To Cher and Cher alike

If you don't know Cher is coming to Bako and I am going. (Cross your fingers that I don't fall into a friggin' pothole and injure my ankle like I did last time, which kept me from Green Day, grrrr.)

But I am going not because I'm a fan of the woman's work. (I don't even own one of her albums.) Other than a VH1-Behind the Music special and copy of Nancy Sinatra's cover of Cher's "Bang, Bang" err ... I don't know much about her.

I do remember that "If I Could Turn Back Time" video where she was wearing the fishnets and straddled a big ol' gun from a Navy carrier.

Yeah, that's forever burned in my head.

But no, I'm not going to see Cher for the music or because I'm a fan. I'm going for the sheer "pageantry."

Pageantry, as some of you may know, is the art of showmanship honed while participating in beauty pagents. One would know this if they watched the first season of America's Next Top Model where Robin, a former Miss Peach Something 0r Other, talked quite a bit about "pageantry."

Pageantry involves style, grace, wit and the ability to strut down a runway in nothing but a swimsuit and heels and still make it seem virginal and All-American. In other words, it's a great big drag show, sans the queens. I mean, someone is "queen" at the end, but that's not the sort of queen I'm talking about.

I am not a woman of pageantry. I cannot walk in heels without looking like I'm having a hernia. Will not wear a bathing suit with heels and make it seem virginal and All-American and I most certainly will not win any beauty pagents. A lot of women aren't. Due to our mothers, children of the 60s who wanted us to go to college and be all Miss Independent. Not Miss America.

So the only people left to truly uphold the sheer ridiculousness of ultra feminity and mutated sexuality are drag queens, southern ladies in big hats, Robin Manning and Cher.

Ah Cher, with all the costume changes, harkening back to the day when a southern lady of class would change outfits at least three times a day with the assistence of her slave ... I mean, maid ... no, no, slave.

Back when a woman looked like a woman and not like a man who looks like a woman, who looks like Cher including the g-string, fishnets and gun boat. Cher is pageantry off the chart and launched into the stratosphere. It's glam. It's camp. It's the skanky version of Miss America. Perverted into a miasma of glitz and kitsch. Here she is Miss Camp America and loving it with a full piece orchestra and back up dancers. Because you can't get this kind of pageantry anymore outside of Vegas.

There's no more "Solid Gold." No more variety shows. The closest thing we've got to pagentry is Jessica Simpson and Nick Lachey and I guess they're trying. I mean, she looks like one of the Muppets and he's your generic "just add water" instamatic pretty boy Floyd (Now with camp singing ability!) created from that boy band factory that was pumping out doe-eyed white boys left and right from 1996 to 2001 -- but hey, that's sort of, kind of, not really what I'm talking about.

Pageantry is Diana Ross, you know? When she's not drinking and renting videos at Blockbuster or Whitney Houston when she was sober. Mariah Carey. So over the top it's both ironic and highly entertaining. And it helps to have some actual talent, otherwise all that pageantry, all that vamping it up is for naught. I mean, I don't expect everyone to go on the far end of the pagentry spectrum and go Grace Jones on it, maybe a little Jenny from the block or Janet Jackson. Or Britney, although her singing ability is questionable, but the girl can dance her ass off.

Or American Idol. That's all pagentry all the time.

But I'll settle for Cher. Cher descending from a golden staircase looking all like Elizabeth Berkley in "Showgirls" in that stupid, ficticious "Goddess" show that she pushed Gina Gershon down a flight of stairs to star in.

So basically what I'm saying is, if you actually liked "Showgirls" because it was the funniest, most over the top glorious thing you ever saw, then you'll like Cher. You'll like Cher a lot.