Project Runway, Week Three

Open on the interior of the boys’ apartments, where Jack is being hott, buff and mostly naked. He is using an inhalator and sorting through a wealth of medications, as he voice overs that he’s been living with HIV for 10 or so years and has never felt better. I think I speak for all of us in the audience, gay and straight, when I say he looks just fine. In the kitchen area Chris and Kevin (who would like you to know, before we go any further, that he is straight) are discussing the auffing of Marion and opining that nobody would have cried if Christian had been auffed. Christian is standing there, but somehow, I am not offended by the dissing of him to his face. Christian says, in his annoyingly valley girl way, that after almost being auffed? he’s not as confident? as he was before? And we’re out the door (they need more V-8) to Parson’s.

On the runway, Heidi tells them that there will be no model selection, because they will not be using their models this week. The designers are headed up and herded out for a field trip to Rockefeller Plaza, where they end up in the studios of the Today Show. Waiting for them are Tim and Tiki Barber. For those of you who don’t follow professional sports (every one of the designers except Kevin (who would like to remind you that he is, in fact, a straight man) is included in that group), Tiki Barber is a former NY Giant running back, played in three Pro Bowls and in 2007 was voted one of the best dressed men of the year by Vanity Fair. Squinty Steve delivers up the following comment, and endears himself to me forever: I don’t know much about sports, except that it’s probably the only time that spandex is acceptable. Miz Shoes is now officially on the Steve love train.

The challenge this week, a PR first, and one that is easily the hardest ever, is to design something for Tiki to wear on air. Tiki says that he likes dark colors, texture and depth. He also is not afraid to wear pink or other pastels. Kevin asks, and Tiki answers, that he likes details. There is the usual 30 minutes to draw, and 30 to shop and the budget is $100. They will have the rest of that day and all of the next to work.

Panic at the Workroom

Back at the workroom, it soon becomes apparent that practically nobody has any idea how to design menswear. Sweet P is already sweating. Kevin says that he has done menswear, and will make a suit. Rami of the Heavenly Arms opts for a sport jacket. Kit, who has done on-air clothing, goes for British School Boy Khakis. Ricky, who amazingly does not shed a single tear this week, decides that as a lingerie designer, he has to step up and design a whole 3-piece suit, just to prove himself. Christian has designed a jacket and pant. Carmen is lost, lost, lost and keeps turning to Jack for help. Jack asks Tim if they can use existing pieces as design guides and Tim says yes. This means that Jack drops trow, and cuts up his pants to make a pattern. which he graciously shares with Carmen and Victorya. This causes much sniffing and tut-tutting and someone (you know by now that I take lousy notes and don’t own TIVO, so I don’t remember who, but I would guess Chris or Christian) says that oooooh, jealousy will bring out the ugly. Sweet P knocks over a mannequin and yells “MAN DOWN!” Why I found that so funny, I cannot say. But I laughed out loud.

Chris observes that people are starting to figure out that sewing up a man’s suit takes a lot more time than they have been given, and Christian chirps that he is a speed queen. Well, actually those are my words. His are just that speed is his greatest asset. It sure isn’t his haircut or his speaking style. Chris says that he is completely self-taught, starting in 4th grade when he snatched the pants away from his mother and said he’d hem them up himself. He also says (and again, I can’t tell you why I found it so funny) that he loves pants, because pants are just two big sleeves sewn together. Rami of the Heavenly Arms and suddenly pissy attitude models his muslin, which, he says pointedly, he DRAPED, and did not TRACE. And they do fit beautifully.

Also beautiful is the bevy of male models who now enter the workroom. Kevin who, as we are all now well aware, is straight, is unimpressed. The rest of us (straight women and gay men) all swoon a little. Squinty Steve delivers another howler, as he says that OK, NOW he gets why straight men are always asking him how he can work with all those beautiful women standing around in their underwear. Jillian has to completely re-cut her pants. Elisa, keeping up her track record of random weirdness, lectures all of us about how she only wants to see her man. She won’t let her model undress in front of her, and she won’t measure him, either. Not even a hand measure… although I have my doubts about hand-measuring a crotch length. Could be fun… And I suppose we should all thank all higher powers that she doesn’t spit mark him, either.

Tim enters the workroom, and calls the designers together. This causes a some consternation, as they all expect another twist to the challenge, and they are already freaking out. But it isn’t a bad thing at all. It is Ginny Barber, Tiki’s wife, and she is there to give the designers a critique and direction. She loves the color and the vest of Jack’s work. She tells Ricky that Tiki loves layering and will like his look, but that there is a lot of work left to do. Kevin is doing a dress shirt, a double-vented jacket and a matching pocket square. Dashing says Miz Shoes. Carmen gets a reality check in the form of Tim and Ginny telling her that her jacket looks too much like a 1980s Members Only. Tim suggests that she recut the pattern, but there isn’t enough fabric, so Carmen is hosed.

As the evening winds down, Kevin is saying that he’s not doing a jacket for lack of time. Jack is focusing on completing his shirt and pants, and Ricky and Sweet P are fighting. Squinty Steve has the final say, and it is brilliant…“What’s that thing that they had on the Titanic before it sank?” he asks the camera. “Oh, yeah, panic. That’s what we have here.”

Show Time

Morning has broken, and Elisa is doing yoga. Sweet P is continuing to panic, as she says she has 3/4 of a pair of pants and no shirt. Jack carries Christian piggy back into the workroom, and the two of them look like some sort of R. Crumb fantasy. Ricky says that if you are going to fall, fall hard on your ass. I don’t think that will make it onto a needlepoint sampler to hang over the fireplace, but it does convey a little attitude. Carmen still needs to make a shirt. There are two hours for hair and make up and then it is show time. We get a quick once over of how far the designers have come. Christian is pretty much finished. Kit has three pieces. Ricky is making his model sew on buttons. Sweet P has made a shirt for a Todd McFarlane toy, with a neck as large as the waist, and other weird and horrible things happening throughout. Victorya says that she has “panic in her veins”, which is too bad, because I think ice water might be better under the circumstances.

Now we see Ricky hemming everything with pins. This is not going to be good. Carmen is looking at her model. The pants fit like shit and she is sewing him into them. There is no shirt, and she tears a swath of blue oxford cloth and wraps it around his neck to simulate a shawl collar and throws the jacket on over. Tim calls time and ends up practically having to drag Sweet P and Carmen out to the runway. Christian looks around and questions that it is going to be hard? to judge? because there is so much that is awful? Yeah. It pains me, but I must agree.

Heidi looks more fabulous than ever as she greets the designers. Is that an Uli that she’s wearing?

As the models come down the runway, Miz Shoes observes that, as impossible as it may seem, the stylists have done worse things to the men than they have yet done to the women. Who is doing hair and make up this year? Jillian’s ensemble is nice, Carmen’s is a hot mess with no shirt. The look on Michael Kors’ face is priceless. Christian has done something with an asymmetric neckline and an awful jacket that reeks of Patrick McGoohan in The Prisoner. Kit puts out a simple, but I think, too short jacket. Rami of the Heavenly Arms has a pair of beautifully tailored pants and a cheesy golf jacket. Sweet P has a mess. Squinty Steven has done a beautiful sweater, pants with a high waist, and an ascot. It is a lovely, retro look. Victorya sends down a white jacket with a black collar. Kevin has a nice vest, and a nice shirt. Kevin contributed the vest to the Bitten design, did he not? And his first dress had a waist cincher on it, sort of a ren fest wench affair. Is this a trend Miz Shoes is spotting? Chris has done a zipper front jacket. Jack has done some interesting things with pattern on pattern. Ricky should, but is not crying over the pinned-together crap his model has on. The model has the presence of mind to show the lining on the jacket, and it is the best part of the whole thing. Elisa has done three pieces: a nice enough shirt, a weird crunchy-granola vest that looks to be made from a kind of fuzzy pleather, and a nice pair of pants.

