How the Chicks clicked

Remember when "chicks" used to be pejorative?

No more, not after the Dixie Chicks steamrolled the competition at the 49th annual Grammy Awards on Sunday night in front of 12,000 at the Staples Center. The Chicks ran the table in the top categories, taking home five Grammys in all: album, song and record of the year, country album and country performance.

By the end, the trio had virtually exhausted its capacity to say "thank you." Which was nice, considering the auctioneer-like acceptance speeches by Mary J. Blige (three awards) and Ludacris (who thanked Oprah Winfrey and Bill O'Reilly).

Yeah, it got weird. Even if there was enough down-tempo music on the 3 1/2-hour telecast to make you break out your teenage journals of love poems.

The Police played. OK Go dressed up like wallpaper. A teenage violinist gave us 30 seconds of adrenaline. And there was a lot of genuflecting as the Recording Academy's annual telecast provided a parade of Hall of Fame-caliber cameos.

Here's how it went:

4:58 p.m. -- A week ago, in a nationally televised spectacle, viewers witnessed a messy affair that a) was engineered by a commercial star, b) featured an inordinate number of fumbles, and c) played in the most adverse of conditions.

But enough about the Super Bowl.

Tonight in the nationally televised spectacle that is the 49th Grammy Awards, we could be in for a messy affair engineered by a host of commercial stars, old (the Police) and new (Justin Timberlake). Fumbles? Well, these are the Grammys. And the conditions? Did you see the suits the power-pop quartet OK Go were wearing on the red carpet?

5:01 p.m. -- Not that anybody would accuse the Grammys of prostituting themselves to nostalgia, but tonight's show from the Staples Center in Los Angeles kicks off with a svelte-looking Sting fronting the Police, who throw down a version of their 28-year-old hit "Roxanne."

5:06 p.m. -- Now it would have been a great segue if "Promiscuous" by Nelly Furtado and Timbaland won the Grammy for pop collaboration with vocals. Alas, Tony Bennett and Stevie Wonder win for "For Once in My Life." Says Wonder, "I did this song at age 17 a whole 'nother way." Tony Bennett thanks Target. Wait till tonight's Wal-Mart moment.

5:13 p.m. -- After an introduction by the indomitable Joan Baez, the Dixie Chicks nail their hit "Not Ready to Make Nice" -- although a birdie tells me that Natalie Maines, who was sporting dark tresses on the Grammys, was a blond Friday night when she serenaded Don Henley at the Music Cares party. Oh, the confusion.

5:18 p.m. -- Speaking of the Super Bowl ... Prince, now missing the halftime show doo-rag that made him look like Rosie the Riveter, economizes with his introduction of the next performer: "One word: Beyonce." She performs "Listen," as if you needed to be told.

5:22 p.m. -- After the program nods to Booker T & the MG's (a lifetime achievement award), Mary J. Blige captures the statuette for best R&B album. She notes that "The Breakthrough" is a personal as well as artistic triumph -- after all, as she said in a red carpet interview, "This album I really allowed myself to get better -- personally better." In her acceptance speech, she allows herself to thank everybody, and we mean everybody. Was that her nanny she mentioned? Wait, wait, we just received a printout of those thank-yous ... it's 3 feet long.

5:31 p.m. -- You can hardly tell the commercials from the telecast with the Grammys. For about the ninth time already, we see a commercial featuring an artist from the show. Sting. OK, buy-buy-buy, we get it.