When it comes to staying current with music trends, I often feel like Anderson Cooper on 60 Minutes interviewing Lady GaGa in her undies. Curious but a little flummoxed.

In the interests of staying hip… if staying hip is still a condition that one aspires to…I watched the Grammys awards show. “You gave up Masterpiece Theater?” asked my incredulous daughter. Well no, I taped the Grammys to watch later. One has certain cultural imperatives.

Yet, I don’t want to ever turn into one of those people who grouses about today’s music, at least not without hearing it.

I was happily crooning along right from the beginning, thanks to the opening tribute to Aretha Franklin, one of the leaders of my pack, appearing near-svelte in her video, her tunes elegantly delivered by five younger stars who like every female musician on the stage that night owe a debt to Aretha and the other older sisters of rock.

There were always big name women singers, like Billie Holiday and Ella, but in the 1950s and 60s when my generation was discovering our own music, it was more about girl backup groups. They dressed up sparkly and had gorgeous voices but they didn’t get much front and center time until the likes of Diana Ross, Janis Joplin, Grace Slick, Tina Turner. And, of course, Sister Aretha, who was the first woman to make it into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. But that didn’t happen until 1987.

I also wanted to check out my other peeps – Bob, Barbra and Mick. I wished the camera had let me see Dylan’s face and that he had played more than three chords on his harmonica, but you have to give him points for always showing up. Barbra’s clear amazing voice soared wonderfully but her mother-of-the-bride dress suffered in a room full of leopard prints and tattooed bottoms. But Mick always makes me proud when he starts to do his rooster moves. You can lip-sync but you cannot body-sync and the boy can still out-strut the best.

I’m grateful for these lasting legends. They’re good p.r. for my demographic.

Spectacle aside, I didn’t see anything revolutionary at the Grammys, although I now will add Esperanza Spalding to my iPod (how hip is that?). Except for new technology, music, pop and otherwise, still comes down to invention, talent and a bit of flash. One generation passes on inspiration to the next. The women wear lots of red lipstick, the guys like black shirts. The product is still called a recording and an album.

And whether we hear it in an ear bud or a portable radio stuck under our pillow, music keeps us going in good or bad times. The day I heard about a friend dying, I put on an old Elton John mix and danced like such a wild thing it made the dog nervous.

My husband mostly ignored the Grammys. At one point he took a look and asked, “Who is this Princess GaGa anyway? Do we have Madonna to credit or blame for this creation.” I explained that she’s no princess, she’s a lady. And actually I think that before we had Madonna we had Cyndi Lauper and Cher to credit or blame for this creation.

Photo: Aretha at Obama inauguration

I have to admit that one of the big reasons I wanted to see “Cheri” was to check up on Michelle Pfeiffer who has been talking freely about hitting 50.

“If you think 40 is liberating, wait till you turn 50,” she said at a news conference.
“You dread it for years and then it happens and it’s no big deal.”

Pfeiffer turned 50 in the middle of filming “Cheri,” the story of Lea, a 49-year old retired courtesan in love with a much younger man. The movie blurbs like to call Lea an “aging courtesan” or sometimes “an aging beauty.” Aging, being the ouch-y operative word.

Critics gave Pfeiffer kudos for playing her actual age. I guess that’s because audiences were bound to give hard study to a 50-year-old playing an aging beauty. Critic Kenneth Turan said the movie is “art imitating life, with a vengeance.”

Actually, both Pfeiffer and Lea seem to manage aging well, at least physically. Pfeiffer’s character Lea ages comfortably, glamorously and more healthily than her friends. Pfeiffer, herself, appears to be aging beautifully, thinly, firmly and blonde-ly.

Certainly age is a theme throughout the story. Lea tells her young lover, Cheri, who is 18, (played by 27 year old Rupert Friend) to not crinkle up his nose or he’ll get wrinkles. Cheri’s mother, played wonderfully bitchy by Kathy Bates, compliments Lea on her perfume and then zings her with how much better perfume clings to the skin when it is “a little less firm.”

