Previously on America’s Next Top Model, there was much squealing. There were make-overs and freak-outs and Jessica went back to Puerto Rico to think about the difference between being pretty and being a model. Now, though, we are with the hamsters in their pink plaid limo and Wind In Her Face is happily remembering her fabulous photo. Nijah worries about having dead eyes and no discernible personality. In confessionals, Tahlia is off her game, and losing her confidence and Aminat is wearing yet another Mammy-rag. Have these girls no sense of history? Or, in the words of Clerk’s Randal, are they just taking it back?

Tyra Mail gives them the clue of Ps &Qs and the girls deduct that they will be going to runway lessons. This lets Natalie confide to the camera that she’s all that and a side of fries, seeing as how she is already a great model and she’s already been signed with an agency. We cut to the house catwalk, and Natalie is showing the others how to walk. Aminat suggests that perhaps Natalie should “take a slice of humble pie and relax.” Not bad advice. Natalie does not take it.

The next morning the girls are hauled off to Miss Jay’s Drag & Slag Charm School for Dummies. They are told to change, and find cropped chinos, faux pearls and twin sets. And heels. The key words are Grace. Poise. Elegance. And Smooth. Miss Jay sashays down the make shift runway and gives the hamsters a textbook example of a perfect catwalk. OK. I’ll say it. She may be a freak, she may be a queen with no sense of how to dress, but Miss Jay can fucking walk. Celia humps out first and gives a “signature walk” which she claims is essential to a star model. Fo is called a wind up toy. Nijah looks angry (better than dead?) Kortnie has a “certain wiggle jiggle” and needs help. This, translated, means that Kortnie leads with her tits. Tahlia needs help. LondonComeToJesus needs poise and grace. Wind In Her Face elicits an “Oh,dear” but the clear loser of the evening is AllisonKeaneLemur, who needs all the help she can get. She is pigeon-toed. She is schlumpy. She gets a book on her head. Natalie has confidence and Miss Jay loves her. And then, previous

hamsters come out to give the girls some tips. They are…. Binaca of the Stank Attitude and Chantallobotomy. Chantallobotomy tells the girls not to over think things. HAHAHAHAHAHA!!!! yeah. Cause that was one thing she never had to worry about. At all. Hell, she never even had to worry about thinking at all. Binaca of the Stank Attitude doesn’t say much at all. She’s too busy feeling superior to this lot. And one must admit, she’s looking better than ever.

Back at the house, the girls are playing a game of Truth or Dare. Someone licks someone else’s nose. For her “truth” question,Natalie gets asked who had the worst photo last week. She thinks that would have been Tahlia. Tahlia takes this personally, and stomps out of the room, and says that Natalie is selfish and that will either enable her to win, or cause her to fail. Tahlia is hoping for the latter. Aminat gives her moral support, or at least says things like yeah, you go, uh-huh.

Tyra Mail! tells the girls that a runway is a terrible place for excess baggage. They immediately recognize this to mean that they’ll be carrying bags on the runway. Wow. Two for two on the Tyra Mail. Someone’s got some brain cells bumping together this season. Before the challenge, though, Wind In Her Face has to get that Jheri Curl taken care of. She comes back looking absolutely the same to me, only with a hairline so far back on her skull that it bears a striking resemblance to Queen Elizabeth 1. She is so far beyond a five head, that she’s basically a twelve-pack head. The other girls gush over the change. Press on regardless.

The girls are going to walk in Jill Stuart’s Spring Runway Show. Walking and carrying shopping bags. And practicing their runway etiquette. This means no body checking the other models with their bags. Ann Shockett, editrix of 17 magazine will be in the front row with Miss Jay and Jill Stuart, evaluating the girls. And we’re off. Celia starts, and, as one would expect, rocks it. Natalie gets half way back up the runway and does a Mary Tyler Moore “She’s Gonna Make It After All” twirl, swinging her bags. Miss Jay and the rest of the front row are horrified. Natalie voices over how confident she is that she just raised the bar on giving good runway. LondonComeToJesus gets into the music and doesn’t even know she’s on the runway. In a good way. For Jesus. Nijah carries her bags in one hand, and Miss Jay just shakes her head. AllisonKeaneLemur says that she’s scared of narrow spaces, and walking on a runway is going to be scary. She clomps her way down and back, and despite her fears, does not fall off. Fo took Miss Jay’s advice from the morning before and radiates energy and confidence. Go Fo.

