Didn't see any emails addressing this so here goes..... Sting was the last presenter at the Billboard awards last night. He presented artist of the year, as I recall; the "biggie". He looked great. He read the little intro from a sheet of paper in front of him, which I thought was weird. I don't think any of the other presenters did that. I think they all read from tele-prompters. But I didn't see that many of the presentations, so I'm not sure. Luckily I turned the east coast feed on with about 30 minutes left, just in time to hear them start plugging Sting's appearance. Still, it was very odd the he was reading the little blurb about the award from a paper (something about all the artists nominated having a "good" year). It kept his head slightly turned and prevented him from looking straight at the camera. In fact, he was looking down reading most of the time. The winners were Destiny's Child (big surprise) and the women seemed very interested in hugging and kissing him before they accepted the award. The emcee (don't remember his name) completely bungled Sting's introduction- stumbled over words, etc. They showed a snippet of Fragile from Tuscany on the big screens before Sting came out. It was nice to have him present the last, big award of the night. But I am sooooooo glad he didn't participate (that I could see) in the horrible all-star rendition of What's Goin' On at the end. Why didn't they have a mic for each singer instead of passing 2 between about 20 people!?!? I don't know...I'm old, I'd never even heard of most of the R&B and rap groups. And most of them looked about 12 years old. But I'm resolved to go get Jill Scott's CD. I've just been putting it off. John Mellencamp received the "Century" award. Glad it wasn't Sting (which I feared for a moment when Matthew McCougnohy (sp!) - you know, the guy from Contact and Ed - was talking about a great 1983 album). "Century" just seems so old and final. I love Mellencamp, but did anyone else think that Matthew M's introduction speech was wayyyyy out there?? Geez, it was like he was talking about the second coming of Christ or something. Wherehouse has the Tuscany DVD on sale for $20.99 This morning on Mark and Brian (a syndicated radio show out of LA) they were talking about what a great, innovative drummer Stewart was/is. These two guys are both amateur drummers, and you could tell they totally revere Stew. I missed part of it because I was station surfing, so I'm not sure what brought the topic up. 10 more days til Vegas, baby! Maggie