When the Number One Surrogate Daughter went off to college, I wrote a book for her. In it I passed along all the knowledge I gained from my years in school. I told her how to get a bad roommate to move out, how to make friends, how to recognize the Seven Drunken Dwarves, and what to do if you find out that you are Slutty, Pukey or Argumentative. (The others are Sloppy, Loquacious, Unconscious and Jolly.) I offered up advice on how to pick a major, and gave her an extra reading from Walter Pater.

As her younger sisters went to college, they received copies too. A year ago, encouraged by the girls who’d read and shared my book, I sucked up my courage and sent my manuscript to a literary agent. She loved it. She also told me that I was way behind the trend, and if she’d gotten it six years prior, she could have sold it, but the market was glutted with girls guides.

Still, in the internet age, who needs a publishing house or an agent? We have Lulu, and other print-on-demand sites. This weekend, I reformatted and tweaked my book. I found an old photo of me taken at a party in my dorm room, backgammon markers wedged in my eye-sockets like Little Orphan Annie, and a box of Screaming Yellow Zonkers behind me, and scanned the negative. I uploaded everything, and now, available for your reading or gifting pleasure, I present to you “The Girls Guide to College (that your parents won’t want you to read). A simple click on the cover will put it in your shopping cart.

A couple of years ago, when I went to the South Beach Food & Wine fest, I signed up for a lot of mailing lists. One of them was information about cheese from Ile de France. I love cheese. They’d send me e-coupons and everything. A month or so ago, they sent me a note, asking if I have a blog, and if so, would I like to get some free cheese. The only condition would be to eat the cheese and then write about it. DUDE! Free cheese and a free blog topic? I’m on that. I sent them a yes, please and the link to this page. Amazingly, unlike some people who read this as a sample of my work, they were not horrified, and in fact, accepted my offer. A week or so ago I received a big log of chevre.  I love goat cheese, especially, so I was really jazzed to get the package. But what’s this? There is a new wrinkle in the free cheese offer. Now they are asking me to develop a recipe using this chevre, and submit it to their contest. First prize? Five hundred dollars. Second and third prizes? More cheese. Hmmmmmm. Is there a bad prize? Can I get both money and more cheese?

Having given this some consideration, I am down to two recipes. The first is a sort of Chicken Kiev, but instead of butter, I will roll the goat cheese in the center of the pounded, breaded chicken breast. I have some herbs de Provence (lavender, thyme, lemon peel) to add. Maybe something green, like asparagus? Or sun-dried tomatoes? My second is a goat cheese quiche. I haven’t quite figured out what to use in it…maybe peas? Anyway, which do you think I should develop and submit?

Not being allowed to blog from work has taken a toll on my updates. I’m just saying.

In the fabulous East Side apartment des Bitches and Hos, AllisonKeaneLemur is explaining that she sees that she needs to have more expressions. She need to give more pose. Celia responds by doing a impression of Allison’s bunny teeth. Funny, but cruel. It seems that the girls are having a Thanksgiving dinner together, as there is a turkey and a pumpkin pie in evidence. The girls all pitch in to clean up together, except for Natalie, who lounges around and calls out thanks and encouragement. The other girls aren’t having it, and call her a spoiled bitch. Fair enough. Natalie is offended by this, and barges into the kitchen to say that she’s sorry that she comes from a nice community and that the rest of them are just all ghetto trash. This triggers a fight between Aminat and Natalie. Same old same old.

TYRAMAIL! Tomorrow you’ll be molded into a fine piece of clay. Speculation about meaning: sculpture?

In the event, they find themselves at the Harlem Stage Theater, where Paulina gives them a lecture about how modeling is like a series of auditions, and posing is like acting. But without words and movement. But that sometimes they will need to do both, move and speak, and do so convincingly. The exercise is to pair up and say a line of dialog in the proscribed tone.

Aminat and Celia trade “I’ve never said that to anyone” in either a bossy or pitiful tone. Celia does good pitiful. LondonCometoJesus and Fo exchange “You’ve gotta be kidding me” and while LCTJ is not so pitiful, Fo is very, very threatening. Tahlia is not ecstatic when she says “You’ve gotta get out of here.” and AllisonKeaneLemur is no better being arrogant. Paulina finds working with Tahlia trying, at best. She tells her that trying to teach her anything is like “jogging in mud.” And ouch. Tahlia is told to stop just being pretty, and start being a model. They all get a script to memorize, involving being a has-been model on a go-see. LondonCometoJesus tells us that she is, by nature, an actress, and comes from a whole family of actors. This challenge is hers to win, she says. We see the script that the girls are reading, and it’s sad, really, because there are cues above each line, telling them what emotion they should be trying to emote.

