Emmy Awards

Aw, everybody loves General Hospital's Robin Scorpio!

Everyone, that is, except whoever told her this dress would hang fine if she just cinched the hell out of it. Listen, Robin has enough problems, what with the HIV and that whole befriending-an-alien thing in 1990, and the fact that both her parents have been presumed dead at one point or another in her young life. She really doesn't need people coming up to her on top of all that and gently asking if she's got a hip tumor. Which you can tell the guy behind her desperately wants to do, because he probably also loves Robin Scorpio and just wants her to be healthy and happy. Clearly, he was not there when she was trying on gowns.

It's hard out there for Days of our Lives' Caroline Brady. I mean, the woman was poisoned and died in a church while praying, only to be secretly transported to some terrible, creepy Island of Misfit Characters, where all the "dead" were secretly alive and, in some cases, watching their loved ones back in Salem having sex with other people. As you do.

Unfortunately, having an alter-ego with a rough life doesn't explain why the actress who plays her is wearing a giant scarf that looks like she bought it at IKEA under a sign that said, "HJÅARTEN: $5.99."

Maybe -- even though actually watching the whole Fake Island fiasco was as painful as ripping off my own feet -- the actress secretly yearns for those glory days of listening to Dr. Marlena Evans Brady Black Whatever sob about John and Kate getting it on all over poor faux-dead Doc's sensibly decorated penthouse apartment, if only because it gave her something to do other than pull pints at the Irish pub as a glorified extra. Indeed, perhaps Peggy is sick of dying of boredom now that Caroline is back behind the bar, and would prefer to die of something else. Heatstroke, perhaps? That's the only sense I can make of pairing a long-sleeved ankle-length dress and panty hose with a thickly knit ode to Twister... on a Los Angeles afternoon in June.

So come on, Victor Kiriakis. Take some pity on your bored, overheated former paramour. Put your right hand on red.

Nadia Bjorlin played Chloe on Days of Our Lives, which I watch only sporadically (like when Marlena gets possessed by the devil), but I do recall a rather fantastic couple of weeks when she was skulking around town wearing a cape and a hood, so as to disguise the terrible, terrible disfigurement she'd suffered in some kind of terrible, terrible incident that I didn't catch (car accident? acid bath? tragic oil rig explosion? freak avalanche? big fight with her evil twin? attacked by birds? lava thrown in her face? I don't know).  However, as far as I know, she's not really on the show anymore, so I'm not sure why she was at the Emmys this year:

Other, of course, than to provoke her former coworkers to come up to her and threaten to unwrap her like one of the strawberry bon-bon candies in a Hickory Farms gift basket.

Like Heather, I love Ellen DeGeneres. Just  last week I found myself watching Mr Wrong, even.  (It's not good, in case you were wondering, and yet I watched the whole thing.) I love her AmEx commercials. I find her talk show charming, and it never fills me with any kind of rage, the way that Oprah sometimes does (like, you know, the four or five times she told everyone to read The Secret). I would never want her to show up at any event all trussed up in a frock. It's just not her. And yet, I'm not entirely sure THIS is her, either:

While Portia's working her high-waisted pants nicely, I'm concerned that Ellen's been spending her weekends in Headwaiter School with Constantine. I'm not entirely sure what kind of cuisine her establishment specializes in, but I suspect there's a portion of the evening where twirling plates are balanced on sticks. And if there's anything I know in this crazy, mixed-up world, it's that Ellen DeGeneres is too good for prop comedy.

While watching the Daytime Emmys on Friday night, I remarked, "Mario Van Peebles is really aging well! He looks GREAT." And so he does (he's 50!). However, I was so taken by his youthful face that I didn't notice until this morning that he seems to be holding on to the misguided trappings of youth sartorially, which isn't working out nearly as successfully as his skin care regime, whatever it may be. To wit, a sheer gray shirt:

The last time I saw a sheer shirt on a man who was not appearing in the International Male catalog, it was on a file photo of Michael "Sorry About the Daddy Issues, but at Least You Got 'Daughter to Father' Out of It, Right?" Lohan, which I just spent twenty fruitless minutes looking for.  Needless to say, Michael Lohan is the last person that anyone ought to be imitating in any way, and I hope this doesn't mean that the wee Van Peebleses are going to start driving into trees.  However, it could have been worse:

CHRISHELL STAUSE (right): God, I'm cute.

MELISSA CLAIRE EGAN (left): I'm so excited! It's my first Emmys!

CHRISHELL: Yeah, I can tell. I mean, you're LOVELY and all, but look, even that weird muse in Xanadu with the penis hairdo would dismiss your dress as "too disco."

MELISSA CLAIRE: You think so, Vegas bride?

CHRISHELL: Hey, at least I look kind of cool and sexy, and not like somebody gift-wrapped me after burning a copy of Saturday Night Fever and then snorting the ashes. And... I'm sorry, but is that a front panty-line, or is your dress just trying to mess up your photos?

MELISSA CLAIRE: This all seems very uncalled for from a girl who plays the once-unloved, now kind of wussy daughter of Janet From Another Planet on All My Children.

CHRISHELL: Janet is just misunderstood.

MELISSA CLAIRE: She's a psychotic baby-napper who threw her twin down a well; somehow convinced her twin's husband to fall in love with her after the sister went blind, got her sight back in A Christmas Miracle, and then eventually died; and then killed him years later and threw him in a deep-freezer.

CHRISHELL: You're so judgy. And shiny. Did you grease up your chest?