Backstage, Jill and Ann give the girls their critique. Jill was thrilled to open her show with Celia, who looked angelic. Fo had a huge personality. Wind In Her Face was a leetle bit stiff, AllisonKeaneLemur was cute and quirky. (And, no. She isn’t. She looks like some big-eyeballed bobble head. She’s just a fly and a blood vessel away from being a Big Daddy Roth Rat Fink.) Natalie had a beautiful walk, right up until she twirled and then she sucked. Tahlia needs more confidence. She was a little weak in the walk. And Nijah was pretty and feminine and needs to walk stronger. The prize will be clothes from the collection, chosen by Jill. She decides to give them to Natalie, despite the twirling debacle. Natalie takes this the way one expects from the smarmy, overconfident girl: she gloats. Then she gloats a little more and points out that she won, even though she screwed up, and that has just got to be intimidating to the rest of the poor loser girls.

As a poster-sized photo of Tyra stares disapprovingly from the wall over her shoulder, Tahlia talks on the phone to her sister, admitting that she’s had her confidence shaken and that she’s ready to come home. Tahlia’s sister gives her a pep talk. Be strong. What doesn’t get you thrown out of the house makes you stronger. Tyra Mail! warns the girls to give it their all tomorrow or they might get thrown under the bus. Only if Natalie and Sandra are standing in the back row, if you know what I mean.

Morning breaks over the lovely island of Manhattan, and the girls see Mr. Jay, wearing the weirdest freaking hat, come out of a double-decker sight-seeing bus. I can’t really pay attention to his speech about the shoot because I cannot figure out what the hell is on his head. It is seamless, and looks like the love child of an equestrian helmet and a baseball cap. Is is felt? Is it molded from fuzzy blanket material? It is blue, that’s for damned sure. The Number Three Surrogate Daughter is just as dumbfounded. In fact, the entire population of Miz Shoes living room quits talking and gapes at the blue helmetcapcloche thing. The RLA and his college pal are dumbstruck. The college pal’s daughter (who shall be known from this point forward as The MB-ette, and who has decided to join us for ANTM bashing on a regular basis) just looks at us and shrugs. I got nothin’ she says. The college pal’s son has a glazed look and can’t form words. The blue is really quite contrasty with Mr. Jay’s orange skin.

Anyway. They will be taking the bus around Manhattan, stopping in iconic places, and doing shoots pretending to be creatures who would naturally inhabit those places. The photographer is Mike Rosenthal, an ANTM semi-regular. Again, and this seems to be a trend this season, the girls will be doing shoots in groups. First up: Wall Street and Fo and Aminat are (power) brokers. They are propped with a lap top and a cell phone. They both get into it, role play and bounce off of each other. It’s a great shoot. Heading north, we go to SoHo, where Kortnie and Nijah are supposed to be Artist and Muse. Which is a joke, because I don’t think working artists have been able to afford SoHo in about 20 years. It’s also a joke because the two of them can’t interact to save their lives. Nor can they pose. They are lame and lamer. Nijah later confessionalizes about the shoot and wearing an American flag do-rag. What is it with head gear this season? Everybody seems to be sporting the do-rag.

Further up town, we have Sandra and Celia and a pram, as the two blondes portray overly-fabulous nannies. They, too, have some chemistry between them and work well together. AllisonKeaneLemur and LondonComeToJesus are supposed to be snotty Upper East Side frenemies. AllisonKeaneLemur is wearing a black sequined leather bar cap, perched in/on her hair. It is not a good look.They are supposed to be telling a story. Neither one can come up with anything. Together they are flatter than, well, they are almost as flat as Kortnie and Nijah. Then we see AllisonKeaneLemur confessionalizing with what seems to be a giant, knitted, baby pink and blue Easter egg on her head. It might be a Rasta knit hat, but it isn’t flopping down filled with dreads, and it isn’t being worn back off her forehead, and it isn’t red, green, black and yellow. It is a HUGE, pink and baby blue conehead dome. I have no idea what she was babbling about, either. The #3SD and the MB-ette both look to me for words of comfort and wisdom. I shrug. I got nothin.

