IT'S ON . . .

I'm watching the Miss Universe Pageant, broadcast live from Quito, Ecuador. I've already had several glimpses of The Donald's hair, and his accessory Me-laaaaaaaaah-ni-ahhhhh. I've endured the opening pageantry, where each woman takes the stage in her native dress (or something akin to it ... or not). I've even endured a wretched performance by Gloria Estefan, whom I normally love, but whose rhythm, vocals and mikes were totally off tonight. I can hear her reaming out the Miss America/Miss Universe organization heads all the way from my couch. But now, onto the good stuff: the bitchy, totally useless and shallow commentary that really should be shared via phone with the C.O.S., as per our college and immediate-post-college days:

9:30pm: The Final Fifteen
East Asia gets totally shut out of the Final 15. Wah. C'mon, my fellow yellows! Represent!

9:45pm: Evening Gowns
MISS PUERTO RICO: Her head is definitely too small for her body. The dress engulfs her. And her tiny little head.
MISS NORWAY: I'm not into the messy blond hair thing. You have hairdressers armed with hairspray. USE THEM.
MISS TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: Nice dress that harkens back to medieval England. Eh.
MISS ECUADOR: The dress is just ugly. I can't look at it. And I think she's cross-eyed. And there's something overly strong about her jaw. It scares me. And her teeth are too big. She can't close her mouth. She keeps trying, but she can't.
MISS INDIA: GREAT hair. GREAT makeup. Also slightly cross-eyed, but I think that's due to the prevalence of nose jobs gone bad. Nice dress, but too many froufy things hanging off of it.
MISS AUSTRALIA: Hideous dress. Hideous hair. And she looks stoned.
MISS ANGOLA: Another hideous dress, at least from the waist down. But she has cool hair.
MISS JAMAICA: Ok, if you're being sponsored by companies in your home country, why do you pick the most hideous dress they have to offer? No, no, no. Pick the PRETTY one.
MISS COLOMBIA: Definitely cross-eyed. And she's doing these wild pirouettes. She's going to topple and take her cross-eyed eyes with her. Also, can you say "inappropriate slit in the dress"?
MISS SWITZERLAND: They have dark-haired Grecian looking people in Switzerland? Who wear ugly Roman-style dresses?
MISS COSTA RICA: Small head, big hair. I love it. I love when a beauty pageant stereotype in an ugly dress comes true before my very eyes.
MISS CHILE: Sorry, a tube top and a skirt does NOT an evening gown make. And she's not smiling. And she walks funny. I think one leg is considerably longer than the other.
MISS U.S.A.: Narsty dress; I think she's trying to be a mermaid. And she looks like an overgrown Trista Rehn with long blond hair.
MISS PARAGUAY: Wow. She's beautiful. Too bad about the stringy hair and the disturbing dress.
MISS MEXICO: Love the color of the dress, hate the actual dress, the strut and the weird accompanying dog collar accessory.

9:55pm: Commercial Break
An advertisement for the upcoming weeks and months of "Days of Our Lives" entices viewers by showing the dead victims of the Salem Serial Killer ... ALIVE on CAPTIVE ISLAND. God, what a show.

9:57pm: The Final Ten
Miss Costa Rica
Miss Trinidad & Tobago
Miss U.S.A.
Miss Puerto Rico
Miss Jamaica
Miss Paraguay
Miss Ecuador
Miss Australia
Miss India
Miss Colombia

Incidental question: how and why are all these women 6 feet tall?

10:10pm: Gloria Returns
Co-host Billy Bush has apologized for the sound system problems of earlier in the broadcast. Gloria opens her mouth ... and all is right in the world again. Thank God. Remember when O-Town performed at one of these pageants? Man, that was bad ... Oops, it just got bad. Gloria reverted to lip-synching, and you could hear her live voice over it. Eep.

10:14pm: Baseball Break with Dad
What can I say -- he hates pageants and we both love Yankee baseball.

10:30pm: Return to Ecuador
They just gave the Miss Photogenic award to Miss Mexico. The one whose nose job is most botched, resulting in a look resembling ... Minnie Mouse.

