A couple of weekends ago, the Number Two Surrogate Daughter came to visit me with her roommate. We went out to dinner and then headed back to the couch and watched “Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.” There’s a scene where they stop the bus, climb out and stare into the west, as the road goes to infinity and beyond and the enormity of their journey first hits them. I’ve seen that scene myself, out in New Mexico, and it is a humbling thing to see all that space with no other sign of human existence except for that straight line of tar and gravel.

The image caused the girls to ask how big, exactly, is Australia. So we dug out the old atlas (1974) and looked up Australia’s land mass (comparable to the lower 48) and population distribution (three or four small dots on the South East coast) and traced the line between Sidney and Alice Springs. Then, because I always need to say something, I mentioned that my father had been stationed in the outback during the war. The Roommate took an audible breath and said “cooooooool. did you get to live there?” “Shit. I’m not that old, honey.” And then she said, “I didn’t even know we had men stationed in Australia.” “Uh, yeah. Pacific Theater of Operations? Japan? That whole thing?” And as we looked blankly at each other, the penny dropped for me.

World. War. Two. Not Viet Nam. The Big War. Oooooooh. Cause see? Her pop served in Nam. Yeah, that would be about right, because my FRIENDS went.  Oooooh, cause, like, her Gramps? HE served in WWII. Right? Yes. Your grandpa and my father would be the same age range.

Every now and then I have to get reminded that there is a generation or two behind me. Sigh.

We open on the mansion on the hill, where we meet Ebony, face deep in the refrigerator saying that her personality does not suck. Jenah of the blonde rat weave is standing next to her, all eye-rolling “what evs, babe” and remembering what a totally rude bitch Ebony was back on the Love Boat, before Tyra and the 2 Jays started plotting Miss Thing’s high-fashion ass-whooping.

We cut to Ambreal in the phone booth, talking to her pops, and asking him to pray for her as he gives her the advice to buckle down, work hard and quit looking for a good time all the time. What? How’s she talking to my father when he’s been dead for 3 years? But sweet little thing calls her pop Daddy, and that makes me love her a little more, despite that she’s a musical theater major, and all the MT majors I ever knew were completely insane and insufferable, and not necessarily in that order.

Binaca and Heather are out on the patio, and Heather is whining about having to work on full frontal face. Binaca is surprisingly supportive and only sabotages Heather with bad advice once or twice at the end of the conversation.

At that moment, or at least at the next edit, the doorbell rings and there stands Tyson Beckford, the hottest, most famous male model ever (or so says Tyra, later in the show). I will grant him hott. Very, very hott. And heavily tattooed, but who among us is not? Tyson is at the house to give the girls advice on how to use your beauty and fame to be a spokesperson for important stuff other than hair products and clothes. This is a concept for Chantallobotomy to wrap her itty-bitty mind around. Tyson’s arrival causes Ebony to go running up and down the stairs, squealing and squeaking. It’s actually sort of cute. Heather, with her usual sangfroid, just allows, and I quote “Eye candy. Yumm.”

The girls are told to go into the kitchen, pick some random thing, and sell it sexy. Chantallobotomy felates a lime popsicle. I’m stunned that she would go there. Just stunned. Who would think that a cheerleader would do such a thing? Binaca sells a watering can… it’s wet. It’s realllll wet. Ebony is too flustered standing next to Tyson to do anything more than go guhguhgugh about something or another. Heather rocks a wine glass, saying it’s fingerprint proof, and (as she kissses it provocatively) lipstick proof. For some reason, although we keep hearing about how Aspberger’s prevents eye contact or physical contact, Heather manages to twine herself all over Mr. Beckford, who is happy enough to stand there and take it. Not to be outdone, Ambreal has a mango, and she sells that juicy thang enough that Tyson takes a bite out of it. A big, juicy, perfectly round bite. And Ambreal goes squealing back to the couch, mango in hand, and you just know that she is going to save that fruit in formaldehyde until the day she dies. SQUEEEEEEE.

Tyra Mail tells the girls that they need to have a cause. They speculate blindly and lamely. The cause, they find out at the shoot, will be Mr. Beckford’s personal cause: the I am Africa campaign, and the non-profit Keep A Child Alive, which fights AIDS in Africa. Good one. I’m down with that. For all my jaded scorn over TyTy and her Cycle of Meaning, AIDS is an issue that will always have me digging in my pockets. The girls are broken into 3 teams, and given the executive summary of the organization, a handful of props and thirty minutes in which to develop a 30 second public service commercial. The teams are Ambreal, Heather and Jenah; Lisa, Chantallobotomy and Binaca; and Ebony, Salacious D and Sarah.

