If your mansion doesn’t have a skylight to handle a 14′ trophy, then you’re probably too poor to be in the pageant anyway.
Those snotty kids can pry this off my cold dead body. Get your own crown… I’m Britney, Bitch.
With all our money we both decided to genetically engineer kids with heads big enough to finally handle those damn crowns they keep handing out.
I still don’t know what a drag queen is, but out back there’s enough duct tape to seal every leaky pipe in the entire building.
Sit still for crying out loud. I want your lips nice and moist when you meet Cher.
So, yeah. I kissed a girl and I liked it. Eeew…kidding. That shiz is so nasty.
Suck it, Bitch.
“We’re born naked, and the rest is Drag.”
RuPaul said that. And for some reason, I know it.
I don’t generally make a habit of tossing that quote around during a Bruins game, and I’m pretty sure it’s not on my updated resume anymore.
But for some reason it’s stored away in my mental file cabinet along with Sparkle, Baby and Werk It, Girl and it suddenly came back to me this week during Toddlers & Tiaras.
It was the Little Mr. and Miss Nevada Pageant: LalapaZOOza and all kinds of absolutely faaaabulous wild animals came out of the closets and cages to werk that stage in Las Vegas.
Pageant Director Tami Soudbakhsh (…five years later and I still have to Google her to figure out how to spell it…) explained how the whole Animal Kingdom thing was going to go down and how the trophy was going to keep going up and up and up.
Like 14′ in the ayah ayah.
Gah. I finally stopped dwelling on what the eff that winning family was going to do with the 7 story pink condo that Tonya Bailey dumped on them in the Ramada parking lot a few weeks ago, and now Tami SoudaBakeAndShake was going to give away a 14′ tall trophy. Oy, my head.
I don’t want to be a buzz kill, but Tami better hope that some nuns start entering their kids into these pageants, because other than the Sistine Chapel I don’t even know anyone with a 14′ 1″ living room ceiling.
But she was darn excited about it, to the point where I thought she might lose her glasses. Tami SoudaBurtBacharach tilts her head back a lot, so I kind of wonder if LensCrafters ever fit her properly. But she has that kind of infectious arts & crafts store smile that the ladies always get when a new bolt of holiday fabric is delivered.
And while the trophy would be sticking right up in our faces, not much else would be…because all the judges were Drag Queens. Wink, wink. Nudge, nudge.
I mean, obviously Drag Queens are always all up in our faces. That’s their thing. But their thing isn’t actually up at all…since…well…you know.
Seriously. Forget it. If I have to work this hard at a duct tape joke, it’s probably not worth it. It would have been totz hilar…but it’s too late now.
The first little princess was 3 year old Mimi and her Mom Amanda, and they pretty much set off the Emergency Broadcasting Ginger Alert on my television.
Mimi looks like she could have been on a flashback episode of I Love Lucy when Ethel and Mrs. Ricardo were 3 years old and met for the first time. She was that cute, with a floppy bow in her hair and 9 nannies.
Yeah. Nannies. Nine of ‘em.
Mom and Dad had birthed 4 gingersnaps all under 5 years of age that were flying everywhere around the house like orange bottle rockets, and had basically chosen to delegate the child rearing to a baseball team of au pairs. The nannies were at the house from something like 7am to bedtime, which gave Mom more than enough free hours in the day to be fabulous and drink mimosas with her rich husband.
Remember…this was the Las Vegas episode. Swimming pools. Movie stars. And dollar bills instead of toilet paper.
Mom and Dad were oddly hands-off in the kid department and had even put Pageant Coach Georgina Vaughan in charge of Mimi’s glitz career. This was pretty evident when the FedEx man dropped off a new pricey glitz dress and Amanda didn’t even know what some strange looking bow thing was inside a plastic bag. She even put down her cocktail to try and solve the mystery.
Hint: It’s a bow.
But Mom owned her aloofness. She was too busy being fabulous and holding champagne glasses by the stem to be bothered.