MELISSA CLAIRE: At least MY character is LOVED.

CHRISHELL: By who? Ryan? Please. He was married to a girl named GREENLEE, for God's sake.

MELISSA CLAIRE: So? He's the hero of the show. Every single script makes sure that somebody says so.

CHRISHELL: Well, he should have saved you from that dress.

MELISSA CLAIRE: Whatever. If Ryan's the stud then I am the AMC sweetheart. Suck on THAT.

CHRISHELL: Just don't come crying to me when your tube top starts to chafe. Smile for the camera!

MELISSA CLAIRE: Yeah, you won't smile so wide when I remind you that I am BIG TIME because I was one One Tree Hill once, as a cashier or something... so take THAT.

CHRISHELL: Pshaw. If Chad Michael Murray didn't try to propose to you, it doesn't count.

MELISSA CLAIRE: ... Dammit.

When I was watching the Daytime Emmy Awards the other night -- look, we all know I love soaps, and we all know I REALLY love awards shindigs, so it was a pretty marriage of my favorite things -- I did a double-take when Ellen DeGeneres won for best talk show host. Not because I didn't think she deserved it; rather, it was because when she got up to accept the award, she walked past what appeared to be a giant cake, and high-fived it.

My first thought was, "Wow,  I love Ellen. I mean, if that woman is hanging out with person-sized baked goods, clearly I need to be in her entourage." Then I thought, "No, her Ellentourage. HA!" And then I realized I was a) making bad jokes out loud while totally alone, and b) sitting on the couch on a Friday watching an awards show without any of my bitches around, all of which made it even SADDER when I noticed that the aforementioned cake was not a delicious dessert treat but, in fact, one Miss Tyra Banks.

The good news is, Tyra has found a way to conceal the wig tape.

The BETTER news is that if Lindsay Lohan keeps wetting the bed all over her once-promising career, pretty soon they'll reunite so that Tyra can recycle this dress as the living doll in Life Size 2: Sleeping Booty.

Unless this was a challenge for the next season of America's Next Top Model, wherein the girls had to learn what it takes to be Tyra by hiding under her gown. That skirt could conceal at least ten model-sized people -- nine and a half if she has a fake plus-size person in the group. And that is why we love Miss Tyra. Why wear enough dress for one person when you could wear one the size of Luxembourg?

I don't know why this woman is holding an Emmy.

.

Her only credit, as far as the all-seeing eye of IMDb can tell me, is that she was on Survivor. And that didn't win. But more importantly, why is she at the HBO Emmy party wearing a harness and a dirty wedding dress?

Maybe she's pitching a new show to the network. Maybe it's called 'Til Death Do Us Art, about a morbid performance artist who agreed to marry her fiance while bungee jumping, and then decided that she didn't have any interest in yoking herself legally to a jackhole who wanted to get married in a wet suit while swinging under a bridge. So she runs -- through a wood, and I suspect a barn -- and vows never to remove her dress, so that others might see her as a living work of art denouncing hasty commitments. And jackholes. And harnesses. Billed as the anti-Big Love, it will feature her trying to convince people not to get married. Courtney Love will ultimately star, of course, since this getup is basically inspired by Hole's first hit album. And Scott Bakula will make his triumphant return to television as the dry cleaner who follows her around begging her to please WASH that damn thing before it starts to smell. Her old art-school T.A. whom she saves from a wrong-headed wedding to a socialite before falling in love with him herself? Why, Bill Pullman, of course.

Can't wait. But I don't know that wearing your pitch to a post-awards party is the best way to get it greenlit.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE: Office Worker Overly Inspired By Goldenrod Copy Paper

LOS ANGELES -- British actress and known tanorexic Lucy Davis, best known for playing Dawn on The Office, has been upgraded to "Tanorexia Threat Level: Severe" after accidentally tragically falling into a vat of iodine prior to walking the red carpet at the Emmy Awards.

Observers close to Davis called the incident a ghastly affair.

"It was a ghastly affair," one of them said, on condition of anonymity. "If she weren't my daughter, I'd have laughed and laughed, and laughed some more, but instead I had to pull her out."

Davis, 33, was once a nice, normal color, as exhibited here in a photo from 2005.

But sources say Davis became a self-tanning addict since her success on the UK comedy; recently, when her concerned family confiscated her spray-on bottles and had her barred from Mystic Tan, Davis tried to take matters into her own hands.

The results of her attempted tanicide were devastating.

Look, we're not going to pretend that Candice Bergen isn't totally rad.  Who didn't love Murphy Brown  (I myself often think of the episode in which it is revealed that Faith Ford's character, Corky Sherwood-Forrest, keeps a diary in which she records what she wears every day. The joke totally worked, but at the same time, I feel like this is not the worst idea anyone ever had)? Or, if you're too young to have watched Murphy Brown -- therefore making us feel ancient -- who didn't watch her guest spots on Sex and the City and think, "jeez, that older lady is a babe. I hope I age that well. "  She's a silver fox, all right? AND YET ("and yet" being the watchword here lately, as Heather so wisely pointed out earlier):

I love, love the color of the skirt, and Bergen can rock the collared shirt like no one else, but oy! The belt! It's so "Hey there! I'm your really cute and spry Grandma who wears jeans and lives in Arizona and grows a lot of herbs and just bought a wagon wheel coffee table for kicks!"  But although that Grandma is awesome, she would never wear that belt to the Emmys. She knows better. And so should La Bergen.