At the Casa de Bitches and Hos, Lisa is talking shit

about the pressure on her to remain in the top spot. We see her practicing in front of ever reflective surface in the house: mirrors, glass doors, the shine of grease on Binaca’s forehead. Honey, you should just worry about remaining in the house, is what I’m saying. Heather is eating at a table with Binaca, where, I am certain you will be shocked to learn, Binaca is engaging in her very favorite game (well, you know, other than torturing kittens, ripping the heads off baby chicks and tearing the wings off of flies) of beating down Heather to her face while pretending to be concerned about Heather’s fragile psyche. Today this takes the form of worrying about when, exactly, Heather will have a complete and total breakdown, and be taken from the house in a straight jacket. My guess would be shortly after Heather finally snaps and pounds the shit out of Binaca. Pounding the shit out of Binaca would leave nothing more than an empty skin, but where would the loss be?

Tyra Mail! tells the girls to get ready to be schooled. Doesn’t say in what, and the usual lame guesses aren’t worth wasting the pixels on writing down. Off they go in their bio-bus and end up at the Fashion Institute of Design and Merchandising. There they meet Neal Hamil, the head of Elite Model Management (and one of the Powers That Be that have to live with the winner for a year, and I think that after 8 seasons of winners (and I use the term loosely) like Jaslene the Drag Queen, Noxema and that other one who couldn’t talk to save her life (insert any name here), the Powers That Be have decided to participate a little more closely to prevent another nightmare like (insert any winner’s name here).

So, the hamsters see BennyNinja again, and he tells them that today’s challenge will be to become a muse to a student designer. The designers will use a particularly nasty, mother of the bride, pastel blue polyester dress & jacket and transform it (good luck, says I) into an expression of who they (the models, not the designers) are. The hamsters are teamed up with their designers and we see the designers trying to get a feel for who these vapid clothes hangers really are. Lisa says she likes to show off her legs. Binaca gets some little Asian girl who sees Cleopatra and a boat trip down the Nile. Binaca sees that this is not what she wants, and begins to show the stank face. Chantallobotomy is asked to strike a signature pose and stands with arms akimbo and the same vacuous look she always has. I suppose that a face devoid of expression or intelligence could legitimately be called her signature. Whatevs. Jenah’s designer sees a ballerina. Has the designer ever been to a ballet other than the Ballet Trockadero de Monte Carlo? Heather’s designer is a cute little guy named Justin and between the two of them there is so much cuteness and dorkiness that I think they should get their own spin off. Neither one can look the other in the eye, probably because Justin is like, two feet shorter than Heather. Heather explains who she is by saying “I’m a dork.” All righty then. When the dresses are done, there will be a fashion show and the girls will have to explain how they inspired their designers.

Backstage, Lisa is practicing her attitude and little speech. “I’m a garden party crasher.” Yeah. Binaca is telling everyone that she’s not worried about a thing, because her pictures just keep getting better and better. Unlike her skank personality, which is starting to really, really annoy me. She’s not as delusional as Darth Jader (but then, who could be?) but she is as big a bitch as pick one: Camille & her signature horse stomp, Yaya and her ego, or Moonique of the crusty undies. Boy, we’ve had some good times together on this show, haven’t we? Memories, sigh. But right now, Binaca is going off on Heather again, saying how she has a pretty face and nothing else.

For the judging, in addition to Neal, we have Ann Shoket, Editor in Chief of 17 magazine. There is a brief montage of the girls variously hating on their designers and dresses, with the occasional squeal of “This is SOOOOOO me!” from Jenah. And we’re off. Bianca comes out and declares herself Cleopatra Jones, and flounces and attitudes her way down the catwalk, daring the judges to not like her or how she’s reinterpreted what her designer told her the look was. She’s a little more Grace Jones than Cleopatra Jones, if you ask me. Heather comes out, looking etheral and then…can’t speak. She chokes big time. She chokes worse than Vinnie Testeverde at the Fiesta Bowl when Penn State cleaned the collective clock of the University of Miami on national television, after the Canes looked like fools wearing cammo and talking shit. GACCCKKK! Calling Dr. Heimlich! But I digress. Heather stands there and we get the dreaded cricket sound track. Not good for Heather. Oh Noes! Ambreal comes down in something that looks like a cross between a crash test dummy and police crime scene tape, with a neon yellow lollipop thing. But that’s OK, because she interviews that she was perfect.

Jenah was a rock star ballerina, which translates to fairy dress from Hot Topics. Lisa blows the talking part as much as Heather or Jaslene, but doesn’t get the cricket edit. She does deliver that inane “garden party crasher” drivel, just not well. Then she goes back stage and cries “No more Top Model for me!” No, no, no. That’s “no soup for you!” Get your pop culture references straight there, missy.

Chantallobotomy comes out in a sort of gauzy Barbie dress, which, actually, is perfect for her, but then she does some crappy, crabby mean-faced stomp down the cat walk and it looks stupid. Salacious D comes out in a real pixie dress, complete (at least in my mind) with wings and is just adorable. And what’s up with her weave? Why is hers still perfect and adorable (even if it looks a little bit like Kelly Osborne?) and poor old Jenah has the rat weave from hell (or Britney Spears) exploding on her head? We’ll never know. But it’s time for Neal and Ann to review the hamsters and pick a winner (who will also get to do a photo shoot for jewelry and take along two frenemies),

Ambreal rushed it and oversold it. Binaca had more attitude than anyone else (shocking) and way too much attitude for the dress. Lisa got derailed while trying to speak and it was her weak moment, unlike Heather, who totally blew up. They were very disappointed that Heather couldn’t sell her ocean dress and called her a blah day at the beach. The winner, the girl with the most sparkle, is Salacious D, who picked Lisa and Binaca to share her prize. At the shoot, Binaca continues to trash talk Heather, and Lisa looks a little rode hard and put up wet for 17 magazine. At least to me.

Back at the house, Lisa and Salacious D make a dive for the showers, completely ignoring the fact that Heather had first dibs. Sort of like in week whatever when Binaca literally walked over Heather to take the phone first. This must happen a lot in the house, because Heather totally looses it, runs in the shower and just screeches at the other two to quit dissing her. Salacious D could care less about this, and naturally, if there is shit being stirred, Binaca has a spoon it. We are saved from seeing more by commercials, where Jaslene is signing autographs and being unintelligible at a Wal-Mart. Ah, nostalgia for Noxema signing autographs at Walgreen’s wafts over me. Is Walgreen’s a step up or a step down from Wal-Mart, do you think?

The next morning, the hamsters get an early wake up call and are hauled off into the middle of the desert in the bio-bus, which, having dropped them, then leaves them stranded with nothing but their wits and the camera crew. Slim pickins’ I say. But from out of the shimmering heat comes a man. Not an interesting man, like maybe, Clint Eastwood in a serape, but the Little Orange Man. Who leads the girls across the salt plains to the bio-bus and today’s shoot. A Model’s Burning Wasteland. Sort of like a Teenage Wasteland, but without Roger Daltry. Or Pete Townsend. Or guitars. Or a point. But with a burning car. Little Orange Man tells the girls to give him, and I quote: “desperation fabulosity”. Lisa tells herself not to over-think things, because then they go wrong. The photographer today is Trevor O’Shawna… the guy who shot the krunking klowns on the roof, where in Darth Jader sort of rocked the shot. Bianca goes first and wears Jay out with her fabulousness. Oh, Jay, please don’t feed that particular fire.

Chantallobotomy is in a baby doll dress that keeps flapping up and she works the frustration with the dress. She also tells us that she craves being in front of the camera like water. I think there’s something missing in that sentence, but I can’t quite put my finger on it…like, maybe, the other half of the simile? Salacious D has to get frustrated before she can get a good shot. Ambreal is told to stop posing. Jenah allows as how her emotions in the photo were real, because she really was hot and miserable. Lisa got all stumpified some how, and didn’t work the garment. And here, I have to say that this season, they actually are trying to teach the girls to model the clothes rather than model themselves. Sort of. And we’re done with this segment.

Back at the house, Heather is all bummed out about her performance this week, so Binaca stirs the turds a little and asks her, Oh, Heather, what’s wrong. Sweet baby Jesus, Heather: STOP TALKING TO BINACA!!!! No good will come of it. No good will EVER come of it. She’s evil. She’s getting in your head. And then Binaca gloats that Heather wasn’t perfect this week. And Ambreal says how everybody’s been babying Heather, and now she’s having to pay for that. And Chantallobotomy says how they are all in the house together, for each other, together, by which she means that she’s there for herself and everybody else should be there for her, too.

Tyra mail announces the week’s judging, and Heather is sure she’ll be sent home, and was that a cobalt blue garden gnome on the table next to the Tyra mail? In the judging room, Miss Jay’s Afro is now bigger than anything Diana Ross ever dared to sport, and I keep seeing Chinese dragons pop up in the background. Then a dragon comes out, and in one of the worst scenes ever on ANTM, Tyra pretends to talk to it as it wags its tail and bats its eyes, and then Tyra shouts with more falseness than her eyelashes, “What you say? We’re GOING TO CHINA!!!!” Much squealing.

Jenah gets her evaluation first, and Nigel and Twiggy are all over her in a good way, and Miss Jay gives his highest approval: she looks like a broke down doll next to a broke down car. Heather is loved by Twiggy, but not by Tyra and Jay. Heather says how she was off this week and the Elite guy says that her talk was directed at him because he was so hard on her, and Tyra explains how to compartmentalize and turn off your soul for the pictures. Salacious D is called pretty, but not striking. Tyra says she took chances, but not enough, she needed to commit to the chances. You know what? My brain hurts just typing this shit. Chantallobotomy is told by Nigel that this is her best photo to date, and Twiggy says yeah, what he said. Ambreal is beautiful but the clothes are lost and she’s got stumpified legs. Binaca looks like she set the car on fire and is challenging the viewer to do something about it. Miss Jay compliments her on showing the dress off well (I didn’t think so, since she was behind the freaking car door). Nigel says Lisa was dramatic, but managed to make herself look squat and short. So. On to the discussions.

Jenah and Heather get love. Neal from Elite gives it up for Salacious D, saying that she’s got the whole package, and that she’s a fun girl that people will want to book her. Chantallobotomy is compared to Cheryl Tiegs (ha. In dreams) and everyone agrees that she’s pretty but not a super star. Ambreal is not special enough. Binaca is rising… to which I say that cream may rise, but shit floats. Lisa gets the harshest critique though. Miss Jay says that she didn’t do so great this week, but she’s still one of his favorites, and Nigel says she’s shrinking and sinking and Neal from Elite says “she isn’t fresh enough”. This makes Tyra mad, and she says something about youth, and Neal says, not youth, freshness. I said she looked rode hard and put up wet. She makes last season’s Renee look positively dewy by comparison.