Binaca’s team goes first, and Lisa and Chantallobotomy do OK with their “see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil” ad, but Binaca totally blows her lines. Heather’s group does a thing with signs that reminds me of “Don’t Look Back” and we know how I love all things Bob, so I’m prejudiced toward their ad. I am also a little bit charmed at how they have no idea about sound on a set, and their cardboard signs go banging and clanging as they are dropped. The last team is Ebony’s and they are all the face of AIDS is women, and it’s all about girl power. The woman from Keep A Child Alive is the judge, and she tells them that the first team (hello, BINACA?) got the name of the charity wrong. (Buzzer noise). The second team was a little stiff (well, it did include Jenah and Heather, duh) and the last team incorrectly identified the services offered by the charity. The winner, then is Heather’s team. GO TEAM HEATHER! Prizes? Yes, two team members will get gift baskets from Carol’s Daughter and the third, whose name will be chosen at random from a little basket, will get to shoot an ad for Carol’s Daughter, art directed by Miss Mary J. Blige! More squealing. More good news for Heather, because hers is the randomly chosen name. She heads off to her shoot (and unlike when Lisa the Lap Dancer won a photo shoot, the other girls are all happy for Heather) and meets her photographer, Matthew Ralston, who has a shot of Johnny Depp on his website that just made me swoon a little. Mary J. Blige decides that Miss Heather is a leetle bit white for a cosmetic company that specializes in persons of ethnicity, so Heather gets a spray tan. Heehee. And she looks good a little beige. Ralston gives her some major one-on-one coaching and she impresses him greatly. She also learns how to pose face forward. Neenerneener, you Heather haters.

Back at the Casa de Bitches and Hos, the girls are making chicken fingers and microwave pizza and having a party in the closet. Yeah. Too easy. Make your own closet jokes, people. Ebony says she’s over this whole thing and wants to go home. The very concept make Chantallobotomy’s head explode. Since it’s empty, there is no mess to clean up. She says something, and I realize that she has a speech impediment. Or she’s talking with her mouth full. In any event, whatever she has to say is instantly forgettable. Binaca is practicing not having dead eyes. She’s doing the “squint with your eyes wide open” trick that Tyra was telling her about at panel last week. Frankly, I think this is a joke, like when Susan Sarandon tells Tim Robbins to breathe through his eyelids in “Bull Durham”, but Binaca is working it out in front of a mirror, so she believes.

Heather arrives home and a camera cut shows us that it’s almost one in the morning. She is glowing and happy. Binaca gives it her best shot, but all she can muster in the way of hateful is to ask if Heather got to practice face forward, and Heather beams, Oh Yes! Matthew was soooooo helpful with that. And Mary J. Blige was soooooooooo cool with me being a total fan freak. And we see Heather giving MJB a big ole hug, and MJB barely tolerating it. Asberger’s helps sometimes, I’m thinking. Binaca then confessionalizes that Heather is her biggest competition, and she just doesn’t get it, why it all comes so easy to Heather. I think the answer, and I could be going out on a limb here, is Karma, bitch.

Commercials, where Jaslene gives make up advice to the make over winners. I wonder if any of them could understand a word she said? No, I didn’t think so.

The theme for the final photo shoot of the week is Recycling, and each girl gets to be a recyclable object. (Oh, come ON. It’s like the closet jokes. Sometimes, it is just too easy.) The photographer is Frederic Reshew, and the girls are made up as: Heather/Aluminum; Chantallobotomy/Shredded paper; Sarah/Garbage Bags (and she does a great, backward flop into the piles of trash); Salacious D/Auto Parts (and manages to knock over the set); Ebony/Bubble Wrap (and she is soooo over it, and the Little Orange Man says she looks trampy); Jenah/Cardboard (and the LOM talks about how Jenah takes direction and then looks for more); Binaca is Grease and you know? sometimes it’s like shooting fish in a barrel…But the LOM says she’s obviously been practicing that smile with your eyes thing that Tyra loves; Lisa/Plastic Bottles and Ambreal/Newspapers. The Little Orange Man says she is going backwards. She looks inexperienced, she’s forgotten how to model, she is boring and uninspired. Not to put too fine a point on it, he grabs Ambreal as she walks off set and draws her a picture of herself, spiraling down, down, down.

Commercials. Ambreal tells the camera that if she can just stay in the house, she could win the competition. Big IF. Ebony allows as how she is praying with all her heart that she gets sent home, that Tyra won’t call her name. She is tired of the criticism and being beaten down. In the judging room, Miss Jay’s Afro is starting to take up two seats at the table, Twiggy is looking a little road worn, Tyson Beckford is the guest judge and Nigel is wearing one of Miss Jay’s old, shorter Afro wigs. There is a huge sigh of relief from everyone when he takes it off. Despite what he says, it is not that he looks bad with hair (we’ve seen the pix from his own modeling days) it is that the short, nappy little wig is atrocious and would look indecent on anyone.

Reviews: Salacious D is showing a lot of neck, and looking good as auto parts. Jenah got cleaned up for the judging and looks as good in person as she does in her shot (except, you know, for the rat weave) and Nigel says he’d book her. Is that Nigel-speak for something dirty? We can only dream. Ambreal is dead in the eyes, and she says it was because her false eyelashes were falling off. Tyra calls foul and says (no, really) “It’s always something.” but it is the model’s job to sell it despite whatever. Lisa has smoothed her poodle curls down again (she ain’t liking that poodle cut at all), and the judges say that she was too “modeling 101” easy, sure poses and no fire. Binaca was too stiff, but she had smiling eyes (You’ve been practicing!). Sarah was good, but she’s losing weight, and she should stay full figured. Ebony is told that it doesn’t matter that she doesn’t want to hear criticism, they are only giving it too her because they believe in her. You can do it! (I’m hearing echoes of the old Tiffany from the Hood “I’ve never yelled at any girl the way I’m yelling at you now.”). Ebony just rolls her eyes, chews her lips, shrugs her shoulders and prays for the ax to fall. Chantallobotomy has hair in front of her face from her movement shot, and Tyson hates it and the other judges love it (because you can’t see that she’s a forceps baby with one half of her asymmetry covered?) and Heather gets all the love. Full face! Hot hot hot! Love, love, love! (Kiss of death, death, death????)

Salacious D is called first this week and praised for her growth and improvement. Then Jenah, who is deemed hot stuff. Heather is one of the best of the bunch. Binaca is getting better. Sarah has to put some pounds back on, and stop denying that she’s losing weight. Nigel says if she can keep the weight on, she could be a super star in the plus-size world. That’s because she’s a size 6. Which is not plus sized in the real world. But I digress. Chantallobotomy (I was born to win this) is OK in person but meh on film. Lisa is playing it safe, she’s stagnating. (Kind of like the New Jersey swamps from whence she came, if you ask me.) And that leaves Ambreal and Ebony. I didn’t hear what Tyra said to them because I was calling the emergency vet to see if I should be worried that JoJo, the dog of very little brain, had found and eaten a tube of cortisone cream. The answer was no, but our home remedy of burnt toast wouldn’t hurt, either. The dog is an endless source of love, and an equally bottomless pit. Even the vet calls her a garbage scow.

In any event, the girl with the most potential is Ebony, and she refuses to take her photo. Y’know, Tyra, she says, I just don’t want to be here any more. I don’t think that modeling is really for me. Tyra, having once screeched at a girl with the same ghetto-fabulousness and long, Naomi weave, doesn’t yell this time. She just tells Ebony that the real reason she wants to leave is that she can’t handle the truth, and that there is nothing uglier to Tyra than a quitter, and for that reason Miss Ebony-the-Ingrate can just take her stank attitude and get the fuck out of the house. And Ambreal? You get to stay after all, and you’d better work this last, final, really we mean it this time chance. And the girls stand around in dumbfoundedness, blinking in shock and awe, and watch as Ebony saunters out, happy that she is free at last, free at last.

So, there I am, hanging around in the examining room at the dermatologist’s office. Hanging, and hanging and hanging. My appointment was at 9:30, and they got me into that room spot on 9:30. But then? Nothing and no one for many long, long, long minutes. Enough minutes that I was able to knit a couple inches of sock. And then I got bored with that, pulled out the extension on the examining table, plugged in the i-pod and closed my eyes. During which time, the doctor and his assistant came in the room. And started talking to me. Which I was completely and blissfully unaware of, seeing as I was listening to loud rock music pumped directly into my head. Imagine my surprise when I opened my eyes to see a strange man and woman standing over me. I let out a banshee shriek that woke up everyone in the room and got all our hearts beating (rapidly) in unison. After we all peeled ourselves off the ceiling, the doctor peeled a few layers of derma off my clavicular area and we all bade one another a fond farewell.

Last week I had to make an emergency visit to my eye doctor. All of a sudden, I was getting flashes of light in my left eye. While I do have the occasional migraine, this wasn’t a migraine light. It was something new and unsettling. As is my wont these days, I Googled flashes of light in the eye before I called my doctor. It could have been a torn or detatched retina. It wasn’t. It was, like every other damn thing these days, a function of my age. The vitreous fluid in the eye changes consistency as we age, and it can (and usually does) cause these flashes. Great. Now my eyes have flashes to go along with the other freaking flashes I’ve started to get. Well isn’t life a fucking bowl of cherries.

Today, I go to the dermatologist. I have some things growing on me. You know. They used to be freckles, but now they aren’t. They are raised and lumpy and funny looking. I know what they are. They are skin damage caused by sun and (sing it with me sisters) age. One is on my collar bone and spreading, the other is on my right shin where I shave the top of it every time I do my legs. Since I wear a lot of long skirts and am basically a lazy shit, this is not daily, but still.

At least I still have my hearing… for now.

This weekend, to change the subject, I had a wonderful Saturday. I spent the morning with the PDB and her daughter, the PPDB (petit person dressed in black) and we went yarn exploring. Then we had lunch at the dim sum joint. I got home to find Star had taken the RLA out shopping for his birthday, and when she dropped him back at home, she took me and the Number Three Surrogate Daughter off to the mall for extended shopping. We hit up some sales, the Origins shop and then the local Jo-Ann’s for some sewing notions. Damned if Star didn’t manage to score some lovely yarn while we were there, too. So it was an all girlfriend Saturday, and I haven’t had that particular pleasure in a long, long time. But now? I must be going, you know how slow us old geezers drive, and the dermatologist’s office is a good two miles away.

This week’s episode of ANTM came with a side of girlfriend on the couch. She doesn’t watch, so I had to do narrative throughout the show, and consequently, missed out on taking notes or paying focused attention. The girlfriend in question is the female half of the PDBs (Persons Dressed in Black), she who was once a Conde Nastie, and has hired more models than anyone I know, and who pegged CariDeeMented as season 7’s winner based on one glance at the website portfolios half way through the season. I respect her opinion, so what I can fuzzily remember her saying, I will repeat.

We begin with tangerine martinis. This puts us in the right frame of mind to ridicule the hamsters. The show begins with someone or another whining about something or another. I’m giving the PDB the rundown on this year’s crop: the Autistic girl who doesn’t look like much until the cameras are on her and then she turns it out, the drop-dead gorgeous girl who had such a stank attitude that Tyra and the 2 Jays beat it out of her before she even got to the house, and now she can’t take a decent photo to save her life, and it’s a shame, because she really is amazingly pretty. There is a stripper and a bikini waxer, and a dumb blonde with a horribly asymmetric face (who was born to win this, made inside and out to win this, whose dream it is to win this and who has wanted this since she was in kindergarten), and a maybe plus-sized girl and a couple of bitches and another couple with terrible weaves.

Finally we get some action: the girls are going to go to posing class with BennyNinja of the House of Ninja. On trampolines, because that’s the way to learn how to pose with movement. This causes a lot of problems for most of the girls, since they seem to have problems with the whole posing thing anyway. Posing and walking? Posing in mid-air? Heather, predictably, falls. Lisa, predictably, complains. Ebony, the girl who has had her spirit broken almost gets her ankle broken. Ambreal, who keeps letting us know that she goes to Howard University and majors in Musical Theater, is amazingly adept at jumping on trampolines and posing at the top of the parabola. The PDB is stunned at this action. “That isn’t the way it is in real life!” she exclaims. “In real life, you just hire an athletic girl if you need one. You know, like that volley ball playing amazon I used.” In translation, that’s “I hired Gabrielle Reese when I needed to shoot an athlete.”  The PDB goes on “You don’t try to make a girl everything to everyone. You either are something or you aren’t.” And then she shrieks a little and asks who the monster is. Oh. That’s just Heather. Wait until you see her film.

