You think a $4,000 dress can’t be real? You should see my honeymoon photos.
Oh. Hell. No. White people are crazy.
With a toy for each gay and boy…we are Santa’s elves.
Dat’s my baby. She’s holding it all wrong, but that’s my baby. I swear.
Ok. I may be only 3 months old, but I know this shizzle is seriously f***d up.
You get no dress for $4,000!! Lady right. White people crazy.
They’re baaaack!
And even more importantly…she’s baaaack!
Toddlers & Tiaras and Annette Hill are back, bitches.
Christmas came early this year as TLC snuck in a new episode of America’s unspoken glitzy, guilty pleasure one week ahead of the official season premiere. Surprise!
It totally screwed up my DVR and my pre-game snack planning, but when a gift comes preloaded with as much lunacy as this one did…I’m not complaining. Hand it over.
Plus it had Annette. And I do love me some Annette.
I’m not sure why exactly, since she isn’t nearly as whacky as some of the other Pageant Directors that we’ve been introduced to over the years. Not even close. And you know I also love me some cray cray. The cray cray-er the better, actually.
But what Annette lacks in wide eyed hyper-enthusiasm and inappropriate lollipop licking (…you do remember the episode with that blonde director going to town on that fine piece of sugar, right? Eeew…) she more than makes up for with Fierceness.
Cuz Annette Hill don’t play.
The last time we got to hang out with Annette she was working that Motown pageant and threatening to get all her junk up on stage and shake what her Momma gave her. We can only hope the cameras were rolling for that one and that one day we’ll finally get to see her in action on some Director’s Cut DVD.
But this time around it was all about Christmas and Glitz. Universal Royalty style. So grab some holiday Chex Mix…this is gonna take awhile.
Our first tiny princess was 3 year old Katlyn and her Mom Kymberli, who both had a little Annette DNA up in there somewhere.
Katlyn was approximately 28 pounds of OhNoYouDin’t as she sassed her way around the bedroom while Mom explained how Divalicious her daughter was for such a young age. She was a 5th generation pageant girl, born and raised like royalty livestock.
And Baby Girl was poised to take on the world.
Based on volume, Mom contained a substantially larger percentage of the OhNoYouDin’t chromosome than Katlyn, and was therefore mathematically even more Divalicious.
Hey, I’m not hatin’. I loved her. And I totally want to hang with Kymberli and Annette when they go clubbin’ on the weekends. Can you even imagine…? I don’t even have enough bail money in my savings account to cover that trip to the Apollo. Call me.
But even Dad said that Mom didn’t look like she was starving. She was a hoot with that bleached, flat ironed synthetic VH1 hair that just made you want to pop off on somebody.
And the apple don’t fall far from the tree, because Grandma Kelli had it going on, too.
But her name is NiNi, not Grannie. Or at least I think that’s how you spell it. They never clarified. But that’s how I’m going to spell it, just so nobody mistakenly thinks that the other NeNe has a grand baby doing pretty feet in Austin.
The other one is very rich, bitch. She don’t need your big a** trophy and dollar bill fans, mmmkay? Bloop.
(Yes, in hindsight…if you don’t watch The Real Housewives of Atlanta you probably could have just skipped over that last paragraph and gotten to the finish line a little quicker. My bad.)
And then we met Christopher.
Spray tanned, frosted tipped, Crest whitestripped, nervous lipped Christopher.
I just can’t.
Christopher was (allegedly) the Pageant Dad to 9 year old Hailey. A single father (allegedly) married to Laura for 7 years.
Again. I just can’t.
I know I make up a lot of stuff when I write. And I may snark a little. Once in awhile.
But I just can’t.
Remember The Dick Van Dyke Show? Two twin beds with a nightstand in between?
Christopher was straight (…no pun intended, but nonetheless hilarious…) out of Central Casting with his Stretch Armstrong face and California Glow spray tan. The Justin Timberlake *N Sync hair was also a nice touch, as was the twitchy wink that punctuated nearly every sentence.
