Sunday 1 October 2006

Mariah Carey is better than you, and don't you forget it

Mariah Carey's dog travels better than you. Seriously, when the pop star flies, she buys a first class ticket for her Jack Russell terrier, who occupies his own seat. But hey, when you're a diva, even your pets get lavished (we hear Carey's hamster only wears Gucci).

Conspicuous consumption, however, is but one mark of the diva. What else defines this shimmering, glimmering breed? Basically, a diva is someone who's larger than life, who indulges every whim, who wears her emotions on her sequined sleeves and whose behavior tends to be as brazen, unpredictable and occasionally obnoxious as her wardrobe. All of which makes Mariah Carey the ideal candidate. In honor of her stop in town today and Saturday at the MGM Grand, we count the ways in which Carey has proven herself to be a true diva queen.

When Carey dropped "Glitter", the cinematic ipecac that was her film debut, the thing sunk faster than Louie Anderson juggling bricks on a kiddie raft in the South Pacific. But whereas this may have been a career-ender for most, Carey actually prospered from it. At the end of the '90s, Carey signed an $80 million contract with Virgin Records, then the biggest record deal of all time. In the wake of the failure of "Glitter" and its soundtrack, Virgin actually paid Carey $28 million not to make another album for them and dropped her from the label.

Cash in hand, Carey would sign another multimillion dollar deal with Island/Def Jam a few years later and notch the biggest-selling album of 2005, "The Emancipation of Mimi". These days, everything Carey touches seems to turn to gold, even her own skin: She's developing a spray-on tan lotion made with real gold flakes. Now, even her bronzed backside will be worth more than you.

During her ill-fated appearance on MTV's "Total Request Live" in August of 2001, Carey proved to be nuttier than squirrel droppings. Appearing on the show barely clad in a oversized T-shirt, she proceeded to do this weird, wobbly striptease like a showgirl on horse tranquilizers. Oh, and she was also pushing an ice cream cart filled with popsicles for the young audience. Nothing goes better with an extreme emotional breakdown than some tasty rocket pops.

Carey's flightiness has been well-documented elsewhere. Even Eminem called her screwy after their brief fling a few years back - and when a dude who rhymes about sniffing glue and getting Oedipal with his mom brands you a loon, it's like Shane MacGowan dissing your teeth. But divas aren't supposed to be rational, and these kinds of outbursts just confirm Carey's batty bona fides.

Here are a few things you just don't do: play hacky sack at a Cannibal Corpse gig, goose a badger, pick a fight with a dude sporting a "born to lose" tattoo on his forehead or ever, ever badmouth Carey in the press. Just ask Christina Aguilera. When the young singer said some unflattering things about Carey in GQ a few years back, Mariah hit back hard, like real divas do.

The incident started when Aguilera crashed one of Carey's parties, and Carey responded by making some catty comments to her. "I think she got really drunk, and she had just really derogatory things to say to me," Aguilera told the magazine, igniting the feud. "But it was at that time that she had that breakdown, so she might have been very medicated." Oh, snap.

"I had hoped that Christina was in a better place now than the last time I saw her, when she showed up uninvited at one of my parties and displayed questionable behavior," Carey fired back on Access Hollywood. "It is sad yet predictable that she would use my name at this time to reinvent past incidents for her promotional gain." And you don't gain anything by messin' with Mariah, except maybe some teeth broken off at the gumline.

Carey has a lot on her plate: She has to wail though her tunes like a cat with its tail caught in a wood chipper and she has to squeeze into outfits revealing enough to make the gals at the Satin Saddle blush, so obviously, she can't be bothered with the task of raising a Diet Coke to her lips.

According to British TV host Graham Norton, when he interviewed Carey recently, she actually had an assistant hold her drinks for her when she became parched. "She put her head to one side for people to serve her a drink through a straw, like she was unable to use her hands," Norton told the Web site FemaleFirst.co.uk. Carey also is rumored to have an assistant whose job it is to make sure her skirts don't touch the ground - like a true diva, not even her clothes are allowed to be down to earth.

(Las Vegas Review-Journal)



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