Putting movement during modeling into practice takes the girls to an ice skating rink, where they are going to do doubles work with someone (Lloyd Eisler) who is allegedly an Olympic pairs ice skater/dancer, but who could be an Olympic skeet shooter for all I recognize the name or face. They show us some grainy footage that could be anybody from any year. He’s going to teach the girls how to flip over his shoulder. And good luck with that, buddy. The judges will watch as the girls attempt to portray one of three randomly chosen emotions BennyNinja yells at them as they flip. The judges are someone or another from 17 Magazine, BennyNinja and season six winner, Dani(I’m a Cover Girl, Mommy)elle. Dani(elle) is still looking good, and apparently has a job coming up, because the winner of the challenge will get to shoot the ad campaign with her. Or at least the part of the campaign that will run in 17 magazine. The three emotions are “joy”, “sorrow” and “anger”. They are either indistinguishable from one another or lamer in execution than CarideeMented’s silent film. I’ve seen more believable expressions of joy, sorrow and fear on blow-up dolls. Heather manages to fall about two dozen times trying to get to the spot on the ice where they will do the flip. I expect her to now be able to nail the anger face, but she does not. Nevertheless, someone has to win, and since Ambreal has been confessionalizing that this is her time to shine, and she knows in her bones how good she’s doing, it is not Ambreal, but Lisa the Lap Dancer. Lisa explains how happy she is to win, and the PDB asks me “what language is that girl speaking?.” She then (the PDB, not Lisa) allows as how Lisa must be the right face/body for the shoot, because there is no advertiser in the known universe who would just give carte blanc to a reality show to pick a winner. Lisa the Lap Dancer gets to pick two friends, and she chooses Ebony and Janet.

They go off and shoot for Akademiks, a brand of hip-hop clothing, and if you check out their ad campaigns on their site, you will see that Dani is a regular face for them, and I wouldn’t have recognized her at all except they use her name. I’d also like to point out that if you go to their web site and look at all of the ads in the ad campaign, for both fall and holiday, you will see what Dani was shooting that day, but you will no way, no how, see Janet and Lisa the Lap Dancer. The girls get back to the house, full of joy and excitement. This has a very bad effect on the girls who didn’t win or get picked to share. It seems that nobody in the house likes Lisa the Lap Dancer very much, but they do like Ambreal a lot, and they are all quite pissy that Ambreal didn’t win the challenge when the universal appraisal of LTLD’s performance was “SUCKED!”.

Bianca, who has been very quiet up till now deflates Lisa’s happiness bubble with the following one liner, delivered with perfect timing and scalpel-like precision:“Is that make up making your face break out?” It’s awesome in its perfect cuntiness. I was amazed that Lisa didn’t just blow around the room backwards as the air rushed out of her.

At some point there is a My Life As a Cover

Girl commercial by Jaslene. As usual, nobody in the room with me can understand a word she garbles.

Finally, we get to the photo shoot of the week. The theme is High-Fashion Gargoyles. After the girls are educated on what, precisely, a gargoyle is, they head off to makeup and wardrobe. The PDB and the RLA are confused by Sutan, whom they both think is a girl. But I digress. In practice, it appears that a High-Fashion Gargoyle has Madonna’s 1990s hair, Michael Jackson’s Beat It-era Members Only jacket, and Cyndi Lauper’s skirts. And of course, horrible make up. Because this is a challenge shoot, the challenge is that the shoot takes place on the roof of a sky scraper, on a narrow, high platform, and the girls are all in sky scraper heels on that platform. The PDB is about to piss herself she is laughing so hard. And then Heather comes out, barely able to teeter around in her heels, crawls awkwardly onto the platform and then just turns it on. As she always does. The PDB stops laughing. Day-um, says the PDB. I told you so, says Miz Shoes. There is no place in this review to put this, so I’ll just stick it here: Heather gets lots and lots of confessional and interview time this week, and she is completely hysterical. She is totally dead-pan and cranky and funny. I’m loving Heather more and more, but I somehow doubt that despite her charm and amazing photos, she will be our winner.

Janet has a hard time posing in her mini skirt, Sarah can’t wrap her head around the concept of a gargoyle. Ebony finally shines. Binaca does too, but what can you do? Even a broken clock is right twice a day. Jenah and Chantallobotomy are completely unmemorable. (Maybe it was the third round of martinis) and Ambreal freaks out about heights. Someone always freaks out about something. Maybe it’s heights, maybe it’s the giant hissing cockroaches, maybe it’s birds, but it is always, as Rosanne Rosanadana would have said, something.

