So Cal Story - My Ideal???

Some of you may recall my obsession with beauty pageants – Miss Teen USA, Miss USA, Miss Universe, Miss America – I love and watch them all. Hell, I’ve even stooped so low as to watch the Mrs. America and Mrs. Universe (or maybe it’s called Mrs. World, I can’t recall) pageants hosted by none other than Florence Henderson on PAX (the last one I saw was co-hosted by Omarosa, that freak from the “Apprentice” reality show, so I think I can officially say I am over that one – at least until they find a new host). A few years ago my “pageant friend” Greg & I even dragged my poor boyfriend Allan to the Miss USA Pageant when it was here in Los Angeles, which was too much fun. So not too long ago I log into an old email account I have and one of the 84 messages in my inbox was from the president of the Miss America organization – apparently I had at one point and time signed up for a newsletter - informing me that the 2006 Miss America pageant was finally going to take place on January 21st. I quickly wrote to Greg to see if he wanted to exchange our “picks” for the pageant or if we were going to let this pageant go since neither of us are any good at predicting the winner. He responded yes, we are going to pick and mentioned “oh, by the way, the pageant is in Las Vegas – up for a road trip?” I thought about it for like 2 minutes and responded “Hell YEAH!!!” and next thing I know we are goin to Vegas.

We left VERY early Saturday morning and arrived in Vegas with just enough time to check into our hotel (The Stratosphere), eat some incredibly NASTY food at the buffet (do yourself a favor and avoid the buffet at Stratosphere if at all possible – something tells me that eating your own poo would taste better), do a small bit of gambling (Allan had a short hot streak and won over $100) and make it to The Aladdin Hotel & Casino in just enough time to stand in the most obnoxious line I’ve ever stood in. We made it into the theatre with about 2 minutes to spare before the start of the show. Both Greg & I had picked Miss Utah to take it all – not only was she pretty, smart and well spoken, but she won the preliminary swimsuit competition so I thought for sure she was golden. What we hadn’t figured in to our calculations was the fact that the pageant was being shown “live” on CMT – that’s Country Music Television (I think) – so not only was Miss Utah not in the top 10, but no other western, eastern, or northern state was represented at all. Basically the top 10 was all from the south with the exceptions being Miss Pennsylvania and Miss D.C. (which could still be considered “south” depending on who you ask). My guess is that it was to keep the home audience tuned into the show although I am sure the pageant folks would deny it. In fact, before we left Los Angeles to go to the pageant we decided to record the show so we could watch it when we got home and what do you know – CMT isn’t on the digital cable roster here in So Cal so I guess it wouldn’t have mattered if Miss California was in the top 10 or not – a majority of us here in California couldn’t even root for her at home if we wanted to.

The main difference between seeing the Miss USA and Miss America pageants live was the crowd. At Miss USA there were plenty of pageant people, but they were for the most part kind of subdued. The crowd at Miss America was INSANE! These people were wearing buttons, carrying signs, and screaming at the top of their lungs for these girls. The highlight of the night for me was sitting behind this huge crowd of Miss Tennessee supporters. When she introduced herself at the start of the show about 30 people stood up with signs and started screaming for her. So they are announcing the Top 10 and the host (some dude from Desperate Housewives) says “our next member of the Top 10 is from Johnny Cash’s home state” (or something like that) and the Tennessee fans FREAK! They stand up and scream. The announcer says “Miss Arkansas!” and the Tennessee people are still screaming when they suddenly realize that they are cheering for a black girl from Arkansas instead of a tall blonde white woman from Tennessee. I have never seen a group of people sit down and shut up more quickly. It was a hoot! I was glad that Tennessee didn’t make the Top 10 because those people would have driven me crazy by the end of the night. So when all was said and done Miss Oklahoma won, my new favorite (after Miss Utah was wrongly denied her spot) Miss Georgia was first runner-up and we had a good time. I was really looking forward to the talent part and it was disappointing to say the least. If the pageant is in Vegas again next year we are definitely going and we are staying somewhere other than The Stratosphere.