Met Ball

JUSTIN TIMBERLAKE: Love the dress, Jessie baby.

JESSICA BIEL: I also love my dress. Thank God we started dating. I get way better party invitations now.

JT: I just have one question. When you walk away from me, is your tan going to leave a mark on my jacket?

JESSICA: Ha ha, you're so funny.

JT: I am, it's true. But that has nothing to do with the problem here. Why are you that color?

JESSICA: Why are you asking me this NOW?

JT: Are you bringing it on down to Orangeville?

JESSICA: Excuse me?

JUSTIN: I am like three seconds away from singing "Tanning it up... with The Barry Gibb Tan Show."

JESSICA: Oh, cute, you're going through your Saturday Night Live greatest hits. Next I suppose you're going to suggest I cut a hole in a box and put my junk self-tanner in the box, and then let you open the box.

JT: That's ridiculous. Why would I say that?

JESSICA: Whatever, Milhouse. I am so breaking your glasses later.

Picture Carrie Bradshaw. Now picture her having fallen on hard times, reduced to starting a burlesque show in her apartment to make ends meet while Big weeps over his crippled stock portfolio. Then add absinthe and stir. Voila! You have Madonna:



I would love to have seen Guy Ritchie's face today when he picked up his morning paper and saw the spread on the Met Ball, likely led off with a large color photo of his ex-wife wearing that. He'd either be horrified, deeply gratified that he may have been what cleaved Madge to her last remaining strands of sanity, or laughing too hard to have any opinion other than wondering where you can possibly go in choosing a burlesque pseudonym once your ACTUAL name is already Madonna. First Sunday School teacher plus name of your local supermarket? Grandmother's name plus anagram of your second husband's surname?



Oh, come on, Madonna, don't walk away now. We were just staring to have some fun. I hadn't even gotten to the part where I'm almost HOPING the taffeta Louis Vuitton tutu is actually bloomers, for fear that you will flash the, er, crack in your armor at every last party guest. Oh well. Another time.

Possibly the best thing that happened to me yesterday was the beginning of the Metropolitan Museum of Art's annual costume ball, because I have never seen a more glorious combination of high fashion and head injuries. It was magnificent. About every ten seconds, Jessica and I would fire another IM to each other that said some close variation of the following: "OH MY GOD, [Insert Celebrity Name Here]. WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?"

We burned many an ellipsis on Leighton Meester here, and used block letters to the point where we should've just hit Caps Lock to keep from scratching the word "Shift" off of that key.



WHAT. IS. THIS? Were it MERELY the dress part, I could perhaps overlook the overall color palette evoking the disaster that ensues when children mix their watercolors. But no. It's not just the dress. It's the red metallic leggings with paisley lace creeping down them like a rare and woeful skin disease, all of which contribute to Leighton looking like she's wearing a matador's living-room wallpaper. Not to mention the twee shoes with ankle bows, and the kind of hair you'd see on a kid making her first communion. Precisely what Leighton is communing with here -- other than possibly a large vat of Elmer's Glue emitting potent brain-scrambling fumes -- I cannot say. So kids, take a lesson: Friends don't let friends drink and dress. And now if you'll excuse me, I need a lot of Excedrin.

Face it: An event isn't really an event unless someone is handing out awards. So you're welcome, Met Ball. You're welcome. Sure, the awards we're handing out this week on NY Mag.com are totally facetious, but aren't those the most fun? For example:

"Best Befuddlement: If life were The Hills, Maggie Gyllenhaal's dress would be the Justin Bobby to our Audrina: Even though it felt wrong, we kept going back for more."

Read more -- including who is in the Least Alluring Rut, who presented the Best Application for AARP Membership, and  who put her Worst Face Forward -- over in the cozy, loving confines of NY Mag.com.

I have to admit that I suspect I kind of don't get Lake Bell. When she was in that terrible movie with Paul Rudd and Eva Longoria,  where Eva Longoria was dead, or something, I just kept thinking that it looked like something that ought to be on ABC Family Channel. At like 2 in the morning. I'm sure she's delightful and probably saves babies from burning buildings and donates all her extraneous organs to the needy, but I don't entirely understand what Hollywood Purpose she serves, other than being kind of The Poor Man's Amanda Peet.  But she's at the Met Ball anyway:

I...don't care for this. I get that the lightening bolts are all very Superhero POP ZOW WHAM BAM THANK YOU MA'AM and all that, but from the waist up, this feels seriously like something an old woman would have worn to a charity function in the 80s -- maybe a fundraiser for a down-on-their-luck rhythmic gymnastics team, since this was clearly inspired by one of their uniforms -- and from the waist down,  like something that old woman's grandchild hemmed in the car with a pair of nail clippers.

Even though she's been at major events in New York City, Camilla Belle is still essentially an up-and-coming starlet to the rest of the world -- we'd seen her at Fashion Week for two years without knowing what her deal was, because 10,000 B.C. hadn't come out yet. And while I think I'd be tempted in her position to show up in something with maximum wackitude just for the hell of it, I still think she made a very savvy choice with this dress.

It's elegant but not boring: The icy color is gorgeous on her, the cut is romantic, and the extra flourishes are unusual without being scary. Now someone just needs to put her in a major movie that doesn't force her to wear glorified loincloths and the aura of body odor.

