Crowned

Last night I had to watch Crowned: The Mother of All Pageants for work and Oh My God how much more bottom is there left on the barrel? It's a beauty pageant but...mother/daughter teams! Yawn.

A better twist is that Shana Moakler (one of the host/judge things) and Travis Barker area apparently back together, which I learned wathing a preview of Crowned while writing Extra at work last week. It is strange watching Moakler critique these women for not meeting this insane, amorphous set of standards of pageantry (or all things"pageant-y", as the host-judges repeatedly emphasized,) I suppose she is meant to be an example of one who does? She certainly projects a vacant poise and confidence as she sits on her throne-y chair explaining it all/nothing. I not knocking her, just trying to understand what exactly about her the contestants are meant to emulate.

Despite the massive amounts of Zinfindel that these women are obviously plied with post-daily challenge, the feminine familial sparks have yet to fly. The best the producers seem able to muster is to add this "twist": "Daughters! you're used to your mothers telling you what to do. Well in this challenge you get to tell your mother what to do! And she has to do it!" Well put up the popcorn, this is gonna get hot. Except they did this for every challenge. And it was a non issue, apart from a couple obviously coached instances of a daughter intoning "I'm in charge now! You have to do what I say!" and the tedious post-challenge interviews when the dead horse was smacked around some more:

Host/Judge: So was it hard to take orders from your daughter because you're used to being the one in charge?
Mother: It was a little hard for me, because I'm used to being the one in charge. But I think my daughter did a great job.

Repeat. Ad nauseum.

The only life in the show come from those producer-induced cracks where either through alcohol or ethically-ambiguous coaching someone gets really mean. Like some blond Mother/Daughter talking about how some of the other teams weren't very pretty, or when blond daughter told her mother that she had "disappointed her" after bungling their "fitness routine" challenge.

Then there was the upsetting part when one obviously plastered woman went off on the mother/daughter who had won the bathing suit challenge that day for having bumps on their noses. She went off about it, and it was nasty and upsetting. It was especially psycho-land as I had noticed no such thing until she pointed it out, and I usually have an ethnic radar for that kind of thing--zone in on the possible Jews and whatnot. The daughter had a slight bump that was visible from certain angles, the mother a bit more so, and the fact that this was so notable was interesting to me. Especially as the vitriol was spewed by the mother from one of the two black teams, the only two teams of color so far as I can tell. I was disappointed as up until this point this woman had seemed saner than most of the contestants, and then she went off on these women for not getting their "problems" "fixed". It was kinda deep, and hard to take on such a horrific show where I had been coping by just going with it and literally LOL-ing every 2 minutes as there was something new and brazenly, shockingly flat-out crazy at least that often.

And then the other black team, who had also come across as disproportionately sane, got cut at the "de-sashing ceremony." Despite the fact that I as actually a bit upset that this team was getting cut, I couldn't help by shriek with laughter as a roomful of contestants in their crappy "fitness routine" costumes wept as the genereality score went DUN. DUN-DUN! Cut to closeup on the oversized, bedazzeled sherars. Cut to contestant staring mournfully at shears. Cut to mother hugging her daughter as she cries. Why was everyone so upset? Had the produces given them a zinfindel eye-opener and then reminded every contestant of every homeless puppy in the world that morning? WTF was going on? Wasn't anyone just psyched to have not been sent home?

I haven't even touched on the silent "cabana boy" who held a platter of gifts from which the winners of the bathing suit competition were to chose. And "choose wisely" as this random bizarro lady whose role in the show I did not understand advised, as (in one of my favorite pieces of dialogue that night,) "Some boxes contain crown jewels. Some do not."

Explains, anyone? If "crown jewels" are an inter-Crowned thing, perhaps exchangable for points or immunity or shear-guards or wtfEVER, this was not made clear.

We never got to find out what exactly "crown jewels" were, as the team got corsages, causing a general boo reaction amongst the more cognisant around the room.

ETC:
E.P.A. Says 17 States Can’t Set Emission Rules Are you fucking kidding me? No, you are not.

Mood Muzik 3 by Joe Budden is really good thus far. I've only heard but a little bit. Killa BH's riff on Kanye's "Big Brother" is hilarious: "I told Joe I brush my teeth with Colgate/next thing I know he brush his teeth with Colgate..."