It’s night in Brazil, Natalie Wooden has gone home and Aminat is asking the other girls if they could imagine the outrage (in the house? on the couch? among her “fans”?) if the judges had sent her home instead. Well, actually, yes I can. The blogosphere of rabid ANTM watchers would have had a fit if the tall, beautiful girl had gone home and the hack from SoCal had stayed. I’m agreeing with a hamster… what has the world come to? Meanwhile, Celia admits that at 25 she is older than dirt and will probably have that flung in her face this week, resulting in her going home. She seems resigned to losing. I’m sorry, what show are we watching? We seem to have a little self-awareness here.

TYRAMAIL! You have to hit the ground running if you want to fly. The hamsters think this means hang-gliding or something. That’s more like it. Stupid, clueless and self-absorbed. That’s why we watch. Keep up the good work, little hamsters. Speaking of little, Fo suddenly realizes that at 5’8”, she is stumpy. She decides that she needs to model taller. The next morning, the girls are taken to the headquarters of Fashion Week Brazil, and there meet Paolo Borges, who needs an interpreter, who also needs an interpreter, and they tell the hamsters that they will pretend to be real models today, and have go-sees. They are given a list of 5 designers and about 4 hours. Downstairs there are taxis waiting to drive them around. As always, there is way too much traffic, the girls have no plan of attack, and nobody is wearing a watch. As always, anyone late will be disqualified. Celia, being older than dirt, and therefore somewhat wise in the ways of the world, tells us that she figured to go to the designer farthest away from their end point, and work her way backwards. RabbityMouthBreather is scared, because she has to go somewhere and meet someone. Aminat is stunned by the traffic. She says that it is worse than NY and LA combined, and re-donk-iless. Yeah. There’s that classical enunciation.

Wind In Her Face and Celia end up in the same place at the same time, but Celia gets through the door first, so Wind In Her Face bolts to the next designer on her list rather than wait. The first question for Celia is “How old are you?” Somewhere across town, RabbityMouthBreather is wowing some other designer with her personality. Her walk, on the other hand, “is not ready for the catwalk”. That’s an understatement along the lines of Miss Jay is just a tiny, little bit gay. Celia, who is older than dirt, but who also lives in New York City, figures out that it is faster to walk than to take her taxi. So she walks. Fo is somewhere with designer Cris Barros, who likes her just fine, except for the part where Fo only comes up to a real model’s armpit. Five foot eight inches is a freakin’ DWARF in Modelvania, people.

Over at designer Orzoco or something like that, Wind In Her Face finds that Celia has beaten her to the location again, dammit, and freaks out and flees. At Adriana Bozos, Aminat is walking and Adriana says that she’d book her for a show, fer sure. And also Wind In Her Face. She’d get booked too. Sadly, Fo is too short for beachwear. She’s a midget! This causes Fo to have a little freak out of her own. She’s good for a photo shoot, they say, but not for walking. Speaking of not good for walking, Adriana Bozos says that RabbityMouthBreather needs a lot of practice before she can stomp down a runway. With half an hour left, Aminat heads over to Cris Barros, where she finds Celia walking it out. Cris likes Celia, despite the fact that she’s ready for AARP and a walker. Wind in Her Face gets there and finds Celia still doddering around, so she calls it a day and goes back to the base. She’s about twenty minutes early. Fo is still in her cab, having made all five go-sees, but very far from the meeting place. Oh noes, Fo. Aminat arrives next. RabbityMouthBreather gets there on time, too. Celia is fourth, and blows into the room at 3:31. The other girls mock her and tell her she’s late and disqualified. Celia disputes that, saying that she was in the building at 3:30, just waiting for the elevator. I’m on Celia’s side in this one. Somewhere around 4, Fo finally drags her stumpy little ass in, and the translator arrives to tell them that the girls who arrived on time will be whisked away to meet Paolo via helicopter. For the sake of drama (and weight limits?) Celia and Fo are told to go back down stairs and take the cab. Only Aminat, RabbityMouthBreather and Wind In Her Face will ride the sky. None of them have ever been in a helicopter, nor even considered that they might one day fly in one, so there is much childish delight and glee. Over in the cab, there is much sulkiness and misery.

