had multiple players on his team of misfits and transfers arrested and was generally underwhelming in recruiting. When starting forward Herb Pope was ejected for blatantly cracking an opponent’s nuts in Seton Hall’s NIT loss to Texas Tech, enough was apparently enough.

Gonzalez being Gonzo, he refused to go gently, suing the school and wreaking havoc wherever he could, oblivious to the fact that he wasn’t just closing the book on this job but setting it on fire for the next one. Mostly it only made him look like the petulant prima donna he by all accounts actually is.

Then summer hit and it all got weird.

In July, Gonzalez was arrested on suspicion of shoplifting a handbag. Then Pope — he of the ball-thwacking incident — nearly died after collapsing during a pickup game and instead of responding to a former player’s fight for life, Gonzo did the only thing he could do and fuck it up. Pope never saw or heard from his former coach in the hospital, though he hardly seemed surprised.

Apparently Gonzalez is aiming for the full Eric Massa. I guess you can’t say the guy didn’t at least leave a lasting impression.

But Gonzalez was a coach going nowhere. UCONN head coach Jim Calhoun, on the verge of ending a Hall of Fame career, is suddenly pretty worried about his legacy. Calhoun is hanging on in the desperate hope of leaving on a high note rather than amid sanction from NCAA investigators.

Calhoun built the UCONN program from national laughingstock to multiple title-winner, all on the force of his Braintree meets Paris Island personality. He has always been one of the best recruiters in the business, and with that, naturally, come plenty of griping and suspicion about his tactics. Now that a former recruit allegedly got benefits from a person associated with the program, Calhoun is scrambling to keep his good name intact.

That this stuff has become almost standard practice in big-time college athletics, as programs skirt the edges of the rules to try and lock in elite talent, isn’t going to help him. The NCAA can’t brush these cases under the rug in today’s 24-hour sports news cycle. Calhoun may hardly be alone in this practice, but he’s a story principally because of his success. And as his health continues to deteriorate, he is worried he won’t have time to make things right before turning in his clipboard. So he’ll persist despite age and infirmity, be it battling Jim Boeheim for Bridgeport talent or sitting through 12-hour NCAA grillings. And there’s the odd scenario of a coach signing a lucrative four-year contract extension while an investigation into his program’s tactics is ongoing.

Or maybe that isn’t so odd anymore. With the exception of Gonzalez, who wasn’t winning enough to warrant the support, the uniting factor is that each of these guys has retained his high-profile, well-paying position despite major public relations fiascos thanks to institutions willing to stand by their multi-million dollar man. Would they all still be working today were they coaching at Gonzelez-esque levels? Each of these men had a few unabashedly bad months, but winning is a cure-all.

When Nick Nolte’s crusty too-true-to-go-through-with-it coach hoists himself on his own petard at the end of Blue Chips, his soul — and the integrity of the game, presumably — is saved. But I wouldn’t expect that out of any of these guys — Pearl’s tear-stained press conference came across as shrewd spectacle as much as admission of guilt. And after all, Blue Chips, was just a movie, while this stuff is real. Right?

Originally from Kentucky, JL Weill now writes from Washington, DC. His take on politics, culture and sports can be found at The New Deterrence and on Twitter.

If your folks busted up, Science has some bad news for you: “Children whose parents divorce are more than twice as likely to suffer a stroke at some point during their lives than other children, according to a new study. The link between the two held even when the researchers accounted for other known stroke risk factors, such as obesity, smoking and diabetes. It is the first time such a link has been shown, the researchers said.”

But wait! Science also sees a silver lining!

Because most strokes occur in people over age 65, [study researcher Esme] Fuller-Thomson said, most of the respondents who had suffered a stroke would have been born in 1940 or earlier. Divorce was rarer at that time, and “the context and consequences of parental divorce in the 1940s or 1950s was probably very different from a child’s experience of divorce now, she said.

There’s also a “to be sure” moment about how your parents’ divorce does not automatically mean you will have a stroke, but what with Thanksgiving coming up and all you can probably still pull this out as a guilt card when things get unpleasant. Which they will.

by Eric Spiegelman

So, Gawker got sued again — this time by HarperCollins, for publishing excerpts from “America By Heart,” Sarah Palin’s latest contribution to the annals of American thought. The book doesn’t come out until tomorrow, but Gawker posted segments of it last week, mostly in order to make fun of them. Some people got upset! On Saturday, a federal judge granted a temporary restraining order against Gawker. So the page with the excerpts from the book is down.

So what’s going on here? Does Gawker have a First Amendment right to excerpt Sarah Palin’s book and make fun of it? Or can Sarah Palin use her powers under copyright law to stop them? The answer is, depends! The copyright clause of the Constitution does not always get along well with the First Amendment. When they find themselves in a conflict, we go to the judges, and the judges now use something called the Fair Use Doctrine to mediate it.

Judges invented the Fair Use Doctrine a long time ago because they noticed a natural tension between free speech and the right to keep your own expression on lockdown. Congress eventually agreed this was a good idea and they passed it into law during the bicentennial. Here’s how it works. Someone borrows part of something made by someone else, for their own creative thing, but without getting permission, and then there’s a lawsuit. A judge examines the particular use in the light of four factors, easily phrased as questions. One, what is the purpose of the use? Two, what is the “nature” of the copyrighted work? Three, how much material was used in relation to the whole? Four, might the unauthorized use have a harmful effect on the market for the copyrighted work?

Then the judge takes all the answers to these questions and weighs them against each other. They call this a balancing test, but it’s not like balancing a see-saw. It’s more like balancing a dinner plate on the pointy end of a nail. Because some answers mean more than others in one situation and less in another, and sometimes a judge will just introduce a new idea into the equation, totally on her own. Fair use is one of the most subjective laws on the books. It’s impossible to predict which way the dinner plate is going to tip.

Lawyers don’t like uncertainty. It makes them queasy because it creates risk. If a lawyer at a traditional media company makes a decision that relies on the fair use doctrine and the company gets sued, the lawyer gets fired. Gawker, on the other hand, has a rather high tolerance for risk. They have their own calculus for whether getting sued is worth it, whether the cost of fighting off a lawsuit is worth the new eyeballs the offending post may bring. Here, probably not worth it. And the odds are that Gawker will settle this lawsuit, because they’re in the making money business and not the litigating on principle business.

But that shouldn’t stop us from the fun sport of legal speculation as to whether Gawker would win if this case went to trial, and to the appellate courts, and to the Supreme Court! I always secretly wish they do this with one of their legal issues. The People vs. Larry Flynt is a great movie and could use a sequel. So let’s call this Gawker Media Court Battle Fan (Non)Fiction if you like.

Here’s what Gawker would be up against. Twenty-five years ago a remarkably similar case ended up before the Supreme Court. It was brought by Harper & Row (one-half of the conglomerate now suing Gawker) and it concerned the memoirs of Gerald Ford, another former half-term executive official with a sordid reputation. Harper & Row sold some exclusive excerpts to Time Magazine, which Time planned to run a week before the book hit shelves. However, The Nation got a hold of the book, and with the admitted goal of scooping Time, they ran an article featuring quotes from the most salacious part of Ford’s memoirs, the part where he discusses the resignation of Richard Nixon and Ford’s decision to pardon him. Time refused to pay Harper & Row for what was no longer an exclusive, and Harper & Row sued The Nation.

The Court sided with Harper & Row, and found The Nation’s article to be copyright infringement not protected by fair use. The thing that weighed most heavily, they felt, was the unpublished nature of Ford’s memoir. An author’s right to control the method and timing of publication, and really the choice whether to publish or not, this is something the Court found sacred, and I bet many of the writers who read this will agree. That consideration outweighed any First Amendment interest in pushing someone’s private words out there into the world, even if they’re a person of interest. The matter was choice.

Obviously the information in Ford’s memoir was newsworthy, especially the stories of the last days of the Nixon administration from the perspective of the man to succeed him, and the thought process behind how in hell could anyone pardon the former president. The Court said, sure, this was central to First Amendment values, as spreading news is a favored purpose. But, they said, The Nation had another purpose, a purpose they considered nefarious, one that balanced out the more noble goal of news reporting. “The Nation,” said the Court, “went beyond simply reporting information and actively sought to exploit the headline value of its infringement, making a ‘news event’ out of its unauthorized first publication of a noted figure’s copyrighted expression.” This supposed “impropriety” of The Nation’s conduct weighed against its free speech claim.

