Blackwell wears thin

Few things in life, outside of certain recurring diseases and visits from relatives, have the endurance and regularity of Mr. Blackwell's annual worst dressed list.

The fashion and entertainment worlds have ground to a halt every year since 1960 to hear whose rhinestone-encrusted purple feather gown with the blinking neon tassels and snakeskin headdress has earned her the title of the least fairest one of all.

But to me, it seems Mr. Blackwell (known simply as "Mr." to his friends) isn't so much the arbiter of fashion and bad taste as a man who gets worldwide attention by dissing famous people with unwitty sound bites.

Anybody could do this guy's so-called job. Just read a few back issues of Vogue to get hip to the current state of the industry, then start writing descriptions of fashion-unconscious celebs that read like a cross between advertising slogans and nursery rhymes.

"Tilley's lamentable outfits leave me no alternative but to baldly proclaim him the master of fashion disaster!" he would sneer if he were to include me on his list.

Of course, in order to make his list, I'd have to a) be about a thousand times more famous, b) make about a million times as much money, and c) get a fashion sense of some sort. Sadly, no taste doesn't qualify as bad taste.

And what's with picking on the Spice Girls? Hey, Senor Blackwell, why don't you go to a home for the elderly and infirm and start beating up somebody's 90-year-old grandma while she's hooked up to the dialysis machine?

It would probably require more effort than pointing out the Spices look like an experiment in the women's division of the World Wrestling Federation gone horribly wrong.

And Pamela Anderson Lee? Who cares what she's wearing? Who even sees what she's wearing?

If Blackwell-san wants to earn some real respect and credibility, he should do his worst dressed list in Haiku. Or rhyming Haiku, even:

"Jennifer Tilly.

Her dresses: Ugly. Silly.

Oh, what a dilly."

Now that's originality! (By the way, the lovely and buxom Jennifer Tilly is not related to me. But it helps that our last names are so similar, because she won't have to change it much when we get married.)

"What the list does, on some sort of sequined level, is to chronicle pop culture, comment on current trends, poke fun at pomposity, ridicule arrogance and point the finger at the ones who deserve it most," says Herr Blackwell.

Of course, this is the same guy who applauds Courtney Love as a "fabulous fashion independent" because she finally learned how to dress in something other than torn fishnet stockings and scary eye makeup. Sigh.

(Anne Heche also got the thumbs up from Monsieur Blackwell, meaning she and her gal pal Ellen, who ranked No. 2 on the Worst Dressed List, should effectively cancel each other out. Whew.)

Speaking of scary, the ultimate disappointment on this year's list has to be Marilyn Manson. The guy dresses like a heroin-addicted mortician in drag and is in league with Satan, and he only ranks 10th? Behind the likes of Sigourney Weaver and Alicia Silverstone?

It just goes to show that devil worship doesn't pay as much as wearing unspeakably tacky clothes.