And the photos go to: Binaca (oh, she’s just going to be insufferable now), Jenah, Salacious D, Chantallobotomy who scrunches up her nose in a sickeningly cutesy way and Heather. Lisa is already crying and she and Ambreal go forward to hear which is doomed. There’s no sexy snot ‘stache, but she ain’t pretty. In any event, Lisa gets to stay and Ambreal is sent home. Just in case we ever forgot that she was a musical theater major, she dances off. I’ll miss her. Next week: Shanghai.

After the thrills and chills of Halloween’s Recap Episode where we saw how quickly Ebony went from Stank Bitch With Attitude to Sunk Bitch Without Hope, and Chantallobotomy gettin’ all up in Binaca’s stank grill, I just don’t know if I can handle tonight’s episode.

Oh, who am I kidding, I live for this. Well, this and the accompanying martinis. So. Without further ado, I present my recap of ANTM: The Girls Work It Out With Tyra. YES! I kid you not, this week the original Miss Thing gets down and dirty with the bitches and the hos and reminds us out here in TeeVee land exactly why she can get away with the crap she does and says to the hamsters every week. It’s because she defines “fierce”. No, really, I’ll wait here while you guys go to your Webster’s and look up the word. See? Right next to the entry is a picture of Miss TyTy on the catwalk. She can stomp it out. She can create the wind in her own hair. She has fire in her eyes, and and and… well, I’m just speechless. She leads the girls across the floor and they are just feeble echoes of a dim reflection of Tyra.

But I digress. Let’s begin at the beginning, with Binaca on the BioBus, explaining that Ebony wasn’t a broke down wannabe, she was just missing her family. Unlike Binaca. In the traditional foreshadowing interview segment, Chantallobotomy tells us that she isn’t concerned about a thing (SHOCK!) that she doesn’t question herself at all (BIG SHOCK) because she knows that she is a natural at this modeling game.

Heather explains that she is doing well in the competition despite not having any natural ability or the first clue because she is a visual artist, and instead of “posing” she is making art with her body. I think Farrah Fawcett did that on the Playboy Network. Of course, with her this involved a lot of paint and a lot of nudity. But still. I’m just sayin’.

Binaca then steps up and hates on Heather. A lot. And to her face. Which, maybe it’s the Ausberger’s or maybe it’s her mental maturity, but Heather just lets it roll off her scary-bony back. Which only infuriates Binaca more, and she asks the other girls why they are so protective of Heather when she’s the competition. Oh, I dunno, and just a wild guess here, but maybe? It’s because she doesn’t talk shit to and about everyone else? And she seems pretty sweet? Unlike, say, BINACA?

And then, the girls end up in a dance studio, wearing fleshy colored unitards and dance shoes. For some skinny bitches, those girls sure look awful dressed like that. Then Tyra! comes in and tells them that she is the teacher for today and she’s going to teach them how to move for music videos and runways. And I have to point out that after a few stomps back and forth across the floor, girlfriend is pretty winded. We do runway stomp with fierce eyes! We flirt with ourselves in the mirrors to learn how to be sexy and coy. Ambreal is choppy and hokey, and allows as how since she isn’t supposed to be there, she really needs to prove herself to Tyra. Good luck with that, Am, since Miss Thing is in front of a mirror.

Next, we work on the “wall slide” which is, apparently, a Very Important piece of munitions in a top model’s arsenal. Who knew? Heather looks a tad possessed, but in a fierce and sexy way (which irks Binaca greatly) and Lisa the Lap Dancer (which we haven’t heard about lately) fails to haul her scrawny ass back up the wall using only her leg muscles. This astounds Tyra, who gives us all a little lecture about how just because you skinny, you ain’t fit. But I’m too busy trying to figure out how a stripper/lap dancer can’t do this particular move in her sleep. I mean, I thought the wall slide was de riguer for strippers/lap dancers. Right up there with the pole twirl. As usual, what do I know…

Then the girls get knee pads, and—SHUT UP!!!—it isn’t that at all. It’s about the sexy/strong tiger crawl. Chantallobotomy does her best, but Tyra says she looks like she’s only running on half a tank. Of what? Bio-diesel? Half-tanked on tequilla? Half a brain cell? Answers are not forthcoming. Binaca is seen as too self-conscious. And then Heather crawls and Binaca tells us that Heather was pure suck on dry toast, and Tyra tell us that Heather was fabulous, and Binaca’s head explodes from jealousy, anger, hatred and just general stank.

And at this point in my notes I say “I’m thinking that Chantallobotomy is heading home this week because she keeps interviewing about how good she’s doing, and how confident she is and how she was BORN TO WIN THIS!!!

Then Sarah comes on and talks about how is she a plus size or is she ain’t and she just doesn’t know anymore. Tyra mail arrives and it is found by Heather. Who stands six feet away from it, like she’s afraid it might explode, and yells for all the other girls to come before she’ll open it. Musicians love models… No kidding. That’s breaking news.

The girls arrive at a theater, and meet Jessy Terrero, a famous (I guess. If you know about those things, which I clearly do not) music video director. Today they will be shooting a music video for a fabulous, international singing sensation. One girl will get a starring role. All the girls will appear, but the “multi-platinum” artiste will get to decide. The “mulit-platinum” artist turns out to be Enrique Iglesias, who, I must admit, is a lot hotter than his dad ever was, and even hotter since he got that mole taken off his face. They are going for a vampire-esqe/Goth girl feel, and in what must be the first time any one of these guest judges ever told the whole truth, Jessy says that after consulting the record company as to what they actually want, the girl chosen to star is

Commercials and we see Jaslene in New York City, unveiling her billboard in Times Square. I hate to say this, but I think I understood what she said. Something about a New York Minute?

Lisa the Lap Dancer…and Heather, because she was just too good to pass up. Binaca head blows up again. This may be my new drinking game. Jenah and Heather stand in a doorway as Enrique walks in. Jenah is supposed to give him the vampire come-hither, and Heather just gets to grab him. Nobody is surprised at how good she does that, or how fierce she looks while she does it. Chantallobotomy opines as to how bad it sucked not to win because she has all this natural talent and stuff. The director says: Chantallobotomy was a stiff. Ambreal (the musical theater major) gets to do a wall slide, and does it totally hootchie, which is exactly what Tyra told them not to do…except in a music video. We will hear more about this later. Lisa’s big scene is to stop Enrique with a leg across the wall, which she (using her talents as a lap dancer) manages to also sort of twine around his waist. Salacious D, Sarah and Binaca are all in a back room, supposed to be giving Enrique the old vampire come-hither, en masse. Sarah is just too freaked out by being the big girl in big-ass open mesh to do anything more than whine about being too big to be mostly naked. To which I say, Sarah, come to Miami and check out how big you can be and still wear ass-floss on the beach. I did that a few years ago, and went back to bikinis, since even though I’m the size of a Mini-Cooper these days, I’m still a LOT smaller than most of the women on the beach. Yep. If you don’t wander into Euro-trash territory over on SoBe, the beaches of Miami can do wonders for a big girl’s self esteem.

They are finally filming the final rave scene and it’s hot and it’s late and it’s hot and nobody has thought to have a caterer on set apparently, because all of a sudden Heather turns whiter than usual, and takes a face plant. The diagnosis is that she hasn’t eaten all day and it’s hot, and it’s late and girl has no stores of body fat to turn to in situations like this (lordy, you could saw a tree down with the points sticking out of her back). She gets some Gator Aid and a lecture and the BioBus back to the Green House. Salacious D makes the astute comment that she doesn’t think that Heather goes out clubbin on high levels of adrenaline too often, and so doesn’t know how to dance all night on empty. Binaca, on the other hand and this will amaze you, takes this opportunity to say that Heather just doesn’t have what it takes to live the model’s life. Which, it goes without saying, she, Binaca, does have…in abundance.

Back at the Casa De Bitches and Hos, the girls are all tucked in their beds, contemplating who will be sent home. Chantallobotomy once more states that she isn’t nervous about judging, because SHE WAS BORN TO DO THIS, and God gave her this face and body for a reason… as an apology for forgetting to install brain cells? Ambreal is nervous because she isn’t even supposed to be there anymore.

Judging. Finally. Jessy Terrero is the guest judge. Miss Jay’s afro is getting scary. Lisa goes first and Nigel tells her that if she could turn out that energy and hotness in a still, she could go far. Big freaking IF, Nigel. Ambreal’s wall slide is dissed as being hootchie, and she even (heaven forbid!) Licked. Her. Lips. The horror. Jessy, though, says he thought she was HOTT. Ha! Salacious D and Sarah were told that Salacious D popped and Sarah looked wicked, except for the part where she looked embarrassed. Nigel tells Sarah that she’s disappearing and she was brought on to be a plus sized model and to, for god’s sake, eat something. Beef up, ho. Don’t be ashamed of the T&A.

Jenah and Heather are called up and their footage reviewed. Jenah was smiling, and vampires don’t smile. She wasn’t evil enough. Evil light. Heather, though, rocked the evil fierceness.  Chantallobotomy was supposed to be checking out Enrique, but instead she was giving the “I’m hot” model pose, and not the “you there, come to Butthead” that she was supposed to be broadcasting. Binaca was too choppy, kissy and stagey, and not fluid.

There is discussion about Sarah losing weight, about Chantallobotomy being too flat and a dissppointment, Binaca being choppy but bad ass. Jenah can’t control the sexy, the camera loves Lisa (and good thing, because none of the rest of us do) and Heather is awkward and coach-able. So. Names are called in this order: Lisa, Heather, Salacious D, Binaca, Ambreal, Jenah. Sarah and Chantallobotomy are the bottom two, and in what must be a first, the foreshadowing and hints were a ploy to throw us off. It is disappearing Sarah who disappears, and Chantallobotomy who gets the second chance. Sarah cries more than any girl ever in any season, and Tyra gives her hugs and comfort. See? If she’d just made a couple of bacon and grilled cheese sammiches, who knows how far she could have gone.

And another week on the couch comes to an end. See you next week, when we play the “Binaca’s head explodes, time to take a shot” game.

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.

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.

Last night was quality tee-vee night at the Casita des Zapatas, and I watched the bitches and the hos, and also Gordon Ramsey in what had to be the worst kitchen in Manhattan. But I don’t recap Chef Gordon, so don’t expect details about the roaches here. In here, all is bee-yoo-ti-ful. The girls are beautiful. The boys are beautiful (and maybe just a little bit orange). The house is beautiful. In fact, let’s go there now.

DISCLAIMER: as an experiment, I took notes last night. This will enable me to recap in actual chronological order, but I found that I was funnier by just letting memory bubble up and sorting things out later. Or never.

Back in L.A., the girls are taken out to their pimped out wheels. If any of you ever had any doubts that Miss Tyra or her minions read Television Without Pity or any of the other blogs (like, ahem, Girlyshoes) and take note of what’s being dished on the interwebs, this year’s wheels should put an end to them. Because this year, instead of the stretch Hummer, or any of the other gas-guzzling behemoths that have taken the girls (and Jaslene) from pillar to post to photo shoot, we have a garishly painted BIO-DIESEL van. It is appallingly fitted out with fake grass and what one hamster refers to as recycled tires for upholstery, but she’s just miffed that she missed the season of the zebra skinned brothel on wheels. We haven’t even made it to the first commercial break, and we’ve already had a powerful political statement from Miss Tyra, i.e.: dependency on foreign gas is bad.

