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Last night I made the time to watch the Miss USA
pageant, not because I dig anorexic chicks with lots of teeth publicly humiliating themselves,
but because it was hosted by William Shatner. With the exception of
T.J.Hooker reruns which are known to cause intestinal bleeding in
Laboratory animals I try to take in everything the Shat Man does and this
gig came just in time as I was in clinical withdrawal since he and
Priceline.com parted company.
I was hoping to completely submerge myself in a blissful
Shatner fugue but a few things got in the way and prevented this from happening which
accounts for why, on my way to work this morning, I took advantage of
the anonymity provided by the bovine human heard on the commuter rail
platform and popped some hapless child in the back of the head. I didn’t
make me feel a whole lot better, but I take what I can get.
I’d hoped to watch the event carefully, take notes and write an
insightful review for a legitimate publication, but things didn’t work
out that way as evidenced by the fact that it’s you reading this and my
wallet is empty. On the other hand a fella can’t have too much
bitterness. This being the case, here are my scattered recollections
which I toss before you as I would bits of Alka-Seltzer before pigeons.
First and foremost; Like a rich desert we’ve eaten so
much of we were sick and now can no longer enjoy as we associate it with vomiting, we
have made too much fun of William Shatner. So many bad stand-ups have
imitated the characteristic halting delivery he uses to hide his
poorly memorized text or perhaps booziness that he no longer does it. Not one
abusively lengthy pause, not on sudden speed up at the end of a sentence,
nadda. Comedians, myself included, made too many damn trips to the well and now the poor bastard is self conscious. On
the plus side, he obviously doesn’t take the jibes about his weight to heart. You
can make your own hairpiece joke, I’m tired and cranky.
Then I got all distracted by Evan and Jaron (not a real name) Lowenstein
who to my jaundiced eye appear to have only a passing acquaintance with
puberty and a more than passing resemblance to Robert Tulloch and James
Parker.
This was followed by a K-Mart commercial featuring
Martha Stewart, first in a bubble bath and then in a bed coyly pulling a sheet up her
obviously naked chest. I got all scared and started crying. It was just
too much, the combo platter of Martha Stewart and sexuality was plenty
disturbing enough, but mix in the idea that this Teutonic Wasp Queen
Avatar of Anal Retentive Frigidity would set foot within fifty feet of a
K-mart let alone shop there was intolerable I had to go get a lot of
ice cream and eat it so fast I got a headache which I was deeply
disappointed to find was not in fact a fatal stroke. Then they showed
the same commercial every single station break which would have been
annoying if not for the bizarre contrast it provided with the actual
Martha who was one of the pageant judges. K-mart was kind enough to
slather their camera lens with Bag Balm, something the Miss USA folks
neglected to do and we all got a glimpse of Martha as she actually is,
kind of bulgy about the face in odd places, like a freezer bag of clam
chowder you put in the ice box at an odd angle.
Tommy Davidson’s comic intrusions were good, if by
‘good’ you mean really, really, really awful and kind of like if GQ gave Jimmy Jay Jay
Walker a makeover and then let him on a TV show. You got to see Donald
Trump in the audience now and then since he owns the Miss USA pageant
which I assume gives him ‘access’ to the ‘delegates’, as
the prancing young escorts in training are now called to avoid offending anyone. Like
if your watching the show exploitation offends you.
Then the baby woke up and started crying and what little
was left of the mood evaporated. I don’t know. Maybe it’s me. Maybe I’m just too old to
reach the kind of religious union with Shatner that once made my life
bearable. Or maybe it’s that right at the top of the show he announced
he was married again. Didn’t he find his last wife floating in the pool,
like, six months ago? That reminds me. I need to call my Doctor and
cancel that sex change operation I have on Tuesday.
note
#1: Max Burbank will apply the Vulcan death grip on
anybody who finds Martha Stewart to be attractive in that K-Mart
commercial.
note #2: -RoG- applied the Vulcan death grip on himself when he saw
that Martha Stewart K-Mart commercial.
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