Their acting partner today is Clay Aiken, former American Idol winner and current “star” of Spamalot on Broadway. LondonComeToJesus is not too bad. NatalieWooden has an attitude. Fo is good. Tahlia just sucks. She is called lazy and insecure by Paulina and Mr. Jay. Celia turns it on and plays it (over the top, broadly) for laughs. But in the end, it’s LondonComeToJesus who wins the challenge and gets 5 thousand dollars worth of Joe’s Jeans. Which she won’t even try on, because (the rest of the girls gossip) she’s been packing on the pounds in the house, and can’t fit in them. She graciously shares her winnings with the rest of the hamsters.

The next day, they go to a studio where M’Key is doing a Cover Girl ad (Good lord, she really has a beautiful face. She’s right up there with Season Two winner Yoanna House in terms of pretty.) The hamsters will be working in groups to do a Cover Girl foundation commercial. This requires walking and talking and facing the camera and holding a product and doing it all at the same time. This is going to be very, very hard for some of these girls (cough AllisonKeaneLemur). The two groups are WindInHerFace, Aminat, Celia and AllisonKeaneLemur, and NatalieWooden, Fo, LondonComeToJesus and Tahlia. They will each take the lead and rotate through the group. As they wait for their shoot, M’Key makes small talk with them. She asks where they’re from and NatalieWooden jumps in and says that she comes from where ever, but that the rest of them are all hicks. Classy.

Celia does well, WindInHerFace isn’t too bad, and Aminat sucks. Tahlia asks M’Key how she can stop being such an insecure little mouse in the house. M’Key intuitively recognizes that there is nothing anyone can do for Tahlia. She smiles. AllisonKeaneLemur, as expected, is flat and has her usual mouth-breathing look of stupidity. She says, and I quote: “I need to figure out how to manipulate my photos and my face.” NatalieWooden remarks that the person to impress is the Cover Girl rep, and proceeds to blow her first take. She pulls out an average take on her second try. Fo tries hard, but NatalieWooden totally blocks her in the final shot. LondonComeToJesus is channeling Harold Hill as she tries to shill the product. Tahlia can’t act, can’t repeat her semi-memorized lines and can’t read the teleprompter. She is also lacking in emotion. Mr. Jay tries to give her a pep talk, and she answers him with a variation of Jade’s immortal line “I am confident, on the inside.”

TYRAMAIL! Someone’s going home tomorrow. Celia doesn’t think it’s her. At panel, our guest judge is Clay Aiken, and Miss Jay’s tie is so huge, even clowns wouldn’t wear it. Celia gets the first critique and Paulina says that she shows natural talent. She is a natural comedienne. Paulina thinks that Celia is great at creating a character, and Tyra just says that she’s old. Nigel says that WindInHerFace is squinty and gave bad poses. AllisonKeaneLemur steps up and is immediately dressed down by Miss Jay, who notes that she has worn the same dress to panel before. This leads to a lecture about why a white t-shirt and blue jeans is the model’s standard garb when not wearing product. She is told to swap clothes with one of the other girls when they are sent out. Tyra says that watching AllisonKeaneLemur’s commercial felt like punishment. Nigel says that she’s still giving the same, slack-mouthed bunny teeth. Nigel really, really, really is NOT into AllisonKeaneLemur.

Aminat is critiqued for her lousy enunciation. Again, fair enough. She does have that whole Ebonics thing going on. LondonComeToJesus is called hard by Tyra, and schlumpy and defeatist-looking by Nigel. True. She has terrible posture, terrible legs and she’s got a pot belly. Paulina looks at her standing there, knock-kneed and chubby-thighed and flat out tells her: Don’t wear those shorts again. They are Not. Flattering. To say the least. NatalieWooden was upstaged by LondonComeToJesus, and Clay notes that she didn’t interact with any of the other girls in the commercial. Miss Jay calls her stiff. Fo was outshone by her backup, Tahlia. Tahlia struggled in her own take, and was upstaged by Fo.

We cut to Cover Girls in Action, and see Heather, who is living in Chicago, signed to Elite Modeling agency and studying computer animation. She’s looking good and doing well. Go Heather. Back in the judging room, the judges agree that Celia did the best, but that is damning with faint praise, since the other girls were so totally, completely and appallingly awful. WindInHerFace, surprisingly, does well on film. AllisonKeaneLemur did better than they anticipated in her commercial, which is to say, she didn’t fall down. Fo was too nervous, but Nigel can see her as a successful actress more than as a model. Tahlia is loved by the camera, but Tahlia does not love the camera back. LondonComeToJesus, who started strong, has had her chances go all pear-shaped, according to Nigel. That is Brit-speak for going bad, but it is also a reflection on her putting on weight…maybe. Aminat’s Ebonics mean that film is not her medium (didn’t stop Danielle/Dani). The judges were thrilled to see that NatalieWooden could actually smile. Nigel says she’s more of a Bond Girl than a Cover Girl. I think Nigel’s over her, too.

The hamsters return, and are told that as a group, they were pathetic and all sucked, but that Celia sucked the least and is the week’s winner of the first photo. The rest go to NatalieWooden, WindInHerFace, Fo, LondonComeToJesus and Aminat. AllisonKeaneLemur and Tahlia are in the bottom. AllisonKeaneLemur is read the list of her short comings: she can’t pose, she has a slack-mouthed expression in every shot, she has bunny teeth and she’s funny looking. Tahlia has the right look for Cover Girl, but, as much as the camera loves her, it is a one-sided love affair. You can’t be a model if you hate having your picture taken. True that. Which means that Tahlia is out, and AllisonKeaneLemur and her bunny teeth are in for another week.

Hang on, sweetiedarlings, this is a long, and particularly pointy review.

Prologue

Back at the Casita des Hámsteres, Tahlia is discoursing on the nature of the universe: i.e.: what it feels like to be stabbed in the back by a competitor on a long-running reality television show, where research has determined that there will ALWAYS BE A BACK STABBING BITCH among the cast. Duh. She is angry and hurt.

Over in the other confessional, Celia, AKA The Bitch Who Performed Said Back-Stabbing, is admitting that she stirred up drama, but does not regret what she did. Of course she doesn’t. The key word in that confession is DRAMA of which there need be a gracious plenty in the Reality TV Universe. We now have our protagonist and our antagonist. Stage is set for act one.

Act One

Sandra lies outright and tells Tahlia that she knew nothing of the planned shoot out at the OK Judging. We see footage of her sitting there in her Mammy do-rag along with the rest of the mean girls. Tahlia says that Celia made herself look “hella low”. Hell-low-oh? Wind In Her Face and Aminat, mean while, ask if Tahlia is going to say anything to those hos downstairs and when Tahlia says no, Wind In Her Face asks if Tahlia would mind if she went downstairs to attend to some bi-ness of her own. And again, Tahlia says you do what you gotta do. Aminat and Wind In Her Face then bound downstairs to take on the triad of Celia, Natalie and AllisonKeaneLemur.

Wind In Her Face (from the stairs): Can I ax? Don’t you feel a fool?

Allison: Huh? Wha? Get outta my face. I’m not getting this kind of air time unless I can’t help it.

Tahlia (From the stairs behind WIHF and Animat): Oh, I’m not going there. I have seen the mountain top. I have been praised in panel and gotten the first photo. I am not afraid of you. (ad lib ad nauseum)

Allison (safely in confessional): That crap from Tahlia was too Chicken Soup for the Teenage Soul to be believed. (rolls eyes) I’m so sure. (exposes bunny teeth)

Back in the kitchen, Aminat and Natalie are on opposite sides of a granite counter.

Aminat: You are stupid. Let me spell that out for you S-T-U-P-I-D.

Natalie: Yeah, bring the A game, beyotch.

Aminat: StupidStupidStupid

Natalie: That all you got?

Aminat: Big stupid stupid head. Stoooo-pid.

Natalie: I’m loving this, I’m getting to do my Sly Stallone/Vin Deisel impersonation on television, viewed by millions. Totally worth looking like a moron.

Aminat: Stupid.

And cut.

Act Two

TYRAMAIL! Cut it out. I don’t want to see any more blank faces. Aminat decides that this is going to be acting class. It is not. It is Face Posing class. Also known as having an expression.

Mr. Jay is in an alley, surrounded by his faceless and less shiny sister mannequins. Mr. Jay explains the personality problem to this year’s crew (again). Nobody can tell you mindless twits apart. Today we are going to look like something other than a clothes hanger, OK? Today we are going to try to project a thought or emotion. To help teach this lesson they have Howard Stern’s wife: Beth Stern, A Model. Examples of her modeling flash on the screen, each one as plastic and as the same as the one before. Could be her, could be Ivanka Trump. Could be Ivana Trump.

The Mean Girls and the Hurt Innocents get lessons in front of a mirror as Mr. J and Mrs. Stern critique them. Celia gives a good mystery. Tahlia is a good sensual (and we get another lecture on being confident from The Girl With The Medical Issues.) Fo can be alluring. Sandra is not so much mysterious as vaguely threatening. Natalie is totally a Victoria’s Secret model, and you know that is totally what she aspires to.

To become a true icon, says Mr. Jay, you have to give all types of expressions and you have to nail them. The challenge will be to figure out what face the Icon Miss Tyra was giving when she took the shot in each of these five live-size enlargements. You will have noticed that there IS no face. We have cut those out. You will stick your head through the hole like a drunk at a Coney Island photo booth, and try to replicate what you think Tyra was doing. There are five shots, you will each pick two.

Miz Shoes thinks this might be a gentle reminder to the girls that their hostess is the Alpha Bitch in this dog pack. Yeah. Let’s see how you look compared to me. Mano a mano, bitches. And then tell me who’s got the right to say who’s all that and who isn’t.

Celia is up first and tanks badly. Fo is awful. Wind In Her Face is awful. Sandra is not quite as awful. Mr. Jay says that Sandra is disappearing. What personality she had has gone. Aminat. Allison (Mrs. Stern says “That’s just sad.” Mr. Jay says, “I’m not getting anything.”) Natalie gets it both times. LondonCometoJesus is also good. Tahlia, meh and meh. Celia focused too much on the body (which wasn’t visable anyway). Sandra just isn’t real. Allison looked like a scared

little kid. Natalie was committed and gave real expressions. She nailed it. (the word “bitch” appears in a thought balloon over each of the other girls’ heads.) She wins an extra 50% more frames than the rest of the girls at the next shoot.

TYRAMAIL! You’re all looking a little pale. You need color. Um, anyone? Anyone? Celia and Tahlia have a heart to heart up on a mid-air hallway.

Tahlia: I was humiliated.

Celia: I was a cold-hearted bitch who just wanted Tyra to hear that you wanted, in your weak moments, to leave. I’m sorry.

Celia: (to camera) I’m sure that I’m going home. But I’m going out with my head up, giving it my all, wanting it more than anyone else. And I better see that everyone else wants it just as much as me.

And cut.

Act Three

Keith Major is the photographer who is going to capture the spirit and essence of the colored powders that the girls will be doused with and have to tell the story of.

AllisonKeaneLemur is first, and she’s been doused in hot pink. She is thrilled to be girly! Girly!! Whee!!! And, we note, a mouth breather. She is very afraid to give a real emotion.

Aminat is earthy greens. And gorgeous. Tahlia is purple. She’s Confident. And at the end, when she starts making eyes at Keith Major, she gives some good face. Wind In Her Face is yellow and needs to never ever smile in front of a camera if she doesn’t want to scare the children. She has a lot of teeth and gum. Fo is fabulous as red. I think that Fo is over the Trauma of the Haircut. LondonComeToJesus is blue and blah. Natalie gets and needs her extra frames. As orange, she’s flat. Sandra is white and says that it’s all in her eyes. She is peaceful and angelic. Celia knows that if she doesn’t wow the tan off Mr. Jay, she is going home for sure, so she hits one out of the park. She is grey and she is giving more looks and poses and using her hands and you know, girl friend has it going on. Just sometimes you can take the girl out of Scratch Ankle, Kentucky, but you can’t take the Kentucky out of the girl. Celia thinks she won’t be going back to Kentucky tomorrow, but you never know.

TYRA MAIL! One of you bitches is out of here tomorrow. Only eight will continue the cat fight. Celia is picking out her wardrobe for tomorrow’s judging. She says like it feels she’s picking out clothes to be buried in. In which case, Miz Shoes wishes she were thin enough to be buried in the full and pleated skirt Celia chooses.

The guest judge tonight is Keith Major, who, coincidentally just shot Miss Tyra’s Ebony cover.  Aminat’s green is the first photo, and the judges love it. Natalie’s orange has no depth. Let’s call her NatalieWooden. (I can’t believe it took me 6 weeks to get there.) No angles. Tyra advises that NatalieWooden figure out where her bones are. Tahlia is told to lose the standy-uppy hair back in a clip thing over her forehead, and the judges regain their concentration to say that she took a great shot. Nigel picks at the scab a little and asks her how she felt after getting stabbed in the back last week. He tells her to just keep shining in panel.

