Brown
Ribbon for Bestiality
As someone who has not only been to the Roy
Rogers/Dale Evans Museum in Victorville, Californ-i-yay, but
took to bed for a week following the passing of Dahling
Roy, Mr. Diva can verify that Val
Kilmer's co-presenter for the Cowpokes in Heaven montage was
probably of Trigger's bloodline. How touched Mr. Diva was that Val
outed himself during this lovely sequence as having a very special
relationship with ranch animals. We must forgive Val his sheepishness
(buh-duh-boom) as the camera caught his hooved companion cuddling,
nuzzling, and engaging in light but affectionate titplay. Mr. Diva
has also learned that, with the newfound moneymaking chic of costume
drama, Val is the current front-runner to play Catherine
the Great.
Jordan Almonds and Crepe Paper!
Even the prodigious mall-trolling skills of Los Angeles County
teenagers will be tested by the dearth of finery as they scour
Deb Shoppes for promwear.
There are no gowns left on the racks, due to the frenzy of demi-starlets
who have snapped up every last pastel, spaghetti-strapped cleavage-masher
for the Oscar gala. Mr. Diva marveled at bandeau, Empire, and
even disco necklines; at lavender, pink, powder blue, butter yellow,
mint, and dozens of other cookie-icing colors; at hip puffs, poufs,
and trains that made even the most emaciated asses look like landing
strips for Cessnas. If good sales help is demonstrably difficult
to find, professional escorts are more so, as evidenced by the
profusion of males
rented for the evening who didn't even have the class to present
their dates with wrist corsages of orchid and baby's breath. Mr.
Diva cannot fathom this pandemic flipping of the bird to Hollywood
glamour, but suspects it has something to do with Y2K paranoia
and the residue of radioactive ions from nuclear testing in the
Sonoran Desert.
This Does Not Make You an
"It" Girl!
Mr. Diva, whose fashion radar is so attuned that it occasionally
scares even him, was glad to see a return to the go-to-hell tragic
glamour of the Silent
Era. Witness the mothballed dresses worn by Meryl
Streep, Geena
Davis, Annette Bening, Kate "Mrs. Steven Spielberg"
Capshaw, Emily
Watson, Renee Zellweger, and everyone else who's ever seen
dahling Carol
Burnett's genius impersonation of Sunset Boulevard-era Gloria
Swanson. Mr. Diva has recently been obsessed with silent-screen
goddesses, and now he knows why. For if patterning one's life
after a coked-out-of-your-skull, sexually omnivoracious, financially
ruined melodrama queen isn't heeding cosmic guidance, Mr. Diva
doesn't know what is. Of these Fortuny-pleated
artifacts, Mrs. Spielberg's was the least unsuccessful, proving
once and for all that Steve is a tit man with the abundance of
funbag gathered with reasonable accommodation into her groaning
bodice. Like all good Hollywood wives, Mrs. Spielberg also advertised
that she is redecorating her dining room, sharing with us all
that the draperies, reincarnated as a ball gown, are mold green.
The Three Horsewomen of the
Apocalypse!
Neither Celinestopheles nor Mariahzebub
fooled anyone in virginal white outfits of such shocking inappropriateness
that they made the preponderance of virginal pink almost believable,
though not acceptable. Mr. Diva had thought the worst had passed
after the pre-show unveiling of Celinestopheles' tribute to the
Bionic
Woman.
Even Melissa Rivers, coached by her E! Television Network co-anchoring
beard, was aware that Jamie Summers never redundantly flipped
up one rim of her cowboy hat to expose her good ear. But then
Whitney Houston, the third prong of this postmodern troika of
evil, joined Mariahzebub to co-tonsil "When You Believe." Whitmodeus
attempted full Billie
Holiday drag with marcelled hair, bias-cut white satin, and
vintage earrings from Walgreen's. Mr. Diva is certain that it
was the spirit of Billie HerSelf who yanked the camellia from
Whitmodeus' leathery ear, for Mr. Diva later found the flower
floating in the toilet of the ladies' room stall that Whitmodeus
shared with Anne Heche. (Internet
auction to be announced.)
Mr. Diva noticed several savvy chair-warmers dive for cover when
Mariahzebub and Whitmodeus locked hands, throats open and yielding.
It was a reasonable assumption that these two Horsewomen of the
Apocalypse were about to self-consume in a sulphurous cloud of
swirling black malevolence, inaugurating Armageddon without any
promise of the rapture. However, anyone who turned off their seat
mikes escaped unscathed if not unharmed, and the magical properties
of white and the superior spiritual shield of couture triumphed
again.