Off they go in their green machine to their new, green house. And is it just me, or does this house look a lot like last year’s house? That funny-shaped pool, the huge balcony overlooking the Hollywood hills? The giant floating heads of Tyra on every wall? I thought so. But, you know, fabulous houses don’t grow on trees, even in El Lay. The cat walk is illuminated and decorated with plants. It’s very nice. What isn’t very nice are the bitches and the hos, who start the girl bonding by a) jumping in the pool fully clothed, b) gang piling into the bathtub in bathing suits(?), c) doing a faux-Tyra elimination ceremony and d) immediately sensing that Heather is not like all the rest (she’s drawing by herself instead of joining in all the homo-erotic shenanigans) and, thinking that different means weak, dumb and or deaf, all start trashing her.  I mean, we haven’t even reached the first commercial break and there is already a Hate Heather Club.

Next morning, the girls go to their first photo shoot, in the LA Merchandise Mart. Why? It’s the center of fashion in LA. Uh, it’s the center of ready to wear in LA if the LAMM is anything like the Miami Merchandise Mart, or the Chicago Merchandise Mart or the Atlanta… well, you get the drift. Not precisely high fashion, but not Wal-Mart, either. No, that will come later.

In the second Important Stance on Important Topics, the shoot today will show the dark side of smoking. It will be a composite shot: first the girls will do a glamorous pose in front of a make up/dressing table, and in the second they will be made up to show the horrible effects of smoking (a tracheotomy, skin cancer, premature aging, hair loss from chemo, bad teeth) and the two will be Photochopped to have the gore reflected in the mirror of the glam. Very High Concept.

Mila, the bubble headed blonde who “celebrates a new nail polish color” celebrates being bald. She just can’t get over how funny she looks and just can’t manage to wrap so much as a pinkie around the concept. Chantal, the I-was-made-to-win-this-inside-and-out blonde (and I find that phrase so unsettling, I can’t even begin to tell you… Does that mean she wants to model her internal organs for anatomy texts?) Eww. And ick. Heather and Salacious D have to pose together, which makes Heather a little uncomfortable. She has Asperger’s, remember? So Salacious D takes the opportunity to reach out to another girl and promptly says to hell with you then, beeyotch, I’ll just rock my own shot without your autistic ass.

Back in the make up chairs, Binaca and Lisa are starting to hate on each other. Binaca offers to toss a cell phone at Lisa. Lisa offers to stuff it up Binaca’s ass. I love it when the girls show that they know all about supermodels like Naomi Campbell. In the actual shoot, both Lisa and Binaca do well. This only fuels the fire of love between them, and Binaca gets all classy and just throws it out at Lisa that America’s Next Top Model is probably not going to be a lap dancing stripper, bitch. ooooo, she totally went there. She’s just sayin’, y’all. Also just sayin’ is Chantal, that Heather just doesn’t have what it takes, what with being all weird-ass and a loner and shit. This is a refrain almost all of the girls will sing at one point or another tonight. All except Victoria, the Yalie. Maybe it’s that snooty, Ivy-league education or something, but she sort of likes Heather and thinks that Heather will surprise everyone. From her mouth to Miss Tyra’s ear.

Back at the Casa De Bitches and Hos, everyone is soaking in the hot tub and Lisa and Binaca sort of make up. And there, on the rim of the tub is a pack of cigarettes. Important Issue Statement acknowledged, Tyra. By sort of, I mean that Lisa sort of says she’s sorry they fought, and Binaca makes the sort of apology that my ex-husband, the anti-christ used to make: I’m sorry you got upset at what I said. Not, you’ll notice, that I’m sorry I was a tactless ho and called you names. Then Binaca confessionalizes that she only said that so she wouldn’t get a Tyra smack-down at judging. Class. All class.

Commercials, and it’s Jaslene’s Life as a Cover Girl. I have absolutely no idea what she said.

In the morning, Miss Jay comes by the house to give the girls an idea about style and taste. Amazingly, he is actually displaying both, and no ginormous corsages or clown ruffles. In order to get themselves some model basics, the girls are going to go to Old Navy and stock up on one outfit, which they will then wear to judging and be judged on it and their photos.

The third indication that Miss Tyra or her minions read TWOP and the blogosphere is that Benny Ninja of the fabulous House of Ninja is on hand to help the girls shop. He does this by telling them to accessorize, not to look like everyone else, and be flamboyant and colorful. This is, of course, a trick, because Miss Jay told them to be vanilla and invisible. In ten minutes, the 13 girls manage to completely destroy the store, and at least one third of them all get the same tacky necklace and another third opine that Heather is stylistically dyslexic in addition to being autistic and weird. (And drop-dead gorgeous, but they forget to mention that).

That night, as the girls relax at the house, drinking hot water and pretending it’s soup, they all relive the day and continue bashing Heather about everything except her shoe size. Kimberly-from-Ocala (Seminole Indian for “one horse town in the middle of nowhere”) reveals that she’s been purposely rude to Heather, pushing her away because she just knows that as the competition gets tougher, that weird, autistic girl would no doubt cling to her like a leech, and she is all about no leeches.

Finally and at long last we make it to the judging room, and there we find Miss Tyra looking fly, Miss Twiggy looking like the British matron she is (but still fabulous), Smarmy Nigel looking all hott and Miss Jay looking freakishly nappy. I’m just sayin’. I’ll do this quickly: Chantal was over-accessorized, Jenah can’t dress herself, Ambreal is wearing some giant chonga earrings (so is Lisa), Victoria dressed well, Lisa not so much, but her photos were good, Mila is a terrible dresser and her photos were awful. Miss Jay says that she looks like she’s farting. And he has a point. Also? Her legs look immense. Sarah’s clothes are OK,  Binaca is well dressed, but she’s too posed in the pics, Janet looks just like young (and was she ever?) Angie Dickenson but needs to lose the noose she’s wrapped around her neck, Ebony has chosen a color that looks good on her (butter yellow), but is too stiff in her pix, Kimberly works the hootchie, Heather layered two wife beaters and was told she only needed one, but her pictures were great (so much for Salacious D’s devious plan to make Heather look like poop), and finally Salacious D wins the clothes challenge in a short, simple dress and good shoes. Whew. For this she wins a one thousand dollar shopping spree at Old Navy, and say what you will about their clothes, that 1K will go a loooooong way. And she gets to be in an Old Navy ad. Good prize.

Miss Tyra reiterates the Important Message that Smoking Is Bad, and to emphasize the point, bans smoking from the house for the rest of the season. That ought to bring some drama out fairly quickly. All too soon we have the judging where the big reveal to Nigel and Twiggy is that Heather has Asperger’s and the photos are passed out. Remember way back in the beginning of this recap when I said from Victoria’s mouth to Miss Tyra’s ear? Well, hos, read ‘em and weep: Heather gets the first photo. And that is why I love this show. That and the fact that the two bottom girls are Ebony (she who was declared in need of a good Top Model Ass Whoopin’ by Tyra & Co. during auditions) and Mila. One of you can’t take criticism, EBONY, and the other is incapable of understanding it, MILA. So who goes home? Not the designated torturee, so buh-bye to the airhead. Now, I missed this, maybe because I was taking notes, but the close up of Ebony weeping, included a close up of her glistening, glamorous mucus mustache. MJ opined as how that was just her excess humility, leaking out.

Next week? Lisa and Binaca slap some sense into each other. Or, maybe, they just get into a slap fight. I’ll be on the couch with the martinis, bitches, join me?

That noise that sounds like the whispering wind? That’s me, sighing in contentment that all is right with the world. The Number 1 Surrogate Daughter came by last night with a pizza (banana peppers and spinach—new to me, but totally d’lish) and I poured the ‘tinis and we sat on the couch to ridicule the clueless. Girl bonding at its best. The RLA didn’t even last until the first commercial break.

For Cycle 9 (like, menstrual cycle, do you suppose? It is a little forced and artificial to call a season a cycle, but it is the house of women… and Jaslene...at least last year. This year we don’t seem to have a tranny in the house. But, never fear, we do have the requisite tragedies and horrible back stories. Nobody survived a plane crash from the diminishing heat of their mother’s dead body (my god, those were good times) but we DO have the daughter of a crack ho, the girl with Asperger’s (again, I have to hand it to Tyra, girlfriend has her finger on the pulse of trend: Autism is HOTT!), the Yalie, the dim blonde who was “born to win this thing”, the stripper (finally one made it into the house, but she don’t take her clothes off, she dances in a bikini, y’all… and she’s the designated weeper this season. She started crying after the third name out of thirteen was announced. Lisa. Lisa the Weeper), the “aesthetician” (read: bikini waxer, and she gave Tyra a faux waxing while we all watched. The look of abject horror on Miss Jay’s face was tooo much… and someone got called MRS. Jay last night which made me think that maybe The Little Orange Man got married), and a girl by the name of (and I am not kidding, although it fits perfectly into a long-running joke) Saleisha, or as I will be referring to her from here on out: Miss Salacious D. She currently has magenta bangs and a $25 dollar weave, but that will be going away very soon, or so Tyra and the Jays assure us.

The personalities started to come out as the 30? 32? 33? semi-finalists got put on a Caribbean cruise to somewhere or other. We see them in the dining hall, picking on each other’s food choices. We see The Girl With the Fauxhawk get up in The Bitch’s grill when The Bitch asks something like, which of you all have eating disorders. Bwhahahahahah. That’s a trick question, of course, because the answer is, if we all eat and purge like this then it’s normal, right? (oh, by the way, one of my Cafe Press shirts bears the immortal question from last year’s sent-home-too-soon girl Kathleen: “I know, right?”)

The Plus-Size Girl is shocked! Shocked!! to see how much skinnier the skinny girls are. But she’s rocking that full-figured size 6, so fuck ‘em. In fact, The Plus-Sized Girl is the subject of much discussion between Tyra and the Jays. Is she really a plus size girl? She’s on the small side of plus. Maybe, just maybe, they allow, she is merely The Real-Size Girl. Whoo-hoo for her, whoo-hoo for Sara.

The girls have to do an impromptu cat walk wearing life preservers and it is as ugly as it sounds. Miss Jay ridicules them and the tears start to flow. We see the duck walk, the pigeon toes, the knock knees, the stoop shoulders, and my personal favorite, the girl who walks like she’s smuggling the family jewels out of Westbumfukstan in her cootch.

