Wednesday

Last night's Miss Universe Presentation event was a disappointment. Also, it was a little bit frustrating. The biggest source of disappointment was that the show, which I thought would include all the elements of the Final Pageant, finally enacted by all contestants, only ended up including the gown and swimwear events. I was most excited by the prospect of at long last seeing more than the top five contestants answering that interview question, my second-favorite part of the whole Miss Universe routine (my first-favorite is the National Costume Event, which was judged during its own event earlier in the pageant month^1,2). The judges do interview all the contestants, of course, and formulate scoring based on those interviews; but this happened off-stage before last night's thing. I'm disappointed because the contestants I find most interesting frequently never make the top fifteen, let alone the final five, and I wanted to hear them talk. On to frustration: the word that continually came up last night was "half-baked." The event itself is produced by the Miss Universe Organization in a venue masterminded by a local organization company which has won a bid for the work. It’s probably par for the course, but last night’s venue, the Diamond Bay Resort Hotel and Convention Center Theater,³ was built from the ground up to house Miss Universe after that Vietnamese organizational entity won their bid. Five months ago, there was nothing standing in a lonely bend in the national highway, twenty minutes south of town, which is now flanked by these enormous yellow buildings. The thing is, they still aren't really finished: the entryway is mostly gravel, the floors are uncarpeted, and the seats aren't all bolted down right. Nobody seemed to have any idea what they were doing, but more on that tomorrow. [Cavin]