At judging, we find out why Ebony always does that stank thing with her face: she’s ashamed of how much gum she has when she smiles. But she manages to smile anyway after the judges tell her she had better start, or she had better start packing. Blah blah blah, neck, blah blah blah, not getting the concept can cost a client money, Super-sized Sarah, blah blah blah critique critique critique. And the bottom two are Ambreal (my time to shine, huh?) and Janet (she’s like a discount version of Liza Minnelli, who was herself an unattractive, discount version of her mother). Who goes home? The girl who cleans up the house after the other pigs (Janet) or the girl who ... who what? Can pose while jumping on a trampoline and who hates Lisa the Lap Dancer as much as Binaca the Beeeyotch does? Well, who do you think? Buh-bye Janet the Bikini Waxer, the girls will just have to be hairy and piggy without you.

Next week, we take up the drinking game of “I was born to win this” despite the risk of alcohol poisoning.

MAKEOVERS! and that means tears and weeping and whining and crying and that’s just the hairdressers who have to work with these hamsters.

We open on the amazing house in the Hollywood Hills, where Victoria-the-Yalie is confessionalizing that she’s only wanted to be a top fashion model for like, you know, the last three weeks or so since she got on the show, and that her normal attire is a sweat shirt and pyjama pants. And she had no idea how hard this would be for like, you know, someone smart. Like her. Who goes to Yale, if nobody mentioned that before.

Then we see Salacious D explaining (I can’t understand my own notes - so I think it was to Binaca-the-Beeyotch) that she is Never. Never. Never. going to be in the bottom two. You hear what I’m sayin? Neh-VER. Gurl.

Finally, Chantal (and I have to thank the guys at fourfour for pointing this out to me) of the supremely asymmetrical face (girlfriend looks like a forceps baby who got gripped a little too hard) goes on about how nervous she is and has been but none of that means anything to her, because she only cares about winning. Winning! She has to win this. It has been her dream eternal.

Finally, we get to the salon, and this year’s celebrity stylist is none other than Ken Paves, who has done Valentino’s shows. And he is also responsible for Jessica Simpson’s nasty-looking Wal-Mart line of hair extensions and falls and pieces and clip-ins. For some reason, though, Tyra doesn’t mention that aspect of the Paves empire. Since this is the first time Miz Shoes has ever heard anyone say his name out loud, she is amused to learn that we don’t pronounce it the way it is spelled (like working on the highway), but Pah-VAYZ. Sure. Whatevs.

The tension builds as Tyra gives the girls the rundown of her visions for their heads: Ambreal will get her nappy little ‘fro taken down to about an inch; Binaca will lose the jello-colored bangs and get blonde extensions; Sarah will get a cool, short sort of Posh blonde cut; Victoria will get highlights; Chantal will get a peroxide blonde version of Tyra’s own bangs and straight hair; Lisa will get a short curly poodle cut; Jenah will get long, floaty blonde locks; Janet will get her existing pixie cut spiked and dyed black; Ebony will get her $500 weave removed (the hair people have been complaining that it is rubber cemented to her head) and instead she’ll get the long, parted in the middle Naomi Campbell weave (the same one she gave to Tiffany From The Hood—remember her? The Girl She Had Never Yelled At Anyone Like This Before?); Salacious D will get a Louise Brooks bob (or, maybe, considering the way it turned out, a Kelley Osbourne bob) and finally, Heather will get some chestnut color and her ends trimmed. Of course, nothing is ever as simple as it would seem. The truth of Ebony’s weave is that it is, in fact, glued down to her forehead, her scalp, her head… It is nasty beyond nasty, and we get to watch as half the skin around her hairline is pulled off. That’s FIERCE! The Little Orange Man asks her, as he holds the dead thing in his hand, if it cost a lot. She says, well, actually, it was free, but…

And I call BULLSHIT! Back on the Love Boat, Miss Thang was walking around telling everyone that she had a $500 weave, y’all. She was flaunting that thing all over the other bitches. Think we don’t remember? Oooooh, she not only stank, she a liar. Snap!

