Whoever is managing this woman needs to be fired again and again and again.

I finally had the opportunity to watch an episode of Hey, Paula, and it is, to summarize, thirty minutes of Paula Abdul wasted. And I do mean for the entire thirty minutes. Seriously, guys, even the Real World kids tend to be sober for some measurable portion of the daytime. Not so with Ms. Abdul. The last time I saw a reality show about someone who was this ridiculously wasted all fucking day, it was called The Anna Nicole Show. And we all know how well that turned out.

Ratings for the show have been dismal, and rightly so. It’s mundane. It’s pathetic. It’s embarrassing. It’s not like watching a train wreck. It’s like watching the five-year-old you’re babysitting crash his Tonka trucks into each other. Over and over again.

But the blame for this extends beyond Paula. Someone pitched this show. Someone agreed to produce it. Bravo agreed to air it. And Paula Abdul herself must have been in at least one or two meetings with these people before any of this happened. So these people knew what they were getting into. It’s not like this woman is witty. It’s not like she’s insightful. It’s not like her day-to-day life is particularly interesting. Her staff obviously hates her, and everyone who has to interact with her does so in approximately the same tone of voice you’d employ with your young Tonka aficionado. So I have to figure that all these people were just betting on her being so fucking retarded all the time that it would make good TV. Paula, my dear, you may want to look for new management, preferably one who can focus on helping you conquer your drug problem rather than exploiting it.

I’ve included a clip of my favorite scene of this episode, in which Paula is touring the lab of a fragrance company producing the perfume to which she’s going to lend her name. She stumbles down the stairs to the lab, then drops a sampler on the floor, bends down to pick it up, and doesn’t see any pressing reason to stand back up again. She then says the word “sexpot” in much the same way I might, had I taken six Vicodin and polished off two tumblers of Scotch before 1 pm.

Not that this should come as a surprise to anyone, but our resident chihuahua-preservation guru had a nervous break-down on a conference call the other day. There is so, so much to say about this article, but I have so, so many other things to do right now, so I’m going to go ahead and let Page Six do my job for me right now. We’ll chat about this in more detail later.

She sobs on the tape: “I’ve never been treated this way and I’ve never seen anybody treated this way. This is just too much to stomach.” Abdul is assured by those hearing her wails, “You will be treated better starting right now.”

“I’ve been going through tremendous amounts of a difficult time,” said Abdul, who recently fibbed to her fans when she said she hurt her nose tripping over her Chihuahua. (We reported the real story last week - that Abdul threw a glass against the wall and a shard of it cut her face.)

Ranting about Bragman [her publicist], who apparently didn’t appreciate her enough, the petite former pop star says: “I do a call-in every week for OK! Magazine on ‘American Idol.’ Because of my brilliant job, they want to do a cover on me. I’m being told by Howard Bragman that I’m too old and no one will ever want to do a cover.

“I’m being tested. All I’ve ever wanted in my life is to be treated fairly and be treated with kindness. And I’ve never in my entire career been treated this way. The people who are supposed to take care of these things do not. I have to clean up after them everywhere they go. And I’m tired of it.”

Ever since she fell off the wagon and into a chihuahua, Paula Abdul’s handlers are keeping a very close eye on her. It’s not that she’s drunk here, see. They just want to be prepared should she suddenly cross paths with a small dog.

In L.A. last night. Thanks to our pals at Buzz Foto for the images.

It’s not that I’ve been ignoring this story, per se, it’s just that, like, what do you really say? She broke her nose when she tripped over her chihuahua.

This is not the sort of thing one does sober.

I mean, far be it from me to point fingers or accuse someone of being an addict. All I’m saying is this: sober people do not trip over chihuahuas.

I have three cats in my apartment. It’s a small apartment. It’s a one-bedroom. There are three cats. They are all approximately chihuahua-sized. I have had three cats for two years now. I have never — never – tripped over any one of them, let alone broken my nose in the process. I’m just saying.

