Where to start? The Miss America Pageant? The Emmys? Was there a difference? Both shows could benefit from swapping some strategies. Let's have the Miss A. contestants face Joan Rivers for comments during the bathing suit competition. Let's have the nominees for Emmy's Best Actress in a Sitcom award line up for a current events quiz. Let's have Clay Aiken get trapped in a room with 50 beautiful women and see if they can get a rise out of him. That would answer a few questions, wouldn't it? Or maybe just one question.

And who were the two idiots sitting up in the balcony with microphones. babbling like bubbleheads during the Miss A. Pageant? One was J-Lo's DJ sister. The guy, who appeared to have a mouth loaded up with a double set of teeth, was -- who? Anybody? Anybody? There haven't been two emptier bodies in a balcony since the Muppets' Statler and Waldorf. But wait -- the Muppets had human hands up their asses and I think if you looked closely, Miss Lopez and that grinny guy might have, too.

The Emmys chose to honor the oldest or most boring people in many categories. Doris Roberts. Yawn. "Raymond." Yawn. William H. Macy and his weepy movie about the door-to-door salesman. Sniff. Yawn.

Best story that didn't happen at the Emmys: If John Ritters' family had shown up (which they didn't), they might have been seated behind the cast of "Six Feet Under."

Yawn.