Pageant

We got back from the Southern California National American Miss Pageant last night at midnight, after crowning the queens of the Princess division (4 through 6), the Junior Pre-Teen (7 through 9), the Pre-Teen (10 through 12), the Junior Teen (13 through 15) and the Teen (16 through 19). It was an adventure we will definitely avoid for the rest of our lives.

It was organized by a group of self-described "values oriented" folks, who were proud to say the competition was all about inner beauty, which meant no swimsuit event and a pledge (which we immediately broke the first evening in our room) that we wouldn't touch alcohol or drugs for the entire weekend. We kept half of that pledge and got smashed on cabaret and chardonnay in the privacy of our room. Karen dropped all pretense of compliance and announced to our fellow judges that she badly needed a drink, before retreating to our room with me each evening. Our judging colleagues looked envious. We didn't get to serve on the same judging panel, so we didn't see much of each other.

Yes, the girls came in all sizes and shapes, but the winner of each division was invariably gorgeous.

There were about 400 "lovely young ladies" competing, each of whom had to pony up $400 for the privilege. The top prize for each division was $1,000. A pretty risky investment with a pretty small return, wouldn't you say? Especially since they probably spend at least another several hundred dollars on their formal wear competition, the hotel room at $119 a night, parking at $9 a day.

I felt like I needed a shower after each final pageant when the winner was chosen. It worked like this. We gave a score of 1 to 7 for each of the three events judged--the personal intro on stage with a mic, a 40-second interview with each judge, and a formal-wear-with-escort competition. A computer averaged the scores, then puked forth the five finalists, from which we chose our individual picks for the queen and her court, while the whole group--numbering from 70 to 103 for each division--paraded before us on stage with high hopes.

We already knew who the five finalist were, but the girls didn't know we knew, so they kept smiling pleadingly at us. We didn't know how our individual scores for the five would add up, but to see the faces of the 15 "semi-finalists" (based on their computer generated scores) and to know that ten of them weren't even in the running anymore made us bilious and sad.

Immediately after the queen was crowned we were told to go up on stage to have our picture taken with the new queen. Which meant we had to wade through the vale of tears backstage, trying not to make eye contact with the losers.

Who were our fellow judges? A motley collection, to say the least, but we got the feeling they were all churchgoers except for us. One's bio said he was a film actor who served on the creative team at Saddleback Church, the famous Evangelical corporation run by Rick Warren, where McCain and Obama made an appearance Saturday night. So I googled up this judge to see what other achievements he had. What caught my eye was his acting experience two years ago in a film called "Hotel Erotica Cabo," described as a place where folks could drown their sorrows in waves of sex and fun. He didn't list that unique experience among the film credits in his bio. I wonder if pageant parents would feel blessed (all weekend we heard we were blessed) to have a porn star ogling their toddler.

Karen's top funny/sad experience was the little princess (5 years old), who was standing center stage with a frown on her face and her hand plunged into her crotch. She later learned the little girl had to go to the bathroom so bad that when she walked off the stage she raced for relief and failed, wetting her pants along the way. One of the pageant organizers assured Karen it wasn't too embarrassing for her because the child appeared to be "challenged." Needless to say, this "lovely young lady" wasn't among the finalists. Beautiful on the inside, but not exactly American Miss material.

My saddest moment came when I interviewed a cute little 8 year-old, asking her the one question we were limited to in our 40-second interview. We could choose our own question. I asked her "Would you want to be famous? Why or why not?" She just stared at me for the longest time, so I tried again, re-phrasing the question to give her some help. She just looked up at me, on the verge of tears, and asked, "Do you speak Spanish?"

Just before we left the hotel last night Karen made a rest stop and heard sobbing coming from one of the stalls in the restroom

An interesting adventure, but one we don't want to repeat.