As for Binaca? Well, she won’t be getting her long, blonde locks because her hair has been dyed, fried, chemically treated, dyed again, straightened, fried some more and is breaking off in chunks. The only way to save her hair is to shave her bald. Not as bald as old Nnennah from Season 6 who got her freak on with the male model in the African shoot, but bald. And unlike old Nnennah, Binaca has a funny shaped head. She looks like my art history pictures of King Amenophis IV, the pharoh with the funny skull. Well, children, Binaca is not taking getting her head shaved well. She cries, she whines, she pouts, she weeps, she sulks, she complains, she bitches, she moans. She actually says to Miss Jay that she feels like a drag queen. Could he arch those eyebrows any higher? Talk to the hand, honey. Binaca lets us know that her momma always told her that if you cut off your hair, you’re ugly. (Nice parenting). Since they promised Binaca long blonde hair, Ken makes up a chemo wig (and O, Lordy I wish I was making that up, but I am not) for her with a latex front. They show her how to put it on, and she still is a bitch about it. Whine, moan, complain. Salacious D, on the other hand, loves her weave, even if it’s so tight her scalp is bleeding. Thanks. Miss Jay shows her how to do the weave pat. Are they going to actually tell this crop of hamsters how to care for these weaves? Nah, where’d the fun be in that.

Now that the girls have been made bee-oo-tiful, they have a make up challenge in which they will have to do their own make up, find their clothes in a room full of clothing racks, get dressed and out on the runway, all in five minutes. They are told to do a dramatic eye and a nude, shiny lip. Their judge is no less a fabulous personage than noted make-up artist, MRS. NIGEL!!! And she’s as beautiful as he is. They must have sick pretty babies, those bastards. The winner of this challenge will have their look duplicated on the new Cover Girl web site and they will get to do a video of it as well. Another good prize. The girls are getting lamer, and the prizes are getting better.

Off they go, and the first thing we see is Binaca bitching that she looks like a boy in a pink bathrobe. Yeah, whatever. Wear the wig and quit bitching, bitch. There are elbows flying and people blocking the mirrors and the makeup. Janet can’t find her rack of clothes, so she grabs the first dress that looks similar and fits. They all make it to the runway on time, but barely. Janet is declare amazing, and would be the winner if she wasn’t wearing the wrong dress, or so they say. The winner? Surprise, surprise, it’s Sarah! Remember Sarah? She’s the one who isn’t quite big enough to be plus size, so she’s the normal size girl? She took a huge risk and did an Amy Winehouse batwing eye. The judges just gushed. Whoo-hoo for the normal size girl who never gets any air time.

Back at the house there is Tyra mail with the question, Ready to be deflowered? And this crop of geniuses decide that means it’s the nude shot. Actually, not far off the mark. Commercials and it’s Jaslene, mumbling about something or other. The solution to her lack of enunciation is to have her do the intro and outro and have people who can actually speak do the commercials. It’s something about violence against women and I seem to hear her say she was a victim of that and that’s why she is so excited to give her voice to this cause. Or she could be telling me that violet is the color for fall. Really. She could be speaking Aramaic for all I can understand a word she says. And back we go to the hamsters.

Nay-chur! The girls are dragged out to a wilderness site where they will be flowers for noted French photographer Lionel Deluy. There they are made up to look like flora, but not necessarily flowers, as Victoria-the-Yalie is a cactus, and Jenah is moss, Lisa is bamboo, Sarah is ivy and Heather is a weed of uncertain variety and painted sort of like the Wicked Witch of the West. The flowers are Binaca who is a sunflower, Janet who is hydrangea (and those tatty silk flowers were blue, but they most certainly were not hydrangea), Salacious D is a pink tulip, Ambreal is a rose with Josephine Baker’s hair and an arched foot that is giving the Little Orange Man a woody (rilly, Mr. Jay, chill on the foot, you are creeping me out), Ebony is a bird of paradise, and poor Chantal is given the perplexing and difficult challenge of being baby’s breath. This very hard. Little Orange Art Director is giving her art direction, and the photographer is giving her direction and they aren’t the same direction and she starts crying and losing it and it is just a mess. Then she interviews that had the two men Just. Shut. Up a minute and let her work, she would have been awesome, because she (join with me now) “was born to do this.” I think that there is a drinking game here, just waiting to be defined. Take a shot every time she says that she was born to do/win this? I’m in. I’ll put the tequila on ice right now.