At Fashion Week Brazil world headquarters, they learn that RabbityMouthBreather saw 4 designers and they all thought she needed a metric fuck ton of practice walking before she could ever grace a runway. The designers all love Aminat and Wind In Her Face. The winner will get one piece from each of the five designers, and that winner is Wind In Her Face. Celia is green with jealousy over this…or maybe she’s green because she’s past her expiration date and has started to mold. Wind In Her Face is not particularly gracious, and yells at the others not to touch her swag. She ain’t sharing this with anyone. (And the others agree that it’s nice for her to win, because she had the tattiest wardrobe of them all.) Well, all of them except Fo, who cries and says it isn’t fair because she wanted it more. Honeychild, if strength of wanting equaled getting, you’d be referring to me as that bitch who’s been married to Bob Dylan for-fucking-ever.

TYRAMAIL says something that we weren’t paying attention to. But it comes out to mean the beach shot. Needless to say, this is something that frightens RabbityMouthBreather, because she doesn’t think she has a beach body. It turns out that Nigel(!) is their shooter today, and it will be a crowd shot. Nigel tells them to drop all inhibitions and show him what they got. Bring it, babies!!! Fo’s ready. Aminat comes out first, and my lord. That woman has a body that could make strong men weep. Or weak men. Or me. Nigel loves her, but Mr. Jay says that she just doesn’t have the best control of all that amazing stuff. Fo comes out and does some weird hunchy stuff, and frustrates Mr. Jay by posing, not modeling. She doesn’t interact with any of the extras and Mr. Jay calls her shoot remedial modeling 101. RabbityMouthBreather is scared by the size of the bikini (smaller than anything she’s ever worn in her life) and wanders around the set, alternating her slack-mouth with her blow up doll O face. Nigel is so astounded that she does better than he’d ever expect, that he hugs her and tells her she did well. Nigel scares her. Wind In Her Face rocks the shot…of course. Winner’s edit, anyone. But there is no denying that she very quickly learned how to hold her face and mouth so that she didn’t scare children or look like a denture ad. She “knows her angles”.

Celia has been backstage, practicing all day. When she finally gets to the set, it is not what she had in her head and she loses her focus and any remaining semblance of modeling talent she ever had. It is so bad, that Nigel (who was a top male model in his day, remember) puts the camera down and shows her how to work the set. It is always such start contrast when someone who knows what they are doing works the shoot next to the contestants. He still has the mojo. Celia, sadly, does not and blows the shoot.

TYRAMAIL! Down to the final four, bitches. Enjoy what may very well be your last night in Brazil. Fo’s nervous, but sure that someonecoughcoughCELIAcough did worse. At panel, Tyra is wearing a wig that is so far beyond whack that it looks like it came from the discount Farrah Fawcett wig line back in 1973. And has been in storage since. The guest judge is Cris Barros, who is not only a designer, but a former Top Model. First up is Wind In Her Face, wearing one of her winning dresses and looking like a million dollars. She saw three designers and all three would book her. Nigel says that she held nothing back on set, and Cris says that Wind In Her Face is the perfect Brazilan model. Celia booked three out of the four designers she saw, but she was LATE, and so disqualified. Nigel says that she wasn’t easy to shoot because she was so distracted. Celia admits that she was thrown off stride by having spent hours practicing for a non-existent set. Paulina, Cris and Tyra are all horrified to hear that she was rehearsing backstage. Now you know. You have to go in cold and use the fear and surprise to work the set.

Aminat only booked two of the three designers she saw. Nigel tells her that she was pretty good, but that she still needs to emote with her body. Tyra and Miss Jay tell Aminat that she has a body that could compete with Naomi Campbell on any runway, but that she’s wasting it by not knowing how to use it. Fo made herself look chunky on set, and not one of the five designers she saw would have booked her because she’s too short. She needs to stand on a chair just to keep the hems from dragging on the floor. Stumpy McStumpersons, that’s our Fo. RabbityMouthBreather surprised Nigel by not totally sucking. But she only booked one out of her four go-sees, because she can’t walk without knocking into the furniture or her knees into each other.