Sober people don’t trip over chihuahuas.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

Fox News brings us this interview with Paula after the fact, wherein she looks pretty damn wasted and generally displeased to be forced to recount her chihuahua-tripping incident. TMZ has video (here) of Paula on the way to the interview, crying her eyes out. I’m sure this has not been a fun process for her.

Paula will appear on the American Idol finale tonight — in fact, they probably start taping in LA here in just a few hours — and I look forward to watching her defend this look to Simon.

Okay, look, I know the audition phase is always a freak show, but tonight was in a class all its own.

For starters, on day one in Birmingham, Paula Abdul is trashed. I mean, right from the start. Just out of her freakin’ head deeeeeeeeeerunk. Not the twitching-a-little-and-making-no-sense Paula we’ve come to know and love, but actually-on-the-floor-and-having-trouble- standing-and- laughing-at- inappropriate-times out of her goddamn skull drunk. I suppose it’s possible that the sound feed between the auditioners and the judges table got dropped. Or, you know, the sound feed between Paula Abdul’s brain and the rest of her body got dropped. Or, most likely, Paula herself got dropped on her head as a child. Sigh. This is only day one.

Day one also brings Jamie Lynn Ward, who is Kellie Pickler on acid. This girl has a Southern accent I didn’t know you could actually hear outside the context of a comedy sketch. Simon asks her to tell them something interesting about herself. Which is the politest way the producers could come up with of getting at the following response: “I live wit may grammaw and may daddy’s paralyzed from here down. He shot hisself raight here (pointing to neck). His waif wuz cheatin awn im, which wuz may stepmomma an he cawt em in the act an it wuddn’t the firs time so like he shot her and he shot hisself and now I live wit may grammaw to help her take care a im.” Beat. “But its okay.”

Please, God, why am I laughing so hard right now? I can’t stop! I am a bad person, I admit it. I have scoured YouTube for footage of this eloquence, but I can’t find it yet. Please please please Lord let it be up tomorrow. Please please if any of you finds this on YouTube, send me the link. I’m begging you! I must have this thing on my blog.

By day two, Paula’s in a rehab detoxing. Or, as Ryan Seacrest narrates, at a “family obligation” in Los Angeles. So it’s just Randy and Simon at the judges table. Which, frankly, makes for a really strange chemistry, and I realize now how important Paula is, drunk and all. I know Birmingham isn’t exactly the music capital of the world, but was there really no one in that city who could judge on short notice? For 30 million viewers? Tammy Wynette, where are you when we need you?

Alright, alright. I’m done for now. I’ll shut up. In closing, to quote the inimitable Leslie Carter: “It’s, like, wow!”

Thankfully, Paula Abdul’s PR whiz kids thought to tie her to her bed for the entirety of the day before this appearance on The Tonight Show, so she managed to seem pretty sober during it. But I guess they were so busy keeping her away from her Vicodin that no one sent her the memo regarding the formal excuse her publicist fabricated for her drunk-tastic Seattle interview last week. Exhaustion, Paula. Your rep said it was “exhaustion.” I think he also mentioned something about the sound guys dropping the feed. But he didn’t cite the fact that you were doing 30 interviews at the same time. And no one ever accused you of answering the wrong questions. You were answering the right questions. It’s just that you were doing it while you were drunk. See, that was the problem. The drunk part.

But I’m happy to report that your PR team is heading in the right direction, in that you seem to have put together at least a half-day of sobriety prior to this interview. Baby steps, guys, baby steps.

YouTube footage courtesy of our friends over at The Blog You Love to Hate.

Today Danny Bonaduce said (on the Adam Corolla show) that Paula Abdul was on a combo of Vicodin, Alcohol, and Cocaine during her interviews, and that during the later ones her coke had worn off.

As he’s an admitted expert drug user I’m going to dutifully pass this theory along as it was the initial question asked when we broke this bad boy…