Exploiting the headline value of something is kind of central to the Gawker business model. Gawker is regularly accused of all manner of ethical breaches, whether it’s because they post a photo of Brett Favre’s alleged penis or an alleged encounter with Christine O’Donnell’s vagina, or whether it’s because they practice checkbook journalism as a matter of course. But regardless of your feelings about this, if you believe in the sanctity of the First Amendment, that at its heart it commands the government to keep its hands off the press, the Court’s reasoning in the Harper & Row case should give you pause. They’re saying that the Freedom of the Press is reserved for journalists who are polite. You may think that journalism should have a code of conduct, but I bet you’re not terribly comfortable with idea of the government setting that code. And there’s no better test for that than Nick Denton saying as much to the Supreme Court.

And the truth of the matter is Gawker has a better case than The Nation did. The Nation offered little commentary on the Ford memoirs; Gawker called Sarah Palin out for all kinds of bullshit. The Courts prefer not to use copyright law to stifle criticism, and you know the reason she asked HarperCollins to sue was because she has a thin skin. If she didn’t want the pages out there, why would she put her own excerpts on her Facebook page? Also, nobody was financially harmed by Gawker’s publication of the Palin stuff. The market for the work was not harmed, not like it was with Ford’s book, when Harper & Row lost licensing revenue due to The Nation’s scoop. The market was arguably even improved, as the publicity this case will bring may help sell more copies. The unpublished nature of Palin’s book is a problem, from Gawker’s legal perspective, but fair use is a balancing test, and the commentary and other factors might just outweigh that.

It’s impossible to tell, and that, for most people, would be reason alone to settle. But I can’t get past that “impropriety” thing, that a precedent exists for the Court to pass judgement on Gawker’s visigoth manners. At the hearing on November 30, the plaintiff’s attorney will say, “Look at all these terrible things Gawker does,” solely to press the advantage of the Harper & Row mandate that distasteful behavior somehow makes a journalist less qualified for fair use protection. Like it or not, Gawker stands for something, something that Sarah Palin claims to stand for but just doesn’t quite get. I hope, if the hearing results in further action, that Gawker defends, and appeals, and appeals again.

Eric Spiegelman is still technically a lawyer.

There is an amazing picture of a bear here. Hell, all the pictures are amazing, but, you know, bear!

This weekend’s rollicking TSA scandal — stemming from this video — has come to a speedy resolution. Why, the TSA has blogged about it, so everything must be fine now! They write: “Their son alarmed the walk through metal detector and needed to undergo secondary screening. The boy’s father removed his son’s shirt in an effort to expedite the screening. After our TSO completed the screening, he helped the boy put his shirt back on. That’s it. No complaints were filed and the father was standing by his son for the entire procedure.” So shut up, everyone, and get back in line. Don’t make us get the truncheons.

Today in A Study Has Found: The average Briton complains for 8 minutes and 46 seconds each day. What about? “The most common daily gripes are how expensive things are, followed by the lack of anything decent to watch on TV, the weather, household chores, our finances and the Government.” I don’t see knife crime on the list, but I’m sure it’s there somewhere.

The Mekons’ Jon Langford played Brooklyn’s Bell House last week with his wonderfully-named side-project band Skull Orchard. Awl pal Joe Angio was there, filming footage for the documentary he’s working on, and YouTubed the awesomness above.

If you’re like me, you’ve spent the past 24 hours unable to think about anything other than the fourth puzzle of Kryptos — the encryption sculpture that stands on the lawn at C.I.A. headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Cryptographers all over the world have been obsessed with deciphering the messages hidden in the 865-character text since it was erected twenty years ago. The first three sections were solved in 1999. They say stuff about illusion and buried secrets and the excavation of King Tut’s tomb. But the last part, the final 97-character puzzle, has remained a mystery, confounding some of the world’s greatest minds. Author Dan Brown referenced Kryptos in his bestselling novels The Davinci Code and The Final Symbol. The code has proven so difficult that its creator, cryptographer and sculptor Jim Sanborn, has provided a tantalizing clue to the New York Times: Characters 64 through 69, the letters N-Y-P-V-T-T, are decoded as B-E-R-L-I-N.

Since reading about this yesterday, I have been going crazy — poring over the fourth puzzle and its accompanying Vigenere Tableau. I have lined up the letters every way I can, numerically, backwards, forwards, upside-down, in the mirror. After awhile, they just start to spin and spiral and fall off the page like a collapsing house of cards. Then I got to thinking, what might be the significance of Sanborn revealing the clue when he did? Does this have something to do with Jay-Z’s book, Decoded, which was released just last week? “Decoded?” That couldn’t be just a coincidence, could it? Or is about the new information about the J.F.K. assassination that comes with the secret service agents involved opening up for the first time — in a new book and a Discovery Channel documentary, The Kennedy Detail, set to air tonight, the 47th anniversary of the shooting? Or is there a connection to the Dorito-shaped U.F.O. that was recently spotted, for the third time, in the skies over England? There must be, right?

Or is there perhaps a message in the medium? Why did Sanborn choose to reveal his clue to the New York Times? I’ve long suspected the government or the Illuminati, or both, working in collusion, might be sending me personal messages encrypted in newspapers. But how did they know I read the Times? Do they have access to subscription lists? Have they been videotaping me through my windows with long-range zoom-lens cameras on helicopters? Are there invisible camera lenses implanted into my lenses of my reading glasses, so they can see exactly what I’m reading, and read along, word for word, when I’m reading it?

What was I missing? What was the secret? For a while — many torturous, torturous hours — I chased the suggestion, which I found somewhere on the internet, that the “Berlin,” might be a reference to the fact that the Berlin Wall came down while Sanborn was working on his sculpture, and that a monument to that historical event actually sits near to Kryptos on the Langley lawn.

This turned out to be a red herring. Because, finally late last night — or early this morning, I don’t know, I haven’t slept — the letters suddenly stopped swirling and fell into place. Neatly, orderly, the words took shape, appearing to me as clearly as if they were written in lip-stick on a mirror that was not shattered into a million tiny pieces like the mirror above the sink in my bathroom, which I punched at some point last night after shaving off all my hair and my eyebrows with a straight-razor.

All became clear. I had cracked the code.

The final 97 characters,

“OBKR
UOXOGHULBSOLIFBBWFLRVQQPRNGKSSO
TWTQSJQSSEKZZWATJKLUDIAWINFBNYP
VTTMZFPKWGDKZXTJCDIGKUHUAUEKCAR”

decrypt to read:

“Who sings that song ‘Take My Breath Away’ from Top Gun? The Motels? Ohh, no, right, Berlin. Ahh, one less mystery in the world.”

Because nothing makes popular music more fun than typing alongside friends, it’s time to do that “liveblogging” thing in honor of the 2010 American Music Awards, which celebrate the most popular of the most popular music that this country has to offer, complete with the sort of pomp that only the most craven enterprises can possess. Join me after the jump for the Black Eyed Peas, Christina Aguilera, Katy (sigh) Perry, the results of allowing 13-year-olds to vote (online) (for their favorite male pop stars), and OMG NEW KIDS AND BACKSTREET BOYS TOGETHER!!

7:56 p.m. Man, the ball shots on America’s Funniest Home Videos just don’t have the same wacky appeal that they did during the pre-YouTube era, do they? Also a video of a naked child wandering around a hallway just “won” the week. America!

7:58 p.m. And the drooling child’s name is, seriously, Bristol. Surely this is some sort of intra-ABC shout-out to Dancing With the Stars’ ballot-stuffing?

8:00 p.m. It’s here! And here’s Rihanna!

8:01 p.m. Rihanna is sitting in a “tree” and singing her sequel to “Love The Way You Lie.” And she is, uh, definitely doing it live.

8:02 p.m. Now, Rihanna is traveling through a kudzu field of glowsticks while wearing a bikini top that looks like it was crafted from dip-dyed dish towels while performing her version of Beyoncé’s interpretation of Axl Rose’s snake dance. And she is also still singing for real, which is an interesting choice given that on every single song she’s put out this year she’s sounded like a different vocalist.

8:04 p.m. And now she is trying to sing the very vocally bendy “Only Girl In the World,” which is a pretty difficult song to sing standing up straight, let alone while dancing. Very curious about the artistic decisions here. Is it an effort to prove herself as Better Than Beyoncé? Also, I can’t help but wonder if Loud is going to be like Katy Perry’s Teenage Dream (not to mention Rihanna’s own Good Girl Gone Bad) in terms of being massive on the singles side, but not on the album side.

8:07 p.m. The Only Girl In The World is running out of oxygen, everybody!

8:09 p.m. Heidi Klum is talking about the awards being voted on by the public, and how that is awesome. Subtext: “AT LEAST NINA GARCIA AND MICHAEL KORS CAN’T RUIN THIS.”

8:10 p.m. Usher’s Raymond Vs. Raymond wins the first award of the night, Best Soul Album. I was pulling for Sade, really.

8:12 p.m. The Thanksgiving-themed song in this Old Navy ad is actually a Ke$ha B-side.

8:14 p.m. If you had told me 21 years ago when I was going to my first concert that the lead singer of the headlining band would be ice-skating on TV someday I would have laughed at you. And yet.

8:15 p.m. Nice to see that the AMAs’ producers hired the people who wrote the NewsRadio theme to perform the night’s interstitial music!

8:15 p.m. Favorite Pop/Rock Band/Duo/Group (don’t get too specific there, guys) goes to the Black Eyed Peas. will.i.am’s Lego hat: The best aesthetic decision he’s made in seven years.

8:17 p.m. “Thank you to everybody on the Internet!” You’re welcome! No, really, you’re welcome.

8:18 p.m. Spanish is funny!

8:19 p.m. Now, these are some sweetened-up vocals. Thanks, Enrique, for showing us how a pop music awards show should do things. Also, this uptempo club banger with the light show is making me miss the straightforwardness of “Hero.”

8:20 p.m. Stomp meets Jersey Shore meets my living room being about 95% brighter than it was before this performance started.

8:21 p.m. Pitbull: No vocal assistance. Keeping track of this is going to be fun!

8:22 p.m. We can also track the number of callbacks to old pop songs, if you’re looking for another parlor game to play. “All Night Long” is No. 1, and I guess the Dirty Dancing song will be next?

8:23 p.m. Oh, no, my bad, next up is Miley Cyrus’ homage to Alanis Morrissette Unplugged.

8:24 p.m. Miley live > Taylor live. Suspect Stevie would agree.

8:25 p.m. Or maybe not.

8:26 p.m. The look Miley gave her band after playing was perfectly blank. The definition of the term “pretty vacant.”

8:28 p.m. I would like to be paid a lot of money to make decisions like: “Yes, a young girl who looks like half of the evil-twin duo from The Shining is a perfect pitchwoman for macaroni and cheese!” Could you imagine what that life would be like?

8:30 p.m. Diddy Dirty Wow.

8:31 p.m. Um, wait, isn’t it too soon for someone to be remaking Kanye’s “Good Life”?

8:33 p.m. There is also the matter of the callback to Bobby Brown’s outfit from the “My Prerogative” video.

8:33 p.m. This song is going to be gigantic, I think. It’s got that triumphant stomp and the sheer will of Diddy’s ego behind it.

8:35 p.m. Oh great, everybody get excited for Taylor Swift to pull her “omg I’m really popular I can’t believe it” act out for the 23,405th time.

8:36 p.m. Not feeling the straightened hair. Or the “nobody understands me but you guys” routine.

8:37 p.m. Men: What’s the deal with the tucked-in pants? Is the afterparty equestrian-themed?

8:39 p.m. And now here’s Kid Rock remaking Bruce Springsteen’s “My Hometown.” I am starting to think that I need to zap my musical RAM in order to not hear other songs (and see other artists) in everything on this stage. But it’s not just me, right? Right?

8:43 p.m. I will say this for this show: It’s jam-packed. Five performances in the first 40 minutes? Pretty sure the VMAs were not as stuffed. (And of course this show’s lack of Chelsea Handler gives it an automatic competitive advantage.)

8:47 p.m. Johnny Weir’s hair is the highest of the night, I think?

8:47 p.m. Favorite Latin Music Award artist is… Shakira! Who, alas, is not in the house.

8:48 p.m. You know who else isn’t around? Bill Medley and Jennifer Warnes. Which means that we’re going to have to hear will.i.am and Fergie sing their bits.

8:49 p.m. I like how Fergie is embracing the Peas’ “cover every demographic base” aesthetic with an outfit that incorporates Gaga’s cage, Katy’s cleavage, and Ke$ha’s muddy glitter.

8:50 p.m. Meanwhile, her band is being danced around by people whose aesthetic recalls “Mummenschanz-gone-Nintendo.”

8:52 p.m. The second disturbing musical revelation I’ve had today (the first was liking a song on the radio by, I swear, OneFreakin’Republic): I think I would actually tolerate “The Time (Dirty Bit)” if it didn’t have the Dirty Dancing callback? Also, how hard do you think ABC lobbied to incorporate Jennifer “Probably Going To Lose Dancing With The Stars To The Worst PTA Mom Ever’s Daughter” Grey into the performance?

8:55 p.m. The ever-increasing Real Talk Quotient of toilet-paper ads is going to reach a pretty unpleasant tipping point pretty soon.

8:57 p.m. Katy Perry. Here we go.

8:58 p.m. A children’s choir. Oh boy. And Katy … descending from the heavens in something … that is pretty much designed to resemble … a saint’s shrine.

8:58 p.m. She is also ill-advisedly singing live. (Did her hair and makeup people just forget to show up?)

9:00 p.m. Nice of her to save the cleavage-reveal until after the kids left the stage.

9:01 p.m. Katy Perry In Pyrobics: The new workout that you can perform while wearing stirrup pants and trying to hit all the high notes!

9:02 p.m. Nicki Minaj’s 10-word speech went through about three of her accents. Impressive that she did that while wearing an exoskeleton made of zippers!

9:03 p.m. No but really, how many pounds is Nicki Minaj’s outfit? She looks like she has to be wheeled around a la Bernie.

9:05 p.m. Justin Bieber’s socially conscious song: So serious, his hair isn’t feathered! Someone get the siren dot jpeg out!

9:06 p.m. Uh oh… here comes the gospel choir…

9:07 p.m. There is definitely a weird “Things are kinda crappy out there, sorry” vibe emanating from a lot of the songs being performed tonight. Hope this means Taylor Swift’s going to pull out her song about mean old writers!

9:08 p.m. I wish Ne-Yo was performing and not just in Project Runway-style car commercials 🙁

9:13 p.m. Mandy Moore: The superior recording artist in this particular presenter diptych. (Seriously, have you heard Sheryl Crow’s cover of “I Want You Back”?)

9:14 p.m. My viewing companion notes that the quality of video in this particular package was barely above YouTube-level.

9:15 p.m. Favorite Country Male Artist: Brad Paisley. Still a terrible graphic designer, though.

9:17 p.m. And the second Bruce Springsteen homage of the night comes to you from Bon Jovi. Wait, and now there’s a callback to Mötley Crüe’s “Home Sweet Home”! What is happening on my television right now? Is it 1990 and you all forgot to tell me?

9:18 p.m. Richie Sambora sure looked bored to be playing that LIGHTNING-EMITTING GUITAR! Just because it’s not Katy Perry’s boobs, Richie, don’t be so bummed out!

9:20 p.m. Jon Bon Jovi is so much more excited to be playing “It’s My Life” than “You Give Love A Bad Name.” Probably because it’s only 10 years old instead of 23? “YGLABN” would have been a great opportunity for one of those dumb YouTube karaoke contests to have their end point.

9:22 p.m. “Quick! Cut to another person smugly nodding!”

9:23 p.m. Seriously, this Old Navy song is going to the Thanksgiving No. 1 that America needs to pull itself out of its slump.

9:24 p.m. Crazy Frog got a movie deal, you guys! There’s hope for all of us!

9:29 p.m. I have such a thing for Mike Posner. He’s a silky-voiced dude who’s kind of a schmoe when it comes to dealing with women? THAT’S SO MY TYPE.

9:30 p.m. Justin Bieber wins the Breakthrough Artist award and thanks God first. Also his mom, his fans. And reveals his lack of geography knowledge by saying that the “smallest town in the world” is 30,000 people strong? Hmm.

9:31 p.m. Is that American Idol also-ran Casey James playing guitar for Pink? Probably not, but it could be.

9:32 p.m. Also how awesome would it be if Pink broke into “Buffalo Stance” right now? She’s dressed for the occasion.

9:33 p.m. REMEMBER THE ‘90S?????????

9:34 p.m. Oh boy that last note, oh dear. Still one of the better vocal performances of the night.

9:35 p.m. I just threw up my hands and screamed “Yay!!!” when Ne-Yo was announced.

9:35 p.m. Will this montage feature Slash and Duff’s “fuckin’ …. oops” speech from 20 years ago? Ah, the memories.

9:39 p.m. I wonder if this Michael Jackson video game will allow people to unlock “Moonwalker mode.” Surely there’s enough room on the disc, right?

9:41 p.m. Ne-Yoooooooo (but what’s up with the facial hair)

9:42 p.m. Oh my God I am so ridiculously excited for this album. There are two comic-book-like concept albums coming out tomorrow! We really need to have an MCR/Ne-Yo CONCEPT-OFF.

9:44 p.m. I am not really able to form words right here. Oh my.

