A portrait of Scotty Neaill, the first boy I had a crush on, the last boy I knew who got drafted for Viet Nam, and the first friend to die of AIDS.

Scotty was a year older than me, and I just adored him. He had this one eyebrow that sort of curled up on one side, very devilish and twinkly eyes with long dark lashes. He wasn't a blonde surfer, and he wasn't an athelete (like that would have driven me wild, even in those days) and he wasn't the most popular boy in school. He was just Scotty and I wanted to go out with him. Instead, I was his friend, the girl he told about all the other girls that had crushes on him that he didn't like. We'd go to the beach together.

Once I went to visit him when I was out horseback riding with another friend. We just trotted up to his house and hung around for a while. When we left, he told his mother, "she's sort of weird, but I like her." She told me that when I made my condolence call after he died.

He took me sailing on his Hobie Cat, and once we were becalmed on the St. Lucie River for several hours until we were able to tack back to the dock at the Sunrise Inn. When I finally made it home, my mother was furious, her mind filled with the horrid possibilities of what a young girl and a young man could do for three hours on the canvas deck of a Hobie in the middle of the river. Nothing much, I assure you, but Mummy was not so easily dissuaded from believing that.

Scotty gave me a strand of love beads, the summer of 1970 or 71. I still have them.

Scotty was drafted into the United States Army, the last of the Nam draftees, but he served his term in Japan, where he fell in love with Japanese landscaping and gardening. When he got out of the service, he tried to enroll in a school in Japan, but there was no room for a US citizen. So Scotty came back to America and moved to San Francisco, where he worked at Horchow, and tried to find local Japanese landscaping classes.

Scotty died in 1988, the first of way too many friends to die of AIDS. He left behind no garden to bear witness to his passion. His younger brother Richard became a landscape architect, perhaps in Scotty's memory, perhaps because he too loved plants and flowers and making them take on the vision you hold in your head. Richard died of AIDS, too, maybe eight years after Scotty.

Remember your friends, and those who are living, tell them you love them. Make a donation today to your local AIDS service organization or national research group, like AMFAR. Light a candle. Say a prayer.

We are down to the last four bitches and hos, we are in Barthelona (no visit yet from Manuel, but I'm still hopeful) and it is the week the B&Hs learn to Flamenco. I'll wait for you all to stop choking with laughter.
All better now? Good. Because when you see these four and their pathetic footwork, you will only start choking again. Amanda starts the episode by interviewing that she is really, really sorry that her twin is gone, but then again, it's just one less bitch to beat out to the finals, so y'know? Blood, water, whatever. CariDee comes around to tell Amanda that she knows it's lonely for her without Michelle, and she, CariDee is there if Amanada needs a cuddle. Wrong twin, CariDee.

The girls get a Tyra mail about partnering and it, of course, leaves them clueless. But I'm beginning to think that with this particular litter, you could just spell it out: Tyra says this week you learn to dance. and they still would all be hanging over each other's shoulders going "wha?"

Flamenco! They pile into a dance studio and meet the maestro and his interpreter and a pack of slim-hipped men in high heels - their flamenco partners. The maestro shows them a couple of simple steps, a forward, back, sweep and step that anyone who never fell over their own Reeboks in a Jazzercise class could master (that would, of course, leave out yours truly, who once said to her own mother "Why did God make Jews smart, I'd have gladly given up a few IQ points for a little natural rhythm." and got slapped for being a wiseass). The maestro's name is Nacho, but he's a different Nacho than the one who didn't want to kiss Jaeda-I-Hate-My-Hair. To which I can only ask: WTF? When did Nacho become a popular Spanish name, or are they fucking with us?

But we are talking about the ANTM hamsters here, so it goes without saying that Amanda is lame, Melrose overthinks it, CariDee hates Melrose and will "puke" if she wins, and Eugena plays the "I GOT natural rhythm, so I have no problems with this one" card. No, she really said it on national TV. Really.

We see them practice with their attractive, slim-hipped and graceful partners. Nothing seems to rub off on the hamsters, but Amanda's shoes rubbed her heels and we are treated to a shot of her picking at her blisters while she voices over something that I couldn't hear because the voice in my head was shrieking too loudly in horror about the visual.

They go home. They practice more. They all interview about how much they hate Melrose. Melrose doesn't care that they hate her (and neither do I, to tell you the truth. I'm pretty much over this bunch. How many more weeks do we have to suffer these fools?).

