Misc. Awards Shows

Faith Hill used to be something of a glamazon.

Now she's coming off more like Mad Auntie Fifi, who insists she hasn't aged a day since she played Sandy in her high-school production of Grease; loves to careen around her Palm Springs penthouse re-enacting the major scenes with the doorman; juices anything she can find in the fridge or the canned-goods shelf and drinks it with vodka; leaves a trail of cigarette ash around the house and in the waffle maker; uses half a can of hair spray before noon; and knows the name of every young bartender and maitre d' in town because she likes to show up at their parties and sing "(You Make Me Feel Like A) Natural Woman" on the karaoke machine.

However, somewhere in the middle of all that, I talked myself into wanting to hang out with Mad Auntie Fifi. I mean, I can just pretend to eat the Marlboro waffles, right?

Seriously, every time I see Kat DeLuna, I think she's one of the Cheetah Girls, mostly because I don't actually know who the Cheetah Girls are:

She's not, and I'm sure she'd like to smack me for lumping her in with that crew. I don't know, Kat. I was alive when New Kids On The Block were popular, you have to forgive me these things. Also, please forgive me for this: you appear to have been dressed by a 1950s B-movie Martian with a beanbag fetish. I just thought someone should tell you.

Actress Skye McCole Bartusiak is only 16. Therefore, she wasn't even ALIVE in the 1980s, so I will take a deep breath, empty a bottle of moisturizer on my crow's feet, ad try to give her a pass for not understanding that nobody should ever yearn for that decade except for maybe Andrew Ridgeley.

Being a teenager is a tough in front of the flashbulbs. Clearly Skye is trying some kind of self-expression, so I will be restrained and simply note: Her parents are hosed. No, seriously, their authority is totally compromised. In a year or two this girl is going to want to quit school and backpack through Western Europe for six months with her life savings and a Swedish bartender named Ulf, and when they try to stop her, she will scream, "OH YEAH? WHERE WAS THAT RED LIGHT WHEN I LEFT THE HOUSE LOOKING LIKE A CRACKED-OUT EMOTICON?" And they will be speechless, and off she'll go, returning a year later than expected with a wicked crepe habit and a tattoo that says "BITTE, BABY" on her left boob. I just hope they're prepared.

Jennifer. JENNIFER.

We'd been doing SO MUCH BETTER lately. And you finally darkened the hair! But for what? So you could wear one of Gretl von Trapp's performance dresses over a pair of jeans? Is your fiance planning to carry you out of the venue and up the stairs after you sing about how the sun has gone to bed?

The thing is, I could live with the dress -- it doesn't fit your chest tremendously well, but overall, I'd probably have ignored this completely if you'd just worn it bare-legged. And possibly with a stiletto heel rather than a wedge. But the jeans, J.Lo.Hew? THE NEEDLESS JEANS? Is this how you repay all the people who got you booted out of Fug Madness in the first round by voting for Scarlett Johansson? And why did my TiVo cut off the end of Top Model last night? How is it possible that I am out of Diet Coke? WHY MUST EVERYTHING BE SUCH A STRUGGLE?

Because I don't get Showtime, I don't know much about what Hal Sparks did on Queer as Folk, so I just remember him as the diminutive but smiley guy who hosted Talk Soup after John Henson.

He was cute. And then he turned himself into Gene Simmons.

Nothing against Gene Simmons, who is a legend, and rightly so. But we already have a Gene Simmons and he's very good at being himself. So unless Hal Sparks is going to play Gene in Trump Vodka Presents Donald Trump's Celebrity Apprentice: The Movie, By Donald Trump, he might want to cool it. What works on Gene Simmons looks a bit like "cocktail waiter and low-level illusionist at Jack's House of Magic" on poor Hal here. I'm a little afraid that if he opens his mouth, a prosthetic tongue will tumble out  and get caught in his waist beads.

You know, I'd been wondering what Eliza Dushku has been working on lately, so it's refreshing to know the answer at long last:

She's been moonlighting on the other side of the Phantom Tollbooth as Plussy Galore, by day the  High Priestess of Operational Voodoo and leading Symbols player in the Mathmagician's marching band, and by night the Dodecahedron's nimble mistress. No wonder she didn't have the energy to change her clothes.

If you're trying to decide whether a tight, shiny, stretchy turtleneck is a good or a bad idea, allow Kerry Washington to aid in your pro/con list.

Pro: No chance of a nip slip.

Con: Unsightly, unexpected perspiration in the face of flashbulbs. Am I crazy or does it look like her nipples are sweating?

Fortunately for her, it took me a while to notice that little problem, because I was wholly engrossed in the children's book illustration that is her outfit. I keep expecting The Very Hungry Caterpillar to pop out of that thicket and take a greedy bite out of her skirt.

Kelly, Kelly, Kelly.

Bjork's had an actual face. And illusion netting. And an EGG PURSE. Were you even trying?

So, it seems pants were in short supply at the Brit Awards -- by which I mean, trouser-pants, and not underwear-pants, and it's important to clarify this point because of the great and almost impassable cultural chasm between this mighty nation and our parent country. Apparently when they landed here, "pants" took on a whole new meaning that didn't make it back across the pond, and suddenly merely saying something innocent like, "I'm just wearing pants and a sweater to the bar," became equivalent to dropping a ticking time-bomb of accidental nudism onto the kingdom that begot us. I don't know how we have managed to be conversant with them since. Fortunately, our t-shirt works in both languages; thank God we are fluent in both.

At any rate, leg-and-crotch coverings were  at times absent from the proceedings -- Abi Clancy being one instance and Alesha Dixon of girl group Mis-Teeq being the other.

It's here that Alesha learned that "Brit" refers to the country in which she lives, and not to Britney Spears -- and that, ergo, this ceremony was NOT an homage to the fabric-to-flesh ratio our cherished, troubled singer so frequently employs. I am pretty sure that dress is made of the foil lining from a box of Valentine's chocolates. Would that Alesha had shared those with us instead.

TV personality Fearne Cotton, it turns out, is TECHNICALLY wearing something trouser-adjacent. At first I thought it was a miniscule skirt, but no:

In light of this photograph, it shouldn't surprise you to learn that Ms. "Make Up Your Mind, Please" Clancy is: a) a former lingerie model; b) a runner-up of Britain's Next Top Model, dinged by the judges for being too "glamour," which is essentially UK modeling code for "soft-core porn"; c) a WAG, or more specifically, the on-off G of toothy giant Peter Crouch; d) was allegedly dumped once by Crouch via fax; and e) tried to solidify her career by allowing herself to be taken under the musty wing of professional exhibitionist and gold-plated nutter Janice Dickinson, purely for televisual purposes.

Given all that, it may surprise you that she bothered wearing panties at all. Didn't Janice teach her better than that?