9:45 p.m. Whoa he’s dripping with sweat. Whoa.

9:46 p.m. And now here’s Taylor Swift to be the buzzkill. And continue with the “people descending from the sky” motif.

9:47 p.m. At least Taylor’s set is inspired by the cover of Fall Out Boy’s Inifnity On High.

9:49 p.m. OH MISS SWIFT GETTING SERIOUS WITH THE ONEREPUBLIC COVER (nb she still can’t hit the notes).

9:50 p.m. Was expecting the unexpected run-in to come from Taylor Lautner, really. “Yes, this song is about me! I know!”

9:51 p.m. Important question: What is love?

9:52 p.m. Justin Bieber thanks Michael Jackson: “Without Michael Jackson, none of us would be here.” OK, so his geography misstep is a bit understandable, but come on.

9:58 p.m. That was a curious undermining-the-point-of-the-choreography directorial decision there at the beginning of Christina Aguilera’s “Burlesque” performance.

9:59 p.m. I do like how this song is sort of a mash-up of her “Dirrty” persona and her “Ain’t No Other Man” sound. But things are coming off as a bit…. inert? Although the piano skirt worn by one of her backup dancers is nice.

10:01 p.m. My viewing companion notes that this is also a big callback to the “Lady Marmalade” remake, from the innocent days of 2001. Well, not “innocent,” but you know what I mean.

10:04 p.m. “Hot country”: For when you don’t want to call a band’s chosen genre of music “Old Bread.”

10:06 p.m. I don’t think you all understand how sad I am that Dean Winters was driving around the parking lot of the mall near my parents’ house… and I wasn’t there.

10:07 p.m. (“The Broadway Mall is one of the largest–and perhaps strangest–malls on Long Island.”)

10:09 p.m. “We forgot to design Usher’s set!” “Just turn on the iTunes Visualizer. Fuck it.”

10:10 p.m. “And get Ne-Yo’s dancers to act like they’re remaking the ‘Cold Hearted’ video. We have all these extra neon wristbands from a T-Mobile promo that didn’t work out, they can wear those.”

10:12 p.m. “And then just add Katy’s leftover pyro. Turn it up to seizure-inducing so no one will notice that we just threw this shit together.”

10:13 p.m. Avril Lavigne is presenting the Alternative Music award… and using the worst coinage of the past year, which I cannot even bring myself to type out. So, everything’s status quo then.

10:15 p.m. Oooh, thanking Charles Darwin! You get political, Muse guy.

10:16 p.m. I have to hand it to Train, who in the past year have somehow put out only songs that are tailor-made to be omnipresent. That “Marry Me” song? It’s going to be played at even more weddings than “The Time (Dirty Bit).”

10:17 p.m. (PS Nice pants.)

10:17 p.m. Oh man, a Dove ad just broke out on stage!

10:19 p.m. Readers, if you want to be shocked and horrified sometime before the end of the hour, don’t Google the “rock classic” taken on by Santana and Gavin “Not Just Gwen’s Husband Once Again” Rossdale.

10:22 p.m. Pretty sure I just saw Danny Gokey flash across my TV screen. Poor Lee DeWyze.

10:24 p.m. “Inheriting a cross-pollinated love of country and rock & roll from their parents, The Band Perry — siblings Kimberly, Reid, and Neil Perry — say that they bleed the bright red blood of American music.” Ah, so that’s why the dudes look like they took a wrong turn at Kings of Leon Way. More important, though: Who’s their manager?

10:25 p.m. “God … I love winning things!” Michael Bublé, winner.

10:26 p.m. What does the word “history” mean to you?

10:26 p.m. What does the career of Daft Punk mean to Ke$ha? Alternate question: What does Prince’s “Batdance” video mean to Ke$ha?

10:28 p.m. You know, say what you will about Ke$ha, but at least her singing voice sounds pretty similar to the way it sounds on record.

10:28 p.m. No comment on her backup dancers’ wigs, though.

10:30 p.m. Or her decision to not bust out a guitar solo with that particular axe.

10:30 p.m. Or her leap onto the “It Gets Better” bandwagon, which, sigh.

10:34 p.m. The first time I heard the Vampire Weekend song in this Tommy Hilfiger ad I thought it was by Neon Trees. 2010!

10:36 p.m. Santana. Rossdale. AMERICA PREPARE TO HAVE YOUR MIND BLOWN.

