ultranow

27 things i hate about tyra and america's next top model

1. the winner of season 9 went to tyra's t-zone camp when she was 14 so shouldn't have been eligible.
2. the winner of season 9 was in a national wendy's commercial already which by antm rules should have meant she wasn't eligible for the show at all.
3. the winner of season 9 has modeled in an antm season 6 runway show and on the tyra banks show.
4. the winner of season 9 is not high fashion at all.
5. i refuse to say "cycle" instead of "season" anymore.
6. tyra cast who she wanted to win with the hopes that an already working model could be more successful than past antm winners and prove that america's next top model really is a top model.
7. tyra eliminated jenah even though she took the best pictures, at tyra's own admission.  the reason was stupid so i'm not even saying it.
8. everyone who is on the show has seen the show so much they know what's coming and despite attempts at creating variety, there is none.  case in point, bianca knew if she said ridiculous, bitchy things in confession and with the other women she'd be kept in the house longer because she'd be needed for "good" tv.  as is typical, the house "bitch" makes it close to the end but never final two.
9. they recognized heather had a.d.d. so fed her the lines for the commercial, but the following week set her loose on the streets of shanghai expecting her to be able to focus enough to find locations on a map and ended up making it to only one go-see so got axed.  not that i know exactly how her disability affects her, but if she looked great enough and would pull in money for an agency, they'd spring for a damn escort plus she was my favorite and got canned fifth so tyra can suck it not that it matters really you know cause darfur matters more but i'm talking that about the stuff that doesn't matter and this pisses me off.
10. there were so many ads for yet another crappy cw show, the finale had at most 30 minutes of content and these included ads which seemed they were ending then got second crapwinds.
11. when tyra was walking down the runway as if a chinese queen she made eye contact to the side with where she knew the camera was and it is not royal behavior to mug.
12. then after sitting down to watch the show as ostensibly the royal ruler of all that somehow protects miss jay from being gaybashed by all of china, she ruined the royal fierce vibe by talking with such phrases as "saleisha's working it!"
13. tyra got into the youth market talk show market right after ricki lake abdicated.  tyra, i've met ricki lake.  i love ricki lake.  ricki lake had better drag queens on than you.  tyra, you are no ricki lake.
14. tyra remembered the whole "breaking them down" thing but forgot to then build them up.
15. i'm a fag and i don't want to have sex with her or look like her or have her friends or any shit like that.  she can have her life and i can have mine.  she is not in control of my destiny any longer.
16. she can not can't can not not not not sing and that time she tried hurt so bad.
17. she sits in waterfront property wearing a lacefront wig controlling weatherfronts with her dmitri casadine evil weather controlling machine from general hospital stupid plots from 25 years ago.
18. she is younger than me, richer than me, and for some reason feels the need to work still.
19. she promotes materialism.
20. janice dickinson was fired from top model because she asked for more money so we had to sit through years of twiggy soon to be replaced by paulina and while i also hate janice the idea of firing a woman who asks for more money is disgusting.
21. janice dickinson just called tyra fat and the fact the tyra is not fat yet is called fat is supposed to make me feel like i'm on tyra's side but i'm not because tyra just spouts semi-feminist values but doesn't live them which is a harsh thing to say but have you seen her show and the bland putrid cliches she spouts to people like she thinks she's oprah 2?
22. if she really meant to have a real size winner of antm, which she in an anti-feminist manner still calls "plus size", she'd cast a whole season of real size women instead of one or two tokens.
23. she wants to be super "accessible" and in so doing loses her real self which is what i thought at first but now i think there is no real self beyond what is shown and she is in fact bland and uninspiring.
24. she wasn't completely destroyed by naomi campbell even though i wish she had been.
25. when i first saw her picture, which i think was in a spread in harpers or elle back in 1990 or so, she was in a red dress and i was sitting in the university library and she was two dimensional and somewhere i wasn't yet i was also two dimensional and somewhere she wasn't because i was locked up inside my life so tight i didn't breath or move or live or live or live i didn't live and it seemed like behind her eyes maybe she was living but it's an act she's fierce but life isn't about fierce life isn't about projecting fierce even if it's supposedly being projected from within because life is about being within not projecting that within to get something like fame or money or glamour or hype or commercial endorsements.
26. she let cover girl take over top model thereby destroying couture mamas from making their mark as they should and as is most exciting to watch.  yes yoanna was couture.  goodbye top model.  goodbye tyra.  you disgust me.  and i'm wasting my time even now hating you.  it's just tv.  it's fake.  it's nothing.  but i needed to believe.  i drank the koolaid and it was good until it wasn't.
27. this is where i would normally say and the biggest thing i hate is i have to wait a few months for the next "cycle" but the biggest thing i hate is my willingness to surrender to trash tv at the expense of my life.  escape is false.  tyra promotes escape from life.  tyra is false.

