Trust me. There’s a Government Hair Conspiracy out there that no one ever talks about.
My menthols bring all the boys to the yard like rama lama ding dong, Haters.
Why would anyone give such a young child a cigarette? I mean…look at all that hairspray. They’re lucky she didn’t explode.
Oh. Hell. No.
So not fair. All I got was a juice box and that bitch got a carton of smokes?
Seriously. I can’t stop looking at it. And she’s holding it all wrong, too.
We’ll always be together.
Like Shoo Bop Shoo Wadda Wadda Go Go Go Go Go Juice.
Or something.
The point is…we’ll always be together. At least until there is no more Crazy for us to dwell on, anyway. Then I’ll probably just flake on you.
But until then there’s Toddlers & Tiaras. And if the latest episode is any indication, it doesn’t look like either of us are going anywhere soon.
It was the Beautiful Me: ’50s Pageant/Rockin’ Around The Clock, which took us all like Greased Lightening to a simpler time when roller skating car hops brought you soda fountain specialties and 4 year old girls smoked Lucky Strike unfiltereds on the daycare playground.
I know you miss those days. They were good times.
As perky Pageant Director Angela Smith explained, this 1950′s themed extravaganza was giving away over $10,000 in prizes to some lucky winner. Since the Top Dawg would only score $2,000 and probably not even recoup the asking price tag on her new cupcake dress, I’m not really sure where the other $8,000 was headed. But Angela seemed legit so I didn’t question her math skills.
She gave a quick run down on all the waitresses and malt shop employees that would be showing up for the ’50′s Outfit of Choice (…OOC if you’re transposing this via your Flash Gordon DeCoder Ring…) portion of the contest and how it was all going to go down at the hotel.
I’ll admit to getting a little excited when I first heard 1950′s, thinking that we would finally see some pint-sized Creature from the Black Lagoon or a little Invasion of the Glittered Body Snatchers. Or The Blob.
The Blob would have been waaay cool. But no such luck.
Apparently there was a Happy Days clause buried somewhere in the online registration form, because pretty much every princess was either serving ice cream or holding a Coca Cola bottle hot glued to a frisbee tray. Maybe next time.
Thankfully, though, a few girls thought out of the box. Or tobacco carton.
But I’m getting ahead of myself again.
Our first contestant was 22 month old Ava and her crazy haired Mom Jessica.
Loved. Mom.
Google “crazy pageant mom” and there’s Jessica. But she’s the good kind of crazy, not the flip out and start crying in Russian kind of crazy.
Jessica is that loud woman you always hear at the Walmart snack bar telling a story about what happened the other night when she went to Target. But she never finishes the story because she goes off on 42 different tangents and then does one of those explosive laughs that usually end up with gum flying out of her mouth and landing in that little container of cheese you get with your road salt pretzel.
The only thing bigger than her personality was her hair, which could probably stop a bullet better than those kevlar vests the cops always wear when college kids start tipping over cars after the Super Bowl.
She was In. Sane. But the good kind.
Eyes going everywhere. Hands going everywhere. Hair going everywhere. Even one mosquito going everywhere that Jess was afraid would make the viewing public think her house was all “Nasty Up In Here.”
And how ’bout that ’80s hair? Whoa. There was so much of it that it quite possibly may have been ’80s and the very beginning of the ’90s hair all ratted up together with some kind of NASA sealant that always made it look like she went swimming three days ago and was still waiting for it to air dry.
Seriously. Where do you go to get hair like that? Where is that salon?
I mean…I’m always standing behind these people while they’re digging through their damn fanny packs looking for that 25 cents off breadstick coupon that they swear is in there somewhere, but I’ve never seen them actually getting their hair did. I really need to go there.
Jessica used to do pageants when she was younger, which explained a lot.
You know when they plopped a crown on that head, they didn’t need no stinkin’ bobby pins. That Monster Truck Pull hair probably just latchd on to it like it had a life of its own and didn’t let go until they were home safe and sound.
Grandma Helen was just as whacky, but with a much more manageable ‘do.
Honestly, by the time Gram had finished demonstrating proper top down on your convertible parade waves and shown us how they booty pop over at the Senior Center, I totally forgot the episode was supposed to be about that little kid sitting on the floor.
Love me some crazy, and I loved those two.
At one point, bite sized Ava did slap her Mom in the chops, which they don’t really condone in child rearing books. But the kid was wearing a pretty funky dress that said “I’m So Fabulous, I Cry Glitter” and part of me just really wanted that on a t-shirt for the gym…so I’ll it slide this time.
But no more punching, Miss Thing. Save it for the guys who are gonna beat me up when I hit the locker room wearing my new shirt.
Next we were off to visit with 4 year old Destiny and her Mom Lisa.
Mom explained that, never having done pageants herself as a child, she was absolutely living her dreams through her daughter. Destiny then pig piled on top of that one and explained that she liked pageants because…well…because her Mom said so.
You do the math. Next family, please.
Last stop was to meet 8 year old Emma and Mom Vikki.
Emma hated to practice, loved to watch television and proudly let us all know right from the start that she was internationally known for her Emmatude, which at first sounded like Inner Tube and got me all discombobulated for a second.
Mom was very nice but seemed like she hadn’t completely sucked down the Pageant Kool-Aid yet, because once in awhile she looked like Moms do when they wish their kids had just tried out for the school chorus instead of a hobby that required road trips and 27 plastic bins full of fake hair. Pageants are a lot of work, people.
Especially when you’re chasing your kid around trying to steal the remote out of her grubby paws.
For this pageant, Ava was getting some new photos done by Miss Alicia.