Our second contestant was 5 year old Ava and Mom Erica. And a stable of strippers who knew more about hotel amenities than the Travelocity gnome.
Mom and Dad ran Girls Direct To You, which sends strippers to your hotel or motel or toll booth so you don’t have to go through the hassle of putting on your pants and getting a roll of quarters from Bank of America.
For realz. And we got to see them.
The girls were pretty enough as they all wobbled around in stilettos in a room that looked exactly like the office furniture display section at Staples. Granted, my local Staples has homeless people sleeping in the swivel chairs and not girls that you can motorboat at the Sheraton…but you get my drift.
Ava was crazy cute, especially with that big puffy yellow hair bow and matching JLo sweats. She had the kind of cheeks that Grandmas would kill to squeeze and she smiled a lot. (Spoiler Alert: For now.)
Surprisingly enough, Mom saw no problem with Ava chilling out with strippers. None at all, and I didn’t judge. Ava then lifted her leg all the way up to her head and I prayed that Wednesday was not the day the US government decided to start spying on my phone and television records.
The final Ultimate Grand Supreme wannabe should have been pretty familiar to all of you from the last Las Vegas show. Spunky 6 year old Elizabeth and her tight & right Grandma Noni were back. And they had stepped up their game.
Last time we saw Elizabeth, we pretty much saw two of her. As you’ll recall, Georgina had turned another contestant into Elizabeth 2.0 with basically the same dress and the same hair and the same makeup. They might as well have been given the same herding number, since they were even standing back to back in the auction lineup.
But not this time. Kenneth Blake had been hired to give Elizabeth some crazy new hairdos and a fresh coat of paint for every outfit this time around. He even drew up oversized cartoon sketches of Elizabeth’s head like they do at the State Fair to show how fabulous the whole thing was going to be this year.
Kenneth dresses up as Lady Gaga during his spare time, so I guess that means he knows sumthin about sumthin. I guess.
He also did one “OhHellNoGirlOhSnapMissThang” Georgina diss with an eyebrow lift that kinda gave me life and sent me to the bathroom mirror to practice.
A year later, Noni’s hair and face are still smoothly flat ironed and Elizabeth still has about three more years left before that “I’m Perfect” thing gets her slapped right upside the head in study hall. But for now, she’s still cute and has eyeballs that literally bug out of her skull like in a cartoon when an old fashioned car horn gets honked.
Across the board, the Zoo Wear rehearsals weren’t going that well.
Ava was supposed to climb an (…alleged…) stripper lion cage and do stuff but she was afraid of heights, so naturally Mom wanted to push her past her limits and dragged her to the Death Drop Trapeze Academy.
Apparently there’s a fine line between pushing your limits and an induced pediatric stroke, because the poor tiny nugget lost her marbles when they tried to throw her out of a simulated airplane. Time for Plan B.
Little Lucille Ball was going to be dressed as a peacock, so Amanda and Dad put down their stemware and took Mimi to the zoo. After slaughtering some seals and putting on a fur coat, of course.
As Mimi tried unsuccessfully to get the attention of both an unruly peacock and her parents, Amanda felt the need to apply chapstick to her husband’s lips.
That’s when you know you have too much money, when you can pay someone and/or marry someone to put your chapstick on for you. Amanda continued to lube up those lips even as Mimi ran past them and disappeared into the woods for two days.
Maybe a Forest Ranger should be Nanny #10. Just thinking out loud.
Finally, it was Showtime! Or at least going to showtime time.
Since 14 hours a day with 9 nannies isn’t enough time to build emotional independence in four young gingers, Mom and Dad decided that it would be best if the kids travel in a separate vehicle to the pageant this week.
That way the children could learn to survive in the wilderness with only a Driver and some hired help, and nobody would spill a juice box on Mommy’s Louis Vuitton.
