Where's Waldo?

Look at that picture, and then marvel at the fact that this is not a scene from a movie. This is a picture from the 2008 Opera Ball in Vienna. You know, where they make sausage (insert your own 'wienie joke here)? The same place!

Who knew they were so classy over there?

Lookit all the little crowns on the ladies! They're all royalty! Isn't it amazing that a place that exports vaguely meaty tubes of sausage could support that many princesses? It might be, however, that they're not Princesses at all and are instead just Duchesses or whatever pretending to be princesses, and they're being paraded around by the betux-d gents in front of the Prince, who will pick one of them (in her ball gown/wedding dress combo outfit, how convenient!) to be his bride, thereby making her a Princess. Perhaps she'll get a fabulous NEW crown, with hundreds of glittering hotdog-shaped Swarovski crystals.

I don't know how the Prince is going to do it though, because they all kind of look the same. Same dress (basically), same hair (just about), same gloves (which is probably no surprise given that there are likely very few glovemakers left on earth and how much zing can you work into long satin gloves?), smile, and arm position! There's not a hot chick in a little red dress among them, and certainly none of them are gowned in a frocks made by birds and mice, because THAT one is pink and has bows, as we all know.

And hey, what if the unseen Prince is gay? All that pomp and circumstance wasted when all he's doing is staring at the guy with the beard wondering what he'd look like in assless leather chaps. Pretty soon he'd be bursting out in songs of his hairy-man passion, and his Dad would have to shush him, and Prince Lancelot would come bursting into the hall waving about an gigantic sword thereby lopping off the heads of anyone unfortunate enough to be in the path of certain doom, and...

Wait, that's another movie entirely, isn't it?

Anyhow. This is a rather decadent occasion for a place that's sole claim to fame is processed tubular meats, don't you think? And they even say it's an Opera ball, but I don't see any chubby ladies in bustiers in that conga line being presented to the possibly gay Prince, and certainly those fey lil' tiaras do not in any way resemble horn-bedecked helmets, so this must be a really sucky opera, is what I'm thinking.

Some people just do not get it.