Celia is praised for looking so sharp at panel, and for being so hot looking in her photo. Keith says how much he enjoyed working with her. Wind In Her Face was able to keep her mouth shut long enough to take a great shot. Paulina (or Nigel, either one is capable) says that the photo doesn’t even look like Wind In Her Face, but in a good way. LondonComeToJesus has taken the same shot as last week this week. Allison has no range at all, says Keith, she just stands there with a slack mouth. Sandra’s photo is weak, and Tyra says that’s because she promised Nigel to show him a full-face shot of Sandra for the first time. It explains why she always shoots in profile. Fo is Majah! Hott!!

Our Cover Girl in Action is Big Whitney, who is looking hotter than ever and bigger than ever. Go Big Whitney. Woot!

The judges judge thusly: Aminat is amazing. There is much love. Paulina does not like NatalieWooden or how she photographs. Tahlia has given an amazing glamour shot. And she has. You see her green eyes glowing out of the lavender powder and it is fierce. Celia has the best sense of personal style that they’ve ever seen in 12 seasons of ANTM, but Nigel says that she was so stank he doesn’t even want to look at her or be in the same room as her. Wind In Her Hair is beeeeeyooootiful. LondonComeToJesus looks like she puked blue and died, says Paulina, who might know. AllisonKeaneLemur has saucer eyes and bunny teeth and Nigel can’t stand looking at her, either. I hear you Nigel. Call me. We’ll talk about it. Keith says that he loved shooting Fo. Tyra holds up Fo’s picture and says: See? This is what I keep trying to teach these hamsters: Smiling With The Eyes. This is what it looks like. Get it?

The photos go to: FO! (Smiling With The Eyes! Tyra likee.) Wind In Her Face. Tahlia, Aminat, AllisonKeaneLemur, NatalieWooden, LondonCometoJesus. That leaves Sandra and Celia, the two short-haired blondes. Sandra is wearing her red Mickey Mouse shoes and her bloomer shorts. That alone is reason to send her home. Tyra explains that Sandra only has one look, unless she can learn real fast how to face the camera. Celia take the strongest pictures every week. She has the strongest sense of style. But what she did last week was ugly enough to get her tossed. Tyra explains how she had a fellow girl mess with her money for years. And how it is a personal hot button for Tyra when a girl throws another girl under a bus for the money. (Cough Naomi) Tyra will Not Tolerate it among her own girls. Does Celia understand? Celia does and begins her redemption arc, and Sandra goes home.

Epilogue

Her final interview is this: I’m the best and they were crazy to send me home. Ah, the delusion loser exit. All is right in the Reality Television Universe.

Not a fence, but here’s my sweet little female painted bunting, sitting on the hook of the bird feeder. I apologize for the quality of the shot, but I’m shooting through screen. And I could use a longer telephoto. But who’s counting? She’s a shy little thing, and this is the first time she’s come to the main feeder. I was out on the deck with my morning coffee and the Nikon, just in case.

In keeping with my recent theme of post titles with snippets from the works of artists I don’t much care for… and before the hate comments come pouring in, yeah, yeah, yeah. e.e. cummings was a fucking genius. But if I had a nickle for every time some well-meaning English teacher made me suffer through that little lame balloon man, I’d be rich. Well, I’d be rich enough to buy a grande Starbucks. If we’re going to suffer through the no caps thing, I’d rather read anything from Don Marquis. And if we’re just going to be reading from the American poets of the 50s, then I’d rather be reading about Frost’s stupid fence or his diverging roads. Or Laurence Ferlinghetti’s trips. And if we’re widening this to all areas and times, then even Wordsworth’s lonely little cloud beats that stupid twee balloon man. And I positively adore the sleekit, cowrin’, tim’rous beastie.

Anyway. It is spring, and that means new shoes are showing up on the train platform. There has been such a dearth of fine footwear these past years, what with the ubiquitous yet slovenly flip-flop, and the equally ubiquitous peep-toe pump. There have been the abominations that are Crocs and Uggs. There is that goat-hoof looking platform made popular by the Olsen gnomes, and the endless parade of gladiator sandals. People! That movie was ten years ago, already. Let it go.

But on Friday, the first sign of spring appeared. Sweeter than a robin, brighter than a daffodil. Pink cow spot strappy sandals on a pink cow spot skin wedge. Sweet.