There are certain celebrities whose voices you should never hear, lest your image of them be ruined entirely. Mainly it's models, athletes, and heiresses that fall into this category, like Gisele Bundchen, Nikki Hilton, and Eli Manning–people who live on magazine pages, or tabloid newspaper pages, or football fields far far away from microphones, silently making a living by being pretty, or being rich, or being fast. Hearing one of them speak, or, God forbid, try to make a joke, is like walking into a room and seeing your dog dialing a telephone. It's unnatural, and unsettling, and just plain wrong.
Case in point, Lance Armstrong at last night's Espy Awards.
In case you don't know (and, really, unless you're a sportswriter why would you?), the Espy Awards is like the MTV Movie Awards, but for sports. Honors like Best Golfer, Best Coach, and (no joke) Best Moment are handed out to people who win awards and championships as part of their jobs, dozens of overblown clip reels are shown, and then Mariah Carey gets on stage, and everyone runs out of the theater. Basically, it's the worst idea ever, and I challenge anyone out there to sit through the entire thing.
Anyway, human-inspiration-bracelet Lance Armstrong was the host of this year's Espys, and his performance was nothing short of painful. In his monologue, he made two
Brokeback Mountain jokes, one Bode-Miller-is-drunk joke, and kicked it all off with a I-have-one-nut joke, all of which were delivered with the stiffness of a 2X4 (actually, I think even a 2X4 would have realized the Brokeback jokes were a little stale).
It goes to show you that just because you're a great cyclist, or you're a good bracelet-eer, or you're excellent at forcing Matthew McConaughey into a subservient role, it doesn't mean you can convincingly read a telepromter.
Did anyone else see this?