The Post's 'beautiful' mess: Only in New York, kids...

Ah, yes—leave it to the New York Post to ruin my return after an extended Labor Day break. I re-opened The Reeler for business this moring only to be staring into the wrecked visage and puffy violet eyes of one Elizabeth Taylor (right), whom gossip Cindy Adams says claimed the top spot in her recent reader poll judging the all-time most beautiful film actresses.

The Taylor misstep represents the latest in the Post web site's cute tradition of fucking up photo requests (see last week's best here) and perhaps proves that a quarter is a small price to pay for an editorial staff that is not deaf, dumb and blind. I mean, Adams only named every single woman in film history except for Phyllis Diller (who was SEXXXY in The Aristocrats, you must admit), and I am fairly certain that Butterfield 8-era Taylor photos are floating around the Web somewhere—you know, when she really was beautiful and did not look like a drawing stuck on a refrigerator.

Perhaps even more outrageous is the poor showing for women like Carole Lombard (four votes), Lauren Bacall (five votes) and that goddess Valerie Bertinelli, whom Adams disqualified anyway for her predominating TV career. My own first choice, Grace Kelly, took third place with 76 votes, and some hack named Angelina Jolie outearned my second choice, Ingrid Bergman, by a 42-24 margin.

Not that any of this matters now—I cannot shake Liz Taylor for the life of me. And it is not as though the Post makes things any easier on its readers with that twin photo of Adams, either. If anyone at the Post is listening, tell Rupert Murdoch that Sears Portrait Studio can give him a great deal on new shots of his writers if the paper's $20 million annual loss is holding him back.