When The Whip Comes Down

The designers who can flee the runway with their chances intact are: Jillian, Christian, Rami OTHA, Squinty Steve, Victorya, Chris and Elisa. Flee they do. Gratefully, I may add. Kit gets the first critique, and Tiki likes the khaki and navy. The fact that the navy blazer is made out of fleece takes it out of the sleepy/boring place and makes it an interesting combination of textures. Tiki likes to use the word texture.

Sweet P is blasted by Michael Kors, who asks her how she could even send her model out in that crap. He acknowledges that she made a very nice tie…if the wearer was 7 feet tall. Her design is both conservative and messy, a bad combination in everybody’s book.

MK does love Jack’s shirt, which uses stripes vertically and on the bias, and is paired with pinstriped trousers. Tiki loves the pattern on pattern. Nina complains that there are only two pieces, and Tiki counters that they are two perfect pieces.

Ricky feels the wrath of NinaGarcia as she calls his work boring, dull, and held together with pins, as if we wouldn’t notice. Tiki says that it’s sloppy and that there is no way he would/could ever wear it.

Kevin, who is straight, you know, is told by Tiki that although he normally wouldn’t wear a vest, he’d wear that vest. MK clocks Kevin for time management skills and says that he should have left the vest open, rather than pinning it shut. There is a lovely and somewhat snippy exchange between Michael and Heidi when Michael says that Kevin’s look would look good on Seal and Heidi says it most certainly would not, because he would never be caught dead in it, but that it looks like David Beckham’s style. The way she says that is searingly dismissive. The RLA, who happily watches Project Runway with me, almost chokes.

Carmen’s jacket is too short, the shirt is too missing, and Michael calls the crotch “INSANE”. He has a point.

Are You In, Or Out?

Kevin, who is straight and wants you to remember that fact, is in. He had a nice, avant garde look. Kit is in for a unique point of view: doing a traditional blazer in a non-traditional fabric. Jack is the winner. Tiki says that the look was smart, and that Jack didn’t try to do too much. I could wear that tomorrow, says Tiki, and he will in fact, be wearing the look on the Today show. Good for Jack, although, for my money, I would have gone with Kevin. Sweet P remains in, despite having no concept of men’s wear or tailoring. Ricky remains in, despite his work being very badly made and very boring. Tiki even goes so far as to say it looked like his five-year-old made it. And that leaves Carmen. Her look was called unfinished, and that’s being kind. Michael Kors put it best when he said the problem is who would even put those things together? Her model was half naked and everything about her look was off. And now, so is she. Bye-bye little model girl. Bye-bye. Word to Ricky: good on you for not crying this week. But still, loose the little twee hats. They did Marion no favors and I fear for what they will do for you.

We begin our 11th episode with the remaining five bitches and hos in Shanghai. In what I am sure will come as a stunning turn of events for viewers everywhere, Binaca is talking shit to Heather. What were you thinking, when you were in the bottom two? she sweetly asks our favorite mildly-autistic beauty. Miz Shoes was thinking that of all the girls who ever needed a high fashion ass-whupping, it is that relentlessly evil stank ho, Binaca. Chantallobotomy and Jenah both bitch about Heather getting fed her lines and still sucking, and Jenah says that what really sucks is that ANTM has turned into a personality competition, not a modeling competition. And I ask you, is this news? Has she watched the show in seasons past? Someone who has watched is StankHoBinaca, who has been keeping track of the episodes and knows, even before the Tyra Mail is opened, that this is the week for go-sees. She is jumping up and down and squealing “GOSEEGOSEEGOSEEGOSEE!!!!”

Sure enough, the girls are sent to PT Modeling Agency, there to meet Susan Yang, the director. Salacious D is delighted to be going on go-sees, because she says they are the best. Heather thinks that she might have a problem with first impressions. Susan gives the girls their portfolios, their list of instructions, their translators and their drivers and a final admonition to be back by 6 on the dot.

The first whiff of trouble comes when Salacious D says that the drivers drop them off in the area, but not directly in front of their destinations. Binaca is interviewing that she totally has to win this, because she is totally going to be America’s Next Top Model. She is going to win. She has to win. And cut to Heather, wandering around lost…for at least half an hour. Chantallobotomy makes it to her first designer and is handed a sheer white dress. This is nice. She is wearing hot pink and black lace undies, which we and everyone in a five-mile radius can see through the dress. She has forgotten the first rule of go sees, which is to wear nude underwear. The designer is so shocked and appalled that he can barely tell her that she sucks and needs to be wearing nude underwear. She says he was harsh.

We see Binaca, again, and again she is whawhawhaing about going home is not an option. To which I say, fine. Stay in China, and never darken my tv screen again. Chantallobotomy makes it to Flora Zeta’s show room, and is dismissed with the statement that she might be fine for print, but that she cannot walk a runway. The other girls are now on their second and third go sees, and Heather is still wandering around in circles. She is remarkably sangfroid about it, though, unlike last year’s Brittney who would have been shrieking and biting the heads of of small passersby by now. Heather finally wanders in to a show room, and is asked to walk. She does. She is asked to make eye contact. She does not. This is repeated several times. Still, the designer loves her look. Jenah sees the same designer and is told flat out that her walk is awful.

Binaca and Salacious D end up in the same show room at the same time. Binaca was there first, and is just kissing the designer’s ass and throwing down major attitude at Salacious D, who is quietly waiting on the settee. As Binaca leaves, she asks Salacious D where the next designer is located. Salacious D, who has just come from there, smiles brightly and says as how she just has no idea. Binaca heads out and Salacious D snickers that the designer in question is about three floors up from where she is sitting. Binaca finds this out when she goes back to her driver and asks to be taken. The gloves are now officially off, bitches.

Heather is now lost again, to the degree that she has also lost her car and driver. She is terribly worried that she only got to see one designer. Chantallobotomy agrees to try on one more dress, and makes herself late. Binaca is running late, too. Salacious D does not want to be disqualified, and so heads off early to allow for unforeseen circumstances. Jenah is running late, sees Heather wandering around and won’t give her a lift. What a shitty thing to do. Competition or not, leaving someone wandering around lost in a foreign locale (even when that person is accompanied by a film crew) is a shitty, shitty thing to do. Karma’s a bitch baby, but not as big a bitch as Binaca.

In the end, only Binaca and Salacious D make it back to the agency on time. Jenah is 15 minutes late. Chantallobotomy is 20 minutes late. There is much hilarity as the girls discuss Heather, and how they’ve seen her wandering around, lost and without her cab. Ho, ho, ho. Such yocks. Heather, who does finally find her cab, is 40 minutes late. Only Binaca and Salacious D are eligible for the win. They load up onto their bus back to the gilded penthouse, and the other four all tell Heather not to be so hard on herself (that’s their job) and so what if she only saw one designer. Big deal. Bitches. Tonight is their night to go on the town, and I’m sorry that Janice Dickenson isn’t there to show Binaca and Salacious D what a real ball cutter looks like. I’m also sorry that Tiffany isn’t there to pour a beer on a bitch’s weave. Or bare scalp in the case of Binaca. They are dining water-side and taking in the view when Susan Yang comes in to tell them who won. Looking out across the harbor, they see a boat with a huge, illuminated billboard advertising the 2008 Beijing Olympics. There, in all her big mouthed, toothy glory(?) is Binaca. She is happy. Miz Shoes is not. Binaca won, says Susan because although she was stiff and nervous, her pictures were good. Salacious D had the personality, but all her pictures looked alike. I’m thinking that if there had been more than two choices, neither of these two would have won.

Speaking of if there had been another choice, Jaslene comes on to talk about “my life” (note: that’s just My Life, and there is no As A Covergirl). She says what I think is that it is a tradition for the ANTM winner to throw out the first pitch at an Orioles game. Now this is just totally confusing to me. Jaslene is from Chicago. Noxema, who was the first girl to chuck out a baseball, as I recall, was from Detroit. The show is filmed in L.A. So how does Baltimore get the tradition and/or questionable “honor”? Jaslene, despite looking like a tranny, throws like a girl and gets the ball straight up in the air, and no where near home plate. It’s a shining moment. For someone. Somewhere.

