At the most recent committee meeting, lovingly catered by those dahlings at Le Bernardin, it was decided over precious hors d’oeuvres and perfectly iced cocktails that Mr. Diva would spearhead the Awards Committee. This only made sense, as—no offense to his dahling colleagues, truly a SCARY bunch—only Mr. Diva posesses the media connections, the wardrobe and the wrath to hostess an Awards Banquet. (Mr. Diva also has the eminently capable Ms. Felicity Lemon-Tart at his service, to whom kudos are due for so ably and glamorously doing most of the Awards legwork.)

As Whoopi will verify, hostessing an awards gala is hard work, especially in a field as unfortunately crowded as skankdom. Nonetheless, Mr. Diva’s support hose and Ms. Lemon-Tart’s Rolodex prevailed, and the First Official Skankies were awarded in a lovely ceremony at the bowling alley in the Port Authority Bus Terminal. As Joan and Melissa were busy at the Century 21 white sale at the time, we had no paparazzi to fawn over arrivals. But Mr. Diva assures his dahling readers that it was a gala which exceeded even his stratospheric expectations for tit with wit and trash with flash.

The talents and gimlet-eyed perspectives of SCARY were combined with those of a broad-spectrum focus group consisting of discarded boyfriends, girlfriends and tricks, expensive stripper-hustler/whores, bartenders who comp cocktails after the first round and salespeople who don’t believe anyone with a waist bigger than 26 inches is a mutant. Mr. Diva feels, and is sure SCARY concurs, that with this voting population we have been able to ensure the highest levels of accuracy, timeliness, quality control and misanthropy. Many thanks to all voting participants. In those cases where winners were unable to collect their Skankies in person, Mr. Diva is certain they offer effusive gratitude and a sincere commitment to clean up their act.