We end at Times Square, where Natalie, Tahlia and Wind In Her Face will be posing as tourists. This should be a slam dunk. It isn’t. Wind In Her Face has a giant pretzel. She takes a bite out of it. Mr. Jay tells her to lose the mouthful, and instead of swallowing, she spits it out. Big, gooey, wet, chewed up pretzel blargh goes over the high side and probably hit some Japanese tourists. So much for poise, grace and elegance. Tahlia was the star of the shoot, and Natalie trash talks her for it. Of course. With that, we are ready to go to judging. AllisonKeaneLemur is scared of judging. Of course. And narrow spaces. And she wishes she had nose bleeds. This child is odd.

Our guest judge today is Jill Stuart. Since they took group photos, they will get group critiques. We begin with Kortnie and Nijah. They did not tell the story of artist and muse. They had nothing about them that said SoHo. Nijah, in particular, sucked. Fo and Aminat are called up and Paulina declares that they both look like models at panel today and that this has now made her happy, as has their most excellent shot. Celia and Sandra are next, and before anyone can go anywhere, Miss Jay tells Sandra that her knees are ashy, and she should spit on her hand and shine them up a little. Their photo garners some raves. So editorial! So NOT nannies, and that’s a good thing. Nigel loves Sandra.

Tahlia/Wind In Her Face and Natalie failed the Times Square Tourist shot. Natalie just phoned it in and was Not In The Moment. Wind In Her Hair has nice teeth, and you could see all three hundred of them, all the way to her tonsils. LondonComeToJesus and AllisonKeaneLemur did not fare well either. Paulina tells AllisonKeaneLemur that she “looks like a hung over Olsen twin.” Schnort. Good one, Paulina. Worthy of La Dickenson herself. LondonComeToJesus gets the damning praise of looking “pretty.” We see a commercial of which former contestant is actually working, and it’s all about Binaca of the Stank Attitude. Apparently she’s the new face of Barbados tourism, or some other Caribbean island. Good for her. We also see that, despite bitching a blue streak when Tyra cut off all of HER hair, she is still working the shaved head full time. Hah. And snap.

Back in the judging room, Paulina says that Kortnie may have more potential than she originally thought, and Nigel says, prissily, that for a shot that was supposed to represent Artist and Muse, it was neither artistic nor amusing. Oooooh, Nigel has his bitch pants on today. You go, Nigel (call me). Nijah is a pretty yawn. Fo, Aminat, Sandra and Celia are all great. Natalie, Wind In Her Face and Tahlia get a pass, but there is some major hating on Natalie. LondonComeToJesus is called pretty and AllisonKeaneLemur is called disappointing. She can do better. She can?

Eleven girls, ten photos. Sandra gets the first photo, and it will be displayed in the house with Celia cropped out. Mean. The rest of the pictures go to Aminat, Tahlia, Fo, Celia, Kortnie, LondonComeToJesus, Wind In Her Face (Tyra says the hair is better now, and so it must be), and Natalie. Ha. Close to the bottom, there, ego-girl. Nijah and Allison are called up for their final dressing down. Nijah is so beeeyoutiful, but she gets lost on film. Allison is a fucking freakazoid, but when you photograph her, she looks like nobody or nothing special. So who goes and who stays? Nijah goes home for being bland and pretty, and AllisonKeaneLemur gets to hang on until Tyra is tired of trying to make this sow’s ear into a silk purse.

Next week, the return of the Drag Queens, Benny Ninja and Celia plots to kick someone off for not wanting it enough. Who would have thought that Celia would be the ringleader of a backstabbing?

Surrogate Daughter Number Three on the couch? Check.

Wine poured? Check.

Brocolli rabe simmering in olive oil, garlic, lemon juice and white wine, waiting to get tossed over pasta? (Carbohydrate loading is important when viewing anorexic girls) Check.

Why, it must be time for the bitches and the hos! And we open on a view of NYC at night. Really, I cannot play a drinking game while watching ANTM, or I’ll die of alcohol poisoning. I can’t even keep track of the cliches. Let’s just assume that it’s all trite, and move along. AllisonKeanetheLemur is confessionalizing about something or another. I couldn’t tell you what, exactly, as I was utterly mesmerized by her beige mummy wrap which she had spiraling around her head. In the kitchen, Sandra and Animat are having a throw down over breathing each other’s air, or something equally inane and pointless. Sandra is wearing a Mammy-style head wrap. What is it with the do-rags on this batch of hamsters? Sarah flounces off, saying that she ain’t paying anyone else no nevermind, because “it is all about me.” Huh. Who’d a thunk that?