When her maid asks Lea what’s wrong she sighs, “You know. Age.”

The film is set in early 1900s France before World War I, a time that has a few things in common with today. Age obsession, for one. Plus, women taking lovers young enough to be their godsons, proving that cougars are not a modern phenom. And the rich and powerful, on the brink of losing it all, growing decadent and obese. Pfeiffer’s Lea is about the only fit one in her crowd, in part because she pushes the wine glass away and dines on toast and grapes while her friends’ necks grow too big for their diamonds.

Lea, in Pfeiffer’s body, looks like she goes to the gym. The chin is holding. The arms are work-out toned. In the books by Colette on which the film is based, Lea eventually lets the flesh take over and stops dying her hair. But in the film Lea’s body and face reveal only minor signs of age and they’re hardly troubling, although telling enough to be registered by the young lover.

And here is a beauty hint for us all:

Pfeiffer told an interviewer the quickest way for her to look older for the camera was to sit in the sun without makeup and not smile. When the smile drops, so goes the face.

Director Stephen Frears raved about Pfeiffer being a sport, never fretting about her looks, never asking for favors from the camera. On the other hand, Frears, who is 68, has his own aging hang-ups and says he thinks it’s more difficult for men than women to get older. The women around him seem fine with aging, he said. They’ve stopped “flapping around about their appearance all the time. I imagine it’s a great weight off the mind.”

Yes, it could be, especially if Hollywood and the rest of the media would get past their own obsession over youth and beauty.

It’s possible that “Cheri” will encourage more films that deal honestly with age. And that wonderful and realistic roles for women over 50 will continue to come along. In the meantime, don’t let your smile down.

I started watching Rachel Maddow during the presidential campaign after “The Nation” reported on a new, novel TV personality who was a Rhodes Scholar and an AIDS activist. She was also a much-welcomed political ally last fall and not nearly as noisy and smirking as some of her MSNBC colleagues.

However, I didn’t expect her to become a regular in our living room. More of an occasional after-dinner treat, like a bowl of mint chip. But now we indulge almost nightly. I still require the more green veggie type of news served up by the reliable Jim Lehrer and his troupe on PBS. I particularly like it when Judy Woodruff is there reporting on politics or filling in as anchor.

A really good night for me is to get Judy first and then Rachel. It’s not the same as having a woman elected president in your lifetime, but if you can remember those years of catfights over who will be the new pretty blonde head sharing the podium with a silver-haired newsman, it’s still thrilling to watch a woman get to the top of her field because of brains and talent. As President Obama noted, in creating his White House panel on women’s and girls’ issues, the fight for gender quality is not over. And while I’m not sure we can say that that this particular glass ceiling has been thoroughly cracked, at least it’s widened enough to allow us to look forward to more Judys and Rachels.

They don’t have to cross their legs in short skirts to fill the camera.

Of different styles, Judy’s the big sister in terms of gravitas, and Rachel’s the brazen newcomer. But I can see them going out to dinner, laughing it up and getting into what they really think of Timothy Geithner and Larry Summers.

Rachel often says she has the best job in the entire universe, and I bet Judy feels the same. “Very cool stuff,” Judy exclaimed one night after what I remember as a complicated debate on climate change. Rachel gets to pop off in a more colorful way, recently commenting on the “junior high whining” of a former president.

The other thing about these women is they don’t have to cross their legs and wear short skirts to fill up the camera. That doesn’t mean their looks aren’t part of their appeal. Rachel, often in Johnny Cash black, favors an unadorned tailored jacket over modest tank top. She’s called herself “not a typical news babe.”

But neither is Judy, even though she’s a former Georgia beauty queen. Judy looks like she put on whatever just came back from the dry cleaners and spent the last 30 minutes before show time going over GM’s annual report rather than getting a comb-out.

But we notice when she does. The other night my husband looked over and said, “Hey, Judy got a haircut.”