We see the girls in their one-on-threes with Tyra and the Jays. There is weeping, there is a gift, there is the faux waxing (really. I may have to rinse my eyes with acid if I think of it too much). There is one girl who comes out stomping like the legendary Camille of season 2? I am Camille and this is my signature horse stomp… One of the girls allows as how she looks like one Adrianne Lima (pronouncing it LYE-ma and prompting catcalls from Tyra). Another has a walk evocative of Naomi (or so says Tyra, proving once more that she is so over that girl, and can too say her name without shattering). And yet another walks on her hands.

We see all the tragic back stories and the ones too tragic for the house are the girl with the fauxhawk who was sexually abused by her foster families and/or raped, the girl who was born with a hemmoraged right eye, but won’t let that stop her, and the bartender from Bahhstin who is even more unintelligible than Noxema or Jaslene. And that, my friends, is saying a good deal. The boat is rocking, and dinner comes a’knocking for one or another of the girls. This means that one or two try to look concerned and a couple others say yahoo, better chances for me.

There is a photo shoot on a beach, where they do varying levels of not-too-bad, with the occasional day-um, she looks good thrown in to confuse us. Jaslene appears here to tell the wannabees how fabulous it is to have won, and prove that speaking like you have a mouth full of gummy bears does not prevent you from winning a contract to be a

spokesperson. She still looks like a tranny, but she seems to have gotten more work than any of the other winners, so what do I know.

The Jays and Tyra look at film and decide who stays and who goes. The best is when they discuss the designated House Bitch (Ebony, the crack-ho’s daughter). The girls have all ratted her out by now, and the thought of beating her into humility causes Tyra and the Jays to cackle like the three witches in

Macbeth. All of us in television land are cackling too, because we know how much fun it will be to watch. Ebony has been gloating over her fabulous $500 weave (and it is pretty fly, I have to admit. How much do you want to bet that she’s the one with the shaved head or Dianna Ross afro make-over?

And then it’s the end, all too soon. Next week there will be DRAMA! FIGHTING! A new, faboo house decorated with lots of pictures of Tyra.

I know, right?

Ah, another season of ANTM slogs to a close. In the words of my beloved husband, as the credits rolled and I groaned over the winner: “Why do you even watch this?”

Because it’s a train wreck, honey. A train wreck and a morality play all in one. Where else can I see people so delusional, and yet allowed to roam free? Where else can I watch drag queens without paying a cover charge? And where else but Greek tragedy does hubris get rewarded so generously?

Ahhhh. So here it is, the final three are Natasha the Mail-Order Russian Bride, Jaslene of Dubious Gender, and NeNe Vibrato, she of the beach-living husband, floppy baby and nonstop bitchiness.

There is some recapping, and we finally(!) see Natasha’s husband and baby in one photo. Let me just say that he doesn’t look twenty years older and the three of them make one gorgeous family. Whoo-hoo.

Then it’s off to their final photo shoot: the Cover Girl cover slash beauty shot. They are on their own here, since Mr. Jay will be off with the tv spot shoot, where the girls have to ad-lib a commercial. So that they shouldn’t be flying solo, last year’s winner, CariDeemented arrives to give them advice. She won, despite asking Nigel about the stick up his ass, so yeah, I guess you might consider taking her advice. Or not, like if you wanted to win.

Jaslene has a hard time looking soft, commercial and pretty (and you know, that is such a cheap shot that even I will forgo the obvious joke). She also interviews that smiling makes her face hurt. OK, now I have to go there? That is totally a line from Rocky Horror and one delivered by my previous favorite tranny, Dr. Frank N. Furter. But whatever.

Natasha is good at smiling, and looking soft, commercial and pretty. But then she gets flustered and embarrassed and is even cuter.

NeNe waltzes in and just carries on like she’s already the winner, perhaps because Carideemented has been giving her advice that starts “after you’ve won”. NeNe, not being the brightest but certainly the most egotistical of the lot, probably took that to mean that she had, in fact, already won. So she preens and smiles and preens some more. Everyone on set jokes with her about acting/looking like she’s already won, and that just adds fuel to her fire.

Then we have the unscripted tv spots. Natasha is backstage at a photo shoot. She has written and memorized a script for herself. The Cover Girl flack and Mr. Jay tell her to scrap the script and just wing it. The resulting commercial is cute and incomprehensible.

NeNe Vibrato is out in Sydney Harbour, and starts her commercial by saying, “Nine months ago I had a baby and I thought my life was over.” The CG flack and Mr. Jay, look at each other and simultaneously shriek CUT!!!! Let’s not go there, sistergirl. Let’s try it again, a little more upbeat and positive, ok? So she gets all cute and happy and waves her arms around and delivers.

Jaslene is in a limo, and gives a sing-song freaky face version, but nails it by talking about how the product matches 97 percent of all skin tones, including hers, y “soy latina”. The CG flack just comes in his chinos. ChaCha Diva does good, in an awful sort of way.

Interviews and confessionals follow, and NeNe Vibrato is full on Cuntie-Pie ala mode. She’s on and on about how she’s got this in the (ho)bag, how she hopes the OTHER finalist isn’t Natasha, because (and I’m pretty much quoting this) she “walks like a pigeon-toed duck with poop coming out of his butt.” And then she smirks and smiles and is so proud of her analogy. She just giggles over what a cute, but oh-so-naughty girl she is.

Judging. Nigel brings it home, and reminds us why he is our favorite male ex-model turned internationally renowned fashion photographer/pervy judge. He takes NeNe Vibrato’s photo betwixt thumb and fore finger, and holding it at arm’s length like the reeking piece of shit she is, says well, she’s beautiful, yes, but she is hardly the freshest face in the box. She photographs old, and her look is old and I’ve seen this face a million times. This is America’s NEXT Top Model,  and we’re looking for something new.

The rest of the judges all nod sagely. The critiques are sharp, and Jaslene is called to task for her appalling delivery of her commercial. They applaud the fact that she managed to hide her Jay Leno jaw long enough to be photographed looking pretty and sort of soft.

Natasha is just Natasha, and Twiggy and Nigel and Tyra all love her to death. So does your viewing audience, peeps.

The girls come back in to face Tyra (wearing a set of false eyelashes that must do double duty as weight training for your eyelids). She gives a photo to Jaslene. She gives her usual wahwahwah, so who goes home. NeNe is holding Natasha’s hand. Who’s two-faced now, you old hag? Natasha gets the picture and NeNe almost drops dead. She was so sure she had it in the bag. See? Morality play. Hubris. Good times.

Back to the house, where NeNe opines about how she’s glad she didn’t win, because she has knowledge and something inside. Yeah. It’s called bitterness. Classy to the end, just like so many other LOSERS. I guess she’s going to have to hock that big-ass pearl after all. HAH!

Then Natasha comes in to find Tyra waiting on the couch. It’s face time. She talks about her years at university in Moscow, where she had nothing. NOTHING. She talks about how she’s an American, now, and how America is a melting pot, and she represents all Americans with accents. Like me? I come from the South, y’all.

Next is Jaslene, and cries and cries and kisses Tyra’s fat ass. Aiee, ju have shanjed mi vida, Tyra. This has been a life-altering experience. Ju know, cuz last season, I dint get nowhere and now here I yam inna top two. Weepy, weepy, snivel.

I turned to the husband, and said: he just won.

And then the fashion show which is lame, but not as lame as the bride of dragula that they did last year, in which Carideemented totally robbed Melrose. As in years past, there is drama on the catwalk, when Natasha’s skirt just slides off her butt. She calmly steps over and out of it and keeps catwalking.

Finally, though, all good things must come to an end, and so after much deliberation, the judges decide that Jaslene will be…. America’s Next Top Tranny.

Really. Did you SEE the size of his wrists? I’m just saying. I can’t wait till next year when they have to use subtitles for his MLAACG commercials. Because, you know, I’ll be on the couch, cosmopolitans in hand, watching the train wreck for another season.

This is an experiment, sort of, although it didn’t start out that way. See, the RLA, the PDBs* and I all went out for dinner tonight to a sorta kinda sports bar. Except it really isn’t a sports bar. It’s more of a diner, only in a strip mall. And with a lot of rock and roll memorabilia on the walls and a great juke box, kind of like the Hard Rock, if the Hard Rock were owned by a couple of folks who used to own the best used CD store in town, and not by some conglomerate mega-corp, and if the Hard Rock wasn’t just another theme park with food. So, maybe it isn’t like the Hard Rock at all. But I digress. We all went out to dinner at the Rock Fish Grill, and I told the owner we were on a timer, because I had to be home by 8 to watch the hamsters.

Well, not only were we not home by eight, but our food had barely arrived, so I commandeered one of the tvs, and watched ANTM. MOS.

MOS stands for “Mit Out Sound”, and is a hold over (or so my old film teacher told us) from the Very Early Days of Hollywood, when most of the film makers came from Germany, and if you were shooting without a sound track, you were shooting Mit Out Sound, and that became MOS on film clappers to this day.

I watched ANTM MOS, and let me tell you, real-time captioning for the deaf is not real time. And who ever is typing it? Either can’t hear, can’t type or can’t spell. And if it’s computer generated? They need better computers.

So. Here is what happened on ANTM tonight, as best as I can patch it together. First the girls all discuss how much they do or do not miss Sara, and Whitney wahwahwahs some more about being a plus sized model, and how she has to step up her game and whawhawhateverrrrrs.

The hair dresser comes to the house and cuts the rat weave out of Brit’s head (there’s even a sign over her bed, and other hints that those stupid made up “supermodel” names are going to be sticking around till the end of the season. More’s the pity. And there she is, left with the hair she came in with, except a better color.

There may or may not have been some recapping of Renee’s sob session. There was definitely a recapping of Fifty Cent shoving Jael in the pool. Last week RJ and I disagreed about the timing of Jael’s saying to Fitty that she was “half black and half Jewish, so that makes [her] Blewish, and you can’t hang wit dat” and him pushing her into the pool. RJ said Jael was wet when she said it, therefore it happened after. And I said it was one of, if not the last thing she said before she got wet. In the event, according to POTES, I was right.

And then, not a couple of days after the episode aired there was this brouhahah about Fifty calling Jews thugs, and other racist crap. I leave you to connect the dots. I would threaten to boycott Mr. Cent, but since he’s never gotten a dime from me yet, that would be a tad hollow. Sort of like Mr. Cent’s head.

Anyway, back to this week. This week they get their acting lessons from someone or other who “stars” on a show I’ve never seen, and then get further lessons from someone who was in a movie I’ve never seen, but I understand was a hit with some demographic or another: Napoleon Dynamite. But not the star of Napoleon Dynamite, because even I know who he is, and he’s currently tearing up the big screen as the feather-haired sidekick to Will Feral** in Blades of Glory.

With the sound off, and the closed captioning on, it’s hard to tell how bad the girls are, and I can only take the captioning’s word for it when Dionne claims to be speaking in a Jamaican accent. For that matter, I can only take the captioning’s word for it that Renee was totally committed to the role (whatever the role was, because I don’t have a fucking clue what they were supposed to be acting) and deserved to win the prize.