Back at the Casa des Bitches and Hos, we see Victoria lose it. This is the most ludicrous thing I’ve ever done, she states. And all the other girls just stare at her, because they have no idea what ludicrous means. Imagine that you are a cactus? PUH-LEEEZE, she says. I want to wash off this ridiculous make up, put on my jeans and just go back to the library. The other girls just stare at her, because they have no idea what a library is. Salacious D announces once again that she is going to be America’s Next Top Model. So there. Phhhhhhhhht. And Chantal? Well, she wants this more than any of the other girls. She was born to win this. She has wanted to be a model since she was in kindergarten. Really? And at 20 she still has the same dream? Because when Miz Shoes was in kindergarten she wanted to be a cowgirl, but by the time I was eleven, I wanted to be a marine zoologist and do dolphin research. I only ended up in art school because my marine biology teacher (asshole) told me that women couldn’t do research and I’d have to be a teacher. I should have lowered my ambitions and been a dolphin trainer at SeaWorld, but you know, hindsight and all that.

Finally and at last we return to the judging room where the chia pet on Miss Jay’s head has grown another inch. And oh sweet baby jeezus, that is this year’s ruffle. He is adding an inch to the Afro each week when a girl goes home. Oh lord. My head just imploded. I don’t know if I can continue. But wait! There’s a cat fight coming, so I’ll press on, regardless.

The first girl to be reviewed is Victoria-the-Yalie. She has posed in such a way as to make her neck wrinkled, which Miss Jay notes by saying the rings on the tree tell a lot about the tree. Huh? And Twiggy starts to say something about a cactus being prickly and isn’t it amusing that… when Victoria snaps that she is so NOT prickly, TWIGGS. And I’d like to say, way to make the point, Yalie.

Lisa is seen as very modelesque in the two good shots she managed to squeeze out. Salacious D was called a dead flower and she lost her neck and her eyes and she has the very worst thing in the Model Universe: Dead Eyes. Jenah took a lot of risks as moss. Yeah. I know. What can I say that is more absurd than that? But she made a fan out of Lionel Deluy, who tells her that when she gets signed, and oh, she will, he is going to book her first. Janet shows the biggest improvement, even if she is too posey. Hah! Get it? She’s a posey who’s too pose-y?

Ambreal is a rose with a thorn… and dead eyes. Heather was declared one of the best shots of the day, as she blended in with all the other weeds, yet never got lost. She looked haunting. Do you think it was the Wicked Witch make up? Binaca came in with her chemo wig on and was told to take it off, because she looks so much better without it. Now is that commentary on the wig? Or of just how skank she looked with jell-o colored hair? Or of the fact that she looked like a dead sunflower. Miss Jay made some crack about her petals falling off. She looked amateur. Then there is Chantallobotomy. Twiggy didn’t like her face.  She tries the “but I had conflicting directions” tack with the judges, and they all just snort at her and tell her, welcome to the real world, honey. Too damn bad. Take it. Work with it. Sell it. Fool.

Finally there is Ebony. You have utterly no charm, says Nigel, quite charmingly. Tyra jumps at the chance to do one of her vicious impersonations. Literally. She vaults the judging table and stands, pigeon-toed on the runway. Then she rolls her eyes and chews her lips, while sitting at the table, we see Ebony doing the exact same thing.  You have to learn to take criticism without writhing, the judges tell her. Take it with the smallest hint of a smile, and with nods of your head to show you are listening. Or just fucking cry, but don’t make those awful faces. Ewww. The snot mustache was more appealing.

Judging: Victoria is stank. And a Yalie. Sarah is losing weight, and that’s not good. Embrace the curves, all fatty fat fat size six of them. Short lecture about how bad it is to be too skinny. Do you think that the Powers That Be noticed that the world found Jaslene to be both alarming slender and a drag queen? And completely incomprehensible, but I’ll stop beating that dead horse until next week’s MLAACG. Janet belongs in men’s mags, Jenah is stunning, Binaca got the bestest makeover evah, Heather is fab, Ambreal is wilting. Lisa is safe, and Ebony needs to clean up her stank attitude. Chantal has something missing (a brain?) and Salacious D doesn’t translate from real to photos. So, as the pictures are handed out, Jenah is first, going down the line to Binaca (embrace the new you), Chantallobotomy (the judges have doubts) and the final two: Salacious D (I won’t EVAH be in the final two… right?) and Victoria-the-Prickly-Yalie. Going home? Victoria, who really couldn’t care less. Whew. Next week? the return of Benny Ninja!

See you on the couch, the martinis will be cold.