To begin, to begin

Celebrity culture, the new American Dream, the 80th Annual Oscars. Other than Regis's downward spiral into senility, bow-ties were also very prevalent at this particular let's-pretend event. Bow-ties fascinate me mainly because they are worn by "architects, attorneys, university professors, and politicians ...professors in movies and fictional spy characters such as James Bond. However, they have also been adopted into the "uniform" of clowns and male strippers." Many thanks to Wikipedia
This guarantees that if you do not know what you are doing, your bow tie could easily become a practicality noose and you will look misplaced jumping out of that pink cake and or giving a thank you speech to god.

BOW TIES AT THE OSCARS

Stripper, stripper, james bond?

Steve Carell cannot be taken seriously in anything, let alone a bow tie.
And the winner of everything, the winner of the world, not excluding fashion, Johnny Depp
Is that a floppy bow tie? As in Lord Byron, the poet slash rock-star of the 18th century. Conveniently here is a history of the neck tie.
Not to dwell too long on the Oscars but I cannot ignore the women of the night who seem to have all gotten together as if it were the senior prom and they were the few freshman invited (most likely because they put out) This section will be a montage of 80's-gone-wrong prom style attempts.

This dress does not appear to be made for the human figure.

And just when I THOUGHT we were moving into an age of subtlety. But once again in this category as well we have a winner and that winner is Nicole Kidman in her beautiful, diamond-dripping (not a phrase I will use lightly) black little dress. Thank you, Nicole, for saving us from the Venus Dwellers of the red carpet and giving us a breath of fresh air.