Mariah Carey

Maybe my heart is just soft because the drama of a sudden wedding is supremely soapy, or because Mimi has turned both her bodyguard and her new husband into frantic wranglers of gargantuan umbrellas. But I think she looks fantastic here.

[Photo: Splash News]

How cute is that? I don't CARE if the wedding may have been a giant publicity stunt to help her single, or to remind the world that her video co-star Nick Cannon still exists (I had, as a matter of fact, happily forgotten). She seems happy, and I like my Mariah smiling and divalicious, not tragic and sad and fatigued and speaking in tongues. So I choose to believe it's real, and that in ten years the Carey-Cannons will be cuddling adorable babies and skipping down Rodeo Drive shopping for shoes -- and possibly purchasing and coaching a youth soccer team they can call the Carey Cannons,  because it sort of works -- instead of subjecting the reality-TV audience to copious icky conversations about the functionality of her bowels (Whitney and Bobby, I will never, ever forgive you).

Also, I want that coat-dress. It's WAY better than the one her fellow big-voiced diva Patti LaBelle recently whipped out on-stage:

There are some celebrities you spy out on the street and -- despite the fact that you were once pretty sure you were incapable of being all that impressed by another person (who, after all, just puts her pants on one leg at a time) -- you find that, in actuality, you can barely contain your glee at having actually spotted this crazy, famous, or crazy famous individual in the wild. This reaction generally occurs with the likes of Brad and Angie, Karl Lagerfeld, Madonna, or (for some of us) Britney Spears.

And then there are celebrities you spot out and about and you could not care less. See: Kardashian, Kim.

And then there is Mariah Carey:

[Photo: INFDaily.com]

It was not until I laid eyes on this photo that I realized she is SO in the first group for me. SHE IS SPECTACULAR. She is wearing a cropped, gold lame bomber jacket! And a dress a size too small! And fantastic stripper shoes! And SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT! She is a TREMENDOUS DIVA and somehow I have fallen in love with her in the last week and a half. I do not know how that happened, but there you have it.

Over the last few years or so, something interesting has happened: I have started to like Mariah Carey. I don't know why. I think I must find her amusing or something. It certainly helps that her most recent video features Kenneth the Page from 30 Rock.  And EVERYTHING is better with some Kenneth the Page mixed in. In fact, I think this cover could have used some Kenneth:

So, get ready for me to blow your mind. We're entered an alternate universe, one where up is down, black is white, salt is pepper, Salt is Pepa, and cats and dogs are lying down together. I think Mariah looks cute here in her Sandy Olsson from Grease shiny black leggings-esque get-up, although TECHNICALLY, I think these are more like....pleather skinny jeans:

I know, I know: I've spent the last sixty years (more or less) whinging and whining and wailing and crying and tearing out my hair about the leggings and leggings-esque pant-like items, and don't get me wrong.  This is not what I would have dressed Mariah in, myself, although....you know, she is kind of working it. Let's just say that I just like them better than this:

When I went out and got my mail the other day, I shifted through the usual mish-mosh of bills, and SPECIAL OFFERS entreating me to subscribe to Dry Cleaners Union Weekly, and random coupons for auto detailing, and menus from Thai food places, and magazines, I saw this and thought, "Since when am I getting Cosmo?"

From the pink background, to the classic Cosmo model pose, to the breathless promise of TOTALLY BRAND NEW sex tips (which is a lie. There hasn't been a new sex tip in a magazine in ten years), to Mariah's kind of fascinatingly upscale(ish) yet trashy(ish) tight little frock that appears to have very large rhinestones affixed to it and therefore seems like it might be uncomfortable to sit down in because all you will feel are those stones digging into the delicate flesh of your posterior, I flicked this thing open fully expecting to find a spread on the latest Fun, Fearless Female and was instead greeted by....Glamour.  Surprising. I was relieved to learn that I haven't developed the magazine-ordering version of that disorder people get where they get up in the middle of the night and eat an entire chocolate cake, and that I won't be getting, like, American Cowboy and Inside Triathlon all of a sudden. But, while I'm sure Mariah is pleased with what the photoshoppers, and her trainer, and the dude who does her hair extensions hath wrought, I wonder if "Looking Exactly Like Cosmo" was the best way to go this month.

Is it just me, or is Mariah Carey molding herself into Beyonce Knowles circa 2004, when she was under Tina's tyrannical, hot-pants-obsessed thumb? Even the hair supports Mimi's "Destiny's Stepchild" makeover.

Except, those ladies have moved on -- even Tina Knowles appears to have ceded ground in her seemingly incessant pro-spankies war. So La Carey is a little bit behind the curve, and she just kinda looks silly. I want to whisper in her ear, "We're past wanting to see you prance around in your funeral intimates."  Except given the spandex tube dresses she's been prone to wearing lately, I have a sneaking suspicion she's back to thinking it's 1992, and I'm not sure I want to be the one who wakes her up from that delusion. Could get ugly.

There are some celebrities who show up at events wearing a ceremonial Native American headdress and a white Elvis jumpsuit and you just chuckle and say, "Oh, Cher. You so crazy. Don't ever change."  At some point, these certain fugly-dressing celebs -- the ones who push the limits of crazy dressing until it becomes, basically, mere costumery for their equally crazy personalities -- would disappoint us if they showed up somewhere in something tasteful. What would horrify us in, say, Lindsay Lohan, elicts only delight on someone like, say, Mariah Carey:

Oh Mimi. You're wearing a cropped demin jacket as a shirt, and you appear to have stolen your boots from Chewbacca. Don't ever change.

Somebody please tell Mariah Carey that if you can't decide which stretchy, shiny fabric to wear, the solution is not to wear both. She looks like one of those badly decorated hotel rooms with aggressively pastel fabrics and nondescript "soothing" artwork on the walls. That, or the decor of the downstairs cocktail lounge at Sweet Harmony Castle For Retired Persons somewhere in southern Florida. Old Jim-Bob's heart condition is not going to like that neckline.