Honestly, I have no idea. I thought I would be miserable. I never really watched the pageant on TV and I predicted that I would be bored to tears. But I actually enjoyed the pageant very much, and no two words explain my change of heart better than:

Swimsuit competition.

The link takes you to Miss Georgia, the first runner-up who, in my opinion, got robbed. I guess I’m glad Miss Oklahoma won (at least the Sooner State is taking home one national championship this year), but Miss Georgia’s performance of a Chopin Polonaise on the piano was just — how should I put this — hot. I found myself rooting for her after my early favorite, Miss DC, was eliminated when the judges discovered that she took money from Jack Abramoff.

Oh, and here’s a media-related item I found amusing: Of the two events I’ve traveled to blog about — the WTO Ministerial in Hong Kong and the Miss America Pageant in Las Vegas — guess which one got front-page play in the New York Times?

For the first time ever, the Miss America Pageant was held in Las Vegas rather than Atlantic City, and broadcast on Country Music Television instead of a major network. I think the pageant fits in quite well here on the Vegas strip and sandwiched in between Dukes of Hazzard reruns, and I hope my wife gets invited to be the announcer again for the next several years in a row, so that I may eventually win some of my money back.