Misc. Awards Shows

Oh, Carrie Underwood. I know I spent years and years railing about your habit of wearing formal shorts to perform, but I have to say, I rather prefer the shorts to this:

You're adorable and in great shape and very young. Now is not the time to dress like you're the headliner on Carnival Cruises' Nifty At Sixty Salute to The Golden Girls as interpreted by someone with a long-term Barry Gibb fetish. You are doing your bum a disservice -- which is not to say that your bum looks bad, merely that your bum would probably prefer to be encased in something less agonizingly cheesy. But maybe the front is better:

Note to Sara Evans:

You're allowed to go up a size.

So this got needlessly complicated:

That is a whole lot of curtain-inspired, rumple-y sheeted, fabric-y business going on from the hips down and while I appreciate the concept of a cape -- in any form! so dramatic! so glamorous! who doesn't love superheros! -- I feel like there is no way this thing isn't getting constantly stepped on and caught on door knobs and table corners and walking sticks and other sticky-out-y things (especially after a few cocktails) and therefore accidentally strangling Minogue The Lesser at a rate of approximately nine strangles an hour. Which is approximately seven too many strangles for anyone not starring in some kind of overly-dramatic soap opera, don't you think?

I guess Abi Tucker is an Aussie singer/actress? Our image provider seems to think she's Abbie Cornish, but all things being equal, I'm pretty sure she's relived she isn't. Even if she IS wearing the following:

I think I speak for us all when I say that this is not flattering. Capris made of what appear to be shantung are best saved for your kicky Grandma who's dressing up for shuffle board because she's got her eye on a sexy new resident at the retirement home.  In fact, this whole thing is weirdly stodgy and droopy and matchy-matchy, in a way that feels sort of like it was originally the bridemaid's outfit for a misguidedly faux-casual wedding. Maybe we should be glad the shoes are not dyed to match.

Empirically, I know this is a flesh-and-blood person wearing a skirt over pants.

But I still can't help hoping that this is actually the very latest and greatest in Italian "FRAGIIIILE" leg lamps. That the poor schmo who gets this major award in the mail has a big fight with his wife in his future when he tries to put her on the bedside table.

The bad news: It's not a hallucination. This TV presenter from Down Under IS, in fact, wearing a waistcoat with a skirt that looks like it's been tucked up into the world's only pair of baggy footless panty-hose -- and yes, those hose DO have built-in glittery leg decorations that would be more at home on the set of Xanadu: The Musical. And, tragically, she truly HAS stuffed her feet into crazy metallic slides that the costumer of Back To The Future II would have dismissed as "too ugly to be believably futuristic" right before he or she popped that urine-colored satin cape on Doc Brown.

The good news: She is only on TV in Australia. And while I admit that might not be so hot for our friends in Oz, for me and my weeping soul it's an immense relief.

Thanks to Google, I learned that when discussing his gig as the host of MTV Australia's awards ceremony, Wyclef Jean insisted that it was time for a little levity in all our lives.

That nugget of information explained so, so much. Like, say, why he put the award on his head.

[Photo: Splash News]

I'm not even kidding -- that IS the award, from what I can tell. I guess it's better than him lying about how it's not important and is going to go on his toilet/in a box in the garage/on the floor to be used as a doorstop. But I'm not sure what the antagonistic gestures are in aid of; he's the one wearing a cheap plastic trophy that makes him look like Darth Vadar attempting to go as a wastebasket for Halloween.

Maybe he was just exhausted by all the forced hilarity of the evening. After all, he started things off on the red carpet with something of a bang:

We've been a little hard on Nicole Kidman occasionally, especially how she ALLEGEDLY seems to have jacked up her former face with so much paralyzing Botox. But I have to say, I am not one of those conspiracy theorists who believes she's faking the pregnancy, because a) that's insane; b) this is not Passions, as much as I wish it were and that Zombie Kidman would start showing up at events, although maybe she DID and that explains why Nic seemed a bit bodysnatched the last year or so; c) she looks pregnant in ways that are hard to fake, like her face; d) I can't think of a good reason why Nicole Kidman would need to go through all the rigamarole to fake something like that when she's adopted before, and also, again, NOT INSANE; e) she's got a glow lately, and it really suits her.

I don't really even care about the dress, although that ruby color is fantastic on her. What grabbed me was the loose, flirty, relaxed hair and what appears to be a genuine smile -- those are things she's been missing for a while, in favor of looking really pulled-tight and rigid and wan. Now if only she would get in line behind Nicole Richie at the Los Angeles Clinic For Looking Like Healthy And Lovely Like This All The Time And Not Just When You're Knocked Up, we'd be in business.

Wow, Paula Abdul looks kind of great.

That's a nice, rich color, and I love her hair.

Of course... the sleeve is sliding off her shoulder on one side, isn't it? And the sparkly embellishments look a tiny bit like Spider Man threw a tantrum in her limo.

But it's PAULA, you know? I feel like it's a blessing if she even manages to wander into the correct party, on the right day, using real words in a believable order.

A comment we often make about LeAnn Rimes is, "Well, considering she grew up in the industry, she seems pretty normal, and somehow she got into her twenties without flashing her chamber of secrets all over town."

Here's hoping that was still true once the CMT Awards ended.

Wow, right? I'm also deeply unimpressed with the orthopedic Tin Man clodhoppers she's got on her feet, but mostly, I'm hoping that if LeAnn pulls a chain the scallops will descend like a window-shade down toward her knees so she can sit down without contracting anything.

She went with a similar risque theme during what I assume was her performance, but with a slightly more literal insistence that -- to borrow from Britney Spears -- she's not that innocent: