“I’m just a hillbilly going to the city,” Dolly Parton told the LA Times “Envelope” about goin’ to the Academy Awards. “I was just gonna wear my costume jewelry.” (Of course, country superstar Parton hasn’t been a hillbilly for about 30 years, but it’s her shtick.) Instead, her dress designer for her Oscar-night appearances, Robert Behar, whose lifelong dream has been to design a gown for the awards show (not world peace or an end to poverty) and has had that dream come true with not one but two gowns for Parton, insists she wear real diamonds. Which she probably hides in a hole in the ground out by the privy. At the awards, she’ll be singing her song “Travelin’ Thru” from Transamerica, which is nominated for best original song. In a real down-homo coinkydink, her country cousin Willie Nelson sings on the Brokeback Mountain soundtrack and has just released his very own gay cowboy song.
But what has us scratchin’ our head is Envelope columnist Elizabeth Snead’s contention that Parton and Italian designer hag Donatella Versace might even slightly look alike. “But what will happen,” writes Snead, “if diva Donatella comes face-to-face with her doppleganger — super-unpretentious all-American country music superstar Dolly Parton — nominated for best song and also attending the Oscars and hitting some after-parties? Won’t this cause some kind of rip in the fabric of the universe…?”