Fug Madness

(2) SHARON STONE vs. (16) COURTNEY PELDON

This could've been the matchup that reunited Sharon Stone with her would-be protege, Lindsay Lohan. Instead, she gets a sartorially deranged munchkin whom we've decided we want Sharon to adopt. Why? Do you even need to ask?

Sharon would be all, "THAT'S DRAMATIC, CHUTNEY, AND THE RED BRA STRAP IS AN INSPIRED CHOICE. BUT IF YOU INSIST ON WEARING PANTIES, YOU SHOULD STAY AWAY FROM ONES THAT LOOK LIKE A SUNBURN."

Also, pink should be deployed very carefully, and on special occasions. Like this one:

Despite all our Hot Technical-Difficulties Action on Friday, we managed to whittle the field down to the Elite Eight -- or, "Round 4," if you prefer. It was rife with drama, typos, and memory lapses (like when we said, "Click here to download the bracket again," and then forgot to attach the bracket), but such is Bracketology Madness. You start, your brain gets scrambled along the way, and it spits you out after the final game feeling exhilarated while also craving a really long nap.

For REAL this time: If you haven't downloaded the bracket and you'd like to here it is: Download Fug_Madness_2008_bracket.pdf

Now I present: The Fug Madness 2008 Elite Eight, courtesy of YOU. We'll have two games today, and two on Tuesday, which determine who "wins" each bracket and moves on to Thursday's Final Four.

(2) SHARON STONE vs. (16) COURTNEY PELDON -- Monday, March 31

Juliette Lewis only managed 36 percent of the vote against the formidable crazy that is Sharon "Rapid Beaver" Stone. For her part, Courtney piled up 60 percent of the vote in knocking off Fergie and continuing her swath of destruction through the shambles that is the Cher Bracket. This is her toughest test yet; we think Sharon will put up one hell of a fight, and not just because of her new nickname.

(1) POSH vs. (6) BEYONCE - Tuesday, April 1

Fab. Just fab. Beyonce bested Jennifer Lopez in a little warm-up Battle of the Divas by a narrow 53 percent to 46 percent. So while J.Lo returns to her absurdly ornate nursery and cuddles the cute babies and Marc sups on some O-positive for energy, Beyonce plows forward to face off with Posh. Mrs. Beckham got out to an early lead and lost a bit of her edge in the late going against Sienna Miller, but nonetheless emerged Victoria-ous (HA! Except, remember what I said about brains being scrambled? Can you TELL?) with 57 percent of the vote.

(1) MISCHA BARTON vs. (3) PARIS HILTON - Monday, March 31

In the end, poor little Brittany Murphy was no match for Paris Hilton -- which might be a good thing, or might be sad, because winning something is always fun, even if it's a contest about how bad your clothes and alleged-maybe-suspected lip injections are. Paris garnered the support of 83 percent of you, and goes on to face Speidi-killer Mischa Barton, who took 71 percent of the vote in dispatching the queasy-making Hills duo.

(1) CHLOE SEVIGNY vs. (2) BAI LING - Tuesday, April 1

Wow. Just wow. But let's not get ahead of ourselves: Chloe made it here by beating the impressively frightening, scantily clad Phoebe Price with a 69-percent mandate, and now gets to face off against the impressively frightening, scantily clad Bai Ling. Tara Reid was no match for Bai, and slunk home with just 17 percent of the vote tucked into her underwear.

(1) POSH vs. (5) SIENNA MILLER

FABULOUS, THIS MATCH-UP. Our gal Vicks might even call it major. A battle of the Brits. But can Posh fight off the young upstart?  Sienna is strong in the ways of the fug. But is she this strong?

Remember those halcyon days before Posh took out the extensions because David kept yanking them out in the heat of the moment? These are good times -- with Posh frolicking around Los Angeles, pretending to care about Scientology a little, but mostly dressing up Katie Holmes like a doll. But these were good times too, at the height of her WAG-dom. Posh, in other words, is kind of a classic.

And then, like Maude, there's Sienna:

(2) BAI LING vs. (3) TARA REID

Oooh, boy. I love you guys. Look what you did! You created a Sweet 16 Clash of the Titans -- a strange, sloppy nutjob whose raison d'etre nobody can quite discern, and a strange, sloppy nutjob whose raison d'etre nobody can quite discern. It's poetic.

Indeed I'm inspired. This can mean only one thing: It's haiku time. Which is a lot like Hammer time, but with better pants.

Left photo: Splash News]

Tragic formalwear.
What's worse: polka-dot bra top
Or refried prom dress?

Two boobs and their boobs.
I want to give them sweaters.
Knit, Intern George, knit!

If that's them dressed up,
I'd hate to see them relaxed.
Wait: I spoke too soon:

(1) MISCHA BARTON vs. (12) SPENCER & HEIDI

I never predicted that Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag would make it this far, but then I figured out what must be happening: Spencer is paying his friends to vote, because he has never met a printed version of his name that he didn't think looked pretty, and Heidi's family are voting because they hate him  (seriously, they couldn't even really hide it on The Hills -- any time they were gazing silently in his direction, they looked like they wanted to shove Spencer's stupid phone up his nostril and then light it on fire).

So, just to get on Spencer's nerves, I'm not even going to use his picture. TAKE THAT, PRATT.

Instead let's just remind ourselves that Heidi paid a lot of money to turn into a bad mannequin version of her old, spunkier self. Her lips in that premiere episode were hypnotically puffy. Every time she pursed them together I kept expecting them to pierce and deflate. Heidi is also a pretty boring dresser -- it's all sleeveless low-cut dresses that hug her silicone melons. Yawn. We get it. Call Pamela Anderson to see if she's cleaning out her closet any time soon.