Have you ever seen that Lifetime movie where the Mom abandons all her kids in the car and then lets it roll down the embankment into the river? It was like that. But with even more screaming and crying and emotional scarring.
Ava on the other hand, even though she still couldn’t climb up on the kitchen table without getting vertigo, somehow managed a helicopter flight to Vegas. With her little headset on, she totally looked like she was dropping Jack Bauer onto the roof of the White House in that last season of 24. Such a patootie.
Not to be outdone, Noni and Elizabeth snagged one of those monster limos with disco lights and stripper poles and went balls to the wall party bus straight to Vegas, baby.
Noni even busted out a quick bump & grind for our viewing pleasure. From the neck down, Grandma’s still got the moves.
And speaking of. We’re only four episodes in, and already there have been more Nonis and NeNes and Naye Nayes and NoNos than the last five seasons combined. Doesn’t anyone ever call a grandma a grandma anymore? What up wid dat?
(Shout out to my somersaulting grammie, NeNe! Hey, girlfriend!)
Ava screamed out “I am SO rich” and Elizabeth countered with “Best Day Eveeeeeerrrrrrrr!” like she was a preschool Oprah…and then it really was Showtime.
Besides that 14′ harpoon trophy, the winner was also going to get some cash and enough zebra furniture to make any Jersey Girl totally jealous. The prize table alone gave me pink eye.
To keep the traffic moving, Joan Rivers was back as emcee again this year.
Well, actually it was Frank Marino again. But this time he forgot his boy clothes at home and was dressed up like he was ready to throw shade on Fashion Police. He even brought a pair of Joan Rivers QVC readers because it’s all in the details, especially when they make the type on the score sheets so damn small.
Tina Turner, Liza Minnelli, Cher, Britney, Rihanna, Bette Midler, Katy Perry and Diana Ross all found time to duct tape the goods and show up to judge the pageant.
So you knew it was gonna be a party, Squirrel Friend.
After Dad finally realized that Ava was still strapped into the helicopter seconds before he cut her in half with the seatbelt, they got her out with the Jaws of Life and headed into the hair and makeup circus.
Elizabeth brought who I assumed was her highly caffeinated brother and Mimi brought four giant Heads-On-A-Stick, which I totally need now.
They. Were. Awe. Some.
The Beauty portion kind of tanked. Sorry. Mimi forgot to leave the stage. Ava got so distracted by three of the strippers who made the trip with Mom and Dad (…hey…a hotel is a hotel, right?…) that she didn’t know which end was up. Elizabeth had new hair and no mirror image twin, so she was happy and didn’t blink during the entire next costume change.
The Zoo Wear was ferocious, fo’ sho’.
Mimi shook her tail feathers. Ava overcame her fear of tall stripper cages and did a back flip/back splat thing that made everyone very happy. Elizabeth looked like Bindi, that Crocodile Hunter’s kid and gave Safari Realness and Cartoon Eyeball to all the Queens in the house.
It should also be noted that for some reason, Ava’s Dad was dressed up like a bank robber. Not sure what was going on there.
Elizabeth won the whole enchilada, mainly because her party bus was the only vehicle that could handle transporting a freakin’ 14′ trophy back across city limits and not get flagged as an Act of Terrorism.
Which meant Ava did not win.
Attention Makenzie Myers. Sorry, honey. Love you. Mean it.
But the time has come to pass the Tantrum Torch to Ava, because all of your previous Toddlers & Tiaras hissy fits combined (…Nope. Not doin’ it!…) do not equal even one of Ava’s meltdowns.
That kid flipped out.
I mean: Flipped. The. Switch.
Poor Mom looked like she was trying to take a wet cat up a flight of stairs to the veterinarian’s office on free rabies shot day. Good luck with that.
Mimi won something that almost choked her and didn’t fit her head, and then it was all over after a little more AvaSpaz.
The Queens left to unzip it, untuck it and call it a night.
Everyone back in the closet or back in your cage.
Sashay Away. The Zoo is closed.