I expect to hear crickets when asked to name a friend to share her prize, since we all know that everyone hates her and she ain’t so keen about anyone. But she pulls a name out of her ass, and nice Dionne gets to share the prize, which seems to be some lame t-shirt that referrences Napoleon Dynomite, which, since I haven’t seen, I also have to take on faith.

Back at the house, there is the usual whining about who won and how they didn’t deserve it, and the usual snickering about how lame the prize was that they won, and probably some trash talking about how nice it was for Dionne to get to be Renee’s friend and take one for the team, ‘cause nobody ELSE was gonna pretend to be. I might be making that up.

But then, OH. MY. GOD. A SURPRISE, surprise, surprise!!!! You’ll never guess! Oh. You guessed. Yeah, this is the week that the winner gets a visit from their family. Dionne’s momma, sister and baby come. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair and has a Marilyn piercing in her upper lip. Dionne’s momma is in a wheelchair because some junkie that she was tryin’ to help get straight got all jealous and shit when she was gonna git married, so he shot her and now she’s all paraplegic. See? And you thought there weren’t going to be sob stories this year. Her baby is cute enough, I guess.

The powers that be managed to find Renee’s husband out on the beach where he’s been living and pluck the baby (who looks a little floppy to me, or maybe fetal alchohol syndrome, or just a little, uh, wall eyed?) from the arms of his grandmother (and why won’t she let her son stay with them? Or why won’t he stay with his own mother?)and send them to visit, too. We see the baby crawling down the runway, and I read someone saying to the baby that Miss Jay would just snatch you baldheaded if he saw you crawl down the runway like that. Pretty funny, actually, though I have no idea who said it.

We see Jael being nice and taking pictures, and then poor Natasha just loses it cause she wants to see HER baby and why can’t she? And she talks on the phone to her husband and cries and cries and cries and we see a picture of her baby, and she is really cute. With big eyes.

Oh, well. Party’s over, y’all come back now, hear? And the family members go home and the girls go to their photoshoot and poor Natasha is all red-eyed and weepy and miserable and Renee is all smiling and obnoxious and gloating about having seen her little floppy baby. And yeah, there was some serious face sucking with the husband. Eww. And she still isn’t taking off the Darth Jader head rag.

The shoot? Well, the concept is to re-enact “famous” ANTM moments from the past. They are “The Girl Who Wouldn’t Do Nude” from season one. “The Great Granola Bar Kerfuffle”, “The Siamese Twins”, “The Girl Who Passed Out Cold at Judging”, “Joanie (now Joni) In The Dentist Chair for 12 Hours”, “I Am Bi-Curious Sarah and Kim in the Limo” and “Michelle’s Impetigo”. This is as big a snooze as it sounds, even if they do bring the original girls back to co-star in their own re-enactments.

Among the highlights is Dionne, who is totally freaked having to be in a limo with a lesbian, much less having to pretend to kiss her, discovers that Kim is hot, and that she, Dionne, is liking this. Natasha is great with big old scabs on her face. Brit totally rocks out as one of the twins, now triplets. Renee can’t compete with Joni (ha!) and Whitney totally does not rock it as the girl who won’t do nude. Whitney in a white beach towel is not pretty.

I need to interject here, that the female half of the PDBs is a former art director for SELF, back in New York City. She pegged CariDee as the winner last year, just after looking at the portfolios on-line, three quarters of the way through the season. Tonight she looked at everyone and said Brit, Natasha and Renee are the three finalists, and that it’ll go to Renee. Jael, she said, was too aware of herself and her own look to be the sort of malleable putty a model needs to be. She also said that Jael is a man. I kept telling her that that distinction belongs to Jaslene, but Jaslene wasn’t even on the PDB’s radar.

So. Judging. “Hey, look! The man’s wearing a dress.” That’s Jael, and she’s not a man, dammit. The judges seem to call Jaslene a drag queen, and not in a good way. The judges, well, Nigel, gets all creamy talking about Brit and the twins. They allow as how they didn’t even notice Renee and her ugly face were in the same frame as Joni. Jael, meh. Whitney in a beach towel? Icky. Dionne gets the love from all. They love Natasha and her fierce scabs. The photographer and Jay both say how she came to the shoot all sad and teary and then WORKED IT on the set. So who goes home? Jael and Whitney are the last two called, and Tyra finally has to say goodbye to her pet plus sized girl.

But child? Please don’t show us those thighs/knees of yours again. Christ, if I wanted to see dimples like that I could look in the mirror. Well, after the scabs and bruises heal.

Next week, Jael has to take the marbles out of her mouth and learn to speak before she gets sent home.

*PDB: Persons Dressed in Black


** Yeah, I know, Ferrel. I just don’t find him funny, OK? So feral it is.

Last night was the penultimate epi of ANTM, wherein we find out who the final three bitches and hos will be… can we stand the excitement?

I know I could.

We are still in the land down under, and this is the week of native dance. The girls (and Jaslene) meet some Aborigines and are treated to a dance by young girls. It is bitter cold in the out back, or so we are told by the women of no discernible body fat, although the Aboriginal girls are bare foot and seem to have no problems. But, then, they have body fat.

So. See a dance, learn the theory, make up your own story dance. And don’t forget the body paint. Renee, who seems to be really happy to keep calling herself NeNe… and may I digress a moment?

Back in the day, there was a girl among the crowd I was in with who went by the party name of Neigh Neigh Vibrato. I’m sure with a little imagination of a sexual nature you can figure out how she came by that. For me, the name NeNe really doesn’t work, although girlfriend does have something of a horse face.

Anyway, NeNe tells the story of how she was an abused child, and she has sisters and she wants to be a role model for getting above and beyond the abuse and win this for her family, because they are poor and living on a beach in Hawaii and like that, that we’ve heard a million times from her already. Fortunately for her, this is all new material to her audience and they eat it up.

Jaslene (who is now Jaz, at least to NeNe Vibrato) tells the story of his life, which isn’t so much the story of his life as it is the story of how he wants nothing in the world so much as to win this season and become America’s Next Top (Not Quite A) Tranny Model and this is his destiny, Luke. OK. Maybe I made that last part up.

Dionne of the eternal puss face opines that she don’t do no dancin’ she don’t tell no stories, and it’s cold and she ain’t happy one little bit so she is gone do a 20 second “dance” and be done wit it. Dionne seems to me to have an awful lot of “I don’t be doin’ thats” in her life. We have already seen that she don’t be kissin. She ain’t no fuckin’ lesbo (but she did like kissing Kim). She don’t dance. She don’t tell stories. She don’t touch other men. She don’t smile. She be one skank ho, is all I’m saying.

Her dance is short. It refers to her momma gettin’ shot, her sisters and their babies, and she has a big yellow blob with a little pink blob in the uterual region of her dress, which she explains is her spirit and her baby. Yeah, what ever. She gets absolutely no applause.

Natasha actually uses props. She tells the story of how she was a weak child who went into the forest for comfort among the trees. It’s a nice story, if a bit far fetched and totally inaudible. Another woman in my past used to do that same thing. She thought if she whispered in a little baby voice while she was running a business meeting that it made people listen harder to what she was saying and made her more powerful. She, like Natasha, was dead wrong. People thought she was a total flake and whack job, which was absolutely correct. In both instances. Natasha gets some polite applause.

NeNe Vibrato wins, and gets to pick a friend. She picks Jaz to share her prize. The prize turns out to be some a-fucking-mazing South Seas pearls, and it grinds me no end that NeNe wins it. Beeyotch. No mention of how she’s going to hock this to help her family. Not like when she DIDN’T win the $40K diamond bracelet that fatty whatsername took home. No, then she was all boohoo, I needed to win that to get my husband off the beach, wahwahwah. Tonight it was all, I’m so beeeyooootiful in my princess pearls and doncha wish yer girlfriend was hott like me.

The girls (and Jaslene, but not Natasha, who is coming down with pneumonia) decide to go out and party and blow off some steam. Unlike past seasons, there is no vomiting, no random acts of sexual nature with random strangers or each other, no embarrassing moments of excess drunkenness. How much fun is that?

Instead of that, they plot how to send Natasha home, and in what must certainly be a total shocker to you, NeNe Vibrato is the ring master of that plan. She goes on in the confessional and interviews about how Natasha is a total phony (oh, yeah? Excuse me, Mrs. Pot, but there is a Mrs. Kettle on the line for you.) and how nobody even knows the name of her husband, or has seen pictures of her alleged baby, and how she doesn’t wear a wedding ring, and a whole other load of self serving crap.

OK? We, the viewing audience know her husband’s name, it’s Stuart, and she’s said it more than once. We’ve also seen pictures of her baby, and as I said then, it was much cuter than NeNe Vibrato’s floppy one, or Dionne’s unremarkable one. So stuff it, Vibrato. And you know what else? You hos have been on about her being a mail order bride since day one. (So have we out here in TV land, but then, we aren’t sharing living space with her, so fuck off). And so what if she has kinky phone sex with him? Honestly, who among us hasn’t?

Anyway. The girls and Jaslene actually come right out and talk about how they need to work a plan to send Natasha home, so that it can be the three of them in the finals. They trash the poor little Russian girl up one side and down the other. When they get back to the apartment and read the Tyra mail, Jaslene, especially is a total ball-cutting snot to sick little Natasha. What do we think will happen tomorrow? We’re going to judging and SOMEONE (meaningful emphasis and daggers) will be going home. Bitches and ho, people, bitches and hos.

The next day is photo shoot day, where there is more body paint and native dancing. Natasha is so sick she is falling over, coughing and with a runny, red and swollen nose. She tries her hardest to pose and can’t. She is awful beyond awful. Little Orange Man tries to give her a pep talk, and it’s sorta, well, other ANTM contestants have been sick and still brung it, and Tyrant has been sick and brung it, and we just can’t milk this story line one more season, so suck it up and bring it. I’m a little sorry that she just doesn’t bring up her breakfast all over him, but she tries and fails to look hot.

Nene Vibrato rocks it again, damn it. She really does. I wish she weren’t so Naomi Campbell though. What a skank ho rat bastard she is.

Jaslene gives the same old same old fierce face and egocentric reportage he always does. And this is duly noted by Little Orange Man.

Dionne is coaxed, pampered and babied into delivering something other than her puss face frown. It’s a little scary and yet bland, but it does resemble a pleasant smile. The fact that she still has no clue how to pose without constant coaching is also duly noted.

Finally, we get to judging. This is the week where the judges ask the girls who has it and who doesn’t. NeNe Vibrato is first, and she says she’s the shit and did you notice that she’s wearing her big-ass pearl prize that she won this week for being the shit? And that, well, quite frankly, Natasha is a ho-bag two-faced phony and we all hate her and she should be getting the boot tonight, thankewverymuch.

Dionne is up and says, oh so graciously, that NeNe is the shit and that Natasha is a fake piece of Russian trash who needs to be taken out. Thankewverymuch.

Jaslene allows as how, no, really HE’S the shit, and that this is the one thing in his life that he wants more than anybody or anything else in the room and he better fucking win or someone is gonna get cut. And, oh yeah, that Natasha? What a loser. Send her home.