They go to another (or maybe the same one they shot the Secret commercial in) park and there is a small wooden dance floor, a guitarist and a handful of random people who are never identified sitting at cafe tables where they can watch the dance. The Maestro and his interpreter are there to judge. Again, CariDee hates Melrose a lot. Even when she's dancing, it's still all about how much she hates Melrose. This is the Flamenco of hate. She's not bad.

Eugena is great, if you are grading on a curve, and you have Amanda with her backward feet setting the curve.

Amanda has her feet on backwards today, proving that she really is Gumby, Dammit. But she tries, and she looks sort of pretty.

Melrose loses the beat in the first eight bars, blames it on her partner (as if, bitch -- I mean, who's the pro here?) and then loses it completely when she realizes that she isn't going to win. No, Eugena of the Natural Rhythm wins and gets to pick a friend to share her prize. Proving once more that no matter how many hours of footage they show us of two girls sharing a bed, gossiping about how much they hate Melrose (ahem, CariDee and Eugena) these hamsters are all two or more faced and Eugena picks Amanada to share her prize. CariDee gamely says that she would have shared with Amanda too, because Amanda hasn't won ANYTHING yet.

The prize is clothing from the famous and fabulous Custo Barcelona. As usual, the only one with a clue about who or what Custo is is Melrose. Have we mentioned yet that everybody hates Melrose? Because she's fake. Because she can model. Because she has more than two brain cells still functioning. Because she cooks. Because she keeps winning challenges. Because she tries harder. Because she won't take off the goddam raspberry beret. Although I have to admit, she wears it well.

Since the theme this week is twosies, the photo shoot also involves working in pairs. The girls will be posing in evening gowns, floating in a swimming pool, looking like (and how many times did they say this so we idiot viewers could get the point) aquatic angels. Yeah, whatevs. First up is Melrose and Eugena. Jay and Tyra giggle a little about how "Don't these two hate each other?" Yep. That's a knee-slapper, alright. Jay also rolls his eyes, despairs that Eugena never listens to direction and laments that it was just another typical Eugena shoot. Ugh.

Tyra is on set to coach, and we see in flashback that back in the earlies, say season two or so, she used to go on set and coach more often. I say that she should do this more often. It actually is helpful to the girls, and interesting to see her work it. Because, even though we call her Tyrant and snark about her fading beauty and all, the bitch WAS all that in her day and she does know her shit. Just seeing her in the flashback showing some forgettable prior contestant--one of the early man/girls--pose like Grace Jones was worth watching this whole episode.

The pool is cold. The models bitch. The fan blogs are rampant with suggestions that this was done on purpose to add drama. Allow me to weigh in on that.

I live in Miami. I have a very small, unheated pool. Even though it's 90 degrees during the day in the early spring, there is no way you could swim in my pool. It's just too fucking cold. That was a large pool they were in. Barcelona is many latitudes north of Miami. I don't think there was any producer hanky-panky involved. That said, I used to have swim team practice in an unheated pool in the winter. Colder than a witches tit. After a few dozen laps, we were fine. Until we had to get out of the water and into the cold air. These girls didn't move at all, and they have no body fat. Of course they were cold. However, if it's cold enough for one girl to develop hypothermia, it was probably cold enough for all of them to do so. Did they? Did Amanada the skeleton get hypothermia? No. Did Eugena? No. Of course Melrose didn't and if she did she would have kept her mouth shut and toughed it out. Did CariDee of the perpetual whining and constant neediness have to be pulled out of the pool and coddled? You better believe it. The girl is a hot mess of high maintenence.

And the photos were amazing. I hate when that happens. But they were. This whole season has had some amazing shoots.

Judging. Prizes. Stills from the dance recital. There is a horrifying moment where the camera zooms in on Amanda's backwards foot, the judges all cringe and she shows them, live, in person, how she can twist her foot 180 degrees from front. Eeew. Gumby, dammit. The judges allow as how CariDee is a whiny, needy, high maintenence sort of girl, and let her stay. They allow how everybody hates Melrose, and they aren't too fond of her either, especially that fucking beret, but she does take a fantastic picture every single fucking time, so what can you do except let her stay. Eugena gets to stay because there is no way in hell there could be three white finalists, and she has gotten better, even if her skin hasn't and they haven't paid for a dermatologist this year and she did show natural rhythm and danced OK. And anyway, if they get rid of her, who can CariDee whine to about how much she hates Melrose.

