There are 110 Grammy categories. The only ones that get any attention are the biggest four or five—Best Album, Best Male Pop Vocal, Best Female etc. Looking at the names of the habitually wank nominees in those categories every year (big ups to John Mayer and the Black Eyed Peas) might lead you to believe that, as a reasonably cool individual of a certain refined taste, the Grammys aren't worth your attention.

You're wrong. You couldn't be more wrong. Once you're past the first ten or fifteen categories, the Grammys get interesting and, frankly, weird. I'll show you what I mean in a subsequent post, but first, a rundown of the Canadian contingent.

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It's led, of course, by Nova Scotia/Calgary/Queen Street's own Leslie Feist—quickly becoming the Anne Murray of the American Apparel generation. The former Peaches hypegirl is nominated for Best New Artist, Best Female Pop Vocal Performance, and Best Pop Vocal Album. In each category, she'll go head-to-beehive with the heartbreaking Amy Winehouse, whose handlers will hopefully be smart humane enough to spare her any Britney-style humiliation. Leslie's also nominated for Best Short Form Music Video, a nomination she shares with hotshot Californian director Patrick Daughters and video producer Geoff McLean. If she wins that one, the statuette should of course go straight to Steve Jobs's mantle.

Along with Winehouse, Feist is up against Maxim magazine's own Nelly Furtado for Best Female Pop Vocal. Nelly is nominated for "Say It Right" and, with Justin Timberlake, slips in on Timbaland's nod for Best Pop Collaboration, "Give It To Me." I haven't heard either song, but their smutty titles would seem to fit with her tiresome new image.

Michael Bublé, British Columbia's ersatz Sinatra, will be in the hunt for his first Grammy win after nominations in 2006 and 2007. The brash Burnaby native's Call Me Irresponsible is nominated for Best Traditional Pop Vocal Album, but more remarkably, he breaks out of the crooners' ghetto that is the "Traditional" category with a Best Male Pop Vocal nomination for "Everything."

The Texas trust fund kids in Montreal's Arcade Fire land Neon Bible on the list for Best Alternative Album. It's not a great record, but I guess it beats She Wants Revenge.

While not precisely a Canadian nomination, keyboard giant Herbie Hancock's take on the Joni Mitchell catalogue, River: The Joni Letters (with appearances by Mitchell and Leonard Cohen), is a shock nominee for Album of the Year, never mind Best Contemporary Jazz Album, and his take on "Both Sides Now" gets singled out in the Best Jazz Instrumental Solo category. Don't write off Hancock's chances at landing the big one; remember Steely Dan.

La Joni, meanwhile, gets a token nomination in Best Pop Instrumental for "One Week Last Summer," a track from her latest exercise in oblique jazz-folk, Shine. You suspect there was a name recognition factor playing in her favour, given that she's up against the likes of Dave Koz and Spyro Gyra.

It's worth tipping our hats to honourary Canadian Levon Helm, late of  The Hawks and The Band, whose comeback recording Dirt Farmer has been tapped for Best Traditional Folk Album.

And finally, the legend continues: Walter Ostanek, the King of St. Catherines, Ontario, gets his 14th nomination for Best Polka Album. This time, it's a collaboration with Brian Sklar And The Western Senators called Dueling Polkas. While he's nominated most every year, the voters have criminally failed to hand Ostanek the hardware since he picked up his third straight gong in 1994. I guess it's like how Wayne Gretzky stopped winning Hart Trophies after the '88-'89 season. Once you've set the bar as high as Gretz and Ostanek did, you start being judged against your own unrealistically high standards—and thus do one-trick ponies and second-rate chumps like Brett Hull and Jimmy Sturr end up stealing what rightfully belongs to you. Grammy voters, it's not fair and it's not right. In 2008, please end our long national nightmare. Give Walter back his crown.

Congrats to all our nominees—especially to Bublé for the crossover nod. I like that.*

Note: Not an endorsement of Bublé's music,  heck no; but he seems like an alright dude.

UPDATE: Apologies, Rush fans—somehow I overlooked your boys' nod for Best Rock Instrumental. The track in question is from their album Snakes & Arrows, and is called "Malignant Narcissism." I wonder if it's about blogging.