Sparkle, Baby.
Remember when Wednesday used to be Prince Spaghetti Day?
It was a simpler time of life. You’d race home through the narrow streets of Little Italy and be greeted with a big hug and an even bigger bowl of Nana’s pasta. Well, don’t get too attached to your ravioli. Somehow when I wasn’t paying attention, Wednesday officially became Toddlers & Tiaras Day.
Both the old and the new were a special time for families to gather. They would make a mess of the house, get sticky stuff all over the counters and leave feeling a little tired, bloated and gross. That hasn’t really changed. They just somehow managed to replace the sauce with a spray tan, and Uncle Louigie’s dentures are now Mackenzie’s flippers.
Other than that, I still race home for a big fat meal of TLC pasta and shovel it down until I can’t move.
This week , thanks to a blessing from the Gods of Reality TV, all my worlds collided. It was Toddlers & Tiaras meets Rise of the Planet of the Apes meets Krazy with a K. And you know I love me some Apes and some Crazy.
It was the Rumble In The Jungle Pageant, which I guess is even cooler than whatever the name of the last one was, because this one gets you the title of World Champion.
The Mutha of All Pageant Crowns. This was the Big Dawg show, so you know Momma Wood dragged self professed SuperStar Eden into town. For those of you who might have been distracted by the crashing of Wall Street, Eden is the shrink ray mini Anna Nicole Smith that has taken the pageant world by storm. She basically looks like Stewie Griffin aimed his stun gun at the back of Anna Nicole’s head, zapped her down into a 5 year old’s body and let her loose on civilization to pillage and terrorize every city down South. (And not the really skinny Anna Nicole, but not the really chubby one either…the kinda in between one.)
This was supposedly Eden/Anna’s swan song, as she has since retired…cough…to pursue her musical and acting career, thereby giving Momma Wood another outlet or two to live vicariously through her daughter. I’ve met some really nifty Pageant Moms recently, but this one doesn’t quite seem to realize it’s supposed to be for the kids, if you know whaddimeanjellybean. She makes it glaringly clear at every media event/interview/daughter pimping opp she gets that, YES, she is sitting by that phone waiting for Hollywood to call so she can say “Buh Bye Teaching Job” and pack up her junk, toss Eden into a ventilated box and hit the road to Tinsel Town. I’m thinking she’s already picked out the shoes she’ll wear when she does that whole feet in cement thing at the Chinese Theater.
Momma Wood spent a good chunk of her camera time talking about how much money she has spent on Eden, and how she wouldn’t be doing this interview if she hadn’t spent all that bank on her kid. Maybe some of that could have gone to furnish the house or hang pictures on the walls. That living room must echo it was so empty.
The whole Planet of the Apes Rumble In The Jungle event was run by a director who is also the agent for mini Anna. El Scandela! Sooooo NOT cool in the world of pageants. The other moms were twisted. FIX! FIX!
But I’m getting ahead of myself. Eden’s competition, at least according to the competition’s mom, was Alexis. She was a little hybrid multi racial cutie who I think was shoplifted straight out of Will Smith’s house when no one was looking. If The Fresh Prince is missing a kid, I know where to find her. I was totally expecting the Jungle remix of “I Whip My Hair” when she wobbled up on stage. Seriously. Will…check all the bedrooms.
Anyway. I’m still obsessed with Allyson from last week, who wanted to be Beyonce.
She and her mom are my all time favorites, complete with her bite sized Sasha Fierce dance and her ten coat spray tan. (Brown is the new Black.) But Ally better keep her eye on the prize, because Alexis’s grandma was working it too. I’m pretty sure that Nana wanted to be Beyonce’s mother. Really. Dang, girl. She was tossing sassy around like it was an unlimited Olive Garden salad. If she could have come in under the height requirement, you know Girlfriend Nana would have been working a jungle two piece on stage. Snap.
Allyson don’t play dat though…so watch out, Nana.
For some reason they felt that Alexis needed a spray tan before the pageant. Which is kind of like saying I need to paint my blue car more…umm…blue. Even on my 50 inch plasma I couldn’t tell the difference between before and after. Maybe it was simply to disguise her in case Will and Jada came into town looking around…
Isabella was the third piece of the jungle puzzle. Her mom did lots of bad hair pageants back in the day, all captured on those Polaroid pictures that you shake to dry. So Izzy didn’t stand a chance. She went to a photo shoot and cried. Then got her nails done and cried. Then got her hair yanked and cried. You can Mad Lib the remainder of her screen time. Isabella did (blank) and cried. Over and over. The highlight was right before getting her nails did when Mom joined in on the melt down, apparently not realizing that we can see through glass doors, and you are wearing a microphone, and…ps…you’re on a TV show. Chill Pill, honey, people are watching.
But nothing compares to Eden and Momma Wood prepping her jungle act.
Nothing. Ever. In the history of television. Not even the Moon Landing.
Her grandpa “Pops” offered/was bullied by Momma into being Tarzan to Eden’s Jane, and for some reason that required a full body shaving, administered by a child, and for some reason required that we watch.
Again, you cannot make this stuff up.
Eden took the whitest doughboy grandpa they could find, brought him out back behind the same shed where they shot Old Yeller and took a Norelco razor to his belly. I know, right? A 5 year old shaving all the country fuzz off her old grandpa. Every Dateline internet sting chat site lit up across the United States at that exact moment. I think my street lights actually dimmed for a second from the drain on the Main Grid. I swear I saw Chris Hansen lurking behind one of the bushes, ready to pounce on grandpa with a bowl of chips and some iced tea. And I am also never going to be able to watch that Norelco Christmas ad again. You know, the one that they always show during Rudolph where the little elf rides the Norelco Triple Head down the snow bank? The one as white as Grandpa’s belly? That one?
I momentarily got that hysterical blindness that they always get on soap operas. “Eden..is that you?”
Oh, and on stage Pops wore one of those one piece Fred Flintstone ensembles, so putting us all through the shaving didn’t really seem to be a necessity after all, since he was completely covered up.
Thanks for the Jungle Fever bed spins, TLC.
