This weekend was The Kentucky Derby, an event held each year by Access Hollywood under the dark, hollow gaze of Billy Bush to commemorate the fateful meeting of star-crossed lovers Anna Nicole Smith and Larry Birkhead. Every spring, dozens of America's dimmest tabloid fixtures, lowest common denominator reality show stars, Hugh Hefner, and anyone else thrilled to be invited to a real red carpet event (in Louisville), put on their loudest floral prints, and their most cartoonish approximations of "southern dandy" suits, and congregate to celebrate clinging to the lowest rung on the ladder of celebrity.
But even though in recent years the event has morphed into a D-list parade to rival the Daytime Emmy awards, apparently the Kentucky Derby is also a 200-year-old horse race, with all the jockeys, and bridles, and horses that are publicly put down post-race that that entails. (Who knew?) Which begs the question: what does one wear to a horrible, tragic horse euthanization? And who attends such things? Let's have a look:
If you're Spencer Pratt and Heidi Montag, you wear a seersucker suit that can cause ocular lesions, and Laura-Ashley-for-Wet-Seal desperation, respectively.
If you're on Entourage, congratulations! You're probably the biggest fake star at the Derby. You can wear a scruffy beard and shaggy mop that say, "I take horse euthanization very seriously," and escort a bolt of Pucci fabric pinned to a hat with a model in between that says, "I was paid to be here."
If you're a judge on a reality show: you're also invited. If you're noted, like Noted Fashion Photographer Nigel Barker, you wear a leftover costume from Dick Tracy
But, if you're a former NSYNC member turned game show host, you are obliged to wear the shiniest suit in existence, for easy identification/avoidance, like Joey Fatone.
And, of course, if you're Hugh Hefner, you just show up with 3 life-size Madame Alexander dolls.