Back with the hamsters, there is Tyra Mail. “No lion, it’ll take a lot of pride to get through this challenge.” Ooh, ooh!!! Posing with animals!!! Says one of the dumb blondes. They make it to the location and there is a lot of talk about the noisy bugs. I don’t know why. Except for the sound of the locusts, there is nothing at all to do with bugs. We have a repeat of the silk lion/dragons who announced that we’d be coming to China. And our photographer today is—- NIGEL! WHEE!!! I love Nigel. This is the shot where they have to stand out in a crowd. The example is that wooly-eyebrowed snooze who won in the Bolly-wood shot. What was her name? The one who freaked out over birds? Nicole. Who was from like, Frostbite Falls, Minnesota. Another location with baseball that isn’t Baltimore.

We next see Jenah getting all sarcastic with Nigel. He’s come to talk to her about not being nervous with him because he’s a judge and she just blows him off, fanning herself and saying she’ll try hard not to faint. He makes a snide comment about her sarcarsm. The other hamsters are horrified that Jenah is so rude. Well, it’s no “Is that the stick you pulled out of your ass after the last panel”, but it isn’t good. Out on the set, Nigel tells her that she is a Chinese princess, and that she needs to inspire him and impress Jay. He also tells her that he gets bored easily, so she needs to mix it up with her poses and her angles. Jay says that it just wasn’t in her eyes today. No pop. Unlike Salacious D, who, says Jay, is all confidence.

Backstage, we see Binaca preening over herself and deciding that she isn’t going to smile because it makes her make up wrinkle. I don’t know. I just take notes, people. In front of the camera, Jay tells her to smile, and not look so mean. That, my little orange man, is like asking a skunk not to stink. Chantallobotomy is channeling her inner Carol Channing, and doing big arms, and Diana Ross show girl poses. Jay tells her to stop forcing it. Heather is walking around, psyching herself up. The other girls ridicule her and say she must be thinking about making art with her body. I hate these girls. At least they aren’t all up in her face this time, they are politely out of hearing range. Heather says that she is just going to go with her instincts and intuitions and not think too much. She hits a pose and looks like Uma Thurman in a brunette wig. The other girls are all behind Nigel, watching. And, of course, sniping about how bad Heather is doing. Jenah in particular is jealous of Heather’s outfit and starts showing how she’d be working that shit. Nigel tells her to put a sock in it. Really. Jay says that Heather was second guessing herself, not up to her usual standards.

There is Tyra mail, and once more, Binaca says that she knows she’s good, that she’s not going home and that her shit don’t stink and that she invented modeling. Jenah says that, uh, well, it was a bad week for her and she is nervous. In the judging room, there is barely enough room for both Miss Jay’s afro and Tyra’s ego. They somehow make it work. The guest judge is Susan Yang. First up for individual evals is Chantallobotomy, who, it is duly noted was 20 minutes too late to compete in the challenge and it’s probably for the best, seeing as how the hot pink and black lace underwear was such a glaring faux pas. Tyra and Miss Jay explain how one can rinse one’s step-ins in the hotel sink and still be ready with flesh-colored undies on go-see day. Her Nigel photo wasn’t bad, but every time she got a compliment on set, she’d get giddy and lose it. Lose what? Her composure? Her mind? More on this later.

Binaca was the challenge winner, as two of the three designers would book her. Her Nigel photo is critiqued thusly: body amazing, face awful. Stank in/stank out, I say. She isn’t fluid on the set. She wouldn’t relax and smile. Jenah was 15 minutes too late to compete in the challenge (and nobody brings up how she left Heather wandering around in the street). She has a diverse portfolio and not enough personality. What personality she does have, nobody likes. Be careful with your sense of humor, say Tyra and Nigel. You could offend people. Yeah? Remember Carideemented and the stick? That didn’t seem to hurt her, and I thought that was a hell of a lot ruder than not swooning for Nigel.

Salacious D came in second on the challenge (or last, depending on how one wishes to look at second place out of two). She had a great personality and good pictures. Nigel says she was his favorite to shoot. Miss Jay says that she finally pushed the envelope and looks edgy-ish rather than like a commercial girl who is trying to look edgy with an edgy haircut. She still didn’t win, though. And that leaves Heather, who was 40 minutes late. Her runway walk was seen as a little awkward. Miss Jay asks her to walk for them, right there and she does. Sadly, Miss Jay says that all Heather really needs is a Top Model ass-whooping, but it’s a little too late for that now. Twiggy loves her picture and Susan says that Heather has a great look for China. And off the girls go, to await the decision.

Nigel says that Binaca was his least favorite girl, and Miz Shoes says “Amen and hand to g-d”. Salacious D is on the edge of the steps of high fashion, what ever that means. Chantallobotomy is missing something…like, maybe, a clue. And that, my friends and loyal readers, is why I have been calling her Chantallobotomy since day one. She doesn’t have enough brain cells to rub together to light up a neuron. Jenah is good girl with an awful, know-it-all personality, and Heather has some sort of disconnect. Oh. You think? Isn’t that the Aspberger’s? Still, says Nigel, all she has to do is get in front of the camera and the camera finds the beauty. Everyone, he says, would like her.

And the pictures go to: Salacious D, and in the background we see Binaca just loathing the fact that it isn’t her. There is a forced smile on her face and hatred in her eyes. She gets the second picture and a lecture not to go to sleep this close to the prize. Chantallobotomy is third and told to hold it together. Finally, there are Jenah and Heather, both of whom have the strongest pictures, yet neither can communicate in person. There is some weird, obvious voice over from Tyra, the first time that I’ve ever heard it so clearly. I wonder what she really said… Jenah has a personality that turns off the judges, and yet, she gets the final photo. It is the matter of the go sees. You can’t get the jobs if you can’t get to the casting call. The judges are clearly sad to have to send Heather home, but not as sad as we are out here on the couch.

Heather has the last word, though, and it is classy. “The experience” she says, “was much more than the prize.” I’m sure she’ll do just fine. Unlike a certain bald-headed stank bitch, who we see giving Salacious D a little pay back in the previews for next week.

PROJECT RUNWAY: WEEK TWO

We begin the way all reality shows begin, with the people who remain dissing the person who did not, but in the speaker’s opinion should have, gone home. In the particular, Rami of the Heavenly Arms thinks that Simone le Fang was way better than Elisa. Well, that remains to be seen, doesn’t it? And as quickly as that, we are back on the runway and having our first model selection. Rami, as the winner of last week’s challenge, gets to make the choice to stay with his model (Ashley) or change. He stays. This our second clue that Rami’s judgement is much less developed than his biceps. Chris takes Marcia, Carmen goes too fast, and according to my notes (and why would I actually look this up on-line for accuracy?), the remaining selections go like this: Christian/Lisa; Marion/Charol; Ricky/Blee; Elisa/Vive; Steve/San; Kevin/Amanda; Jillian/Lauren and Sweet P/Katie. You figure that out… I’m too busy trying to remember which designer is which. I can’t be troubled to remember the models, too.

The challenge this week is to create an outfit for a pop culture & fashion icon. Oooooh, who can it be now? Carmen guesses a singer who is also an icon and that would be Madonna. Or Britney, says an anonymous other, who then adds that the poor thing needs some sort of help. Tim comes into the workroom and says “Designers? Gather ‘round.” and introduces (wait for it) Sarah Jessica Parker! Jack and Christopher pretty much swoon. Chris starts crying and says that he moved to New York pretty much because of Sex & The City. To which I say, schnort. And also, who the hell am I to laugh, seeing as it is a known fact that I moved to New York City because of Born to Run? So, bravo to Chris.

The designers are challenged to make a two-piece look for SJP’s clothing line, Bitten. It should go in the fall/winter line and if it’s good enough, will enter into production. Bitten, says SJP, is (supposed to be) high-end American sportswear at an affordable price. That means this look needs to retail for under $40. And that means that the budget at Mood will be $15. To which I say, good fucking luck with that. And to which Chris says, what can we get at Mood for $15 other than toilet paper and scotch tape? The designers are given half an hour to draw. They will then present their sketches to SJP, and she will pick seven designs. The designer will chose a partner, and then they will produce the look. SJP gives everyone a dossier on what is in Bitten’s fall/winter line. Jack jumps on that like a trampoline. Christian goes for a dress and jacket. Ricky goes for the Kleenex box, because he has already started to cry. Oh, for the love of god, man, butch up a little. Maybe if you’d stop with the stupid, wee hats… Jack has some beautiful marker renderings, but we quickly pass over the drawing and thinking and go straight to the presentations.

Chris does a knit turtleneck dress, and my notes say “gush, gush.” They do not say, nor do I remember, if that was SJP gushing over the drawing, or Chris gushing over SJP. I somehow think it was the latter. Elisa delivers up an Angela-worthy blahblahblah about her dress being polymorphic and having a cape with variable flaps. Sweet P thinks that Bitten is lacking in skirts and offers one to beef up the line. Kevin has a “button story”. Kevin, who would like you to know, before we go any farther, that he is straight, is also lacking in social skills. He gets up and bolts off, leaving Sara Jessica Parker sitting there with her hand stuck out in empty air, waiting for a handshake. Oopsies. Gotta work on that, buddy. Christian makes up for it though, by having a “pleating” story and demanding a hug. Kit shows leggings and Ricky has a knit. Jillian does something flirty with a jacket. Victorya shows yet another freaking baby doll dress, and I for one, was tired of that look after seeing her portfolio in episode one. But this one has a vest over it. Quel difference! Marion does a fitted cape, which, I think is some what oxymoronic. Steven, who has that squinty thing going on that made French Stewart so funny on Third Rock From the Sun, even though it never translated to a career, does something in classic black. Rami has a shirt dress and tights and Carmen goes for a Juliette sleeve.

SJP makes her selections for team leaders and they are: Elisa and her Riding Hood Polymorphous Cape; Kit with the knit with low pockets; Victorya and her stupid baby doll with bow; Marion and his fitted cape; Ricky and his cropped top; Christian and his very complicated-looking jacket and Rami of the Dreamy Arms (nobody can resist the arms) gets props for being concerned about different types and styles of women with his shirt dress. Then SJP gets totally giddy and squeals “I’ll see you on the runway!” Can this show get any gayer? Would we care? Would we want it to be less gay? And the answers are: yes, no and no.

Off to the workroom for the excruciating game of “Last Designer Picked For a Team”. Marion of the stupid twee little hats chooses Squinty Steven. Ricky the Weeper opts for Jack, and who wouldn’t? Victorya picks Kevin and is probably the first to go for substance over style. Kit picks Chris, ditto on the skill set. Rami of the Arms of Legend picks Jillian, Christian takes Carmen (matching stupid emo haircuts) and that leaves Elisa with Sweet P. Elisa shows the same sort of class that Chris did in Bryant park and says that she got just who she wanted, ha-ha! and Sweet P wants to kill herself for being forced to work with Elisa.

Next stop: Mood

We see Kit telling Chris that they will be working with fleece and jersey. We see Elisa grabbing all sorts of stuff as Sweet P voices over that Elisa was grabbing all sorts of stuff that had nothing at all to do with the colors used in the Bitten line. Christian says that he’s ready to go, except he’s an awful up-talker, so it comes out “Ready?”“To Go?” And back they go to the workroom, where they have until midnight to cut and sew. Kevin and Victorya discuss shape. Rami instructs Jillian that he wants a loose fit so that all different body types can wear the garment. Squinty and Twee Hat Boy are talking. And talking. And talking. Elisa is trying to figure out how to make her dress with one cut. This is the same strategy she used last week, and it will soon come to light why. What we didn’t see last week, and what we can hope that we never see again, is how Elisa marks the pattern. She spits on it. She calls this “spit marking” and it is not as common a procedure as “hand measuring”. I need to mention that she spit marks the dress while Sweet P is holding the fabric up to her body. Elisa explains that she spit marks the fabric to “imbibe it with energy.” She means to imbue. To imbibe is what I need to do with a bottle of scotch if she keeps doing things like spit mark. Eek. Sweet P opines that she is from Earth and Elisa, some other planet, the happy planet of unknown name.

Ricky is crying again. Steve thinks that the design Marion has come up with is overly ambitious, but since he (Steve) is merely the sewing partner, he isn’t going to say anything, but he really is the one going to have to do all this sewing. Victorya and Kevin are doing fine, ticking along nicely. Elisa is hand-sewing the one seam (see? one cut, one seam. Can’t do a lot of hand sewing, so a minimum of seams is a requirement in a speed test like this.) The designers only have half an hour left, and there is still lots to do. Kit observes (astutely) that while she gets Elisa’s (my note says ‘intrigue’, but that can’t be right, so I’ll say) viewpoint, but that girlfriend is going to have to learn to use a sewing machine. And I say Amen and hand to G-d.

Runway Day

It’s the morning of runway, and now we see Jillian in a stupid hat. I’m telling you, this is stupid hats, stupid tats, stupid hair season on Project Runway. Carmen saunters over to chat with Sweet P, who is struggling mightily to iron the “handmade crap” and make it work. There is one hour for hair and make up. Jack says that Ricky has the “sickest model”, by which he means she is hott. Kit says that their sweater ended up looking a little French, so they accessorized it with a beret. Squinty and Twee Hat have made something greige, and not quite finished and ratty-tatty. It’s getting ugly, says Squinty Steve, and getting uglier, says Miz Shoes. Christian is primping and doing his own makeup in the L’Oreal makeup room. Elisa thinks that somehow, she and Sweet P made a perfect marriage. Kevin (who is straight, you know) and Victorya have made a little racer backed vest over the stupid baby doll and added a huge floppy bow at the neck of the dress. Christian, having finished his eye makeup says that he will be Surprised? If he doesn’t win?

Out come the models: Kit and Chris with their long-ish sweater and 3/4 leggings. Very cute on the model, it would look like crap on me or any other woman larger than a size two. Elisa and Sweet P’s dress is (and it sort of kills me to say this) really, really cute with a bat wing sleeve. The skirt is cut a touch too slim, and the cape is crap, but the dress is stunning. Rami and Jillian have made a meh shirt dress, with meh leggings. They have saddled their model with a purse the size of a Mini Cooper and an Amy Winehouse beehive, held in place by a ginormous head band. The whole look is awful. Twee Hat and Squinty send out their sloppy, floppy, fringed thing which makes me squeak: POCAHANTAS! As it turns out, it made Michael Kors squeak the same thing. Victorya and Kevin send out the sack and vest, and my note says boring/bad. Christian and Carmen have made a jersey turtleneck dress in almost the same color and cut (except for the batwing sleeve) that Elisa made. They have added a 1980s Euro-Trash fitted jacket over it. I notice that the cut of their dress has made their little stick-like model look like she has a poochy belly. Not a good sign. The last dress out is a sweet little scoop necked dress in a gorgeous shade of cranberry, and it was Ricky’s dress. Don’t cry, little emo boy, we love your dress, and we love the way you accesorized it.

Rating the Runway

The following designers represent the best and the worst: Elisa, Victorya, Marion and Christian. Victorya’s design is seen as “interesting” by Sarah Jessica Parker. NinaGarcia says that many types of women could wear it. Miz Shoes says that not many would want to. Twee Hat’s model is asked to remove the belt. This only makes it worse, because the sweater knit now looses any semblance of shape. The proportions are off. SJP says that the sketches look sophisticated. Michael Kors says the actual garment looks like Pocahantas and also, costume-y. It is noted that the arm holes are so huge that you can see the model’s bra, or side-boob. Heidi says that she just doesn’t get the whole thing, and it looks like it came off the basement floor. After the judges have finished flaying Marion, they move on to Elisa. Her dress, she explains, is polymorphic, which means it can be worn in many ways. The judges have been told about Elisa’s “spit marking” technique, and Heidi thinks that maybe she isn’t understanding the English words. Michael Kors looks like he’s going to vomit, at least a little bit. But, say the judges, the finished dress is great looking, and SJP declares the sleeves “stunning.”

Christian is called out for his full-on 1980s Addicted to Love look. Christian just sniffs his little emo sniff, and demands to hear what SJP has to say. What she says is that the dress is much more severe than his sketches, the color is different than what he showed her and that the dress itself is too short and too snug. Asked and answered, Little Emo Boy. This makes Carmen cry, so the judges ask her which designer she thinks should be sent home for this. Before she can answer, Christian steps up and says, I should. It was my design, and I take responsibility. Someone saw how much street cred Malan got for that answer last year, me thinks. The same question is asked of the team of Squinty and Twee Hat, and Marion gives the same answer: I was the leader, I’ll take the hit.

I have some weird notes about Elisa and Sweet P winning the Cape Cup? They took crazy and whining and turned it into something fabulous. I think this is where Elisa told the judges that she comes from another planet…with gifts. And does that mean that she is possessed of gifts? Or that she is coming to give us presents? And how much of how good that looked was due to Sweet P and her construction and pressing skills? Well, it doesn’t matter, because the winner is Victorya and Kevin (who is, you know, straight). It comes down to Marion and his stupid twee hat or Christian and his stupid emo haircut going home. Bye-bye little twee hat. Bye-bye.

And that is the end of episode two. So, week one was won by Rami of the Heavenly Arms, and week two by Victorya of the never ending baby doll dress. Hopefully, by week four, someone will notice a distinct lack of variety in her style.

The girls return from judging to the mansion on the hill, where they find a pile of books about China. Heather interviews that she always wanted to go to China, Jenah is dumping clothes higgledy-piggledy into a suitcase, Lisa is saying that being in the bottom two really took the life out of her and Binaca is bitching about Heather. Again. Change the station, already. We know you don’t like her, we know you are jealous of the way the other girls and the judges treat her, and we know that you a stank ho. So unless you have something new to add, we pretty much have heard all you got, Binaca. You can put a sock in it already.

And off they go, in the little animated airplane, to Shanghai. Binaca says that everything is made in China, so to her, Shanghai is just one big shopping mall, and all she wants to do (besides send Heather back on the first boat) is go shopping, shopping, shopping. Heather loves being in China and says that she does not want to go home. We don’t want you to be sent home either, honey. You are the crowd favorite this season. Chantallobotomy allows as how she had no clue that China would be so amazing. She says it looks like something from the Jetsons. I guess, except, you know, for the lack of flying cars, robots and buildings that float in the air. Heather, in her inimitable deadpan, says that Shanghai is like no city she’s ever seen. Except, maybe, Las Vegas. We see a montage of neon lights and high rise buildings. Binaca says that she didn’t fly 14 hours to turn around and fly home, and that when she leaves, she’s leaving happy. Well, she’ll certainly be leaving Miz Shoes happy, but I suspect that wasn’t what she meant.

The two Jays greet the girls and tell them to get rested and ready for the next phase of ANTM. They send them to the hamster cage, which turns out to be a penthouse suite in some bazillionty story high rise. There is immediate drama when the dorm room proves to have only 5 beds. Salacious D plants herself on an enormous bed that looks like a triple king, and Jenah, Binaca, Chantallobotomy and Lisa claim the other four. Which leaves, if you are paying attention, Heather without a place to sleep. True to form, the other girls laugh and laugh and pull Heather’s chain, trying to make her snap because that’s the most fun they can have in the house: torturing the faintly autistic one. Salacious D refuses to share the giant bed, saying the only people she gets in bed with are men, which I suppose means that if Jaslene were still around, she’s share with her. Lisa barely sprawls across a tiny little fainting couch and laughs herself sick telling Heather that she could always sleep on that. Much hilarity ensues among all the hamsters over that bon mot. Binaca says that she’s so happy that they were able to make Heather freak out. Then, when Heather asks what the joke is, Binaca charmingly tells her “you the joke.” I have got to say that Binaca is a new level of stank, even for the show that brought us Bree, Camille and Darth Jader. After everyone catches their breath from the side-splitting humor of the past ten minutes, Chantallobotomy decides that Heather is getting ganged up on, and that it isn’t right and so negotiates that Binaca and Jenah will share the big bed, and Heather won’t have to sleep on the floor. It is Chantallobotomy’s finest moment. I almost forget how annoying she is by this show of fair play and compassion. Heather steps up her game and interviews that she’s very much over being picked on and teased and that she’s just not going to let it get her down.

Amusingly enough, and in a major show of good editing (and how did THAT happen?) the Tyra mail contains this “I can’t stand the bitching and the fighting in the house.” Get ready to rumble. Off the girls go to a film studio where they meet Louis, who is not really a tour guide, but their martial arts instructor. They are shown the Old Shanghai street set, and then martial arts mayhem breaks out around them. Pretty cool. They learn that today’s lesson will be martial arts basic forms and positions. This lights Heather up, who interviews that she always wanted to do martial arts, but her mom wouldn’t let her. “Thanks, MOM.” she says in her funny, slightly off way. We see them trying to learn the positions, which admittedly, are a lot more complex than the five basic positions everyone knows from ballet. Binaca and Chantallobotomy can’t follow the speed, or really hit the forms. This makes Binaca, in her own words, get sour. Honey? Sour is to you, what a Mento in Diet Coke is to Old Faithful. Puh-leeze.

They change into Chinese robes, and then are brought into a courtyard where they are shown flying rigs. They will be put in the flying harnesses, and hoisted into the air. Then Louis will call out positions, and they will have to hit them…in mid-air. Heather is psyched. She thinks this is just tits, man. What a hoot! What fun! Lisa does what Lisa does, which is to say she starts to cry. Binaca does not like heights, remember? So she is not a happy camper about this exercise. Ha. And ha. Stank beeyotch.

Jenah and Chantallobotomy are first, and neither of them can balance in the flying rigs. They give it their best, but still can’t remember which pose is which. It is amusingly bad. Lisa and Salacious D are the next pair in the air, and Lisa spends the time screeching in fear and sucking. Heather and Binaca go last, and Binaca makes a “joke” about this being the only time Heather can smack her around. Binaca interviews that she doesn’t trust strangers. She has a huge fear of heights. She can’t go high. The other girls tell her she has to do this, what if in real life she gets a job that requires her to go high or something. She says that she just wouldn’t take those jobs. Louis tells her that if she doesn’t do this challenge, she will be disqualified. And we cut to Jaslene’s Life as a Cover Tranny. She’s shooting for 17 again. This time a fshnn shute. Although her diction has improved over the weeks, she still can’t deliver a line in a way that can be understood without closed captioning. Really. She’s an embarrassment to trannies every where.

Back in Shanghai Binaca is explaining that she wants to model, not fly in the air. To which I say… why? I’d take the ability to fly, even on wires, over being a clothes hanger any day. But in any event, Binaca tries, gets about 10 feet off the ground and starts to freak out. She cries, she wails, she begs to come down. She shakes, she cries, she totally loses her shit, and refuses to participate in the challenge, which means that Heather gets to fly around by herself, striking poses at will. She is fucking awesome at this. There is no challenge, really, she is the clear winner of this one. Her prize is a $500 shopping spree. Hardly a $40,000 dollar diamond, or a day at a Thai spa, but money is money and shopping is shopping. She gets to take a frenemy, and although she knows how much Binaca wants to shop, well, Binaca is a stank ho who keeps torturing her for shits and giggles, so she takes Chantallobotomy instead. Because Chantallobotomy was nice to her, and made sure that Heather didn’t have to sleep in the rags and ashes in the fireplace.