Strike
a Poseur!
How fortunate that we were subjected to only one egregious production
number. How unfortunate that Debbie
Allen probably is gonna live forever, for it is true that
people see her
and cry. Debbie brought her unique vision to the Dorothy Chandler
stage via five out-of-shape arhythmic dancers who will never work
again, interpreting the best score nominees with a melange of
flamenco, ghost-in-the-machine, Flatley-esque
upright seizure disorder, and stoned teenage onanist in the bedroom
with the door locked. Ms. Allen burst into tears of pride as the
production number ground to a halt, even as we in the audience
were so relieved we wept, not even caring about smudging our mascara.
Place Gwyneth's Oscar Next to Her
Horse Show Ribbons!
It must be awful to be Blythe
Danner these days. Does she applaud her
child's success even as she reviles it? How much guilt does
she feel even as she wishes to feed her own flesh and blood to
wolves? Mr. Diva begs Blythe to relax and enjoy the venom for,
as we all know, envy is the only pure emotion.
She's Not Ready for Her Close-Up!
Goldie
Hawn's latest facelift hasn't fully healed, as evidenced by
the devotion paid her by a stillwatch camera monitoring the exact
tensile strength of the sutures for a worldwide audience of millions.
Winners
Collect!
Several of Mr. Diva's numerous friends joined him at his bungalow
at the Beverly
Hills Hotel for a pre-show gathering, armed with barbs and
fortified by an open bar. Crisp hundreds changed hands all around
after an evening's worth of even-money bets:
- Whatever
happened, Gwyneth
Paltrow would sob.
- Geena
Davis is too much of a carny act to function as the sideshow
barker.
- Matt
Damon and Ben Affleck are having a tiff.
- Whatever
happened, James Coburn would keel over in a fit of narcolepsy.
- Roberto
Begnini skipped his lithium for the night.
- Everyone
who applauded Elia
Kazan seemed spineless. Everyone who refused to applaud
Elia Kazan seemed like a sourpuss. Whatever happened, Elia Kazan
wouldn't know the difference.
Best Performance by a Fashion Victim!
There were so many nominees in this coveted category, and all
are richly deserving of the award. With the exception of Katherine
Hepburn (gardening clogs for evening, 20 years prior to dahling
Martha
Stewart) and Barbra Streisand HerSelf (peekaboo Scaasi peignoir),
there has never been a tie in this category. As with all other
Oscar races, the real honor is to be nominated.
The nominees are:
-
Cate
Blanchett, for revering Hallmark
Gold Crown store chic so earnestly that she wore their entire
Easter card wardrobe decoupaged onto coordinating gift wrap,
and for smearing her childbearing lips with red sealing wax.
-
Celinestopheles,
for saluting '70s retro chic without the sense to know that
the buttons on a tuxedo jacket face front.
-
Anne
Heche, for taking lesbian chic so seriously that she shopped
for her Oscar gown at Paragon
Sporting Goods, and for advertising her and Ellen's sexual
polemics via that hideous turd mark above her drooping breast.
-
Helen
Hunt, for taking heroin chic to such an extreme that she
didn't even bother to unspackle the residue of her windowpane
acid and for wearing a gown exactly of the kind Mr. Diva used
to make for his Barbies
out of old hankerchiefs and Christmas tinsel.
And the winner is…
Best Performance by a Fashion Triumph!
Just as Mr. Diva wonders why anyone would want to win a Supporting
Actress Oscar, Mr. Diva wonders why anyone would want to win in
this category. Nonetheless, just as the Academy must grant tedious
technical awards to a squad of AV geeks made good, so must we
note the following nominees:
-
Ellen
DeGeneres, who proved again that males are the dreamier
half of the species in an unconstructed Richard Tyler tux.
- Whoopi
Goldberg, whose succession of outrageous Ray Aghayans and
trillions of dollars worth of ice seemed extreme even by Mama
Diva's exacting and alcohol-fueled standards.
-
Sophia Loren,
whose Armani was wise enough to play second fiddle to the eye-popping
cleavage that, with rare exceptions, was absent throughout
the evening.
-
Catherine
Zeta-Jones, whose garnet Versace epitomized whatever glamour
remains in Y2K.
And the winner is…
-
Keiko Ibi,
who transcended several rules of elegance in a lilac (no pastels,
rule #1) confection studded with tissue paper roses (not too
fussy, rule #3) and carrying an Easter Basket from the April
1998 issue of Martha
Stewart Living (everything handmade, but not by your own
hands, rule #6).
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