Please, don't let those Miss USA contestants SPEAK!

While home sick on the couch, I was alternating between NCAA basketball (one can only take so much of underdogs blowing 50-point leads or getting raped by refs) and that lovable institution which turns the womens' movement back 70 years, the Miss USA pageant.

Here are some observations.

1) Tara Conner, with those bangs, looks like a blonde Elvira.

2) If your social ethos makes Lindsay Lohan look like Kate Middleton, you probably shouldn't be Miss USA anymore, but that is neither here nor there.

3) Miss New Hampshire is a larger girl. I find myself rooting for her.

4) Miss Michigan looks like a man.

5) Miss Kansas is very, very pretty. I hope she's also very, very stupid.

6) Top 15 are announced. Virginia, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Utah, Hawaii, Texas (no surprise), Kansas (damn, slut!), Missouri, California, Nevada, Michigan (WTF?), Louisiana, North Carolina, Tennessee, Wisconsin. Click here for pics.

7) I automatically find myself rooting for the minorities and the Northeasterners. Northeasterners seem to be so ill-represented in the top 15 at pageants that they might as well be considered minorities.

8) Miss Texas looks un-Texan, which makes me like her. California's breasts are beginning to annoy me.

9) Top 10 announced. Here's where the pageant gets boring. Top 5 announced. Nevada, Tennessee, Kansas (shit!), Rhode Island (yay, northeast!) and California (watch those mammalries). For pics click here.

10) Now for the fun part - the "conversations". From this episode, we learn that Miss Tennessee is the only semi-intelligent one in the bunch and is likely the only one who not only owns, but has used a passport. She speaks rather articulately (she's only half black, I can say this) about volunteering at Oprah's Leadership Academy in South Africa. Compared to Miss Nevada, who said "50 below windshield" instead of "wind chill", and Miss Rhode Island who admitted to journal-keeping (someone tell her that only serial killers, sociopaths and suicidal poets keep journals) she's the class of the bunch.

11) Miss Kansas: "I do a lot of charity work with my Catholic youth organization...we do a lot of work with abortion centers." Unless you explain more thoroughly, we'll assume that the "charity work" you do with your "Catholic Youth Organization" re: abortion centers involves C4 or nitroglycerine.

12) We learn that Vince (7-on-the-Wonderlich) Young and Jerry Springer are judges, along with the likes of Kimora Lee Simmons and Vanessa Minnillo. So, if anyone is still under the misguided impression that you're watching the Nobel Organization decide the recipient of its next prize, this is your clue to change the channel.

13) Time for the questions. Tennessee quips that if she were to be a famous man, she'd be Will Smith. Deep down I'm hoping she meant Adam Smith.

14) Kansas mentions, in response to her question, that people should not automatically be given second chances, especially for acts such as "murder". Methinks she has never watched The Shawshank Redemption.

15) Rhode Island, if she could ban anything in this world, would ban the act of talking on cell phones while driving. If I could ban anything in this world, I'd probably ban vacuous sorority-types from opening their mouths to speak.

16) The gruesome thought runs through my mind, "where's a terrorist when you need one..."

17) California gushes, "women should be able to use their beauty to get ahead, but it's the inner beauty that counts!" Profundity to rival that of Keats, I'm sure.

18) Miss Tennessee wins. I'm pleased. She's half-black and has left the country before. That's about as much as you can ask for from any "scholarship contest" run by that great supporter of womens' issues, Donald Trump.

More March Sadness

If you are an American male who has entered a bracket pool, chances are that your slack-jawed, vapid, bottled-blonde girlfriend whose life centers around Vera Bradley bags, apple mojitos, leggings, spinning class and VH1 is soundly beating you. Yep, that doe-eyed sports naif who picked all #1 seeds to make the Final Four using logic like "Carolina Blue looks like Tiffany Blue" and (perhaps, more stupidly) "who am I to challenge the logic of the selection committee" will probably win. And you, who watched every BracketBuster game and debated to no end on the ESPN.com message boards the merits of Texas over North Carolina will end up with a bracket full of red.

7 of the Elite 8 teams are 1 or 2 seeds. Oregon, as the lone 3-seed, is the underdog. What this means is that there will be a shitton of amazing games that no casual basketball fan will give a shit about. Maybe we (i.e. everyone outside of Storrs, CT) got spoiled with Miracle Mason's run last year, along with surprising Sweet 16 appearances by the likes of Bradley. This year, the lowest seed in the tourney was UNLV (a 7), and UNLV is about as close to evil as a college basketball team can get. Arguably, the sentimental favorite was USC with their we-have-no-stars, do-it-for-our-fallen-homie ethic, but the zebras ceremoniously stomped on their glass slipper with 10 minutes left in the game and awarded the Elite 8 nod to a team led by an individual whose appearance and class is reminiscent of caucasian Jerry Springer guests.

So, given the lack of a true underdog story, I must do what all Americans typically do: root for the teams from schools with the most intelligent and reasonable student bodies. Thus, here's to UCLA and Georgetown. Rooting for Memphis is excusable because they're a mid-major, but any affiliation with Kansas (especially if you still live in Kansas or anywhere in the Midwest outside Chicago) probably means you order steak at every meal, are anti smoking-ban, drink canned beer, don't know what edamame is and don't own a passport. Need I say more.