Natasha gets up last, and says that while she appreciates what the others have said about her, actually, she must disagree and say that she has the most potential, because, really, have any of you people looked at a runway lately? It’s ALL Eastern European women who look like her. She’s got the look that everyone wants this year. I don’t even remember who she thought should go home. The judges all jump on the “why does everyone else hate you?” question, and my girl says, hell, if Giselle Bundchen was standing in the room she’s dis her, because that’s who would be her biggest competition. Connect the dots, folks.

There is some very interesting debate from the judges, wherein they talk about how hot NeNe Vibrato is, even though she photographs like a hard and ravaged old hag. Jaslene has one look, and they pull up his first S&M death penalty shot to prove it. Yep. Just the same. As are they all. Then they talk about how having one look can get you a lot of bookings, but after one season, you are done, done, done.

Dionne is recognized as being a puss-faced yak who can’t do dick without heavy art direction. And can I digress a moment to say she should have been called on the carpet last week when at every go-see she asked to KEEP THE CLOTHES!!!! What kind of just-out-of-the-backwoods hick is she? CAN I KEEP IT????? One person cracked that he thought she was going to try to steal the dress, and the final designer, very frostily told her she could BUY what ever she liked. But sweet baby Jesus drinking gin from the cat dish, where did she ever learn her manners or professional etiquette?

Well, that leaves Natasha, whose photo was The Worst In ANTM History. Or so the judges said. Worse than the fishy thing that used to be the worst? It doesn’t matter, because at least she takes direction and tries and showed a huge amount of class in the face of everyone talking shit to her face.

The judges decide that she probably was the victim of a plot to get her tossed out, or else why else would all three of the other girls say exactly the same thing, and anyway, she’s a damn sight nicer and prettier than Dionne, so, bottom line?

The last three standing are: NeNe Vibrato, Jaslene the Tranny, and Natasha, the sweet Russian Mail Order Bride.

I had a rough day yesterday, and was more than ready to settle in on the sofa with the glass of red wine, fuzzy slippers and fuzzy doggie. It’s TV night at the Casita des Zapatos, and time again for the bitches and the hos. Whee. Good times, peoples, good times. Except. Not. Because at the end of the show, my sweet, gently bewildered Jael was the first girl to head back to the states. But I’m getting ahead of myself.

Open on the usual shit talking about who went home and how nobody’s going to miss them. Random leaping about concerning who’s left.

Doorbell rings and in walks…uh, that pointy-faced girl from Season Two? The one who got her own on-line talk show? April. The one that Nigel was so hot for. The one who didn’t win. She’s going to teach them how to interview and be interviewed. She has a grinning little midget friend with her to help her with the examples of talking too much and talking to little. He looks like Teller, only shorter and with a rubberier face. Woof.

Then the girls team up and practice. Jael and Dionne get nasty with each other, but Jael is, and it pains me to say this, terrible. No, really, I mean terrible in new and different ways, most of them involving bizarre facial contortions and wildly inappropriate body language.

Natasha isn’t too bad, Jaslene has really big teeth, Renee is such a hateful ass that I don’t care if she does well or not. Brittney reveals that she doesn’t know if she can do this sort of thing because she got run over by a car when she was 17, bounced her head off the curb, had 8 (or 18—accounts varied) staples in her head and absolutely no short term memory any more. I wonder if that’s why she couldn’t keep her weave pretty? She couldn’t remember how to handle it? Wash/comb…don’t wash/don’t comb…

And then, they learn that they are going to have to take their newly-honed skills out into the real world and interview people on the street. The streets of Sydney, Australia. And there is Tyra in a broke-ass kangaroo suit. I love Tyra, because she is fierce and fabulous enough to let herself be put in a ratty roo suit and hop up and down on my TV screen. The woman deserves some sort of Emmy for that. Natasha doesn’t understand for, like, a minute or two that they are going to Australia, and then she starts shrieking like a banshee. It’s pretty funny, in an ear-splitting, nails-on-a-blackboard sort of way.

We see them pack, we see the little animated plane with their faces in the windows, and then we see them disembark in Sydney. Jael is wearing a flowered mini-tank dress over jeans and a lime-fucking-green tu-tu. It’s reeeeealy mind blowing, and not in a good way. Who had brain damage, again?

They are met by an Aussie supermodel who treats them to a slang-filled welcome speech. As you would expect, there are crickets chirping everywhere. Especially around Jaslene, who has really, really big front teeth. I’ve seen beavers with smaller front teeth. The model gives the girls (and Jaslene)a guide book to Aussie slang, a microphone and a big send-off to discuss American fashion faux-pas with the guy on the street. They will score points for each usage of the slang.

Dionne rocks that, basically by using what I suspect is her own verbal tic, but which coincidentally is also in the phrase book…“That’s cool.” Repeated two or three times after every response. But she says “I want to AKS you a question” which had me sticking my fingers in my ears.

Jaslene is just pathetic, Brittney talks to an American and is told that in the interviewee’s opinion, the worst thing American girls do is to wear skimpy tank tops with their bra straps showing. OMG! I was there being interviewed and I didn’t even know it. Brit, of course, is wearing a skimpy tank top with her bra straps showing. I love this show.

Natasha, who already learned one new language and has the skills for it, totally nails the use of slang in her interviews. She’s cute, and perky and just adorable.

Jael is, uh, not.

Then it’s off to their new digs and on to the Cover Girl commercials, where they have to memorize their lines and deliver them in an Australian accent. This is one time when I almost wished for closed captioning.

They are all just dreadful. Renee is dressed in poufy sleeves and really ugly eye makeup and delivers like (she says) Steve Irwin. In judging, the panel agrees that she did sound like a man, and maybe that wasn’t the best choice of role model when you are selling lippy.

Dionne comes back with her Jamaican-not accent. Brit cries and blows her lines even with cue cards and wahwahwahs about getting run over and having no short term memory. We know, because you already told us that story, and we do remember it.

Jaslene can’t speak American English, and her attempts at an Australian accent are embarrassing and awful and grating and pitiful. On the up side? She nails her lines without cue cards.

Jael is totally done in by the need to be cute, sweet and perky. She proves to be utterly incapable of smiling on cue. In fact, she sort of reminds me of the scene in Addams Family Values where Cristina Ricci is at sleep away camp and is forced to smile, and all the other campers squish back and start to cry that she’s scaring them. Yeah. It was pretty much like that. She cries and climbs a tree to make herself feel better, but we all know that this is it for my favorite little anarchist.

Natasha does an Austrailo-Soviet accent, which is much more endearing than it sounds.

Judging! Jael is looking fabu in a dress and heels. We see the commercial and it opens and closes on Renee. She is getting the fucking redemption arc so large and blatantly that it looks like McDonald’s neon arches in Times Square. The judges comment on the fact that Jaslene has this history(?) of drag queens. What? First we heard that she was raised by drag queens, and now she has all this experience with drag queens. See? This is what I’m saying… Jaslene IS a fucking drag queen.

In a huge upset during panel, the Aussie model talks about how the girls got off the plane (we see the flashback to Jael and her lime green tutu) and of all of them Jael (says the model) was the one who came out with enthusiasm and joy and a passion for the job and and and. Well. She was out-voted. The looks that passed between Nigel and Twiggy and even Miss Jay? Hokey smokes, Bullwinkle, they could not have been happier to finally give Jael the old heave ho. But it was certain curtains for Jael when Tyra said that she didn’t look like a Cover Girl, she looked like an anarchist cruelly mimicing a Cover Girl.

Then the panel discussed Brit’s head injury and subsequent short-term memory loss. Right. Head injury. Sure it was. That’s not what they tell us in drug class. It’s something else that causes long term loss of short term memory. Well, I think that’s what I remember them saying.

The bottom two are Brit and Jael, and Brit gets to stay, along with this advice: Sack up ho, and figure out how to deal with your disability.

Personally, I thought Jaslene should have been standing there with Jael, and I would have preferred to see her skinny ass out on the tarmac, but so it goes.

The winner of the challenge, remember the challenge? was Natasha, who received as her prize a field reporter job on the Tyra Talk Show. No kidding. How cool is that?

Next week, I don’t know what to expect because I didn’t get any previews. All I know is that with my pet anarchist gone, who cares. I’m going to go climb a tree and pet the grass. Who will protect us from the evil ducks of the universe now?

Last night the most amazing thing happened: the RLA watched the show with me. It took a while for him to figure out the players, because he said they all looked the same. That said, he was quick to pick up the following: Renee is a beeyotch. Jael is peculiar. Saying “Just cuz” to Mr. Jay is going to get you sent packing.

Another day dawns with mist on the swimming pool at the House O Hamsters in the LA hills. And that, dear readers, is why the swimming pool in Spain was icy: they were saving budget dollars for this year’s pool heating to get that mist to rise.

We open with Renee getting all up in Whitney’s face, asking her with “sweet” sincerity if she (Whitney) really truly believes that a fat girl will ever grace the cover of Vogue. ‘Cause, you know, rilly she just wants Whitney to face reality and not get all bummed out and all. She’s just asking. Whitney shows that she’s the real deal classy babe by not punching Renee’s skank ass out. Diana wanders in and gets pissed off for both of the fat girls.

A sidebar, if you will: please remember that by “fat girls” we are talking about women who are NORMAL by all other standards; they wear size 10s, not XXXXLs. OK?

After seeing the girls in some of their own clothes at judging, the PTB have decided that this is the week to give them lessons on style. Thankfully, we no longer has arbitrary assignments of personal style that they will have to learn it live it love it. Just, you know, a little bit less skank.

In what is my favorite scene to date, the girls are dressed up and asked to evaluate their looks to the head of Elite Models and one of her real working girls.

No crickets chirp, but they all gamely announce that they luv-luv-luv what ever the hell has been thrown on them. HAH! Fooled you! These are all TERRIBLE Fashion Mistakes. Natasha explains to Miss Elite Models that they all said they liked the clothes because as working models, you have to believe in what ever is tossed on your back. (Like her. By her mail-order groom. And please, if there is a God, do not show any more footage of her talking on the phone with him and playing sex games involving meowing. It just skeeved me out. But then, all the hamsters, once they wrapped their collective mind around it are a little skeeved by that marriage. Of course, some of the hamsters are less skeeved than just bitchy gossips, WHITNEY! But I digress)

There is a little round of clothing swappage, and the girls now look less awful. Except for Diana, who really, really, really needs to put on a little lipstick and wash her hair now and then.

After they learn about Bauhaus art theory as it relates to the fashion industry (Less is Still More, hos.) they are sent off to their challenge. In a warehouse somewhere, they find lots and lots of high fashion clothing from Sears, three platforms and two male mannequins. Renee thinks that they are terribly life-like, and they may very well be. Since they are actually two male models. They said they were identical twins, but either one of them was wearing lifts, or they weren’t all that identical, because boyfriend on the left was a couple inches taller.