Tyra Mail tells the girls something about turning heads. They have no idea what this means. As ever. In the morning, they hit the street to find their new ANTM chariot awaiting: it is a pink stretch limo. So much for the going green of yesteryear. One of the hamsters describes it thusly: It’s pink. PINK!!! And it has these lines going all over it. That would be called “Plaid”, darlin’. It’s an old invention. You might want to brush up on some of that technical fashion lingo. In her defense, Miz Shoes would probably have been struck dumb her own self, faced at that wee hour of the morning with a pink stretch limo with lime green and purple plaid, like Lilly Pulitzer on bad acid.

Cut to the Two Jays at Bergdorf Goodman’s. They are engaged in some painful dialog with Miss Tyra over a badly animated i-phone, in which the conceit is Mission Impossible. There are dossiers. There is gaggingly bad acting. There is no need to linger on this memory. The girls arrive for their make overs, and are taken to John Barrett’s salon, somewhere in Bergdorf’s. They are told that they will not know what they are getting until they’re done. OK, let’s go.

Jessica gets edgy, shorter hair with a wave and a little red undertones. She takes another awful picture. Sandra gets her head shaved down to fuzz and bleached blonde. It pains me to say that she totally rocks it and doesn’t bat an eyelash. AllisonKeanetheLemur gets a big blonde weave and looks like a Walter Keane painting of Heather Graham. She says it makes her feel like a mermaid. OK. Nijah, who is really beautiful and doesn’t get any airtime admits that she hadn’t washed her hair in two weeks. The guys at the sink say that they’re going to have to toss the sink. Ick. She gets a long weave. Fo is too cute, so she gets a short, short boy cut. She sobs. Celia’s cheekbones need to shine, so her hair gets chopped into a Bridget Neilson sort of high faux hawk. Someone voices over that her hair was as dry as Gandhi’s sandal. Pretty funny. Animat’s fro turns out to be a weave, and it is cut off. Miss Jay waltzes around the salon wearing it like a bolero. Instead, she is given the Naomi Campbell, Cherokee Nation Cher long, straight weave. It takes her beauty down about twenty notches, and makes her look like the love child between Danielle and TiffanyfromtheHood.

plus

equals

Kortnie is too tan, so she gets red hair. It actually looks good. LondonComeToJesus gets some short, yellow blonde Twiggy cut, and rocks it for Jesus. Natalie has a melt down and cries and cries and says that she can’t let them cut her hair and has a freak out and then, GOTCHA!!! They weren’t going to cut her hair at all. Or dye it. Or do anything at all to her, they just were testing her desire and trust levels. Creepy. This pisses off the rest of the hamsters who don’t get why Natalie is considered “perfect” as is. Teyona gets a slick Jeri Curl weave. Tahlia gets a lion’s mane big blonde weave and it sucks.

Sarah trash talks Fo for crying over her hair. Then Fo gets in the confessional with yet another freakin’ do-rag and sobs and sobs and says that she’s never felt ugly a day in her life, even when she was living on food stamps in a shelter with her moms, but now, she has to hide her hair to feel pretty. Miz Shoes just wants to know how these girls have all managed to get to this point in their lives without ever having a bad hair cut. If Miz Shoes had cried over every bad hair cut she had as a child, she would have been dehydrated until she was 18 and in college, when the shag first reared its choppy head. It is the shame of Miz Shoes’ life that the shag, in all its variations, including and particularly the Roger Daltry in the 80s version, has always been the best hairstyle she’s ever worn. For the shag alone, Miz Shoes is accepting of the 80s revival.

The Challenges

Then Jessica confessionalizes that there isn’t anything that anyone could do to make her ugly. Except, one supposes, film her egocentricism and broadcast it for the world to see. That seems to be doing it for me. Moving on, we see Sutan (who’s looking good this season) and Elyssa Starkman, the Cover Girl liaison. They explain to the eager little hamsters that since there isn’t a WalMart in Manhattan (thank you Jeebus) they have brought the Cover Girl/WalMart make-up display to the girls. Their challenge will be to wander around in whatever part of town they have created this display set, grab a total random stranger who embodies the Cover Girl gestalt, and drag her in and sell her the new line of eye-color enhancing mascara. Which, to my further shame, sound interesting enough to try. The girls are broken into teams, and the winning team will get a photo shoot and ad somewhere. I don’t know where, because the pasta water was boiling, and the brocolli rabe needed stirring, and I was in the kitchen. The teams are Sandra, Animat and Celia, and there is surprising little drama in that combo. Fo, Kortnie and Wind In Her Face; Jessica, Tahlia and LondonComeToJesus, who have the best make up skills, but Sutan tells them that this isn’t America’s Next Top Make Up Artist and their sales skills were dismal. The last group is AllisonKeaneLemur, Natalie and Nijah. They are critiqued as taking the make up to the girl, not dragging the girl to the make up display. If you’re paying attention, this means that the Sandra/Animat/Celia team is the winner.

Next is the obligatory dinner out scene. They go to an African restaurant, which means that Sandra is lording it up. Animat is of legal drinking age, and wants a glass of wine. This prompts warnings from Sandra not to get drunk, and devolves into yet another Aminat/Sandra girl fight about class: who’s got it, who don’t. It’s sort of a draw, in that Sandra is saying that Animat is all trashy, which is blatant. A classy girl would just sniff that Animat is “interesting, bless her heart.”

Tyra Mail: How many girls does it take to screw in a lightbulb? All of them, because none of them have the slightest clue what this might mean, other than another photo shoot. They head off in the ghastly pink plaid Barbie Limo to a dark alley. There, Mr. Jay throws a light switch and tells them that the shoot will be all about lighting. They will have to light and direct themselves. The photographer is our own Nigel Barker (call me). He tells them that it’s a rock and roll theme, which means big hair, Trash and Vaudeville clothing, and a lot of eye make up. The girls are handed light bars (technical note: they are slave units, which means that when Nigel shoots, they are triggered by photo sensors which detect the main strobes going off) and told to work it. They will be shooting in groups. AllisonKeaneLemur is up first and Finds The Camera.

Nijah is disappointing to Nigel, because she has no passion. Jessica is underlighting herself. Mr. Jay explains it as holding a flashlight under one’s chin to make a horror face when telling ghost stories around the camp fire. She continues to do it, anyway. Nigel says that she didn’t understand the concept and couldn’t feel the light. (The pasta was done at that moment, and #3SD took over the notes). Animat takes risks and gives a crotch shot. (NICE. Missed that) Celia is in the background, and upstages Animat. Sandra stands smirking in the background. Celia understands the concept and how to work the lights, and does the best so far. Sandra (of course) is overthinking and looks bored. She needs more attitude, but ends up giving more character.?

Kortnie bores Nigel to tears, and he rips through the required number of shots without comment or direction or feeling. LondonComeToJesus complains that having to light oneself is Not What Models Do. Wind In Her Face is a genius and throws down some amazing poses. Fo is too nervous, and has completely lost her mojo with her hair. She actually cries on set. Mr. Jay asks Fo if without the sassy do she feels like a Plain Jane, and she says no, that she feels like Plain Jane’s brother! Sting! Natalie takes beautiful shots and gets lots of compliments all around.

Panel/Judging

Prizes. Judges. The guest judge today is Nole Marin who used to be a judge back in the first couple of seasons. He does not have his little dog with him today. Miss Jay’s schtick this year is going to be her stupid bowtie. It’s going to get bigger and have more layers each time a girl goes home. Good lord. No. Please. Just. No.

Fo is up first and given a beat down for letting her make over get the best of her. Tyra explains that only girls with beautiful faces get short hair. Miz Shoes will let that slide, and not review every slag she’s put into a boy cut. Nole tells Fo to step it up and swallow the tears. Kortnie lit herself poorly and wasn’t feeling it. Maybe she needs a pit crew. Nijah is wearing a pink blouse that Nigel/Tyra/Miss Jay and Nole all gag over. She’s told that she looks like she’s wearing her nightshirt to panel. Then they tell her that she has dead eyes in her photos. LondonComeToJesus is “willing to go there” whatever that means. Ah. It means her photos are good.

AllisonKeaneLemur is the poster girl for looking like an alien is beautiful. If they say so. Her photos aren’t bad.

Paulina gets her licks in at Sandra, whom she states “radiates dullness.” Schnort. There is no tension in her poses. Tyra demonstrates tension. Celia works it, displays tension in her photos and took fierce pix. As much as she’s older than dirt, and sorta smooshy faced, girlfriend knows her fashion shit. She always comes to panel dressed to impress. She knows how to take a picture. She could go all the way, except, you know, she has talent and we don’t much care for talent on ANTM. Jessica gets a put down from Nole who says she may be a novella star where she comes from, but not here. Snap! Tahlia isn’t modeling, she isn’t giving tension, she’s just a girl with… (and here my notes end. A girl with big dreams? A girl with big scars? A girl with a light stick?) Natalie comes to panel wearing a dress with doilies for sleeves. Nole proves that Tyra was wrong when she let him go (and needs to bring him back stat!) when he looks at this and exclaims “Do you girls even look in the mirror before you come here?” Wind In Her Hair totally rocked the shoot, but seeing the Jeri Curl weave, Tyra is not happy, and tells her that the weave will have to go. Animat got lost in the crowd in her pictures.

The judges deliberate thusly: blahblahblah, Paulina is disappointed in how dead Nijah photographs. Sandra has no personality. (Sure she does. It’s just stank.) AllisonKeaneLemur fierce alien. Celia is always on the catwalk at panel. Paulina is not convinced that Tahlia can model. Jessica is a “disaster, disaster, disaster” (that must have come from Nole). Wind In Her Face is fantastic on set. Animat is so awful (that weave, people, it stole her mojo) that Nole can’t even look at the pictures.

12 Beautiful Girls, 11 Photos

Wind In Her Face (Teyona) gets the first photo and the news that the Jeri Curl has got to go. She’ll be looking different next week. Celia. AllisonKeaneLemur. Natalie. LondonCometoJesus. Nijah. Tahlia. Sandra the Drama Llama. Kortnie the Pit Lizard. Aminah (bring tension!!) and Fo and Jessica are the last two. Who will stay? Will it be poor Fo who lost her mojo when they cut her hair and she even (gasp!) cried about it on set? Or will is be the pretty girl who doesn’t translate to film and who relies on pretty? Oh, come on. Like you can’t see this coming a mile away? How many seasons have we been watching this train wreck? Of course the pretty girl goes home to learn humility and fierceness, and the sobbing wreck stays to sack up and make a come-from-the-bottom redemption.

Next week? Miss Jay’s Charm School. One can only imagine.

Previously, there was much squealing, bitch-fighting and bad acting. Now, we are off to New York City with our fabulous final thirteen. Let’s review, shall we:

On Saturday, I sat down at my laptop, notes and manuals to my right, coffee cup to my left. I wrote a brilliant recap of part two of the ANTM premiere. I uploaded it. I backed up some, but not all of my site, and, before I began the coding of Paypal into Mild Burning Symptoms, I decided that it would be advantageous to update the software that runs this site. I was wrong. I was wrong in ways I have still to count. To say that I blew up Girlyshoes would be an understatement like saying that George W. Bush wasn’t the best president we’ve ever had, and maybe not the brightest. It would be an understatement like saying that George Clooney and Brad Pitt aren’t too bad looking. It would be an understatement on a par with saying that Paris Hilton is maybe not the classiest girl to ever climb into a limo and onto a trustfundnista. Perhaps I am belaboring the point, but I fucked Girlyshoes right out of the world wide web.

I’m not a total dolt, and I was able to reconstruct my data base, missing only two entries. One (ANTM part one) I was able to find cached in Google. The other? Maybe. Maybe not.

I’m sorry that you’ve not been able to keep up with the fabulousness that is my pathetic life, but them’s the breaks. Hah! Get it? I broke my site.

God, I’m pathetic. And also tired. It took four days of constant help desk consultations on, not one, but two sites (my hosting company and the software company) to rebuild and repair Girlyshoes. And I still have to sit here and figure out the Paypal thing. All I want is to go back into my studio and sit at my spinning wheel. But no. I have to write code. And more code. And try not to fuck anything up again.

And then? More photos, more code, and launch the virtual garage sale.

In the meantime, the birds are mocking me. I hear them, and I see the seed levels go down in the feeders, but the little feathered bastards won’t show themselves while I’m out there watching. Mocking me, I tell you. And the squirrels? Oh, my lord. The squirrels have attitudes. These Miami squirrels don’t do dried corn. My brother’s squirrels up in St. Lucie County, they love corn. My guys? They turn up their furry little noses, and refuse to eat it. They didn’t eat the pumpkin seeds, either. I had to give a big bag of squirrel chow to my brother, because the fluffy-tailed tree rats only want peanuts and sunflower seeds. The little beasts eat better than I do. At least my hummingbird is faithful and doesn’t complain about her sugar water.

The dogs are unimpressed with this sudden influx of fauna. They bark a little now and then, just to establish their territory, but really? they don’t much care. The only birds who’ve come and made a regular stop are the mourning doves, and a couple of ring-neck doves. I like them fine, but I’m doing this for color and song, and the doves have neither. Oh, a little cooing now and then, but half the time, I can’t even tell they’re out there because they are the same grey brown as the dirt under the palms.

That’s it. I’m exhausted. And so, to bed.

Once more into the bitches, dear friends. The Number Three Surrogate Daughter arrived, the popcorn was made, and Miss Tyra commenced torturing the dumb and the ghetto and the delusional and the just plain weird. We begin, for no apparent reason, at Caesar’s Palace in Las Vegas. The #3SD and I anticipate all sorts of torture, in which the clueless hamsters are made to strut like showgirls with a stack of books on their heads. Alas, such is not the case. The theme this year is Fierce Goddess, and so, with much squealing, the girls are all given gold gladiator heels and micro-mini togas and told to work it.

There are profile shots. There are unusual names: Fo. Aminat. There is the first runway, where the fog machines are working overtime, and the girls are told that they are walking on clouds. Clods, maybe. Clouds? Not so much. We get our first view of our first whack job: her name is Monique and she’s a conspiracy theorist. In the few minutes we see her, we get the Tri-laterals, the Elite, that Pearl Harbor was a set up to get the US into a war and a tin-foil hat. Just kidding about the tin-foil hat. Up next, London and her twee little brow-band. London is a street preacher who wants to praise Jesus all day and stomp the runway all night. Miss Jay says (and rightly so) that she looks more like a street walker than a street preacher. Miz Shoes and the #3SD look at each other and decide that London will be falling the day she has to get naked for a photoshoot, and we hope that it’s the first challenge.

Someone in the pack voices that OMG, here come some “staunchy dudes” and they are escorting in Tyra. This sets off another round of squealing. Tyra delivers (and by delivers I mean hams it up with a bad accent and worse “acting”) the back story that the Goddess of Fierce (herself) is tired and retired and seeking a new goddess to take over. Yeee-ah. Ain’t gonna come from this crew, darlin’. Unless it’s that 8-foot tall glamazon with the afro there in the back. Holy mackerel, is she hott! And tall. And she seems capable of walking in heels.

Angelea has three-inch long blue acrylic nails. She’s this season’s cha-cha diva, I think. She claims to be from Buffalo, but she talks like any other ghetto-girl-wanna-be, with the vague accent of somewhere and the chonga earrings and the plastered down side bangs. And a jaw like Jay Leno. She is rough. On to the interviews.

Sandra is first, and she is black and beautiful. When Tyra tells her this, she totally breaks down in tears. London shows her street preaching skillz. Jessica has an ego. Tahlia has some wicked ass scars over her belly and legs. When she was 8 months old, her mother left her alone in the kitchen with a coffee pot. She pulled the cord and pulled the pot down on herself resulting in major burning. Many surgeries. She is proud, she says, of her scars and wants to be a role model. She has the face of an angel, so good luck. Monique comes in and delivers another lecture about Pearl Harbor and government and what not. In her bikini, she is revealed to be stoop shouldered to the point of looking like a scrawny yet pot-bellied question mark. She will not be staying. Mark my words.

Natalie is a spoiled rich bitch. Animat is our glamazon. She is 6’1” and she does indeed walk in heels. Combined with the afro, she guesses that she rolls at about 6’7”. And she is just drop-dead beautiful. If she can keep it up, she’s our winner. Some hamster has panic attacks. Celia has a Really Bad Blonde bleach job, with bleached out eyebrows to match. She’s our oldest hamster at 25, and that hair and her bad makeup combine to give her that Rode Hard Put Up Wet look we all love. On the other hand, she knows her shit about fashion, and she can even twirl aswirl. And she dresses like a model. With the right make over, she could be another contender. The next girl collects gimmicky pens, and has brought some for show and tell. Tyra is not impressed. Tyra is less impressed when the girl can’t name five working models, or five current designers.

