Mariah Carey's Mother's Day Cake Was the Most Mariah Cake Ever

For Mother’s Day, Mariah’s manager gifted her with a thousand-dollar cake dusted in real gold, crafted in the shape of a size eight platform stiletto heel with a strap in the shape of a butterfly. The only way this cake would be more perfectly Mariah is if it were delivered and consumed within the magical confines of a real butterfly conservatory.

This is probably something she needs as a pick-me-up, because her Vegas run, which began last week, is not getting great reviews. At the Times, my friend and colleague Jon Caramanica has harmed my and Mariah’s forlorn hearts by leveling a brutally honest critique comparing the “largely difficult” show to a car crash:

When it came to the notes, though, the struggle was real. From the beginning of the night, she was tentative and inconsistent. She sang parts of several songs an octave lower than the recordings. Often she appeared to be holding back, as if to build up to a big moment, only to shy away from it. As she’s aged, her voice has gotten huskier, but sometimes the rasp felt like a glitch, not a goal.

And! And! And!

All in all, this show displayed a minimum of imagination and effort, from the song order — although she did rally near the end, on “We Belong Together” and “Don’t Forget About Us” — to the strategically lethargic band to the constant reminders of the things Ms. Carey wasn’t doing.

The whistle register you hear is that of a cake knife being pulled right from the butterfly shoe and driven straight into my heart! I hope she washed all that realness down with a big glass of white wine and propped her feet up on the table. I hope she bathed in Louboutins and diamonds and laughed the pain away. I hope she ripped the chocolate butterfly from the shoe and shoved the whole thing in her mouth at once. It gets better!

Oh, this shoe cake is also appropriate because when I saw her on the opening night of her Christmas spectacular last December in New York, she inexplicably removed one of her shoes and walked around the stage half-barefoot while singing and performing for approximately three minutes straight, before walking back to the shoe, tippy-toed, and putting it back on.