The challenge consisted of getting separated into teams, and nobody was at all happy with their team or their team members. Each team had a few minutes to put together three looks (that had to work separately and together as a group), some props, and pose on the platforms. Dionne the Dentist used to work in retail, so she pulled the looks together for her teammates Renee and Sara. Natasha, Jael and Whitney called their look Afrodity’s something or others and when the twins pointed out that the hamsters has spelled Aphrodite wrong, Natasha stepped up to the plate and explained that when you make up a name you can spell it any way you want so there. Phhhhhtt.

The final team was composed of Diana, Jaslene and whoever I can’t remember and needs to go home. Right! Brittney! Brittney and her ratty weave that looks worse each week.

The prize this week will go first to the group who does the best, and then to the individual girl. The prize is getting to take all your challenge photos, then review them with Mr. Jay, and then re-shoot. I have to say, that’s a fucking GREAT prize. PS: If you aren’t in place when the boys say time, you will be disqualified. You know it. Someone isn’t on point. Want to guess who?

The winning team is determined to be Jael, Natasha and Whitney, except for the fact that they weren’t on their posing platform when the boys said time. Natasha, who really, really stepped up her game this week, was all but yanking Whitney up to the platform by her arm. Maybe if girlfriend was one of those anorexic hos, she could have pulled her into place. But she isn’t and she couldn’t and so Whitney, who would have been the Number One girl two weeks in a row became just another also ran.

That meant the second runners up were the winners. Sara, Dionne and Renee were the winners. Sara was chosen as the best of the three and won the prize. And, OH. MY. GOD. the stink face that Dionne put out was astonishing. Renee, of course, opined that she was the best, yadayadayada, and should have won something or another, because after all, she was the one who picked the accessories for Sara. Dionne, though, she picked out the outfits, and so Sara shouldn’t have won dick. Boy-howdee, were those two girls miffed. Big time. Dionne wore a puss for the rest of the show.

The other three? Chopped liver.

The photo shoot this week was the season’s gender bender, where the girls (and Jaslene) had to dress as boys. The twist, and it was funny… OK, I know I keep saying that this show has jumped the shark, but I gotta admit, this is the best season yet. The shoots are good, Mr. Jay is adorable, and Miss Jay is out of the picture most of the time (except during judging when he’s wearing that ever-growing clown ruffle). But I digress. The twist. The twist is that they are going to pose as men, with women. The women in question are drag queens. That’s right, throw those little cluesless hamsters to the she-wolves, and see who can keep the camera focused on them.

Jael was cast as a boho, and really had a great time and threw around a lot of poses. Dionne had to be a powersuit. Whitney was a f(r)at boy. Britney was a redneck (best quote: Hi. I kill things). Sara was a glam rocker and totally channeled David Bowie. Jaslene was one half of a pair of chaty-yachtys and Diana was a red-carpet star (HAH!-not. She looked stiffer than the giant paper mache Oscars) Renee was a rocker… but she was no Brian Setzer. The star of the shoot was, no kidding, Natasha. She had to be a hip-hop guy, and she even made her own grill out of chewing gum foil. Insert Soviet Union joke here. It was awesome. She was chillin like a villain. She was down wit it, dawgs. She was stylin’.

Jay said something inane like, no wonder the Russians take home all the gold at the Olympics. She’s competing. She brought her A-game. While he was trying to get something, anything out of Diana, Mr. Jay asked her why she was there. Her depthful reply: “Just cuz.” That’s when the RLA said: she’s history, and in the next scene, at judging, she was.

When it finally came down to Whitney and Diana, and Diana got sent home, Jael ran over and jumped on her, throwing her legs around Diana’s waist. It was awesome. I love me some Jael.

Next week, Jael finally bitch slaps Renee. Is life great?

So it’s week four or five already, huh? How time flies whether you’re having fun or not. I know that I missed reviewing the make-over episode, but that was because it was so boring and lame that I just didn’t care. Well, except about Jael, who got the bad make-over, complete with do-over (Tyra changed her mind. Sorry about the pain of getting a weave and the eight hours in the chair. We’re just going to cut everything off and dye your hair brown.) And then she found out one of her friends O.D.d. And then they made her get naked and frolic with ice cream.

This week, however, there is much more going on in the house. What things, you may ask? Well, to start with Renee has decided not to be a bitch any more. (Or any less, either, but it’s the thought that counts.) To that end, she draws a really nasty picture of Jael in a straight jacket, but see? The sleeves aren’t fastened, so that makes it a positive drawing. I know, right?

Jael, sweet but gently bewildered thing that she is (but is she a sistah solja, beautiful bi-racial butterfly?) takes the drawing and pretends to loves it so much that she sticks it up on a shelf with some Asian dog or pig or cat or something.

There is some house action which I cannot remember, mainly because these hamsters are so unforgettable. But then they all pile into the big, vulgar, gas-guzzling Hummer and go for a ride to a park. The limo is stopped by a police person who is directing traffic like s/he’s a Bahamian tourist-trap photo-op…on crack. S/he then executes a couple of John Cleese funny walks and admits that s/he’s not really a traffic cop. Yeah. What was our first clue? (Of course the hamsters all thought it was a real traffic stop. Or at least Renee did.) Turns out s/he’s Benny Ninja of the House of Ninja, and http://www.televisionwithoutpity.com/articles/content/a12923/">POTES’; dream comes true as one of the founders of vogueing and one of the stars (I think) of Paris Is Burning comes to ANTM and attempts to show the girls (and Jaslene) how to pose. And let me say right now that Ninja beats the pants off the contortionist from last season. He immediately pairs the girls (and Jaslene) up and has them do a muthafuggin’ face-off. Renee is unfortunately not awful. In fact, most of them are not awful. It’s sort of disappointing.

They next have to put their lessons to the test by vogueing their way through one of those LAY-zer mazes/theft deterrent devices so popular in movies like Mission Improbable. And then, the most wonderful thing happens.

Renee confessionalizes that she rilly, rilly needs the prize (a $40 THOUSAND dollar diamond bracelet) because she and her husband (and, one supposes, the son about whom she Would.Not.Shut.Up. in epi one, and whom we have not heard the first word about since) are dead broke and all but eating out of dumpsters and living in their car and she rilly, rilly wants to win to help out her family.

Now, in the world that I live in, helping your family financially means things like, oh, I don’t know, taking a stab here, GETTING A FUCKING JOB! Or, you know, WORKING! Or even sucking it up and going to one of those federal job training programs where you end up with a skill and A JOB!!! But I suppose going on a television reality show is better than using the lottery as your retirement plan. I guess. Maybe. Possibly.

So. Off they go, one at a time, with ole’ Benny Ninja sitting behind a table with a video screen and a big ass buzzer and every time the girl (or Jaslene) breaks a laser beam, he hits that buzzer and makes them go back to the beginning. One by one, with various skill levels (who knew that Dionne-the-Dentist could drop a split like that? Sure made Benny Ninja’s jaw drop. Jael has fun. Sara does good. Natasha makes a few errors but still gets to the end before running out of time. Every single girl goes through and gets a key to a jewel box…even the plus sized girls make it through the limbo sticks. The last girl up is Renee. Our Lady of the Perpetual Whine proceeds to blow it. Totally. Doesn’t finish. Doesn’t get a key. Doesn’t get 40K of bling to pay off her family’s debts and buy her son food. And there goes her resolution to be nice. Bwahahahahahaha. Sorry. Whitney (one of the plus girls, and I’m beginning to think all the speculation about this being a plus sized girl’s season to win may be true) takes home the ice. She notes that although she has taken a semester off from Dartmouth (take that, you skanks) to do this (and she’s not on financial aid) she thinks that she’ll keep the bracelet rather than using it to pay back her pops the 9K she’s costing him by being on TV. To which I say, you go girl. Props to you. And also? My daddy was from West Palm Beach, so way to represent.

The girls and Jaslene go back to the house and Renee gets on the phone and proceeds to have a break down, calling her husband and crying that she doesn’t want to be there any more, and he should come and get her, and all the other girls (and Jaslene) are just awful beeyotchs who can’t hold her crusty undies (Hey! Where’s Moooonique, now? She could teach you something about crusty undies.) and so on and on and on and on and on and on…. until a couple of the other girls (who, I’d like to note are smoking like chimneys this season, much more so than previously) notice that 1)Renee’s not around, and 2) she’s actually hogging up all the phone time. The usual confrontation occurs, and Renee breaks her resolve to be nice (I’m SHOCKED!).

The next scene is the week’s photo shoot. Sur-prize, sur-prize sur-prize, in what must certainly be nothing more than a co-inkydink, this week’s theme is “Death By…” (Sort of like season whatever when Kahlen’s friend gacked and they had to go be the seven deadly sins in the bottom of a grave. The only saving grace here is that they don’t actually make Jael portray an O.D. So.

Renee is up first as death by poisoning, and does unfortunately well. Jay raves. The photographer raves. I rage that they didn’t actually poison the bitch. Renee smugly tells Jay not to tell the other girls how well she did, because they all hate her. Too late. Why, he asks, all innocence and shit. Renee leans into his little apricot-like ear and whispers coyly, “Because I’m a bitch.” Well, alright then.

We get stabbing and shooting (really creepy) and throwing off a building and tossing down the stairs (again… just like I didn’t understand why there was both a bad girl and a ho in high school, I don’t understand why getting thrown from a roof is dynamically different from getting tossed down the stairs, but that’s why I’m not art directing these shoots.) Natasha (who, by the way, did get the Boris and Natasha make over, schnort) is drowned. There is death by electrocution and death by vivisection, death by strangulation and death by (I just looked on the WC site and it seems that three girls got tossed to their deaths…)getting thrown off another building.

The hamsters are all a little skeeved by the realistic make up. Jay is disappointed by Jael’s sadness and poor performance and claims that he didn’t know about her dead friend. I’m a little skeeved by the whole death is fashion thing. I thought that sort of misogeny went out of vogue (HA! Get it?)with Helmut Newton back in the 80s. (Oh, shit. Those terrible 80s again. Will that decade never die?)

At judging, the choice comes down to Dionne who is beautiful but doesn’t know what to do with it and Felicia (aka Baby Tyra) who is just coasting on being pretty and looking (Tyra finally admits) like Tyra. Big surprise, Baby Tyra goes home.

Next week? I’ve already forgotten the teaser. I’m sure it’ll be fabulous, though. Especially if we could fire Miss Jay and hire Benny Ninja.

In episode two, the girls go back to school. Or go to school. They also get schooled in walking by the dragalicious Miss Jay, are forced to hold a “fashion show” on the school basketball court, and do a photo shoot of high school cliches: bad girl, teacher’s pet, class clown, unpopular loser weird girl, class ho, class brain, class jock…

You know, I hated high school so much that even reliving it like this makes me queasy. Let’s just say that I was the class weirdo, except much better dressed.

In what must surely come as a surprise to you, Renee whines and bitches and cries. Jaslene exhibits amazing powers of self-delusion, Natasha still doesn’t understand English and Jael proves more and more endearing to me.

So. First we have Tyra mail, and in what must be a first after 7 seasons of ANTM, the girls figure out the clue: even babies learn to do this. Instead of the usual crickets chirping, we hear some girl sing out “WALKING LESSONS!” And where better to have that than at a high school band practice where Miss Jay explains that high school marching bands are known for their precise choreography and fine, high stepping. Uh-huh. Where I came from that translated into precision milling-about-smartly. But I digress. The girls get dragged off to the track oval and are given directions for walking in groups of three. I had had two cocktails by the time we got to this point, and I was chatting with RJ and MJ, and I have no discernible sense of rhythm (unless I’m standing in front of the amp banks at a rock show and you’d have to be dead not to feel the rhythm) and I can still tell you what that complex routine consisted of: Three girls start. The middle girl stops at the half way mark. The two girls cross at the end of the catwalk, stop & pose, turn and go back up the cat walk to the middle girl. They stop and the middle girl goes to the end of the catwalk, poses, turns and comes back. When they are three abreast they all walk to the beginning/end point on the runway. Next three girls go out and do it all again.

I’m sure you will all be shocked to discover that this was way, way too complicated for a couple of the girls. For the other girls, this was just a floor show for dissing the rest of the girls: cackling and crowing about how they (which ever one was doing the speaking at the moment) had the Very Best Walk and the rest of these girls are pitiful at best, and borderline epileptics at worst. Miss Jay critiques the girls and this results in Natasha thinking that he said she was a “Martian.” What he said was that he didn’t know if she was walking or marching.

Then they go inside to the gym to repeat their steps in a “real” show featuring (and I’m not kidding, but Oh. My. God. how I wish I were) Prom Dresses through the ages. We see monstrosities from the eighties and would someone please put that decade out of its misery already and stop dragging its rotting zombie corpse back to torture humans with eyeballs? Metallic fabric, bows bigger than ponies, attached to any body part not in need of a pony-sized bow and puffy sleeves to match.

There were dresses that theoretically came from today, but I couldn’t see much difference, and then the third sweep down the walk is defined as “ghetto fabulous” and consists of skin-tight micro-skirts, cowl necklines that plunge to below the girls’ belly buttons, a lot of animal prints and a certain touch o’ ho. Sara works it so well that her boobs pop out of the six-inch wide neckline. Jael opines that Sara’s boobs escaped and that she found it very liberating for Sara and she’s proud for Sara that it happened next to her (Jael). See why I love Jael? She is so…funny. Funny ha-ha. And maybe, yes, a little “funny”. But who among us would be secure throwing that particular first stone?

Samantha gets to wear some itty-bitty thing that she felt should be burned because it wasn’t a dress, it was a blouse and boy-howdie, she wouldn’t have been allowed to go to the prom in Alabama lookin’ all hootchie-mamma like that. Renee claims to have been amazing, and she was… in the way that watching the space shuttle blow up is amazing. Renee does not like hearing that she was unaware of the other girls on the runway with her (and the difference between that and her normal level of awareness of other people is what?) and says that it didn’t matter what the judge thought, the audience ate her up and loved her.

See. The audience were high-school students, and really and come on, who cares what they think? Except the other high-school students who, the last time I checked, weren’t the people in charge of ANTM. But I digress. The winner on the catwalk was Britney, who really is beautiful in a classic sort of way, and doesn’t appear to be a ho-skank like the last Britne

y we had a couple of seasons ago. Britney wins a trophy. It is a least four feet tall, looks like a high school basketball trophy, except instead of a little metal b-ball player on the top, there is a gold stiletto pump. I squee’d a little bit and told RJ that I so want the trophy. There’s plenty of time till my birthday, sweetie.

Sara voices over that the trophy is “redonkulous” and thereby wins love eternal from RJ and me because that proves that Sara reads Cute Overload.

The next day, the girls go back to the school for a photo shoot where they do the whole cliche thing. To get these looks, Mr. Jay has brought in the official hair stylist for Clairol’s Herbal Essence line. She says things like “This will give you perilously straight hair.” She says it with a perilously straight face.

The girls all have to pose as “types”, Sara is the class flirt and Samantha is the class ho. Sara nails it, Samantha almost passes out from Mr. Jay’s art direction (put your hand on the inside of your thigh like you’re masturbating). And I’d just like to say right now that Mr. Jay is less orange and a lot funnier this season. And also, maybe, doing better art direction. Maybe. It’s only week two. Jaslene is magnificent as the weirdo, but lemme tell you, when Nigel says to send the photos and not the girl to casting because the girl can’t get the gig, but the girl in the photos can… I’m just thinking that Jaslene won’t be in at the finish.

Britney is dressed like a fat frump as the valedictorian, because we all know you can’t be smart and have fashion sense, the cheerleader shot looks a lot like the ho (letter sweater, but no shirt and the sweater is wide open.) and I still don’t understand why there is both a bad girl and a ho… they were pretty much the same in my high school, but that was 30 years ago, so maybe everybody specializes these days. The girl who everybody calls BabyTyra does well as the jock. Jael rocks the house as the nerdy bookworm. Natasha has no clue what the words “teacher’s pet” mean, and says that they don’t have that in the Soviet Union. Diane (one of the two plus sized girls) is stunning as the class president. Renee has to be the class clown and she blows chunks. Then she complains that it wasn’t fair that she had to play against type when nobody else did and then she cries. (RJ: “I’m going to send her a wheel of cheese to go with that whine.”) She also whines about having the other girls on the set, and why didn’t they ask her if that was alright? She almost pops a vein when the photographer suggests she get some posing advice from Jael. RJ and I laugh and laugh and laugh.

There is an interlude at the house where we see pixelated nudity (Jael) and horseplay and what not and we see Samantha sniveling about being all alone in the house and how she just isn’t very outgoing. MJ astutely notes that “sure you are, you’re going out of the house.”

Finally, we get to judging. Predictably, Jaslene complains that the other girls are already dissing her, Natasha mistakes the comment that she was the hardest girl to art direct since Ann the Man for a compliment (“I remember Ann, she was one of the most beautiful girls on this show ever.”) and Renee rolls her eyes at everyone else’s compliments. In the end, it comes down to Natasha and Samantha and MJ proves to be right. Samantha is out going the door back to Alabama, where she’ll never have to pretend to be a lesbian or ho again.

Next week is makeover week. Squeeeee!

The bitches and the hos are back with a vengence in season eight of America’s Next Top Model. I keep saying this every season, but I don’t see how they can find any dumber girls. Really, this season’s crop is astonishingly stupid and vapid, and it’s going to be the best train wreck yet.

We start with casting, and are spared any of last year’s embarassing moments, like the pole dancer who insists to Tyra that being a stripper is the same thing as being a model, rilly. On second thought, I sort of missed that. We don’t have any tragedies like being in a plane wreck, kept alive by the diminishing heat of our dead mother’s body, or night blindness, or psoriasis or even being the blackest child in the family. I didn’t miss that. We don’t have anything terribly memorable except the girl with the sewn-in wig (which I think was also repossessed, but it might have been two different girls with weaves) and the other girl who just wouldn’t shut up. Or leave. Or say anything that was worth listening to the on and on and on and on and on and on to hear.

The first thirty odd (really odd) girls are picked and off we go to Model Boot Camp, where I have high hopes that these B&Hs will learn how to walk in high heels before they get to the first judging. Of course, I have high hopes about Mr Jay not being orange and Twiggy developing an attitude, too, so who am I to say.

Right away my hopes are dashed with the “name 5 American designers” question which results in chirping crickets. Personalities begin to display when Sara (the semi-pro) knows who Richard Avedon is, and Renee starts bitching about how Sara only won because she’s a photographer and so of course “knew who that dude was” and the whole thing isn’t fair. This, we will discover, is her mantra, along with the particularly overused “I’m only doing this for my baby.”

You know, I don’t have kids, so maybe it is a normal thing for a mother to do, leave an infant at home to go off and participate on a reality show for the fame whoriness of it. We see a lovely picture of Renee in her white wedding gown, holding her infant son. Really, it was almost touching. But, just to be terribly old-fashioned, since when did a white wedding dress get accessorized by a bouquet of baby? I thought the presumed accessory was an intact hymen, but then again, I am old-fashioned.

The first cut is the deepest, and we get reduced by a number of forgettable, semi-attractive girls, and one Betty Paige by way of the tattoo parlor wannabe who was shocked to think that having a life-size and somewhat realistic tattoo of the bleeding sacred heart of Jesus on her sternum might make for a minus when you want to be a couture model. Then it’s off to our first photo shoot and we have a political statement theme, in which the girls must front for whatever random “controversial” position the PTB have come up with. There is pro-choice, and anti-abortion; gay marriage and straight; pro-fur and anti-fur; anti-gun and NRA shill; vegan and carnivore; death penalty pro and con. Con, get it? Jeez I crack myself up. Unfortunately, these were concepts that went way beyond the limited wattage of our contestants. In particular, Sara couldn’t get with the life behind bars, Renee didn’t like having to not like guns (I’m guessing she’s a military wife, what with being 20, a mother and living in Hawaii.) Katherine could not figure out why anyone wouldn’t like to wear fur, Jael and Natasha needed to swap positions on the whole choice thing, and the girl who was pro-straight marriage looked as stiff and unbelievable as the giant Ken doll they had posing with her. Nigel was the photographer, and he and Mr. Jay looked pretty miserable at the raw materials they had to work with.

Then, it was off to Goodwill to make an outfit of personal expression in three minutes, plus a charity runway show, money raised to go to Goodwill. I will spare you the details, because they are painful. Jael wins, and Renee bitches that it wasn’t a fair challenge because Jael shops in second hand stores, anyway.  Jael wasn’t happy about winning, either, because she thinks that will make the other girls like her less. Here’s a clue for you, honey: none of them like you anyway, and they are all backstabbing bitches, or haven’t you watched this show before?

Speaking of Natasha, which I was a paragraph ago, she is 19, Russian and married to a 40-year old man about whom she can only say he changed her life and brought her to America. Uh-huh. I knew one of those guys. He did the Russian bride thing twice, and the first one left when she learned enough English to figure out he was sort of creepy and the second one left as soon as she could without anyone questioning the validity of her green card marriage. I’m sure that Natasha isn’t one of those, right? I’m also harboring this deep, deep desire to see Tyra give her this makeover. Ohpleaseohpleaseohplease.

Anyway, after the juding, wherein Tyra et al admit that this is the worst bunch of wannabes they’ve ever seen, and Katherine allows as how she didn’t get the whole concept of anti-fur, even though Mr. Jay and Nigel explained it to her…a lot, and how couldn’t you just get fur from already dead animals, because “animals die of natural causes sometimes, don’t they?” that is enough for even Tyra to send her away for being stupid beyond all comprehension.

Whee! I can’t wait for next week, can you?