We get to see the girls shopping in an all-night mall. It’s pretty amazing, and Heather points out that she and C are like giants in a land of little people. That Heather. What a way with words. Well, at least you can understand what she says. They finally make it back to the gilded cage, and there is Tyra mail, telling them to channel their inner queens. Let their beauty reign. Another person with a way with words. Only, nobody has a clue what that means. There is a footnote and it tells them to bring their own clothes to the shoot tomorrow. Clothes that express who they are. Their inner personality. I don’t know if Binaca brought her devil tail and horns, we’ll have to wait and see.

It’s a Cover Girl shoot! There will be both print and a tv commercial. Brent, from Cover Girl, gives them a script to memorize, and shows them that there is a hole in the script where each girl will have to insert an ad lib about what makes them a queen. Yes, they are shooting for the Queen Latifah line, hence all the queen references. We get a quick series of Heather fretting that she can’t memorize lines, Chantallobotomy complaining that she doesn’t want to wear her own clothes (which we’ll see soon enough was a valid complaint) and Lisa mumbling and psyching herself up to sucking.

Salacious D goes first and is adorable, damn her, and nails it in four takes. Binaca finally gets to take seven, where she says that she’s a queen because she has flaws but makes them beautiful. (HAH!) Heather comes out and looks wonderful, with her hair all loose and curled. She fails rather spectacularly. She makes faces and sticks out her tongue when she fumbles a line. She absolutely cannot deliver. Finally, Jay feeds her her lines. And even that doesn’t help because she can’t mimic the inflection he uses. I realize that she looks like Bebe Neuwirth. But her line about “I’m a queen because I’m different and proud of it” is killer.

Jenah has a great delivery (after about 12 takes) and really horrible lower teeth. I never noticed them before, being blinded by those rabbit fangs in the front. She’s also showing roots and the rat weave isn’t holding up so great. But she has on a great t-shirt, and she can do a commercial. Chantallobotomy is wearing what looks to be Raggedy Ann’s old dress. She says that she’s a queen because she loves and pampers herself. Then she wrinkles her nose and you just know that that little nose wrinkle has broken more teenage boys’ hearts than she can count. The judges love her to death.

Lisa. Lisa starts out bad, and then gets worse. Every time she flubs a line she gets more tense, and then of course, the tears come. Little Orange Man says that Lisa only focuses on failing. Salacious D goes over and tries to help Lisa, and gives her a pep talk and Lisa gives Salacious D a very rude sort of mind your own fucking business brush off. Salacious D saunters off saying she won’t help a ho that don’t want helping.

And…..back to the penthouse where the usual pre-judging smack is going down. Lisa doesn’t want to go home. Binaca asks the question “What will you do if you have to go home?” My notes don’t say, and I’ve slept since then, but I’m pretty sure that this question is addressed to (of course) Heather. Binaca says that she for sure is not getting the boot, because they can’t send her home just for not taking the challenge. And I’ve watched enough seasons to know that she won’t get sent home until the powers that be have milked the last drop of human unkindness from her stank self. Jump to judging where Jenah is looking amazing for a change, but sort of wobbly in her high heels, Twiggy. Nigel. Miss Jay in yet another ginormous afro wig. Jeffrey Chu, who was the Director of Photography on the Cover Girl shoot.

Lisa is first. She looked panicked and like she was about to cry, and her forehead really wrinkles up when she talks. “I was.” Then cry, says Tyra. Let it out and then move on, because otherwise, you look like this: like you are about to cry and the whole shoot is fucked. Cry, but don’t mess the make up and then carry on. Her still shot, however, looks great, which means it must have been Photochopped. Jeffrey gives her props for being able to do a fierce still immediately after walking off a set where she was crying and blowing chunks. Nice guy. Chantallobotomy squinches up her eyes when she smiles, and her wardrobe is universally abhored, but the nose wrinkle got called out for cuteness.

Binaca, Tyra notes, was disqualified from the challenge this week. Yes, says Binaca, I have trust issues. Nigel (and we have seen way too little of Nigel this season) spits out “Then you are in the wrong business, honey.” Yeah. And your commercial sucked too. And my lord, but that girl has a huge mouth. When she smiles, she looks like those characters from South Park, whose heads split in half at the mouth. Jenah comes out and Nigel tells her she lacks charm. Twiggy says that she wouldn’t buy anything that Jenah was selling. But her still, with her hair flying and her arms up over her head like she was caught dancing? That’s a great shot. And everyone liked her t-shirt.

Salacious D gets the highest compliments from Twiggy, who calls her an actress, and Nigel who says she flirts with the camera, and advice on how to reduce the baggage under the eyes from Tyra. Heather gets slammed as the judges say she got special treatment and still sucked. They tell her to focus, not to make funny faces when she flubs a line because it makes the editing so difficult. And then they see her still shot and you could hear a pin drop. She is smiling. A glorious, big, amazing, Julia Roberts quality smile. Who knew?

The actual judging starts and the first thing is that all the girls sucked big time at commercials. Having said that, someone has to win and someone has to lose. Lisa? Sucked the worst of all. Chantal was pretty and cute and did the least sucking. Heather disappointed in her delivery. Salacious D is great, but is she getting better as the weeks go on? Jenah is seen as distinctly unlikeable by Nigel and Tyra admits that she doesn’t have any inner attractiveness. Which maybe explains why she also gets no air time, even though she’s still here after 10 weeks. Binaca’s delivery was hideous and Miss Jay and Nigel find her weak. 

As Tyra poses, ready to hand out photos, she says that collectively, they sucked. But, giving Chantallobotomy the first photo, you sucked the least. But get rid of that horrible thing you were wearing. Salacious D gets the second photo and the lecture that week to week she impresses the judges with her spirit, but she’s slowing down. Binaca: somebody needs to work on her fears. Her still was seen as beautiful, but her film was a disaster. Jenah, surprisingly, gets the next photo and Lisa and Heather are the bottom two. Lisa, predictably, starts crying. She has personality plus, but she can’t handle critiques. She needs some self esteem. Heather comes in and the judges lovelovelove her, but her commercial? Eek. Even with Jay feeding her lines, she still couldn’t deliver. Still, the judges think you have a certain something (it’s called Aspberger’s) and so… Heather stays and Lisa the Lap Dancer and champion cryer, goes back to the strip club. As her image fades, I realized that Jenah and Chantallobotomy are standing together in that shot, and wearing the exact same color. One of those girls is going home next week, I’ll bet, and I’ll bet it isn’t Chantallobotomy.

Last night I watched the great, Oscar-winning actor and total hottie, Kevin Kline in the 1986 version of The Pirates of Penzance. This is unfortunate, because I realized, as I watched him camp around singing his intro number I Am a Pirate King that this is the tune stolen to be Popeye’s theme. I now have a mash up of the two rocketing around in my head. To make matters worse, this ear worm has taken over the space in my brain previously occupied by Tim Curry’s novelty hit I Do the Rock, which showed up in i-pod rotation and stuck in my head for a week. I can honestly say that I’d rather be possessed by Tim than Popeye. Kevin only supplies the visuals in this, and even the memory of him in black tights, thigh high boots and a poofy white shirt cannot erase the pain of a mental loop caused by Popeye the Sailor King.

I try not to blog about my work life anymore, because frankly, life here at hospice is infinitely better than life at the hospital. Whereas at the hospital, the only time anyone gave a thought, much less a rat’s patootie, about the mission/vision was when the regulators were coming and any employee could be asked to recite them, here at the hospice I have found that people tend to live the values. Especially in the field, hospice work is more a calling than a job, and things like “We Take Care of Each Other” are profoundly held beliefs.