The judges judge thusly: Wind In Her Face is just amazing. Celia is pose-y and unnatural. Aminat isn’t natural either, or maybe a better word would have been effortless. Fo was one short little Faux Pas. She hadn’t a clue how to work a set and she was just an all-over disaster. RabbityMouthBreather was freaked out by Nigel’s praise, and Nigel mocks her in a heartless and dead-on way, making a bug-eyed and rabbit-toothed googly face. Makes me wish I had Tivo, just to grab a screen shot of that.

Predictably, our winner is Wind In Her Face. RabbityMouthBreather comes in second, much to the universal disgust from the denizens of my couch. Aminat is third, and the bottom two are Stumpy and Ancient. Who stays, and who goes? Celia is allowed to stay and get thrown off next week when she’ll be told that she’s too much of a crone to sell make up to 17 year olds, and Fo is sent back to Albuquerque, where, she says, she is ready to finish high school. You go and get that GED, girl. Next week, Tyra is the photographer, and one girl will be told by Paulina, without the slightest sympathy or pity, that their samba lesson was hardly their shining moment. Ouch. I’m hoping that the girl with two left feet is that bug-eyed freak, RabbityMouthBreather. As G-d as my witness, if she wins, I will never watch ANTM again.

It’s been a not-so-quiet week here at the Casita de Zapatos. On Tuesday morning, the boss was relieved of his position with the company and the rest of the week has been one long whirlwind of reassignment, file searching, reorganizing, catching the balls that were in the air as they fall. I’m going to be working in a new department, for a new taskmaster

cool boss, but before that happens for real, I have to pack and move, not just my cubicle, but all the pertinent materials from this department that will be within the pervue of the new department.

Still, that didn’t stop me from curling up on the couch Wednesday night to laugh at the train wreck that is ANTM. We were alone this week, as the MBEtte was MIA, and the Number 3 Surrogate Daughter was celebrating the natal anniversary of the Number 1 Surrogate Daughter. Number 1 turned 25 this week. How time flies. I remember when she was just a fuzzy-headed bundle scary tininess.

We begin in confession, where Wind In Her Face allows as how she is thrilled to be going to Brazil, but there are girls still in the house who are sippin’ on the Hater-Aid. Specifically, that would be Fo, who is still sulking that WIHF did the right thing in regards to taking her model, Celia, along when she won a photo shoot for 17 magazine.

We land in Sao Paolo, and Aminat has her mind blown. Well, as we old stoners are wont to say, a mind blown is a mind shown. The girls are taken to a lovely park, where they meet the host of Brazil’s Next Top Model, Fernanda Matto, who is in fact, one of Brazil’s top working models. The hamsters are told to pick partners, and then sent on a merry treasure hunt to find the Real Girl From Ipanema’s favorite flower store, and there to buy her favorite flowers. Aminat and WIHF pair up (of course), then Natalie Wooden and Fo, and finally AllisonKeaneLemur and Celia. There is the usual riding around in taxis, getting stuck in traffic and being stupid. Natalie Wooden and Fo arrive at the shop first, and are handed a bunch of bird of paradise, and instructions on how to find the Real Girl From Ipanema. They run off. Celia and the rabbity-toothed mouth breather are dead last, or as Celia confides to the camera, laughably last. Alliteration, how we love thee. AllisonKeaneLemur, whom I shall now call RabbityMouthBreather, stupidly tries to smell the birds of paradise. Dolt.