Maybe I'm crazy, but I rather like this. She looks like an elementary school Valentine, the kind you would make with red construction paper and paper doilies and Elmer's glue. Except, you know, less smeared with fingerprints, graham cracker crumbs, and glue detritus. Presumably. On the other hand, why is her bodice so m-f-ing crooked? I want to run over to her and yank it up and to the right.

KARL: Hustle, pet. Tonight we RIDE.

KATE: I'm coming, I'm coming, I just... people want photos...

KARL: Photos are lens vomit. You pose for ART. It's like I told Victoria: "You are a still life with melons. BE THE BOWL."

KATE: Okay, "art," then. They want me to let them take some art. How does the dress look?

KARL: Like a swirl of pain. Agony on a cracker as painted by a drooling child. But SHINY. I would drink you if you came with a bendy straw.

KATE: Only a bendy straw?

KARL: Do not pester me. There are stupid questions, and tonight the answer is YOU. How is my jacket? Does it gleam like a gun-toting seal?

KATE: Actually, it kind of does.

KARL: LOOK ALIVE. I think he's got real bullets. Do you need your hair, or can the maid have it for a casserole?

KATE: Ha ha, um, why don't we go inside? These shoes aren't super comfortable. I'm not sure about this plastic stuff. My boyfriend always says...

KARL: Pish. Your boyfriend is life's dental floss. BRUSH.

KATE: He's great, though. He just doesn't like the shoes.

KARL: Poison him and make a necklace of his teeth.

KATE: I trust his opinion.

KARL: Trust is a drunk driver's highway, darling. TAKE THE BUS.

KATE: An open bar will help. It MUST help.

We got a lot of e-mails suggesting that, by wearing blue shoes with an orange-red dress, Katie Holmes might have taken leave of either her vision or her senses.

To me, the color scheme actually makes weird sense with the theme of the event. Wonder Woman certainly didn't shy away from mixing primary colors, for instance, and Superman and Spider Man could never be accused of favoring subtle palettes either. What gives me greater pause is the way this is executed: The pointy, high-cut shoes are a bit clunky for my taste, appearing almost like an afterthought and akin to those heavy old pumps of the 80s that her mother probably gave away fifteen years ago, and she's got the same problem Nicole Kidman had at the Oscars, with the long necklace hooking like a noose around one boob. As for the dress, it photographs with a strange plastic sheen --  like Katie had it made at one of those factories that makes the fake grass you put in Easter baskets, and strands of which, if you have offspring who are anything like I was, you will still be finding down the side of the sofa and stuck to the curtains four months later because the aforementioned kids liked to run around the house wearing the green tufts like fright wigs. (True story. And for added drama, Easter baskets sometimes make great fake bonnets. In case you were wondering.)

I think my problem can be boiled down to: I don't love Mrs. Holmes-Cruise in strong reds, or at least, not when she's got such a chiseled, structured haircut that competes with the dress for total domination over her face. That gown is screaming so loudly for attention that the rest of her becomes mute. Which she's probably used to in her family life, given that she spawned one of the cutest celebrity kids in recent memory and is married to a couch-surfing zealot, but which she shouldn't have to put up with when it comes to her wardrobe. Her pretty face deserves better than to be an afterthought.

INTERN GEORGE: Hello, Giorgio. Julia, you look lovely.

JULIA: So do you, George. Happy birthday!

GIORGIO ARMANI: BIRTHDAY! HOW DELICIOUS! LIKE CHOCOLATE FROSTING ON SKIN!

GEORGE: Funny you should mention that, because... I mean, are you WEARING chocolate frosting? You look awfully tan. Like, abnormally tan even for you.

JULIA: Actually you both look sort of unusually brown tonight.

GIORGIO: I AM A CHOCOLATE-FROSTED CAKE OF A MAN! PUT A CANDLE IN MY EAR AND BLOW ME OUT! HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

GEORGE: Yeah, Sarah bought me some bronzer for my birthday. I'm not sure why.

GIORGIO: Because you are PALE! LOOK AT YOU! YOU ARE WASTING AWAY BEFORE MY EYES! SOMEBODY PLEASE BURNISH THE GEORGIE!

GEORGE: Is he talking to himself now, or me?

JULIA: Sometimes I can't tell.

GIORGIO: GOOD BOY!

JULIA: Go on, George. Go with the man.

GEORGE: Pipe down, Roberts. Maybe he's talking to YOU.

GIORGIO: QUICK, SOMEBODY, SQUEEZE SOME SUMMER ONTO HIS FACE! PUREE A YACHT AND SPREAD IT LIKE PASTE!

GEORGE: Oh my GOD, if I put on any more bronzer, people will start calling me Leatherhead for REAL this time.

JULIA: Let's just back away and go get some champagne. We have much to celebrate. You're looking great, everyone's forgotten about your last movie already, and you have an exciting internship that affords you new and wonderful mail-answering, foot-rubbing, and mixology opportunities every day.

GEORGE: Perfect. On three, let's escape. 1....2...

GIORGIO: WHEEEEE!

GEORGE: Close enough. RUN!