10:37 p.m. There are so many questions about this performance. Why is the band so big? Why is the cowbell so overmiced? What pedals is Carlos Santana using? Did no one think to give Gavin Rossdale’s hairdo a makeover? How quickly is Marc Bolan spinning in his grave?

10:39 p.m. And same question, but: ROBERT PALMER?? Oh, Robert Palmer. The world misses you so badly right now.

10:39 p.m. I mean. I just.

10:40 p.m. “It’s over!”

10:40 p.m. The crowd reaction shots on this have been pretty priceless. Lots of “uh, well…” looks.

10:42 p.m. There are still awards being given out, just in case you were wondering. Usher will now have six of the little glass pyramids on his shelf!

10:45 p.m. I should probably use this commercial break to note that “Bang A Gong” will probably not be the worst song on Carlos Santana’s forthcoming covers record. Other contenders:
• “Riders On The Storm,” Santana Featuring Chester Bennington & Ray Manzarek
• “Dance The Night Away,” Santana Featuring Pat Monahan (aka the Train guy)
• “Sunshine Of Your Love,” Santana featuring Rob Thomas
It would appear that the duet with Scott Stapp got cut from the album last-minute?

10:49 p.m. Ryan Seacrest is turning the Favorite Artist award into an American Idol results show! Please don’t let that mean that we have a drawn-out hour of this coming.

10:50 p.m. Justin Bieber, once again proving that giving 13-year-olds the vote produces results.

10:51 p.m. Welp, Justin Bieber’s acceptance speech just provided the night’s “passing the torch” narrative. That’s what you get when you hire a swagger coach!

10:52 p.m. “[Usher is] my best friend and my big brother.” “Justin Bieber just solved race.”

10:53 p.m. OMG BACKSTREET BOYS NEW KIDS MASHUP!!

10:53 p.m. Probably worth noting the fact that the final two musical performances in an awards show in 2010 were a cover of a song from the ’70s by a guitarist from that era and a faded frontman from the ’90s and a medley of hits by boy bands minted in the ’80s and ’90s. And that all the ads encouraging people to buy music were for the Beatles.

10:54 p.m. But … “I Want It That Way”!!!

10:56 p.m. I didn’t even like the New Kids when they were a “thing” but that synchronized crotch-grab? Ticket, purchased.

10:57 p.m. Michael C from Project Runway is having the best time right now. Somewhere, Ivy is off being a jerk with an atrocious aesthetic.

10:58 p.m. And … well, that was abrupt.

10:59 p.m. My friend showed up at 9, so I am explaining the scenes being shown in the closing-credit montage. “That was Bobby Brown … I mean that was Diddy.” I really said that.

11:07 p.m. Here is your full list of winners, not that they are consequential to anyone except the people who will have to add time to their dusting routine:
Favorite Soundtrack Album: Glee: The Music, Volume 3
Favorite Contemporary Inspirational Artist: MercyMe
Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Male Aritst: Eminem
Favorite Rap/Hip-Hop Album: Eminem, Recovery
Favorite Latin Music Artist: Shakira
Favorite Country Female Artist: Taylor Swift
Favorite Country Male Artist: Brad Paisley
Favorite Country Band/Duo/Group: Lady Antebellum
Favorite Country Album: Carrie Underwood, Play On
Favorite Alternative Rock Music Artist: Muse
Favorite Adult Contemporary Music Artist: Michael Bublé
Favorite Soul/R&B; Female Artist: Rihanna
Favorite Soul/R&B; Male Artist: Usher
Favorite Soul/R&B; Album: Usher, Raymond v. Raymond
Favorite Pop/Rock Female Artist: Lady Gaga
Favorite Pop/Rock Male Artist: Justin Bieber
Favorite Pop/Rock Band/Duo/Group: Black Eyed Peas
Favorite Pop/Rock Album: Justin Bieber, My World 2.0
Favorite Breakthrough Artist: Justin Bieber
Favorite Artist of the Year: Justin Bieber

I’d also argue anyone who had the channel on anything else during that Santana/Rossdale atrocity was the true victor for the evening.

• Why aren’t you charging more to tweet?

• Why aren’t you marrying some dole-slob from England?

• What the hell are you listening to?

• What are you making for Thanksgiving?

• Who are you hate-retweeting today?

• Should you fire your agent?

• Have you ever seen so many pictures of Barack Obama’s backside?

• Should you maybe become a nun? It sounds kinda great.