The second location is a park. Is it the same park where they started? Unknown. At any rate, this portion involves running, which should mean the team with the track star wins, but it does not. Again, Natalie Wooden and Fo get there first and Wind in Her Face and Aminat are a close second, with RabbityMouthBreather and Celia wandering in eventually. Fernanda Matto is there with a three-piece samba band to introduce Ihelo Pinhiero, The Real Girl From Ipanema, who is still gorgeous, and can still move gracefully, but is many many many years past girlhood. I’m just saying. For their troubles, the winning girls (or all of them, it wasn’t real clear) are given hampers full of Haviana flip-flops. Fo informs us that some of these retail at $500 a pair. You have got to be fucking with me. For rubber flip flops? Even if they are covered in Swarovski crystals. They are just fucking FLIP FLOPS, people, and are to foot wear fashion what the ubiquitous and gawd-awful sweat suit is to sartorial splendor. An anathema. Yeah. I said it.

Despite the glamor of their new digs, there are not enough beds, and Natalie Wooden takes this badly, saying that she isn’t impressed with Brazil, complaining about the accommodations, the lack of an ocean view, the lack of a swimming pool and the lack of, oh, I don’t know… naked pool boys fanning her and feeding her grapes. Aminat isn’t impressed with Natalie Wooden. Who is?

TYRAMAIL! Fight or flight. Give me both or go home. This must mean it’s time for the Native Culture lesson. Sure enough, we are taken to see a troupe perform capoeira. Animat gets that this is just a bastard child of break dancing and kung fu. They are shown some basic moves and told to “pray to your drama.” That must be a bad translation, don’t you think? Nevertheless, Aminat and Celia have some drama between them (remember the scene on the staircase after Celia attempted to toss Thalia under the bus at judging? No? Right. This is the season of boring. But it happened.) and Celia manages to, totally by accident, connect a round-house kick to Aminat’s face. Aminat blows it off, and says that once is an accident, twice will get a bitch cut. Fair enough.

The winner of the challenge will get an extra fifty frames at the next photo shoot by stealing them from one of the other girls. That gets Natalie Wooden hot. Or so we are led to believe by her deadpan assertion that stealing frames is “power”. Wind In Her Face forgets her face, Celia kept covering her face, Fo had great body, but her face got a little “puggy”, Natalie Wooden was just that, with a side of awful. Aminat had the strongest movement, and RabbityMouthBreather gave a lot of thought to her shots. Fo wins, and promptly takes frames from Wind In Her Face, because “payback is a bitch” and so is Fo. Wind In Her Face just shrugs it off and says that Fo wouldn’t have taken frames if she didn’t think WIHF was her strongest competition. So there.

TYRAMAIL! Tomorrow enjoy the fruits of your labor. There is much speculating about cabana boys feeding them fruit. But no, it is to be an homage to the late, great Carmen Miranda, of whom only Natalie Wooden seems to have heard. The rest are referred to Chiquita Banana, or, as WIHF keeps calling her, Chica Banana. I could cry, but my tears would get salt in the Cosmos. Maybe I should switch to Margaritas? Natalie Wooden thinks she’s got this shot in the bag because Carmen Miranda was all about sex, and that’s Natalie’s specialty. If necrophaelia is your thing, I guess. The head out to the favelas, or the poverty-stricken neighborhoods that are a single step above tar paper and corrugated tin shacks. Celia is jazzed to be there.

RabbityMouthBreather smiles for the camera and, it pains me to say, actually looks kind of good. Natalie Wooden can’t even stand up in her platforms and is totally unhappy being in such a bad neighborhood. Aminat is all face, no movement and never brings her creativity to set. She tells Wind In Her Face to sex it up for the camera. Aware that she only has 25 shots, Wind In Her Face works it like the rent is due yesterday. Fo wastes her 75 shots being too literally Carmen Miranda. Jay is disappointed, and tells her that she looks like “Carmen Miranda on crack as a drag queen” and that Fo needs to tone it down.

TYRAMAIL! Get ready to say buh-bye to another loser. Only five bitches will remain. Natalie Wooden isn’t nervous at all. She says it will be hard to find a bad shot of her. I guess we don’t see her as the delusional bitch she is because her affect is so flat. Aminat hopes that she did better than the previous week. Fo doesn’t want to go home. At the panel, Fernanda Motta is our guest judge.

Aminat is up first, gets the lecture about not using her body. Paulina says that she is beautiful but boring.

Natallie Wooden is told that she has no sparkle, and Nigel says that we’ve seen all of this before. Natalie Wooden says that she only did what Mr. Jay told her to do. Exactly the same thing in all 50 shots. Tyra doesn’t buy it.

Celia doesn’t have any sparkle either. Tyra tells her this was her weakest shot to date and Celia agrees.

RabbityMouthBreather is finally seen as something other than a waste of air. Paulina says “Finally. I quite like it.” and Nigel says that she looks alive and sexy. And her mouth is still open.

Fo was cute, but too Carmen Miranda and no Fo.

Wind In Her Face is wearing a yellow knit mini dress and before anyone can look at her shot, they have to clock her for wearing tatty jammies to panel. As for the photo? Nigel says that there is no Carmen Miranda, but plenty of hot. She looks totally at ease and at home in the location.

The girls are sent to the green room and the judges deliberate. Natalie Wooden is boring. Ya think? Wooden, even? She isn’t pushing the envelope in any way. RabbityMouthBreather is finally proving Tyra right. Of course she is. Tyra is always right. Unless she’s wrong. But she never is. Miss Jay likes Fo’s picture and the judges all say that she’s an actress, not a model. Aminat is a noun, not a verb: she looks like a model, but she’s not modeling. That actually makes sense. Sort of. Celia is, at 25, the oldest girl in the bunch and she Does Not Look Fresh. There’s a shock. She looks OLD. There’s our clue that Celia will be number three or four, but not America’s Next Top Model. Nope, that will go to the girl with the winner’s edit: Teyona, or as we call her around here, Wind In Her Face.

The photos go to RabbityMouthBreather (what?), Wind In Her Face, Fo and Celia. Down in the bottom two again is Aminat and Natalie Wooden. Aminat is allowed to stay and told that her fierce is all in her head. She needs to bring it to set. Natalie Wooden needs to go home. As Tyra hugs her goodbye, Natalie turns her cheek and gets a pissy look on her face. Gracious. That’s what we all loved about her. She gives a “I don’t know why I have to leave when there were girls with worse shots than me” final voice-over and finally, we see the last of her. Next week? Go sees and Nigel on the beach.

We begin with Aminat in the confessional, bitching about how she can too enunciate. At least, that’s what we think she was saying.

TYRAMAIL! A top model knows how to be direct. The hamsters, ever on the money, clue-wise, decide that this means that they’ll be taking a direct flight to somewhere. Out of the blue, LondonComeToJesus begins to extemporize about her relationship with God. The bottom line is that God wants her to be America’s Next Top Model. It’s His plan for her.

The next day, the hamsters roll out, not to an airport, but another photo studio. There, Mr. Jay explains to them what it is he’s been doing on set for all these weeks. He is the creative director, and his duties include choosing the theme of the shoot, the hair, makeup and artistic direction of the shoot, and editing/choosing the final images from the shoot. It helps you as a model, says Mr. Jay, to understand what all of that entails, and so today, you will each get to be the creative director for another girl. They do not team up, so much as round robin. Ann Shokett and her nose will be on hand from 17 magazine to judge how well the girls do. The product placement is South Pole clothing, and it’s Ghetto Fabulous, or so Animat tells us.

Fo says something inane about having to strive to win, but syntactically, it was much worse than that. They head back to hair and makeup and Sutan is knitting. This is the high point of the show for me, but I was too excited to be able to tell you if he’s a thrower or a picker.

Natalie goes first and styles Wind In Her Face with Big Hair. They get fifteen frames. Natalie tells us that she is really quite visionary. She’s wearing that stupid purple acid-washed vest, so she’s really quite a vision, as well. Natalie has Wind In Her Face walk across the set, again and again. Mr. Jay notes that a real model can create the image of walking, without actually, you know, moving around out of the light.