That means that Twin II gets the boot. Don't worry, little twins, you'll have a contract in no time. You two have faces that the camera loves, and more importantly, you have a gimmick. We'll miss you.

Next week, someone wins. The big question is, will anybody care.

By the time I got home, the head cold from hell was manifesting as a real flu. I have been in bed since, drinking hot toddies (Thanks Gigi and RJ), sleeping and groaning in pain. The flu makes your joints hurt, you know. But did you know that you have joints in your skull? Yep. They hurt, too.

I took the strongest OTC decongestant there is: something that you can only take once every 24 hours. Hasn't made a dent in the quanity of liquid oozing from my head.

Warning: TMI coming in the next sentence. That which isn't dripping from the front of my nose is making its way down into my lungs, gearing up for a lovely episode of bronchitis.

On the other hand, I'm so out of it that I was able to play my favorite stupid computer game and reach a new high score. OK, that exhausted me. Time to go horizontal again. I promise an ANTM recap when I wake up.

You know, I had a flu shot just a couple of weeks ago. So why did I wake up with a dripping and sore sinus this morning, which, by the time of this writing (4:30 EST) is now a raging head cold. I'm sneezing, dripping, mouth-breathing and cranky. I'm also out of sick leave and I'm not sure how many packages of Thera-Flu are in the kitchen pantry.

I just want to go home to the fuzzy bathrobe, flopsy puppy and bunny slippers and pass out on the sofa.

Groan, moan, bitch, whine and complain.

The bitches and the hos are in Barthelona (still no sign of Manuel, however) and Jaeda and her tedious hair hysteria are finally gone. Can I get an amen from someone?

It's week seven, and time for Nigel Barker to get to photograph the remaining contestants. The shoot will take place in an actual, still-in-use bullring. Take that, you bleeding heart PETA people. And because the idea of sticking these anorexic and none too graceful bimbos in front of a (possibly) charging bull isn't enough to frighten viewers, the PTB also put the Little Orange Man (aka Mr. Jay) in a full matador suit of lights. I had nightmares.
We see the girls in hair and make up, there is some interviewing about how scary it is to work with the fabulous NigelBarker, and then.....

Have I mentioned that this season's crop of hamsters is particularly clueless? Even more so than thinking all birds are blind clueless? They bitched about their makeovers from no less an eminence than Frederic Fekkai. They bitched about the shoots. They bitched about each other. They complained that Fabio was too old, that they didn't want to kiss people other than their significant others, that they didn't like their makeup, that they didn't like the photoshoots, that they didn't want to have to watch other girls win. Jeez, give it a rest, already.

Well, CariDee steps up her game after last week's gawdawful commercial, alrighty. She steps it right up into NigelBarker's face and suggests that he remove the stick he had up his ass at the last juding.
Yes, she did. And while Nigel managed not to slap her, he did turn around and march off the set, leaving poor Mr. Jay to explain, yet again, why being an asshole to the judges or the guest stars is probably a really bad idea and not likely to help them win the fabulous prizes (contract, cover and spread, money, etc) that they are all clawing each other's eyes out to win.

As you might expect, there is much eye-rolling over the lecture and not a whole lot of grasping of the concepts.

CariDee offers up a half-assed apology to Nigel, and he (way too gently, in my opinion) explains that she really doesn't know him from Adam's housecat, although she might think she does, and that it really isn't proper, polite or professional to speak to him (or anyone) like that.

With that excitement out of the way, the handlers release the bull and the shoot begins. There is jumping, and posing, and an occasional dive behind the safety barrier as the bull has enough of these twits and tries to run them down. (Unfortunately, the bull misses every time. Dammit.)

Eugena doesn't suck for two weeks in a row. In fact, Eugena manages to somehow show something approximating emotion. Or, the judges have just given up and now accept her version of stink eye as emotion.

Amanda blows big chunks, and Michelle tries to pry out of her what she did that was so wrong or so bad so that she can do something different. Amanda sulks and won't say. Michelle goes out and once more rocks the house, even with lace glued over half her face. Don't ask.

CariDee works too hard, and keeps looking a little too Debbie Does Dallas Barcelona for anyone's comfort.

