So, I feel I speak with a certain authority when I say that last night’s Grammys was a complete and unmitigated flop. The entire show was tone deaf from beginning to end. I heart Bruce Springsteen. I adore Bruce Springsteen. But when he kicked it off by yelling, “America, are you alive out there?” and you thought, “Well, yeah, except for Whitney Houston,” you had a sense of how the night was going to go. (Also when Bruce, a writer second to none when it comes to tributes, has no chance to pay tribute to Clarence Clemons.)

This was the year of Adele. Also the year music lost Etta James and Amy Winehouse. It was already too much big, tragic death—how many clips can they do, how many vocal tributes? Then Whitney Houston dies, and it’s official: this year is about the female voice. Specifically, the African American female voice and those inspired by that voice.

So, what do we get in the show? A lot of Paul McCartney. A lot of Dave Grohl. More Bruce. Tony Bennett. I like old white guys. I like them a lot. I love their literature, love their music, love their acting. I even like a few of them in politics.

But this was not their year. It was not about them. Why were they all over my screen. And singing standards? My Funny Valentine? It Had To Be You? What genius decided that Tony Bennett, honored this year for his duet with Amy Winehouse, should sing with Carrie Underwood? Who is about as far from Ms. Winehouse as you can get? Probably the same genius who decided that he should receive that award, along with Amy’s parents, before the telecast. Because you know, they might say something moving, and who wants to see that? Who wants to see Mr. Winehouse say, “Long live Whitney Houston, long live Etta James, long live Amy Winehouse. There’s a beautiful girl-group up in heaven.” Nah, let’s watch Chris Brown and pray they don’t cut to Rihanna.

Amy got nothing, as far as I could see. Etta James got Alicia Keys and Bonnie Raitt—which was terrific, even if you had a feeling it had been cut short.

Oh, by the way, did you know Diana Ross was given a lifetime achievement award? Might have been nice to highlight her, given, you know, Whitney, Etta, Amy, Adele…

But no, we got Glenn Campbell. And the Beach Boys. Admittedly, Glenn put on quite a show, and yes, I’ll say it, I like Rhinestone Cowboy. In fact, I wish he’d kept singing and we’d skipped Coldplay altogether. I guess if I loved the Beach Boys, I’d care about the reunion. But since I don’t, I didn’t.

But I guess we had to have Coldplay, because what other excuse could there be to have Gwyneth Paltrow introduce the star of the evening—Adele. This was an actual Moment that worked. I was on the edge of my seat. Oh, my God, actual singing! Actual emotion. Wait, is that a real person? At the Grammys? Oh, my God!

But then it was over. Leaving us to look forward to the next Big Moment: the Whitney Houston tribute. I was hoping for something off beat, a slow, sad I Want To Dance With Somebody. My friend assured me it would be I Will Always Love You. And he was right. I’m sure the moment worked for a lot of people. I will be really happy for Jennifer Hudson when she gets to use her considerable talents on a song not already made famous by someone else. (I saw Jennifer Holliday in Dreamgirls. I have a theory you can only be destroyed by one Effie per lifetime. She was mine.)

Taylor Swift as Daisy May, skip. Nicki Minaj in The Exorcist, skip. Katy Perry, kind of hilarious in blue, crimped hair. Although Kate Beckinsale had led me to expect so much more!

I wish Adele had said something a little…bigger…at the end of the night. But she can’t be expected to provide all the Real Moments of the evening.

And how do we end this whole crazy shindig? With every female nominee and performer coming out with candles while clips of amazing female vocalists play in the background? Nope. Instead we get Sir Paul, back again with Golden (Age) Slumber. Fittingly, he is joined by Dave Grohl—missed you, Dave, haven’t seen you for at least half an hour!—Bruce again, Joe Walsh, and maybe Tony was in there, too. And it’s all one big white boy rock guitar fest.

And there is nothing wrong with that.

Except this was not the year for it. And I don’t know how the Grammys didn’t know that.

This time around, I wanted to tackle one of my major ouch spots of my childhood: being born with no roof to my mouth. In medical terms, this is called a cleft palate. In real life terms, this is called “you talk funny.” As a kid, I got a lot of comments like

“Are you deaf?”
“Are you retarded?”
“You talk like a moron.”

I wish I could say I had some snappy, stinging retort for those comments, but I didn’t. I just cried. My teachers told me not to be so sensitive. (Helpful, guys, thanks!) Needless to say, I didn’t talk a lot at school. Wasn’t a big hand raiser. “Mariah needs to speak up more in class!”

However, when I decided to write a book about a girl with a cleft palate, I didn’t want to write a “It’s so hard to be me” novel. So I started wondering what would happen if a girl who was terrified to speak to people (I suspect there are a lot of us out there, cleft palates or no) had to speak up? What if she had to start asking questions, demand to be heard?

So, what would be so important that she would have to start asking questions?

And that’s when I remembered the Jennifer Levin murder. Jennifer was murdered in 1986 by a boy she knew named Robert Chambers. She was about my age, a New York private school kid like me—and very unlike me. I had evolved from non-speaking, picked on kid to sarcastic but socially acceptable nerd. Jennifer had been pretty, outgoing, and popular, fully engaged in everything New York in 80s had to offer a teenager—both great and not so great.

What if, I wondered, a girl like me and a girl like Jennifer were friends in high school? And the pretty, outgoing one was murdered?

And that’s what started me writing the book that became The Girl in the Park. It brought up a lot of psychic ouches—but as I say, you can’t write a good book without them. At least I can’t!

Right, what is this called?

Blogging? Communicating? Bloviating? Time wasting? “Online presencing?”

More importantly, for those of you who don’t know me, but do know my books, this is where you can stay as informed as you want to be about my work. For now, the big news is that my new novel The Girl in the Park will be in stores April, 2012. It’s loosely based on the Jennifer Levin murder, which happened in New York City’s Central Park in 1986. I was a teenager when Jennifer Levin was killed, and the event stayed with me for a long time. In my next post, I’ll talk about why I decided to write a book about it.

Thanks for reading!