AllisonKeaneLemur is stoked for this challenge because she, too, is amazingly creative. Or so she says. She gives Aminat big hair. Mr. Jay is shocked at how emotive and out of her rabbity little shell she is on set. She actually does a good job art directing, but chooses the wrong “best shot.”

Fo is talking to LondonComeToJesus who is freaked out about her weight gain. She feels like a fat freak. That would be Fat Freddy. He’s the fat Freak Brother. The other two are Phineas and Free Wheelin’ Franklin. I bet she doesn’t know that. Anyway, she’s fat and freaked out. Maybe Jesus likes ‘em chunky?

Aminat now has to art direct Natalie, of whom she is not inordinately fond. She wanders around looking at wardrobe and being vague until Mr. Jay starts yelling at her that she’s only got another 15 minutes to get Natalie into hair/make up and wardrobe and onto set. Aminat tells us that South Pole is “urban cheek”. So much for her enunciation. As they sashay onto set, Aminat tells Mr. Jay that the delay isn’t her fault, and he throws down a bitch fit and explains how it not only is her fault, she’s getting demerits for not owning it.

Wind In Her Face does a great job of styling Celia, and Mr. Jay is so shocked by this that he asks the girls from wardrobe if Celia styled herself. LondonComeToJesus styles AllisonKeaneLemur as a “total rocker chick” or, as Mr. Jay put it, “exactly like London used to look before she had her make over.” True. Sad, but true. Celia faux-hawks Fo and then rocks the shoot.

Ann and Mr. Jay tell the girls what they think of their Art Direction: London did a bad job of styling, but a great job of choosing the right shot. Wind In Her Face did a great job of styling, but picked the wrong shot. Aminat sucked at time management, but managed to get the perfect 17 cover shot out of Natalie. AllisonKeaneLemur had no clue about how to work with a photographer, and she picked a bad photo as her final, but did a good job of styling. The challenge winner, then, is Wind In Her Face. Her prize is an editorial spread in 17, and she gets to take along two friends. Because WIHF is a nice girl who recognizes that without Celia, she wouldn’t have won, she takes her model to be one of her two friends, and her real friend Aminat. This straight up behavior ticks off Fo, who thinks she should have gotten to share the prize.

TYRAMAIL! said something that none of us heard. It doesn’t really matter, does it? Because Mr. Jay arrives at the house the next morning at the crack of OhDarkThirty, coffee in hand and hair and make up artists in tow. We see AllisonKeaneLemur waking from her nightly slumbers. Her rat weave looks as though marsupials have been nesting in it. She allows as how she herself looks like some kind of forest creature in the morning before her ablutions. She thinks she looks like a wood nymph. The girls on the couch think more like the marsupial that was nesting.

The girls are thrilled to have their hair and make up done in the living room, and act as though this is some huge treat. Then the doorbell rings again, and it is Ciara, an award winning R&B star that the #3Surrogate has to explain to yours truly who she is. Talk about tortured syntax. The crux of her fame is that she is also a he, biologically. And s/he’s got some fine pipes. Where was Ciara last season when we had poor Isis?

Celia, unlike Miz Shoes, knows who Ciara is, and claims to have been a fan for a long time. Everyone piles into the pink plaid limo and heads off to Webster Hall for the shoot. The concept is that the hamsters are (deranged?) fans of Ciara, and will be on the stage in front of her, wrapped up in microphone cord, trying to be near their idol. We’ve seen worse from the Creative Director. Our photographer today is Mike Ruiz. The girls are told to be aware of their bodies and faces, as their poses will be constrained by being bound up in wires.

LondonComeToJesus is all twitterpated over the costume: it’s basically a rubber bathing suit, or a series of wraps of electrical tape (kind of hard to tell). She’s freaking out because she’s packed on the poundage, and the electrical tape bikini is very unforgiving. Celia comes out first and, according to Ciara, who is all up in Mr. Jay’s monitor, checking out the frames, “gives good stuff”.