But there is always a fly in the honey, is there not? One of my co-workers has drunk our boss’ Kool-Aid and is all offended by the health and wellness program offered by the HR department. Why is a health and wellness program offensive? I don’t know. But it seems to be hinging on the addition/promotion of yoga. This is seen as intrusive and a religious pontification and a promotion of the HR director’s personal beliefs in contradiction to separation of church and state and who the fuck knows… I most emphatically did NOT drink the Kool-Aid on this one. All I know is that yesterday, at the corporate holiday lunch, said HR director gave a short presentation on life/work balance, and said co-worker just writhed in her seat (which was, unfortunately next to mine) and sighed and heaved, and rolled her eyes and carried on until I told her to put a poker face on it already and just shut the fuck up. This did not go over too well with my co-worker who felt she had to explain why she was so mortally offended by the presentation and the yoga and you know what? I have no idea what she was yapping on about because despite the pleasant smile on my face, in my mind, I was going “lalalalalala I CAN’T HEAR YOU!” Which is what you have to do in a corporate setting, and what I was trying to tell her about sitting there seeming to listen to the life balance blahblahblah.

Anyway, tonight I start cooking for Thanksgiving. The Girlcousin hosts it, but since all the women in my family find cooking to be a competitive sport, there is plenty of room on the buffet table for everyone to show off. I make two cranberry sauces (cranberries in port wine—fabulous, and Susan Stamberg’s mother in law’s cranberries with sour cream and horseradish, which is just divine), a pumpkin pie from scratch (because I can) and this year I’m roasting brussels sprouts.  The Girlcousin’s brother and sister-in-law bake, so there will be something chocolate, and lemon squares (for me) and probably a little more chocolate. There will be deep fried turkey and a regular turkey breast roasted in the oven. Potatoes and sweet potatoes. Salads. Kasha. Cocktails. Hilarity. Football. All the junior cousins will be in town, and I’ll finally get to meet my nephew’s wife.

On Friday, the other side of the family will gather for an after-Thanksgiving lunch and there will be more hilarity, more cousins, more food, and more love.

On Saturday and Sunday, I’ll be packing up stuff to bring back to Miami for a garage sale. Is there no end to the fun? And because I have them on hand, here are my two cranberry relish recipes.

CRANBERRIES AND PORT WINE

12 oz. bag fresh cranberries

1/2 c. sugar

1 c. port wine

Wash cranberries and place in pot with sugar and port. Bring to boil - reduce heat and boil gently, uncovered until berries begin to pop. Remove from heat and chill. May be kept in refrigerator up to one week. If you prefer a smooth gel, press though a cheese cloth.

MAMA STAMBERG’S CRANBERRY RELISH

2 cups whole raw cranberries, washed

1 small onion

3/4 cup sour cream

1/2 cup sugar

2 tablespoons horseradish from a jar (“red is a bit milder than white”)

Grind the raw berries and onion together. (“I use an old-fashioned meat grinder,” says Stamberg. “I’m sure there’s a setting on the food processor that will give you a chunky grind—not a puree.”)

Add everything else and mix.

Put in a plastic container and freeze.

Early Thanksgiving morning, move it from freezer to refrigerator compartment to thaw. (“It should still have some little icy slivers left.”)

The relish will be thick, creamy, and shocking pink. (“OK, Pepto Bismol pink. It has a tangy taste that cuts through and perks up the turkey and gravy. It’s also good on next-day turkey sandwiches, and with roast beef.”)

Makes 1-1/2 pints.

For more on Ms. Stamberg’s cranberry relish, NPR has the back story and other recipes.

Last night, after watching an exhausting hour of the Bianca

Bitches and Hos (aka America’s Next Top Model), I settled deep into the couch cushions, opened up the laptop and participated in a live blog party with the most rabid (and I say that in the nicest possible way) of the Project Runway fans over at Blogging Project Runway. Thanks for letting me in, and I’ll certainly do it again, even though it made taking any coherent sort of notes impossible.

And. We are off and running, and damn Heidi Klum for being spot on when she said this is the best season yet. We didn’t waste any time with the audition tapes or the freak show of folks who didn’t get in. There was no pre-challenge challenge to narrow the field. There were just new apartments, which, I’m sorry, look exactly like the old apartments. Gotham. Atlas. Cube Farm. What ever. The fourteen move in and the camera does not linger over any of them, but I wonder at the introduction between Jack and Kevin (who would like everyone to know that he is straight before we go any further). Kevin says hi and Jack says hi and they shake hands and seem to hit it off and then Jack charmingly allows as how the two of them will most likely loathe each other before the end of the season. And then he smiles and laughs, charmingly. Or sinisterly. Only time will tell.

In the women’s apartments the two earlies gloat over having squatter’s rights to the closet space and bed choices. It turns out that this is Jillian (in Betty Page mini-culottes) and Carmen (I used to be a model and if you were never a model, you don’t know shit about clothes.) They are joined by a heavily tattooed Sweet P (who used to be a biker chick and also has Evil P tattooed on her other forearm, and who warns us that you never want to meet Evil P. I’ll lay you odds right now that we meet her in all her Shetangi-like glory before the end of episode 3). There is the requisite whack job who comes in and claims a spot for her Sun Salutations. This is Elvira, uh, Elisa, who makes 30-foot tall marionettes which somehow accidentally translated into fashion. Whoo-boy. Is she Angela? Is she Lupe? Is she Vincent?

In the men’s apartment, we have the arrival of a flamboyant little boy with wicked manners and the worst emo haircut in history. It is Christian, and he has worked for Vivienne Westwood and gone to school in London, and is a perfect prat. He is also, he says with a stupid valley girl uptilt at the end of the sentence “Really kinda Fierce?” Hmmph. We’ll just see about that. He says he is thrilled to be sleeping in a bed because he sleeps on the floor at home. Why spend money on furniture when you can spend it on? What did he say? Fabric? OK. I’ll give him that. But if you have a big enough stash, then you can sleep quite comfortably on that. Not that I would know, by any means. I’m just guessing.

There is a handsome fellow named Rami from Israel, and a Jay McCarroll light clone, who, as it turns out, made the salad dress that Erin featured on Dress a Day. Look, I loved it then, and I love it now, and despite the unfortunate resemblance to Jay, I’m loving Chris March. There’s some guy who looks like a watered-down, much shorter Emmett. A stupid hat guy. Several stupid hat guys. Lots and lots of tattoos. None can hold a candle to the Neck of Darkness that was Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo, and for that, too, I am grateful.

Back in the women’s dorm, there are more tattoos and more women. Simone Le Fang. Kit, whose work just floored me. I love her stuff. And I know the perfect place to get the hats to wear with them.  If I don’t own that candy pink Marie Antoinette Pirate Tricorne with the fishnet drape by next Halloween, my name ain’t Miz Shoes. Of course, I’ll need the candy pink, be-ribboned and be-shelled corset, too. But maybe Kit works in pink… Rounding out both genders we have a florist who makes clothes and a lingerie designer who wants to do outerwear, and Victorya, who seems to design a lot of stuff that looks alike.

Heidi Mail! Meet us in Bryant Park. And now you know where that forced song lyric in the title came from. Hey, you want better? You think of better. Champagne, and nibbly things and small talk and Tim and Heidi. Heidi asks the designers if they are enjoying the champagne and they all say yes, and she says good, because the party is over. Tim reminds everyone how in previous seasons, the first challenge has been to make a dress out of junk like groceries or their apartment furnishings, but this year, no. He points across the park to three shabby art festival tents and tells the designers that the tents have what they will work from. Only—FAKE OUT!—it isn’t the tents, it’s what is inside the tents. $50,000 worth of fabrics from Mood. Heels come off, elbows come out and they stampede across the lawn to claim their yardage. Except for Chris, who is a leetle too portly to run. Kevin beats out Kit for the silk plaid. Elisa grabs some silk chiffon. Others are grabbing just anything. By the time Chris makes it to the tents, there is nothing left but (insert evil chuckle) exactly what he wanted. Good, because that was a shitty thing to do, reality show or not. Hah! and Snap! Their ultimate assignment: to make a garment that shows who they are as designers. State your point of view now, or for ever hold your peace.

