Forget the Oscars or Grammys, the ultimate red carpet eye candy can always be found at the annual Costume Institute Gala held at the famed Metropolitan Museum of Art in NYC.  Titled "Alexander McQueen: Savage Beauty", this year the fete honored the late great designer who committed suicide early last year.

Check out some of LLT's favorite arrivals below:

Ok, show of hands, who was pretty excited about the S&M Remix featuring our girl Britney Spears?   Now how many of you were as excited after hearing it?  Ok... a lot fewer of you.  And I feel you on that.  But hear me out...





Overlooking Rihanna's annoyingly sharp and repetitive opening of how much she "likes it, likes it", the remix does not differ from the original for the first half of the song.  Rihanna gives off the impression that she can hold a note by moaning her way through the first 2 minutes and some change before handing it off to Britney.  And it's all downhill from there.

But here's where I have I have to give my 2 cents.  Firstly, why did we (the public that was excited for the union) hype the track up like it was going to be the duet of the century?  As much of a fan as I am of both of them, we all know that they're both mediocre singers at best.  Rihanna, specifically, has a tone that consistently treads dangerously close to being off key.  (Did we already forget the annoyance they called "Unfaithful"?)  So what do you get when you add a semi-decent singer, that would be Britney, on a sub-par singer's track?  Even worse singing.  Top it off with layers of unnecessary auto-tune most likely used to mimic Rihanna's pitchy vocal flips and you have a hot mess.

IMHO, the S&M remix was created purely to garner some hype for Rihanna while dissing Britney's musical prowess.  Asking Brit Brit to feature on the song was media sabotage.   I mean they are competition to each other after all.  Call me a conspiracy theorist but at the end of the day it is Rihanna's song so her camp has the last say on how it sounds.  And if you can make Ms Fenty sound like she's a power vocalist, there's some real fuckery going on.  Period.

Now, I have to hear what you all think of this one:

...told someone, oh I love that song by so-and-so, and they're all whaaa that song's mad old, and you're like so what, so what, I can't still like it?  Stop being all pretentious, you are not smarter than me!

No?  ::sigh:: What do you guys know anyway.


So yeah, this isn't new.  But I still like it.  The video's trippy.  And who ever thought we'd actually see Rihanna dance again?  Ok Rih-rih!