Mischa Barton is the opposite. When she's not feigning an interest in Keds, she's all about wearing clothes that droop around her frame and make it look like she's wilting under them:

(2) SHARON STONE vs. (11) JULIETTE LEWIS

This ought to be interesting. We're of the mind that there are two sorts of fugs. One is the tragical misguided Tara Reid-y kind, where you're just like, "oh, HONEY. NO." And then there's the over-the-top, wackadoo crazy diva kind, where you're more like, "oh, my God. No. AND YET YES."  One could argue that at least one of these women is the latter, and possibly both.

The no-questions-asked diva, of course, is Sharon Stone, who is SO GLORIOUS that I must put her after the jump (you MIGHT be able to see her nipples a bit. Not in a way that your boss will come swanning past your desk and then do a swift, angry U-turn, asking you loudly, "ARE THOSE NIPPLES?" but rather in a way where you think, "are those...oh, Sharon."):

Due to daylong technical problems that we've since resolved -- yay! -- the Madonna bracket didn't go up on time, and then briefly appeared with a malfunctioning jump post. To compensate, we'll leave the comments and the voting open through most of Friday. Thanks for your patience! Comments are working on all other brackets again also.

(2) JENNIFER LOPEZ vs. (6) BEYONCE

We love it when divas collide. And NOT FOR THE FIRST TIME:

THAT'S not an awkward photo. For the love of God, I can understand why you might want to ice each other out, but WHY IGNORE BECKS? He's so beautiful. Give that man a little face time. That being said, both of our contestants look lovely -- if affected by RAGING BITCHFACE -- here, if you can ignore the fact that Beyonce's dress seems to have a tail. In fact, as one of our commenters noted earlier in the tournament, both of these woman are actually naturally very beautiful. And yet they chose to wear items just as:

(1) CHLOE SEVIGNY vs. (13) PHOEBE PRICE

Charo would probably be very proud of Phoebe Price. Not necessarily the fame-mongering, famous-for-being-fugly-and-that's-really-it part -- I mean, really, call us when YOU get a Geico commercial, Pheebs -- but rather for the part where Ms. Price teases up her hair and dresses like she popped out of a basket full of plastic grass at the Easter Bunny's bachelor party.

[Photo: Splash News]

We suspect Phoebe dreams of discovering that she is Charo's long-lost daughter, much in the way Posh affectionately refers to Joan Collins as her real mother and Blair on Gossip Girl reimagines herself as Audrey Hepburn reborn. Still, we like to think any offspring of Charo's would rather shave her head and wear a muumuu than stand around desperately holding up magazines in which she is featured, trolling Robertson Boulevard day in and day out, and telling the paps to credit her as a "model" -- which I suppose she is here, of lingerie, although it's a job she accepted without it being offered.

Come to think of it, though, Chloe is no stranger to Charo-ism herself. Not only is there this shredded affront to the mighty zebra, but there's this:

(3) PARIS HILTON vs. (15) BRITTANY MURPHY

Well, I'm about out of material. We weren't expecting that Brittany Murphy -- one of the last people to crawl into the brackets, to be honest -- would make it this far. In fact, we weren't even picking her to win that Round One clash against Gwen Stefani, who is not tremendously far off from Chloe Sevigny in terms of having her personal style drilled into us as Very Advanced, and in fact Unimpeachable, even when it looks pretty damn impeachable and unpeachy to the naked eye. Gwen versus Paris would've been pretty sweet. As it is, B.Murph and her Lips Of Bad Judgment sit in this slot, and the well of fun fuggery is running dry. This is the best I can do:

Yeah, it's sort of weird -- bad hair extensions, and shoes that prompted Jessica to think, from a very large distance, that Brittany was roller-skating into a fashion show -- and whatever she did to her face is still a problem. But other than this and the other outfits we've showcased, we're out of ideas here. Which isn't to say she can't mount a charge; just that the poor kid apparently should've reconsidered going anywhere at ALL in the month of February, because so far those outings have been keeping her afloat here in the Pacifug Ocean and we're sure she'd rather go moor the S.S. Restylane somewhere else.

For her part, Paris's stank wardrobe has already dispatched with two of her friends and/or favorite props -- Elisha Cuthbert, then Kimberly Stewart -- and I am now wondering why she and Brittany here don't hang out more often. She and Benji could double-date with Brittany and her maybe-former-check-kiting-husband Simon Monjack (which totally sounds like something you would order on top of a hamburger, as if he was trying to come up with an alias in the dairy aisle of the supermarket and a packet of Monterey Jack caught his eye), and talk about all their favorite weaves and mascaras and pieces of bling.

Like this one:

(5) FERGIE vs. (16) COURTNEY PELDON

 Okay, so it turns out Peldon is a tough competitor. Who knew? We all thought she was sort of a hilarious mascot, but it seems she is also A FIGHTER. Miss Fergie Ferg should put up a good fight, though. I mean, look at her:

It's like if Hermione and Miss America had a baby and forced it to become a stripper. And then forced it to join the Girl Scouts. And then made it a Pink Lady. And then talked it into modeling for Cost Plus's line of accessories. And then made her into a total douchebag. Oh, wait -- sorry, that's Chad Michael Murray. Anyway, it's been a LONG HARD ROAD for Fergs, and many was the night that she was put away wet.

On the other hand, this IS this: