If this doesn’t make you all spit out your flippers, nothing will. Welcome to Las Vegas, kids!
I’m pretty sure the Dry Cleaner with the curly black hair just starched that Dad’s nightclub pants.
OMG. I’m sitting between freakin’ Cher and a School Librarian. Shut. Up.
Overall, I think she had a nice package today. Though I prefer more duct tape myself.
Yeah. I’d tap that.
‘Choo lookin’ at, bitch? Hmmm?
Ok, TLC.
You win.
I’m throwing in the glitter towel.
Just when I think it can’t get any whackier…it does.
And thankfully, I might add…because you know I love me some cray cray.
This week Toddlers & Tiaras hit the Strip and nipped, tucked and ducted itself right into sparkle orbit. The Las Vegas trifecta, as it were. A truly winning combination.
It was the Little Miss & Mr. Nevada Glitz Beauty Pageant, and money was no object.
Everything was over the top. The spending. The parents. The spending. The costumes. The spending. The attitudes. The spending. The drag queen judges.
Over. The. Top.
Let’s be real. The only thing I could find that wasn’t over the top was all the drag queens’ junk, because that was definitely all neatly tucked away somewhere like precious magic beans being saved for a special day.
And how does that even happen?
I mean, I know how it happens…I watch RuPaul’s Drag Race. (Sorry, Mom.)
But how does it really happen? Honestly, I can’t even walk down the street without everyone seeing my iPhone in my pants pocket, so…I mean…seriously.
According to Pageant Director Tami Soudbakhsh (…thanks for totally f***ing up my spellcheck gizmo with that one, honey…) the event is a total Glitzapalooza. They expect tans and teeth and tons of aerosol if you want to score that 6 foot tall trophy, so bringing in the drag queen judges was almost like getting a free mentorship from a Harvard professor.
If the Harvard professor carved his own butt cheeks out of upholstery foam, I mean.
Tami seemed pretty nice and very excitable, especially when it came to the “celebrity judges” coming to Vegas, and her name reminded me of some kind of ethnic food that you would still smell on your clothes the next day. But I liked her because she had those squinty eyes that closed when she smiled.
The first bank account and princess we met up with was 6 year old Kylee and her Dbag Dad Marty.
Sorry. Hate to start out on a downer. But dude. C’mon.
Marty had money. A ton of it. And I was jealous.
It all went to fancy cars, nightclubbing, BeDazzled Affliction hoodies and a seemingly endless supply of low brow t-shirts so insultingly lame to woman that even MTV would probably pixelate them out of the camera shot.
Decked out in his “I don’t date Single Moms. I create them.” t-shirt, Marty explained how his ex had gotten Kylee into the pageant biz and now it was his obsession. We didn’t get the deetz on what actually happened to the Mrs. but I’m sure Google almost crashed during the first commercial break after he mentioned only getting two hours of sleep a night because he was out flopping his glow stick under some DJ booth 7 days a week.
As he bragged about working hard and playing harder you just wanted him to go back into that pink walk-in cupcake dress closet and start the conversation over with less swish.
Somehow between after-hour raves the guy had still found time to teach himself how to handle a jigsaw blade, because Marty was working on a life-size I Dream of Jeannie bottle for Kylee’s Vegas routine, and it was pretty slick. In a strangely prophetic glimpse into the future, Kylee climbed the giant bottle for a test run and the lid almost knocked her unconscious. Concussions tend to result in a deduction from the judges, so it seemed that Marty’s DIY prop was still a work in progress.
Next up was 5 year old Elizabeth, who proudly proclaimed that she was sassy, beautiful, perfect and blessed with a personality that was way over the top. She was a cutie, with big cartoon eyes and a non-stop mouth that was probably already going before I even turned on my television set. But she could have used a slight injection of humility.
Unfortunately, though, it appeared that all the needlework may have already been done on Grandma Patti.
Sorry…I know. Another downer. Usually I’m a lot nicer, right?