Melrose is perfect, of course and as usual, except that even the judges hate her, so it doesn't count because it wasn't naturally perfect, it was calculatedly perfect. Or something like that.

There is a Tyrant group talk about criticism that amounts to so much filler and she manages to make it about her. Imagine that. I'm only bitching at you 'cause I L-U-V y'all. This comes from the Momma place. Eeeewww. Don't make me think about that, Tyra, 'cause it scares up visions of Mommie Dearest.

At judging, the girls have to opine as to who has the most talent and who has the least. Each of them picks themselves as being the best, except for Michelle, who thinks she isn't the best because she doen't want it the most. Way to buy into the bullshit the judges are feeding you, honey. But aside from themselves, they each name another girl who's maybe as good. Nobody picks Melrose as being the best, because they all hate her, and the same goes for Eugena, too. That leaves Amanda and CariDee as potential contenders and since Amanda is sort of a joke and a cypher, CariDee gets the nod as girl most likely.

Then the judges weigh in on it, and CariDee gets herself reminded about what a tool she was to Nigel, and how in the real world, not a reality world, she would have found herself on the sidewalk without a paycheck or much of a chance to ever work for one again. CariDee cries, and reads a letter she wrote to the judges apologizing for being an idiot and saying how she'll really, really, really, really not be an asshole to people if she gets to be the Covergirl Spokesgirl. It's no Jade "Leftover Lady" but then, what ever could be?

During the judging, Tyra has a brain fart and somehow produces a viable theory about the twins: Michelle only SAYS she doesn't know how much she wants to win, because she knows that this is her sister's dream, and she doesn't want to take it away from Amanda. Huh. Beauty and brains.

So, with that set-up in place, we go to the handing out of the four final photos. And they are: CariDee, getting yet another chance (I think just so they can crush her in the final three), Melrose (because the bitch takes great pix, how can they not?) Eugena (whom Tyrant now sees as a contender) and BIG FINISH: Amanda.

I'm guessing that the part of Tyra's logic that we didn't see went like this: If Michelle could win if her sister wasn't here, keeping her from trying all the way to win, maybe the same holds true for Amanda. Maybe Amanda isn't trying as hard as she can because she sees that Michelle is a natural and she (Amanda) wants to let her sister win.

Whatever. Next week it's Flamenco lessons. God, I just knew they were going to do that to the noble dance. This is going to be ugly.

In the brown bathroom, the one in the hall outside my apricot bedroom, there is a closet. Today is the day that I've decided to clean that closet. In it is the detritus of my parent's failing health. It contains strata of activity and obsessioin. There are two wrist braces, still in their original boxes. One is from the 1960s and shows (in a pen and ink illustration, on a lime green ground) a man, bowling. The other is from the 90s. Its box has a golden yellow band above a generic photo of a generic male wrist wearing the brace. It must have come from a big box store.

There is a black and clear acrylic tissue box holder. It has ended up in this closet after my mother redecorated her black, white and marble master bath. There are many, many, many, many boxes -- some are empty and some are filled -- but they are all Waterpik boxes. There is even a shoebox full of Waterpik replacement heads and brushes. Some, judging by the color of the bands used to differentiate them when more than one person uses the same device, are also relics from the 1960s. Others are pastels from the 1980s.

And then there are two bars of soap, shaped like and painted like ladybugs. Someone gave me them (along with a missing third) the summer I went to Europe. I was 11. It was the summer of 1966. The person who gave them to me was my cousin. She seemed much older than me, and much younger than my mother... could she have been about halfway between us?

But which cousin was it? That is the mystery and memory these two bars of soap have awoken.

I remember that we visited her when we were in New York City, before we sailed. Was it Aunt Ann's daughter? We stayed in Brooklyn with Aunt Ann. But where we went to visit, the house had a real yard. Did she live out on the Island?

She gave me an ice-cream cone, served upside down on a plate, with the ice-cream and cone decorated to look like a clown. Would that have been Aunt Marilyn's daughter?

When we left, she gave me the soap for my trip. Each bar was wrapped in tissue. I loved them too much to ever use them.

Now here I am, 41 years later, emptying them out of my childhood bathroom. One has lost its tissue. The other is still perfect. I wash the cracked paint off the open one and put the soap on the rim of the sink. There is a Waterpik already there.