We next see another white ghetto trash talker, this is Alex from Tampa. She’s making Angelea look classy. Isabella has Julia Roberts’ smile and epilepsy. Fo is a little gummy when she smiles, has freckles and self-identifies as a Blaxican (black New Mexican, but she didn’t know she was black until she was ten or so and met her dad for the first time. I’m guessing mummy didn’t talk about him much.) Angelea has to take off the chonga earrings and the My Little Pony wig, and she still looks like crap, but she has a great set of stems. Kortnie is our marginally plus-sized girl. Allison is a lemur.

She looks like a Keene painting or a Japanese anime and she has a fascination with blood. She tells Tyra that nosebleeds are beautiful. Tyra says that she used to get them as a child. Allison says, with a valley girl inflection: Jealous. The seismic tremor you feel is the entire viewing audience getting the shivers at the same time. Eww. Teyona is tall, black and tight. She will now be known as Wind In Her Face. She is declared to look fashionably alien. If you say so.

In order to whittle down the numbers to a lucky 13 (it being Vegas and all) the girls are tossed back into their goddess gowns and given a goddess to portray. There is the usual elbowing at the makeup table. There is a horrible bitch-fight between Sandra and Angelea (of course). Angelea has given herself magenta cheeks and eyes. She is attempting to be the goddess of love, but she says that, and I am not making this up, “Sandra has been trying to pull my buttons” and so is not feeling the love. Pull. My. Buttons. Where do they find these freaks girls?

With this photo shoot in hand, the judges (Hi Nigel. Call me) bring it down to: Aminat, Allison the Lemur, Isabella, Celia (2 cups of crazy in her eyes, says Miss Jay), Fo, Jessica, Kathryn (who is the goddess of who knows what), Kortnie, Someone whose name I missed completely, LondonPraiseJesus, Nijah, Natalie, Sandra and Tahlia (not skinny, not plus and scarred.)

I have two train stories today.

On the morning commute, there was a college writing professor sitting across from me, reading papers. About two stops in, a burly young man wearing ID badges from the local VA, and those hung on a lanyard that said MARINES, sat down next to her. All of a sudden, through my earbuds, I hear her yelling at him that he’s touching her. I look up and she is pointing to where his jacket hem is in the crack between the two seats. I hear him say, quite calmly, “ma’am, you are touching me. He scoots forward on the seat, and folds his hands over the top of his cane. For the rest of the ride, that woman rode him, elbowed him and complained at him.

It’s only because I have been less than on my best game that I didn’t think to say to her “Don’t make me separate you two. I’ll turn this train around if you don’t stop.”

What I did do was this: when the train stopped downtown, and all three of us got up to leave, the woman made eye contact with me. I pulled my earbud out and said, conversationally, “You know, even with the headphones on, I could hear you bitching at that man.” This made her think I agreed, apparently, because she immediately launched into the “he was sitting too close to me” rant, but I interrupted her. “No,” I said. “You were rude. It would have been rude to talk that way to anyone, but the man is a veteran, fer Christ sake. Show a little respect and appreciation.” She started to squawk, and I interrupted her again. “No. You were wrong. You were rude. Period.” And stuffed the earbuds back in and stalked off the train.

The ride home could not have been more different. I was sitting near a young black couple and their adorable son (corn rows and a Miami Hurricane jacket). I was working on one of my nellyphants, and she asked me what I was knitting. I pulled a finished-but-for-his-ears nellyphant out of my bag, and she grinned. “It’s an elephant, but he doesn’t have ears yet. Still, if you wouldn’t mind…” Oh, no, she said, she wouldn’t mind at all. So I gave the ear-less nellyphant to her son. He dug it and started playing with it immediately. The father kept telling the little boy to say thank you, but he was too busy playing. “It’s OK,” I said, “he’s too shy.” They told me that he had just turned three on Valentine’s Day. What a great present he was, I said and the mother smiled. Then the father said “he may not say thank you, but he can say the President’s name.” We asked the little boy who the president is, and he piped up, loud and clear “OBAMA”. I just about cried.