10:35: The Final Five
MISS PARAGUAY: Good. I like her.
MISS U.S.A.: I thought the world hated us.
MISS PUERTO RICO: Oh, she of the small head.
MISS AUSTRALIA: She's still wearing the hideous evening gown.
MISS TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: I just noticed ... her eyes are a different shape from each other, and her eyebrows are tweezed unevenly. She looks ... well, she looks palsied.

Well, I have to say this: things sure have changed since the days when the C.O.S. and I would grab two hours' worth of snacks and settle down in front of the boob tube. Gone is the big hair. Gone is the super-tan. Gone is the bright red lipstick. Gone is the excessive cleavage. Gone are the blond streaks. Gone are the gravelly-voiced Spanish speakers with the legions of crazed and loyal fans. Now, the women are aiming for the "this isn't a nose job because I'm all about being natural," "hair spray isn't good for the environment," "I'll reveal my belly button but not my big boobs," "I'm smarter than I look and definitely taller than they used to be," "I went under to minimize body parts, including my nose and eyes and head shape, instead of maximize my butt and hips and boobs" look.

Dang. Pageants just aren't what they used to be.

10:41pm: La Pregunta Final
MISS PARAGUAY: "If you could interview any female leader in history, who would you interview, and why?" (I would like to note for the record, that the interpreter used the Spanish word for "girl" instead of "female" or "woman.") Miss Paraguay is lovely, and sounds and looks intelligent ... but the interpreter is horrible. He mumbles. Marble-mouth. I couldn't hear the answer.
MISS U.S.A.: "What do you think has been women's greatest contribution to today's world, and why?" She says children. Blah blah blah. With all due respect to my motherly friends ... that answer was trite and unsatisfying. Also, Miss U.S.A. giggled. Annoyingly.
MISS PUERTO RICO: "Give us three words that decsribe you, and why?" Her features are distractingly small, and she talks distractingly fast, and I heard not a single word of what she said. She looks like a skinnier version of Erika, from "The Apprentice." With a smaller head.
MISS AUSTRALIA: "If you could choose what time period to be born and what sex to be, what would you choose and why?" Short and sweet, but boring: this time period because women have rights (oh, REALLY), and female because women are strong and contribute a lot to the world. Is it the questions that suck? Who do I blame these answers on?
MISS TRINIDAD & TOBAGO: "We tend to learn our biggest lessons from our failures. What is one failure of your life from which you learned the most?" Her biggest failure from which she learned the most was when she fell and hit her head on the floor during a fashion show. She says she learned, after that, to get up and walk correctly. Sigh. I'm not impressed for some reason. Plus, her mismatched eyes are creeping me out.

I would love love LOVE for someone to write a math problem on one of those question cards.

10:52pm: The Last Walk-Throughs
This is the final viewing before the judges reveal their choices ... but allow me to make my predictions now:
5. Miss Trinidad & Tobago
4. Miss Paraguay
3. Miss U.S.A.
2. Miss Puerto Rico (despite her excessively small head)
1. Miss Australia

Please let me be wrong, because I would really scare myself if I predicted something like this accurately.

10:55pm: Miss Universe 2003's Last Walk as Miss Universe
Dang, she's only nineteen years old. And her nose job went bad too. But she has on great makeup and a beautiful dress. I forgive her plastic surgeon.

10:57pm: Crowning of Miss Universe 2004
5. Miss Trinidad & Tobago.
4. Miss Paraguay

(Uh-oh. Don't let me be right, don't let me be right, don't let me be right.)

3. Miss Puerto Rico

(Thank God I'm wrong, thank God I'm wrong, thank God I'm wrong.)
(Wow. Weird. Two blond women who speak English are the finalists.)

2. Miss U.S.A.

Miss Universe = Miss Australia

Is this a first? As a non-Hispanic North American citizen -- and don't take this the wrong way, but ... -- I do feel somewhat gratified that a seemingly generic Caucasian woman from an English-speaking country has been crowned. I mean, I'm all for the Venezuelan pageant industry and how weird THAT all is, but ... this is interesting too. I'm kind of disturbed though ... Miss Australia MUST be stoned because she's just kind of THERE. Not emoting, not crying, not anything. C.O.S. will be mad, as I am. We love it when the winners cry. Plus, there's no confetti. And then Billy Bush said "that's it, folks, good night!" And it's over.

Dang, they sure don't make pageants like they used to.

And that's all she wrote ...