Mr. W’s daughter is a competitor in her city pageant. The winner is crowned Miss [City] 2009 and moves on to compete for the title of Miss California, and from there Miss America. This city pageant dubs itself a Scholarship Pageant, as the “Queen” and her “Court” (runners up) get scholarship money toward college. The pageant was this past Saturday. Mr. W’s Gamer Bro + Wife came down from Vegas and joined the festivities. James came along also, in support of Daughter. We met up with James at dinner, where the three men at the table, all techies, threw a bunch of specs and numbers out in discussing Gamer Bro’s new desktop computer. It’s apparently an impressive concoction of metal, plastic and water (cooling system), and Gamer Bro showed James photos of his system on his iPhone. (Gamer Bro always has the latest and best gadgets.) In drawing back his arm, Gamer Bro accidentally knocked his hand against something on the table and dropped his iPhone directly into the pitcher of sangria. The phone sat half-immersed in the pitcher precariously balanced on ice and chopped fruit, and after a collective gasp, Gamer Bro gingerly tried to fish the phone out with his fingertips. In so doing, he succeeded in sliding the phone completely underwater. I imagine that all of Gamer Bro’s past gadgets flashed before his eyes, and he hesitated only a moment before dunking his entire hand into the pitcher to retrieve his phone. After blowing into and rubbing the phone vigorously with his napkin, turns out the phone had zero water damage. Hey, did you guys know the iPhone is waterproof? Good thing, because I would’ve felt really bad drinking a $600 pitcher of sangria. Although as it turned out, only Gamer Bro’s family members had additional refills anyway. Hope he’d washed his hands. Haha.

The pageant began with an introduction of all the competitors with a dance number to Abba’s “Mama Mia.” The crowned girl in the center is the title holder 2008. Daughter is the spunky curly-haired brunette to the left, between the two blue-dressed blondes.

(as usual, rest mouse pointer over photos for captions.)
Next was a public question, drawn by lot by the contestant after she walks up to the former titleholder. Most of the girls either did not answer the question because they meandered off on a tangent, or gave some totally lame response that I can say is even constitutionally violative. Daughter drew the question, “If you hosted your own talk show, who would you have as your first guest, and what would you ask him/her?” She answered without hesitation that her first guest would be Barack Obama, and she would ask him what inspiration maintained his perseverance when he was running for the presidency. (Generally. She also went on a bit about his being African American, but we won’t get into that because if you’re regular readers you already know how I feel about that.)

What’s a scholarship pageant without a swimsuit segment, right? The requirement is a one-piece, and some of the girls really pushed that definition, but I thought Daughter’s choice was very tasteful.

And then my favorite segment: talent. Daughter was last, and there were a lot of singers and dancers before her. The most original talent was a dramatic monologue performed by one of Daughter’s friends. But the absolute BEST performance, the best display of talent by FAR (and I’m not saying this because I’m biased, because I really am not), was Daughter performing a shortened version of a song she composed and wrote the lyrics for, “Rescue Me.” It is one of my favorites of hers, although I love her original long version better than this one that she had to shorten to fit in the alloted time slot. The crowd exploded when she was done, and she made just about every singer before her look and sound horrible. OH, her songs are finally registered as of this morning with the United States Copyright office, so I can show her off now.

And finally…eveningwear. I don’t need to say anything about this — a picture is worth a thousand words, right?

The first award given was Miss Congeniality. The girls voted for whom they felt exemplified the spirit of kindness, giving, support, etc. And the winner…DAUGHTER!

Daughter didn’t win the title crown, but she did win first runner-up. If Miss [City] is unable to fulfill her obligations, Daughter will step up and take over. She also gets a hefty scholarship prize. (She was frankly relieved she didn’t win, because she would have to carve out a lot of time to the causes and to represent the city, as well as move on to compete for Miss California, which she isn’t sure she wants to do. Her passion is her music, not beauty pageants, and this is her first.)

Later at the reception which we didn’t attend, Daughter received an additional award: Best Talent. Well no kidding! Check her performance out:


Photo Sharing – Video Sharing – Photo Printing

Can you believe she picked up her first guitar 4.5 months ago?! And has never had a professional lesson? Thanks, James, for the still photos. And the video is courtesy Mr. W (on a regular digital camera, so the sound and video quality is a bit lacking…plus we were pretty far back).

Congrats to Daughter, we are SO proud of her!