Back they all schlep to Parsons, but not before Elisa takes her silk chiffon and starts scrubbing it in the grass, rubbing grass stains into the gorgeous fabric. She is wearing Bermuda shorts and high cowboy boots. She claims to be imbuing the fabric with the soul of the grass. Oh. Really. Well. That will either be fabulous or a fabulous atrocity. Score one for the Vincent style of loony. Or would that be Bradley? As they leave, Tim turns and looks at the skeletons of the tents. All that is left is a faux fur pelt, sadly alone. Poignant. And also nasty, which is why it was rightfully left behind to become a nest for rats, or some homeless guy when even the rats don’t want it. They arrive at the workroom. (Oh, workroom, how I’ve missed you and the mannequins. And the industrial machines and cutting tables of correct height and steamers and irons and the BlueFly wall of accessories, which last year was the Macy’s wall of accessories. It looks like a big step up in style this year.)

And now all the crazy comes out. Christian is showing off what he learned in Vivienne Westwood’s attellier, but without the attention to little details like matching the plaid, which he defends as a point of view when Tim questions the wisdom of matching the back seam, but not the sleeves. Christian is putting on the wicketywhack. Elisa is communing with the voices in her head to determine which one has the best ideas for the dress. Christian calls her strange. Miz Shoes calls Christian Mr. Pot, and points out that as such he has very little room to criticize Mrs. Kettle over there, who, having destroyed that yummy silk chiffon is now doing bad things to a bolt of peacock blue…jersey? In a moment of lunacy that makes Vincent, Lupe, Bradley and Angela all look like pillars of sobriety and sanity, Elisa is sitting on the sewing table, legs stuck straight out, and is somehow sewing the dress on herself, rather than on a dress form. What ever. I’m sorry, there Mr. Pot, you may, in fact, have a point. And then, while everyone else is working like made, she announces that she has finished and goes off to take a nap.

Rami is draping. Rami has biceps. No. Really. Rami is built like a brick house and as long as he wears tank tops, the man can do no wrong in my book. I think Tim Gunn may feel the same way, because he says things about Rami’s draping but he’s eyeing Rami’s biceps. And who can blame him? Rami is doing things with a steel grey silk georgette that makes me want to weep. Did I mention that he has really great arms? He does. And Marion and Ricky have stupid hats. I’m thinking that the rule this year is stupid hats, stupid tats and/or stupid hair. Carmen has the same asymmetrical emo cut that Christian does. I miss Laura all of a sudden. Finally it’s time to go home, and many of the designers have much left to do, like put in zippers, or sew up seams, or in the case of Elisa, make a dress that doesn’t suck.

It is morning in the apartment, and we are gifted with the sight of Jack in nothing but his briefs. Miz Shoes has a moment on the couch. Miz Shoes thinks that if Jack will continue to wander around in towels and briefs, Miz Shoes will be very happy. This is infinitely better than Santino in a towel. At Parsons the designers meet their models, send them off for hair and makeup and prep for the runway. There are some big girls this season, by which I mean that they may have eaten more than wheat juice and hot lemon water in the past year. Some of them actually look like solid food has passed their lips and they LIKED it. Elisa “hand measures” her model, by which I mean she estimates the girl’s height and width by hand spans. A hand is the standard by which horses are measured. A hand is four inches. In case you ever need to figure out someone’s height in hands. I am so amazed by this action of Elisa’s that I almost miss her (Elisa) thinking that maybe a column of peacock blue jersey with a tail of shredded, wadded up crap that will unfold and explode down the runway could be a bad idea because maybe the girl won’t be able to walk in it. Tim asks her if she’s sure about this concept and she says that the other times she tried it, it almost worked. Unfortunately, she doesn’t listen to the voice that’s telling her to make it work, she’s listening to the one that is telling her this: Bai Ling wants you to design for personality number 43.

Heidi comes out in a gold mini dress with her golden locks and her legs up to there and looks amazing. Today’s guest judge is Monique Lhuillier. No idea. Had to look her up. And the runway commences. Eliza’s model comes out (wearing a particularly clashing aqua slouch boot…Angela crazy moment) and promptly gets ensnarled in her gown and can barely make it to the end of the catwalk and back without tripping. Chris, who we saw nothing of in the workroom, has made a beautiful, elegant olive green and eggplant gown in something shiny and drapey. Charmeuse? Kevin, who wants you to know, before we go any further, that he is straight, has made a sort of Playboy Bunny/waitress mini-dress out of what looks like a black pinstripe menswear suiting, but with the added kickiness of a metallic ren-fest wench bustier. Meh. Sweet P has the first baby doll dress of the night, in an ivory oversize eyelet lace with burgundy at the neck and hem. Simone has a monochromatic hot mess with an even worse brocade mini shrug. Jillian has made a vibrantly red (perhaps a red sheer over a magenta stretch underlining) party dress with a bubble miniskirt. Christian hauls out his beige, black, white VW ensemble complete with bustle on the skirt. But markedly well-made, I have to say. Victorya sends down a black mini-baby doll with bondage straps across the upper arms that makes me think of something Heidi wore last year. Rami’s steel grey dress is a knockout, and I’d wear it if I could get it. Ricky the lingerie designer also sends down a black baby doll minidress. Ho-freaking-hum with the baby dolls already. Jack sent down a dress that could have walked in anyone’s cruise wear collection, and it is accessorized flawlessly. He used a black and white fabric, cutting it so that the print was an integral point of interest in the design. Oh, there’s a term for that, but it escapes me. He used a clear turquoise either as an edge treatment or as a lining that showed along the seams, I couldn’t tell about the construction, but it was another dress that would sell out if it were put into ready to wear. Marion did some Santino light thing all flowy and drapey and with raggedy swatches of denim. Steven (and who is he again?) did a wonderful, retro new-look sort of pencil skirt and dramatic jacket suit. Black with red accent. For all the color that I saw in the Bryant Park tents, and all the color popping out of their bags of swag, this is a black and red runway show. Carmen made something with genie pants and an Elizabethan vest. I didn’t want nightmares, so I didn’t look too closely. Kit sends out an asymmetrical black and red (plaid?) hottness. And then, there is judging.

Chris, Kevin, Sweet P, Jillian, Jack, Marion, Steve, Carmen and Kit are all safe. Rami, Simone, Ricky, Victorya, Elisa and Christian are the top and bottom three. Simone Le Fang says that she wanted to make a moderne romantic, but Michael says it looked like her model dressed in the dark. And you can’t sew, either. Rami’s silk georgette was called sophisticated and chic. MK pointed out that there was a mother-of-the-bride fleurchon up there on the shoulder, kind of spoiling everything. Ricky, as a designer of lingerie, was called out for doing a stupid baby doll when he could have done something constructed to within an inch of its life. A pageant dress? Oh, Kayne, where are you now? Victorya’s baby doll was also dissed, but Michael admired her use of the arm bindings, and laughed an evil laugh as he allowed as how he knew women who would bleed for fashion, much less not be able to hail a cab.

And then we had Elisa, who explained her point of view thusly: “a sylphlike haiku of a cut like SLLLLLLUUUUUUURRRRRRRRRRRPPP and a tail that goes FFWWWWWAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH”. Imagine the appropriate hand gestures, too, please. To which Michael says, “you had me at hello. Color: pretty. Sleeve: pretty. But where to stop? It’s a train wreck.” Dammit, Michael, low puns are MY purview. Christian’s work was found to be innovative (you say innovative, I say derivative. Tomayto. Tomahto.) Rami’s ability to drape with those amazing arms was duly noted as was the fact that he knows his craft.

As the judges discussed the bottom three, Heidi said that Elisa’s dress made her model look like she was (and again I quote, because there is nothing I can add) “pooing fabric”. And finally, Rami wins and Simone is out. Next week looks like a team challenge. And having watched this and ANTM in the same night, I am left to ponder the differences between shit and shinola.

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.

Well, sweeties, is today a great day, or what? We have the newest season of Project Runway beginning tonight, and we are mid-way through this season of America’s Next Top Model… in honor of this momentous occasion, I am discounting my “Got Taste” t-shirts in my cafe press shop. It’s never too early to think about your holiday shopping. Or about my dwindling bank account.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At least I still have my hearing… for now.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

At some point there is a My Life As a Cover

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

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

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

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

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