Let’s just say that I went to college with a lot of “Christophers” who “dated” a lot of “Lauras” when they weren’t waitering at The Cheesecake Factory or painting sets for West Side Story and leave it at that. I don’t want to influence your opinions on the topic. You know me by now. I would never do that.
But before we move on, I’ll just add that those “Christophers” were also the ones who wore those year round euro-trash scarves wrapped five times around their necks and wouldn’t even put on a hat in a blizzard because the static might mess up their tips.
You can just tell Hailey’s Dad owns about 6 pair of those 180 wrap around the back of your head ear muffs that are always stacked up in the aisles at Macy’s on Black Friday. You know he does.
And now I’m done.
Christopher’s goal, aside from actually participating in the pageant himself, was to bring Hailey out of her shell. She was quite shy. And expressionless. And yawned a lot. Good luck with that.
Our final contestant this week was 3 year old Ava, who was so busy clubbing her big brother in the head with a ceramic piggy bank that she barely looked up at the camera.
Mom Monica had that subtle deer in the headlight smile that a Mom always has when she’s attempting to distract company from noticing that her son may have a chunk of white ceramic and two silver dollars embedded in his skull.
You are correct, Mom. Ava’s a handful.
Then it was off to retrieve Hailey’s $4,000 dress at Muzzie’s, which coincidentally enough, was also the name of the bar that many of my college “Laura” friends went to one night instead of sitting through another West Side Story dress rehearsal.
I just can’t.
Christopher had hooked up Hailey with a stylist. For her first pageant. And his name was Ephraim Danforth.
Of course it was.
Somehow, the $4,000 dress had required another $1,000 in alterations and was now ready for pick-up. Not being a tailor, I can only assume that for $1,000 the gown either now has the Power of Invisibility or will help Hailey fly when she eventually jumps out the window clutching her college education bank book.
Five seasons into T&T, the best thing that came out of the trip to Muzzie’s was that we finally got clear and concise directions on how one walks in a pageant gown from Ephraim Danforth himself.
On the outside, you should look like royalty and walk with your hands slightly scooping your dress as you heel/toe your way down the runway towards Buckingham Palace.
On the inside, you should look like you just scored Streisand tickets at Madison Square Garden. Box seats. With a Meet & Greet.
You need to Google it. Ephraim is my new fabulous screensaver. I think he even wet himself a little.
When I finally get to go clubbin’ with Kymberli and Annette we’re gonna have to take a 4 door, because we are absolutely swinging by Salon Mia Bella and picking up nail tech Shumei. She is the tech who drew the short straw and had to give Hailey a french manicure while Christopher twitched and got all jealz on the other side of her station.
When she got wind of the $4,000 dress during an hour of awkward silence, she almost poked her own eye out with a file.
She could buy car for dat!
And then she laughed so big that I wanted to go to a restaurant in Chinatown and hug somebody. Shumei needs to have a scene every week.
Back at Casa Diva, Katlyn was being shrink wrapped inside a makeshift snow globe.
Literally. Shrink wrapped. Like pork chop leftovers.
Mom and Dad were trying to figure out a creative way to design their holiday prop without cutting off all their daughter’s oxygen or alerting Child Services. Saran Wrap didn’t seem like it would be the way to go as NiNi said a prayer for help. That’s about when I realized that NiNi is big on that.
Jesus, take the wheel. Jesus, take the snow globe. Jesus, help me find the remote. As we moved on to the pageant, NiNi kept asking Jesus for everything but glue sticks, which made her that much more endearing.
Makenzie was right. I want my NiNi.
Finally, it was Showtime!
Annette was all gold and full o’ glitz and ready to get it done as the girls began the customary hotel room meltdowns.
Ava didn’t like people yanking on her ‘do and was getting ready to fling another piggy bank unless they wrapped this thing up quickly.
Down the hall, NiNi and Kymberli had apparently just returned from the MTV Music Awards where they performed a medley of their hits, because I can’t think of any other reason why they would be so overdressed for a kids pageant. And packing cowbells.
If they could get Katlyn half as blinged up as they were for the pageant then Baby Girl was bringing home the Gold, fo’ sho. I hope they get that dressed up when we all go out for ribs.
As Hailey sat comatose in the chair, the hairstylist that Christopher had paid good money for was falling further and further behind and Dad’s nerves, patience and rubber face were all being pushed to their limits.
He even offered to take Hailey back to his room and do the hairstyling himself. I’m guessing that means that he had hot rollers and Aqua Net in his carry on, which was…convenient.
I just can’t.
Ava’s ambition when she grows up was to be a doctor. If that’s really the case, I hope she responds faster with the crash cart than she did during the Beauty portion of the show. It just didn’t happen. Even Judge DJ Pecktal took off her glasses like a naughty school teacher in a hard rock music video and commented on how dazed little Ava appeared on stage.
I’m hoping DJ is laying tracks at the club the night I hit the town with the girls, because she seemed like she could get a party started.
Katlyn’s ears bled a little from NiNi wailing on the cowbell, but it was all out of love.
Hailey missed her call and never got to walk the stage with her age group because everyone was still yanking on her hair back up in the room. Through the bronzer you could tell that Christopher’s cheeks were burning red with anxiety and I could already feel a Celine hissy fit coming on.
He eventually pulled two other hair and makeup people out of thin air and got Hailey down to the ballroom, but it was too late. But not too late to angrily sashay right up to the podium (…tuck your shirt in, dude…) and get all up in Annette’s face. Daddy likes it rough, I guess.
Turns out he had paid Annette’s company for the faulty hair lady and demanded that Hailey’s deducted points be added back into her score. Annette listened, but didn’t really look at him. Like your Mom does when you are whining about something and she’s trying to watch her stories.
Ok, dear. That’s nice, dear. Here’s your lousy three points, you big cry baby.
Christopher even hugged her, and probably got more creeped out than she did.
Pageant Girl Cooties.
For the Christmas Wear portion, nothing says Holiday like stealing decorations from a hotel lobby and sticking them on a life size snow globe, I always say.
Kymberli and Dad panicked a little the night before, bailed on their Saran Wrap death trap and instead chose to ransack the hotel for some festive decor. Which they promised to return after snagging a trophy for Katlyn.
Jesus, take the security camera.
Ava stood in a Christmas dress. Period.
Hailey ended up on stage dressed as an elf, singing off-tempo to a track that sounded like those old pull string toys when the battery is just about to die. Cute, maybe, for a 3 year old. But for a 9 year old? Deduction.
As she began a slow slide down to the floor to finish the routine, it looked like someone had accidentally knocked one of those creepy Elf On A Shelf dolls off the mantel and didn’t even try to catch it.
Christopher was not happy. And called the whole thing a surprise, which was a little odd considering that he helped carry the props, saw his daughter dressed up like an elf and (allegedly) lives in the same house with her. Not to mention that he was clutching the Elf Microphone the whole time he was harassing my girl Annette.
Unless he had something else in his luggage that looked like a fat candy cane with a knob on the end that took AA batteries. He was holding it for crying out loud. What part of this was a surprise?
I just can’t.
Then some kids won some stuff.
Katlyn had enough trophies for a yard sale. NiNi testified “Here comes Santa Claus! Here Comes Santa Claus!” like she was wearing a big hat in church.
Ava got a little sumthin sumthin that made her happy but made Dad Victor insist that she was robbed.
Hailey lost to a girl in a cupcake dress. One that probably didn’t cost $4,000.
Two happy girls. One, not so much.
But Dad was there to support poor Hailey by yelling at her to pick up the hem of that $4,000 dress as they exited the hotel. Don’t make me show you how to walk in that dress, Girlfriend.
To paraphrase Ryan Seacrest…Christopher, out.
Happy Holidays.