Normally, it seems like all these pageant people do is have their pictures taken. But remembering that little Ava is only 22 months old, I don’t really know how many photos she could have realistically stockpiled so far beyond a sonogram and maybe that inkpad thing they do with the bottom of your foot. So this time it was probably justified.
And again. She’s 22 months. So needless to say, getting Ava to sit up and focus on her Mad Hatter’s Tea Party movie set was a little challenging, to say the least. Imagine trying to prop up one of those bean bag stuffed animals you win at the Fair, except all the beans are either in the head or the butt and the wobbly thing keeps tipping over and throwing donuts at you at the same time.
Luckily Jessica’s hair was so amazing that I was as easily distracted as Ava and didn’t really notice any of the drama.
Not only had Jess driven to the photo shoot with her head out the sunroof the entire time, but she had also somehow managed to face backwards on the highway.
Or maybe she just really teased and smooshed the back of her hair up more than normal. Dunno. But it was amazing. And I loved it.
While Jess was picking up stray donuts, Emma and her Mom were bribing each other at the dress shop.
Vikki wanted Emma to wear a black dress. Emma wanted the pink one. Then Emma locked herself in the dress shop bathroom and Mom tried to remember if she had ever heard of a soprano in the school chorus having this kind of diva meltdown over a lousy cupcake dress.
Over at Destiny’s house, she was rehearsing her We Go Together routine from Grease, and it was right around here that things started getting really good.
Based on the movie’s finale when good girl Olivia Newton John comes back to school all tightly hooched up for John Travolta‘s greaser boy with the best name ever Danny (…insert your own Travolta/Masseuse joke here ________ …) Mom thought it would be a hoot to have Destiny come out smoking a cigarette.
I know, right?
Because if it’s good enough for Sandy, it’s gotta be good enough for a 4 year old. Plus, Destiny’s missing a few teeth, so the filter part would slide right in like it was meant to be there.
You knew how this one was gonna end before it even started, as Destiny kept squawking that she needed the “the real one” instead of having to fake an invisible doobie between her fingers.
Don’t deny Baby her smokes. You know how she gets.
Back at Casa Hair, we got to meet Ava’s Dad Chad, who could not have wanted to be there any less if the building was on fire.
Really nice guy, but you know as soon as someone stops blinking and says they would rather watch paint dry than sit through a pageant…yeah, it’s over.
Thanks for playing, dude. Drive safe.
Jessica spit out some more gum and said “Roll with the ‘Fro” for some reason as Dad left to pluck out his own goatee hair by hair.
Finally it was Showtime!
I was oddly fascinated by the emcee with the spiked up hair and the Adult Contemporary radio station voice. Every time he opened his mouth I wondered if he was going to announce one of the kids, give us a little backstory on the next Barry Manilow CD or tear his own face off to reveal that Mr. Rogers was actually still alive and doing pageant voice overs.
Beautiful Music. For Beautiful People. You’re all special. WWT&T.FM
Hair and makeup went the way it always does. Those scenes have all been pretty interchangeable since the Makenzie Myers heyday ended.
Oh. No. I’m sorry. I’m not doing that.
There are still plenty of meltdowns, but very few compare.
Destiny kept spitting out her soda like Linda Blair. Emma’s makeup artist had requested her face be blurred out like an episode of COPS, which I think was probably due to the embarrassment of being seen in that nasty shirt she was wearing.
The biggest drama was Ava’s hair.
Jessica wanted to use the wiglet, while the hair girl wanted to use the baby fall. I know….drama.
The one thing you don’t F*** with around Jessica is hair, because the bitch knows her stuff and the whole thing was working her last nerve. By the time tiny Ava was hooked up with the wiglet and no ringlets, Jessica was certain that she had stumbled onto an industry-wide pageant conspiracy where hairdressers were intentionally plopping the wrong wigs on the wrong kids to throw the game.
Despite the emergence of an international coiffure espionage ring, all three little girls did well in the Beauty portion. Ava became a little mesmerized by the hot floor lights on the stage and tried to touch them like a burner in the kitchen, but she’s a quick learner.
Hot. Hot. Boo Boo Kitty.
By the time the ’50s Wear rolled around, the paint in Chad’s garage had probably dried and the girls were ready to go.
Ava recovered from the hot stove lights just in time to see the girl before her use the same pink Barbie car that they were just about to hoist up for her own routine. Mom was horrified that the judges would now not only think that her home was full of fruit flies, but that she also has to borrow props from total strangers.
Most likely to save some money for new window screens and a case of Raid, I would assume. Have you been to Home Depot lately? It’s not like they’re giving those things away.
Emma channeled Lucille Ball’s Carmen Miranda dance and was this week’s unlucky recipient of the scary slo-mo music, which always means you just forgot something.
But the night belonged to leather wearing, chain smoking Destiny who came out toking it like Spring Break, much to the shock and awe of the audience and the judges.
For the first time in Toddlers & Tiaras history, the now classic “Sparkle Baby” mantra was replaced with “Don’t Forget To Smoke” as Mom rolled her a fresh one and sent her out on stage.
Hey. Relax. I just embellish…I mean…report it.
Then some kids won some stuff.
Destiny got a Beautiful Me logo ashtray and won the Personality prize. Emma scored Ultimate Face which I always think is a funny title. Ava brought home Beauty Supreme and then threw her crown like a Mad Hatter donut and broke it before she ever got home to see Dad’s paint job.
As Jessica’s massively amazing hair blocked out the last bit of sun and night fell on the ’50s, everyone headed back to their respective mini vans and she left us with one last gem.
Jessica likes to do pageants. No denying it. But she likes to eat even more.
Yeah. Definitely eating first.
Seriously. How can you not love her? And who let that fly all up in here?
A Wop Bam Boom.
