The day of the awards is an uncharacteristically gloomy day in Los Angeles, a wonderfully foreboding sign of what’s to come. It’s a Wednesday, and I assume they’re holding it in the middle of the week to get a discount on the theater. Besides, Ellen DeGeneres will be there, and you’re not getting Ellen to come out on a Friday night.

Around 11 a.m. is when the grooming starts, which is a ridiculously early and counterproductive time to start pampering yourself—I sweat through at least three layers of clothing before lunch on a normal day, how am I supposed to make it to the show in one piece if we start this early? But considering that every show taped on the West Coast is recorded for the East Coast prime time audience, everything in Los Angeles has to start three hours earlier than any normal human behavior.

Now, everybody at any event in Los Angeles is groomed to within an inch of their life. Men, women, children, dogs—half of them have their hair and makeup done just to go to Whole Foods, and frankly, considering everybody in that city is so horrifically gorgeous, I don’t blame them. Whenever I’m in L.A., I try wearing the biggest pair of sunglasses to cover as much of my face as possible, to save myself the embarrassment of being compared to the natives. On a day like this, where there’ll be cameras and lights and a red carpet, you better believe the bar is raised.

Fortunately, I was getting pampered. It’s not my favorite thing in the world to have someone painting my face with makeup. I have a bad history with makeup. When I was five, my mother insisted on dressing me up as Frankenstein’s monster for Halloween, a costume that seemed adorable, but required that she apply a thick layer of chalky green makeup to my face every time we needed to pose for pictures. I hated the smell of that makeup. It smelled of melted Tupperware full of old chili, and she absolutely refused to let me wear the costume without the face of makeup. But every time she tried to apply it to my face, I’d start violently gagging and thrashing, and the tears would streak through the makeup, and any bit of it that she would manage to get on my face would be smeared off in seconds anyway. There is no existing picture of this Halloween that doesn’t feature my tear-streaked face.