JULIA GROSVENOR
Satirist
grosvejm@plu.edu
It is a little known fact that long before the Grammy Awards became televised in the 1950s, Pacific Lutheran University created an award of the same name, in order to appreciate the grandmothers of students and staff.
“Actually, there is no record of when we started doing Grammy Awards here. Maybe it’s a Norwegian thing?” professor of history, Marshall Langman, said, “There’s a chance we started calling them the ‘Grammys’ because of the music awards, but then we got scared they would sue us so we stopped doing them for a while.”
It turns out ,however, that nobody owns a copyright on the word “Grammy,” so last week, PLU brought the award ceremony back. In case you missed it, here are the highlights.
While technically there was no red carpet, the grandmas walked slowly enough across campus to give paparazzi plenty of time to take photos. The show began at 4:30 PM, which may seem late, but several of the nominees said they wanted to have time to eat dinner before the event.
After 127 moments of silence to remember the winners and nominees who had passed away since the last Grammys (it had been a while after all), everyone was starting to get cranky and sleepy, so there was no wasting time announcing the winners. Childa Haggard won Best Cookie of the Year for her single “Double Chocolate Caramel Brownie Chip,” while Meemee Lapone won Best Batch of the Year for “Pumpkin Spice Snickerdoodle,” despite controversial rumors that Lapone had used store bought dough.
Peggy Gausman won the award for Sweater Production after her record-breaking knitting of 481 shawls, cardigans and pullovers in 2015. Gayle Waters received a special honor in the Surprisingly Liberal category after she was the first to ensure her book club refer to Caitlyn Jenner by the proper pronouns, but the award of course had to go to Bernie Sanders. Despite having not been nominated, Ethel Durn won Best Random Gifts after she gave everyone attending, including the judges, a 20 dollar bill. While this may seem like a bribe, Durn said in interviews that she had no idea this would even qualify her for the award and explained her purse stuffed with twenties saying she “had just gone to the bank to cash her social security check” and “had some change.”
The last and most anticipated award of the night was Coolest Grandma. Nominees included Marlene Wyatt — who rocked a leather jacket, Linda Rubtee — who is on both Twitter and Snapchat, Sue Pine — who snowboards and Jackie Silverman — who played the entire campaign of Fallout 4. However, Childa Haggard won her second award of the night thanks to the hoverboard flashmob she put together at the nursing home to a Beyoncé medley, which went viral on Vine. She dedicated the award to her corgi, Dorito, and was met with a standing ovation from everyone who was awake and could actually stand.
