A look into a cracked crystal ball

AS the tallies are being taken leading up to the Dec. 7 announcement of nominations for the 49th annual Grammy Awards, key questions are emerging:

Could Mary J. Blige and John Mayer reign as the new Grammy prom queen and king?

Can the Dixie Chicks go from Nashville \o7non gratta\f7 to Grammy \o7gratta?\f7

Can Carrie Underwood prove that being an American Idol is no Grammy handicap?

How will Faith Hill react if Underwood wins?

How will Kanye West react if anyone but Kanye West wins?

And when the Grammy Awards are handed out at the televised spectacle in Staples Center on Feb. 11, will the Red Hot Chili Peppers wear their formal tube socks?

The latter question is not just for fun. After 23 years of punk-funk mayhem, triumphs over personal tragedies and travails, various states of undress and an abundance of tattoos, the Chili Peppers look to be serious contenders for album of the year with their sprawling tour de force "Stadium Arcadium." As such, the L.A. quartet could fill not just one but two slots in patterns that have developed in recent years: It's an edgy rock act, a role taken two years ago when Green Day's "American Idiot" picked up a best album nomination. At the same time, it's a veteran act with great influence that's never quite received Grammy recognition to match its popular and critical stature -- putting the band into the unlikely company of past winners Eric Clapton, Tony Bennett and Bob Dylan.

Speaking of Dylan, the bard is expected to claim an album spot himself for his bluesy "Modern Times," his first No. 1 in 30 years -- continuing the streak of his 1997 Grammy winner "Time Out of Mind" and 2002 nominee "Love and Theft." In this survey, the terms "shoo-in" and "sure thing" were used more in connection with a Dylan album nomination than for anything else.

Of course, these days Grammy nomination predicting can be like a cat chasing a light beam -- good exercise but not necessarily productive. That's agreed on by both Grammy insiders and outside observers surveyed by The Times.

"I'm a Grammy voter and we are so much harder to predict than the Academy Awards voters," says one veteran music business executive who asked that his name not be used due to his work inside the Grammy process.