Natalie and AllisonKeaneLemur discuss how chunky LondonComeToJesus has gotten and talk about how insecure and stressed out she is over it. LondonComeToJesus just prays for Jesus to be inside her and take over her shoot for her. Mr. Jay notes that London has gotten huge. He calls her to one side after her frames, and admonishes her for not taking care of her body, which is supposed to be her temple. How will she do in the long run, he asks, if in the short run stress causes her to eat like a pig and gain tonnage? Huh? You are too tiny to be a plus-size girl, he tells her, so get a grip on yourself and release your grip on the fork.

Wind In Her Face comes into her own in this shoot and gets very Grace Jones. Natalie has been given Aminat’s old fro, and is told for the millionth time to show some emotion and get out of her comfort zone. She snarls, and gets high praise. Fo is giving lots of poses and faces and working it. Ciara loves the variety as she and Mr. Jay look at Fo’s film. AllisonKeaneLemur has to be brow beaten into giving any expression other than her usual slack-mouthed, dull-eyed stare. She glares at Mr. Jay and gets the Olsen Twin pursed lips. Aminat is lost and can’t find the light, the camera or a decent pose.

TYRAMAIL! Tomorrow we send another one of you useless slags home. LondonComeToJesus is in the confessional, talking about God’s plan for her. God wants her to be a model, so she is a little confused about why God is making her fat. I think that it’s actually more the laws of thermodynamics (more calories consumed than used) although Isaac Newton would say that is a manifestation of God.

Mike Ruiz is our guest judge tonight, and as Tyra intones, there comes into the judging room a bikini-clad boy, holding a giant bowl of something. There is some painful dialog and back and forth as Tyra ingests one of what ever is in the bowl and determines that it is a bowl of Brazil nuts. They will all, except tonight’s loser, be heading to BRAZIL!!! This devolves into some maraca playing by the judges and gives Miss Jay a chance to sashay around in a Carmen Miranda hat. She has no shame. She really doesn’t.

Natalie gets the first review, and Paulina calls her scary. Other judges find her to be stunning and fabulous, but agree that she needs to be more present in her face. Miz Shoes takes that to mean Natalie should try to project a thought once in a while. Aminat looks great in panel, but her picture is flat. Miss Jay tells her that she needed two cups of crazy and a pinch of insane. She would know. She probably has some to spare, too. Celia looks hot both at panel and in her photo. You do know that she’s not going to win, don’t you? She might come in second, but she is not winning. Paulina is thrilled to see her bringing it again this week.

Wind In Her Face related to the scenario better than any of the other girls. LondonComeToJesus is told that Paulina doesn’t love her over-the-topness, and Nigel clocks her for getting all pear-shaped. Miz Shoes says that Jesus didn’t bring the fierce when he inhabited her during the shoot. Fo was fabulous and AllisonKeaneLemur had a fierce face. If they say so. I suppose compared to her usual mouth-breathing, it was. She opens up to the judges, gushing over how much fun it was to shoot with Mike Ruiz, and how this was her favorite photo shoot to date. Nigel gets pissier and pissier as she talks. He reminds her that he’s a photographer, and that she’s shot with him. She just digs deeper and deeper until the rest of the judges take pity on both Nigel and her and shut her up and send her back to the pack.

The judging is quick: Natalie is a big question mark. Aminat has it all, but isn’t using it. She might be better for the runway than for print. Celia is the perfect stylist. Wind in Her Face is consistently good. LondonComeToJesus, in spite of having permanently smiling eyes, is not going to work in print or runway, and is a fattyboombabatty. Fo has perfect bone structure. AllisonKeaneLemur is a boring one-note.

And so the photos go to: Wind In Her Face, Fo, Natalie, Celia and AllionKeaneLemur who needs some instruction in how to care for that weave. The bottom two girls are Aminat and London. The judges look at Aminat and see a perfect face, perfect skin and a perfect body. But maybe she can only walk the cat walk. LondonComeToJesus has the best face of all the girls, and eyes that are always smiling. But she’s let herself get fat. Not only that, but Jesus did not bring his A-game to the shoot, and consequently although Jesus may be her saviour, he can’t save her from being sent home this week. Next week? Brazil. Nuts.

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.