Since the words “Wrinkles” and “Grandma” both traumatically signified aging to Patti, she had decided to try and eliminate both from her vocabulary, at any cost.
And apparently over night.
Noni, which I believe is Klingon for Grandma In Denial, was also filthy rich and had already spent upwards of $100,000 on little Elizabeth’s pageant career and maybe one or two (…alleged…) elective surgeries. She was also always accompanied by a woman who was either the Mom, or a relative or Bernadette Peters. They were never really very clear on how this woman got into the house, but she tagged along for all the good stuff.
For all I know, she could have been a sculptor sent in from Madame Tussauds Wax Museum to…umm…never mind. That’s probably too mean for even me to say out loud.
Forget I said anything, Noni.
Besides, if that was the case, she was probably headed to see Mom Kelli and the twins and just ended up at the wrong mansion.
Scarlett and Isabella, 3 year old polar opposite twins, were back for another round of pageantry. This time they were also accompanied by newborn baby brother Gavin, who was going to blow nose bubbles in his premier pageant appearance. Since it looked like G-Man had only been missing his cord for about a month, he just kind of sat there and tried to make both eyes go in the same direction while Kelli got us all caught up on her family tree.
Along with the pink Hummer (…insert your own Hummer joke here ______________ ) that Mom & Dad had purchased for the twins, there was also apparently a clown car of some type located somewhere on the property because more and more brothers kept appearing on my screen as the show progressed.
Bro Dalton helped out with pageant rehearsals when he wasn’t doing ab crunches at the gym or buying designer shades, while still another brother was getting buff off camera for his Vegas debut.
Since no pageant resumé is complete without some glossies, Marty next took Kylee and his “Shove a Chick off a Cliff = Problem Solved” t-shirt to Winning Wand Pageant Consulting for a little camera love.
Yeah. Pink Hummer and Winning Wand in the same show. Badabing. It’s Vegas, Baby.
Pageant Coach Georgina Vaughan, who single handedly is probably responsible for over half the nation’s non-contagious Barbie Pink Eye, had managed to secure two little people that she morphed into some Shrinky Dink version of Blue Man Group for the photo shoot.
Or maybe they were Smurfs. YouGoGirl Smurf and JackA** Smurf. Whatever.
It was just messed up.
Turned out that Barbie Vaughan was also coaching Elizabeth, who a little later on busted out her Madonna Like A Virgin rehearsal. It took me a few seconds to realize that the belly shirt, black vinyl thigh high go go boot ensemble Liz was rocking were just her street clothes. Then I was all like…say whaa–?
Georgina may own an eighteen wheeler’s worth of pink clothes, but she seemed to only have a few moves in her arsenal, because every routine she choreographed was pretty much the same.
Pretty much, as in Exactly. Even though Noni couldn’t scrunch up her nose, she was starting to smell that something wasn’t right.
But before she figured it all out, it was Pageant Time!
You know how Maya Angelou always said that it’s the journey, not the destination?
Well Girlfriend must have been a pageant judge before she worked for Hallmark, because these kids were traveling in style.
The twins hung out of the Hummer like micro bachelorettes slamming Sippy Cup Shooters while both Kylee and her Dad’s “I ♥ Lesbians” t-shirt arrived in a white stretch limo.
Though it never showed on her face (…oh, snap…) Noni couldn’t stand the stress, or the traffic, and chartered a helicopter for Elizabeth who sat there as they Blackhawk buzzed every pink Hummer on the highway.
As the usual hair and makeup chaos was unleashed on the hotel, Frank Marino showed up to introduce his drag supahstahhhhs, and the crowd went wild before they even knew what was going on.
Especially the older folks, who either flat lined or got uncomfortably enthusiastic as the girly boys made their arrival. Check it out. Two little ladies down in the front were passing an inhaler back and forth like Engelbert Humperdinck just took his shirt off.
Cher, Britney Spears and Lady Gaga all hid their nuts for the Winter and entered the ballroom arena like it was the poor man’s Caesar’s Palace.
