101 Most Salacious Makeovers
In which the author reports some facts about a television program
I was a-glazing a couple of scallops yesterday evening, when, ever alert, I became aware that the TV was tuned to that easy-breezy 24-hour Hollywood celebrity infomercial channel. The announcer could not contain his enthusiasm for the current segment, called "The 101 Most Starlicious Makeovers." I'd missed the crucial exposition scene, so I remained largely unenlightened by the exact definition of "starlicious." Whatever it is, Tina Yothers apparently possesses it in spades, whereas Danny Bonaduce has more of it than Prince but less of it than Elvis. The nonsense interested me strangely, and I proceeded to breathe deep of the televised fumes.
The show's format consisted of back-in-the-day footage of Kirstie Alley (or Pamela Anderson, or Bruce Jenner), which the viewer was then invited to compare with more recent images of the star. These before-and-afters absorbingly spotlighted Hollywood's grotesque plastic surgeries, staggering feats of coiffure, and dramatic body mass vicissitudes (in Hollywood, whenever drug addiction and serious disease fail, weight loss of 5 or more pounds is achieved primarily through stomach-stapling. Also, weight gain need not be a deal-breaker if one is, in fact, starlicious to begin with and doesn't mind a second career jello-boxing Tonya Harding).
The E! network has on retainer a cabal of enigmatic philosophers and mathematicians whose area of expertise is the assignment of numeric value to starliciousness. Thus, by some inscrutable ritual, is Pink's makeover ordained more starlicious than the Olsen twins'. This system enables producers to arrange the makeover vignettes countdown-fashion, providing a convenient cliff-hanger at every commercial break (i.e. every four minutes). Who will make the Top 67? Don't miss the thrilling reveal!
Supplementing the footage of Botox Nation was insightful commentary by many obscure 27-year-old television personalities. To disabuse the viewer of the notion that these third-tier sycophants were exceptionally well-coifed nuclear physicists, helpful captions identified them: "actor/model," "actor/ comedian," "actor/writer," and occasionally the triply-talented "actor/author/comedian." Based on their uniformly urgent desire to peel away any recalcitrant layers of obfuscation separating me from the vital intelligence that Jennifer Aniston is "hot" (or, in the case of Joan Rivers, "hot, for an old lady"), I now believe these were the same brilliant aesthetes who contributed extempore sociopolitical analysis on "Starlicious Makeovers'" progenitor, last year's gripping "I Love The 70s." This, if you'll delve back into memory's suppressed crevices, was the show that elevated the relentless declaration of celebrity hotness to a previously unimaginable pinnacle of gratuitous redundancy (e.g. "Mary Richards was HOT!"), thus stripping the adjective--and the Seventies-- of all meaning. My suspicion is that actor/singer/models love enunciating the word "hot" on camera because it allows them to demonstrate how good they look wrapping their lips around, you know, vowels.
At first it appeared that the producers of "101 Most Starlicious Makeovers" were hawking cognitive dissonance, flat out. Joan "Security Here Is Tighter Than My Face" Rivers, hot? Dick Clark, "as edible now as he was in 1957"? Julio Iglesias should get his mole reattached because "it isn't fair to the mole"? Yet even disinformation this blatant couldn't hold its own against the hypnotic torrent of gushing approbation for the stars' ever-wackier cosmetic vagaries. Chinks began to penetrate the armor of my ethos. Maybe having a couple of croquet balls stapled to your chest really is attractive. Maybe stuffing your lips with human cadaver meat really isn't gross.
But what were the criteria for starlicious makeovers? They seemed deeply esoteric, if not downright occult; the makeover in question might be a great success (Patricia Heaton, whoever that is) or a career-flusher (Jennifer Grey). It could be x-shtreme (Cher), or merely a judicious deployment of couture (Nicole Kidman). It might be full-body amputation (Sharon Osbourne) or a somewhat less invasive procedure, such as divorcing a millionaire (Ivana Trump). Sometimes it isn't a makeover at all, but a simple matter of growing up to be pretty (Prince William). In more than one instance the makeover wasn't even human, as when Video Games--the entire technology--made the 50th percentile.
In the end, I determined that there were only 2 qualifications for Most Starlicious Makeover. The subjects had to be in video format (B-list or above, past or present ), and there had to exist archived evidence proving they once looked kinda different than they do now. But because even the most grisly, mockworthy facelifts drew from the panel only a sort of doting avuncular benevolence, I was eventually able to puzzle out the secret thrust of the program:
Famous people are great!
___________________________
Note: Of "101 Most Starlicious Makeovers"' final countdown, you are of course eager to learn that Michael Jackson more or less copped the top 2 slots. The consortium ranked him #2 for his general transformation from young black boy to old white woman, but the gold medal went to the most famous body part on Earth; his nose, exclusive of the rest of him, stands alone at the zenith of starliciousness. Cher, the taut drum-head, galloped home with the place money.
I was a-glazing a couple of scallops yesterday evening, when, ever alert, I became aware that the TV was tuned to that easy-breezy 24-hour Hollywood celebrity infomercial channel. The announcer could not contain his enthusiasm for the current segment, called "The 101 Most Starlicious Makeovers." I'd missed the crucial exposition scene, so I remained largely unenlightened by the exact definition of "starlicious." Whatever it is, Tina Yothers apparently possesses it in spades, whereas Danny Bonaduce has more of it than Prince but less of it than Elvis. The nonsense interested me strangely, and I proceeded to breathe deep of the televised fumes.
The show's format consisted of back-in-the-day footage of Kirstie Alley (or Pamela Anderson, or Bruce Jenner), which the viewer was then invited to compare with more recent images of the star. These before-and-afters absorbingly spotlighted Hollywood's grotesque plastic surgeries, staggering feats of coiffure, and dramatic body mass vicissitudes (in Hollywood, whenever drug addiction and serious disease fail, weight loss of 5 or more pounds is achieved primarily through stomach-stapling. Also, weight gain need not be a deal-breaker if one is, in fact, starlicious to begin with and doesn't mind a second career jello-boxing Tonya Harding).
The E! network has on retainer a cabal of enigmatic philosophers and mathematicians whose area of expertise is the assignment of numeric value to starliciousness. Thus, by some inscrutable ritual, is Pink's makeover ordained more starlicious than the Olsen twins'. This system enables producers to arrange the makeover vignettes countdown-fashion, providing a convenient cliff-hanger at every commercial break (i.e. every four minutes). Who will make the Top 67? Don't miss the thrilling reveal!
Supplementing the footage of Botox Nation was insightful commentary by many obscure 27-year-old television personalities. To disabuse the viewer of the notion that these third-tier sycophants were exceptionally well-coifed nuclear physicists, helpful captions identified them: "actor/model," "actor/ comedian," "actor/writer," and occasionally the triply-talented "actor/author/comedian." Based on their uniformly urgent desire to peel away any recalcitrant layers of obfuscation separating me from the vital intelligence that Jennifer Aniston is "hot" (or, in the case of Joan Rivers, "hot, for an old lady"), I now believe these were the same brilliant aesthetes who contributed extempore sociopolitical analysis on "Starlicious Makeovers'" progenitor, last year's gripping "I Love The 70s." This, if you'll delve back into memory's suppressed crevices, was the show that elevated the relentless declaration of celebrity hotness to a previously unimaginable pinnacle of gratuitous redundancy (e.g. "Mary Richards was HOT!"), thus stripping the adjective--and the Seventies-- of all meaning. My suspicion is that actor/singer/models love enunciating the word "hot" on camera because it allows them to demonstrate how good they look wrapping their lips around, you know, vowels.
At first it appeared that the producers of "101 Most Starlicious Makeovers" were hawking cognitive dissonance, flat out. Joan "Security Here Is Tighter Than My Face" Rivers, hot? Dick Clark, "as edible now as he was in 1957"? Julio Iglesias should get his mole reattached because "it isn't fair to the mole"? Yet even disinformation this blatant couldn't hold its own against the hypnotic torrent of gushing approbation for the stars' ever-wackier cosmetic vagaries. Chinks began to penetrate the armor of my ethos. Maybe having a couple of croquet balls stapled to your chest really is attractive. Maybe stuffing your lips with human cadaver meat really isn't gross.
But what were the criteria for starlicious makeovers? They seemed deeply esoteric, if not downright occult; the makeover in question might be a great success (Patricia Heaton, whoever that is) or a career-flusher (Jennifer Grey). It could be x-shtreme (Cher), or merely a judicious deployment of couture (Nicole Kidman). It might be full-body amputation (Sharon Osbourne) or a somewhat less invasive procedure, such as divorcing a millionaire (Ivana Trump). Sometimes it isn't a makeover at all, but a simple matter of growing up to be pretty (Prince William). In more than one instance the makeover wasn't even human, as when Video Games--the entire technology--made the 50th percentile.
In the end, I determined that there were only 2 qualifications for Most Starlicious Makeover. The subjects had to be in video format (B-list or above, past or present ), and there had to exist archived evidence proving they once looked kinda different than they do now. But because even the most grisly, mockworthy facelifts drew from the panel only a sort of doting avuncular benevolence, I was eventually able to puzzle out the secret thrust of the program:
Famous people are great!
___________________________
Note: Of "101 Most Starlicious Makeovers"' final countdown, you are of course eager to learn that Michael Jackson more or less copped the top 2 slots. The consortium ranked him #2 for his general transformation from young black boy to old white woman, but the gold medal went to the most famous body part on Earth; his nose, exclusive of the rest of him, stands alone at the zenith of starliciousness. Cher, the taut drum-head, galloped home with the place money.
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