It’s on, bitches.
Best Moment of the Night has to go to Elizabeth who didn’t even know what a Drag Queen was, and all along had somehow been under the impression that the judges were going to be Dry Cleaners.
Like the ones who wash & press & fold Noni’s (…wrinkle free…) pillowcases.
Or George Jefferson.
I just can’t.
I needed to eat her up with a spoon at that point.
Backstage, the usual panic switch had been flipped, and kids were pinging off the walls like laser pointers when you try to freak out a cat.
Taking a cue from the classic Lucy and the Chocolate Factory episode, Georgina seemed to have decided to just assembly line the process and give Kylee and Elizabeth the same hair, same routine and approve almost identical outfits. She had also, at some point, cloned herself because a second look-a-like Georgina was now in the hizzle and I was losing track of who was doing what to who and where.
Everybody looked the same.
Luckily the Smurfs were back again but they were pink now, so it was easier to differentiate YouGoGirl from the JackA** one.
Noni hated Elizabeth’s hair. And her routine. And her matching dress. Because three minutes before showtime is always a good time to freak on the details, right?
First up was Beauty.
The twins had no idea where they were. Scarlett got the weekly slo-mo scary movie music theme song when she just stopped mid stream à la Celine Dion and declared she was over it. Bella could count to 20 in three languages which I guess will come in handy…never.
Kylee and Elizabeth, or Elizabeth and Kylee…who knows…went on right after each other and pretty much sent four old ladies to get their eyes checked out for cataracts.
OMG! BFF Twinsies! LOL!
Then it was Vegas Wear!
Even the emcee got his bling on with a little crystal beauty mark under his eye. Bitch stole my look…I was totally going to nail that when my drivers license comes up for renewal.
Dalton and his bro channeled their inner Abercrombies and went all shirtless and board shorts as they carried up their twin sisters on a surf board. MORE twins. Make it stop.
Isabella was all about the attention and ran to the front of the stage the way babies do when they see their reflection in a TV screen. Scarlett, on the other hand, pulled her second Celine of the night and turned her back on the audience until everyone else left the stage.
They are all here…for meeeeeeeeee!
Dalton and the other one just flexed and posed like the guys on the big mural when you walk in the store until their time was up. I’m not really sure out of the four people on stage, who was really wanting the crown the most. Cuz you know, chicks dig crowns.
First time around, Kylee’s Barbara Eden routine didn’t go so well when the stage grunts put her big bottle too close to the back of the stage and she fell right off and disappeared in a puff of Jeannie smoke.
Luckily Dad and his Trucker Mud Flap Pole Dancing ”I Support Single Moms” t-shirt came to the rescue and helped fish his daughter out from behind the curtains. Marty complained that he got sloppy bed sweats when he saw Kylee take a dump, but he was also wearing his thug hoodie inside the building with the hood up.
So…der.
While Kylee tried to get it together, Elizabeth took over and jumped around in a bridal gown like that viral youtube wedding. Boy Britney loved it, because he’s Britney. And he said so.
I Dream of Jeannie brushed herself off and went back up for take 2 and nailed it.
Noni kept noticing that everything looked the same, so I knew it wasn’t just me. Of course, I’m not paying Georgina, so to me it wasn’t as big a dealio.
Then some kids won some stuff.
None of this week’s primary princesses took home the Big One. It went to that Good Ship Lollipop Booty Poppin’ Kayla Hatton.
So no giant crown or stylin’ Vegas zebra royalty robe, which I thought was a Slanket the first time I saw it laying on the table.
They took a blanket! And they put two sleeves on it!
(Side note: Who knew all those years I was wearing my bathrobe backwards I could have been a freakin’ millionaire? Bastards.)
Then it was over.
Some girls were happy. Some, not so much. There was sulking, and a few tears.
But it’s like all the drag queens say…
Just deal with it, bitches.
Don’t dwell on it. And whatever you do…don’t pick at it.
It’s like duct tape.
The faster you rip it off, the less it hurts.