jaslene gonzalez sorta making it after america's next top model

she's currently a spokesperson for love is not abuse and she's riding the almost too sexy edge for lot29.  more pics after the jump.  what the hell is she holding here?  some goop ass sugar straw?

america's next top model cycle 9 winner

i won't be exhaustively mytaking this cycle of top model.  the whole going to school, working, like looking for like "like" and like "love", cooking, cleaning, erranding - just can't add antm to it.  but after two shows i love heather the mostest.  she's goth fierce.  they better not blonde her out though maybe she'd look good that way too.  and she has ass burger.  which is how the other wannabe models pronounce what she actually has, which is asperger's.  not ready for something in life?  maybe it'll be too much, too soon?  maybe you'll fail?  as heather says her mom told her, they can only kick her out of the house once.  she can only lose once.  but she could also win big.  and so can i.  and wherever i work.  and whoever i like.  and whoever i love.  win.  big.  or lose.   small.

p.s. to heather.  hope you've been working on your posture.  it's not the bestest but who cares.

america's next top model cycle 8 finale

a woman...

whose dream...

comes true...

is the most...

beautiful woman...

in the world...

even when tyra is towering behind her.

jaslene gonzalez won the whole schmeer and so deserved to!  i am at peace.  and natasha "#2" galkina is back in texas.  is this what a fanboy feels like when a new videogame with a jessica alba 3d avatar comes out?  jas's success has also made my dream come true, for  back in february i wrote "i want jaslene to win though i predict felicia will." and i've never been happier to be wrong about a prediction yet right about a hope.

as for the episode, renee got called out as old around the eyes in her covergirl photo so got cut first.  by the way, she's 20, so if her eyes are that tired, she's clearly been through the ringer.  to add insult to injury they told her she had the best commercial and best covergirl photo, but for reading too old. because goodness knows girls can't relate to anyone who looks 23 or 25 or 27 because of how tragic it would be that said girls imagine themselves at those advanced ages.  still i was glad to see her go, because of how, you know, horribly mean she is behind people's backs.

natasha and jaslene both did well in the fashion show, each showing up at least half the other models in the show.  caridee (last cycle's winner) worked the catwalk also to much less success.  just call her stompette.  the best part was natasha's skirt falling off while she pranced.  she totally kept going and made it look like it was on purpose somehow.  since the clothes had elements of deconstruction, it worked.

in the end, jaslene proved she could put forth both commercial and editorial, and integrate her cha-cha diva self into the covergirl brand, literally bringing spanish into her improvised commercial read.  natasha's good, no doubt, but jaslene deserved to win, and will hopefully take it far.  the small print on her seventeen cover (is that hood supposed to balance out what some people, not me, see as her too square chin?) says "the real-life drama you didn't see on camera!"  damn you tyra!  how could you make me miss some drama?!  what secret will be revealed on june 5th?

p.s. loving you jaslene.

america's next top model week 10 rundown

i'm experiencing pafws:  pre antm final withdrawal syndrome.  from 4 to 3 to 2 to, gulp, 1, to, after the winner most likely swiftly disappears from pop culture sight, ze-ro.  mere days away.  but not before a quick journey to the land of aboriginal drag.  barely rising above village people indian makeup level, the ladies were given aboriginal stories to tell through their modeling, final product below.  but before the final photoshoot, the challenge consisted of each telling her own story using media of body paint, voice and movement.  the aborigine woman who introduced the task used the awesomely redundant wording "oral speech" which for me myself was the bestest phrase word pair sounds ever forever.

renee was up first and totally got it, telling a story of rising from the generic "abuse" while the aborigines and the editor of 17 (who told some lie about 38 million readers - did she mean per decade?) watched and judged.  she had just the right paint and colors and gestures and clear phrasing which managed to make the challenge look interesting and reasonable.  jaslene then gave a pageant type speech involving little synced movement or personality, but at least she was understandable.  natasha did some forest woman grovel dance and whispered her story, with the logic that when you speak quietly people really want to know what you are saying.  speak quietly, maybe.  whisper with no chance of hearing a word, then no.  dionne was resistant to the whole concept and though touching on the story of her mother's paralysis, wasn't able to turn it into anything coherent or engaging.  dionne was somehow worse than the soundless natasha.  as reward, renee finally got jewels she's been craving, which i'm sure she pawned as soon as she could.

natasha was sick for real.  walking/stumbling through the rainy cold woods in the ever impractical wedge shoe on your way to a challenge you fail will do that.  she stayed home while the others went out to a private room in a bar and (no real mingling allowed as australia is filled with gossip mongers too who i'm sure would gladly spill what top modelites they saw out and when) plotted her destruction.  they were sincerely pissed that they've never seen a picture of her husband or kid, as if somehow she doesn't actually have either.  they think she's fake or whatever is bad to them that's one syllable long.  at the club, renee encouraged jaslene and dionne to have great shoots because they needed to take out natasha.

judges say damn jaslene you're not versatile, this is the same pic we've seen from you before and you'll pigeonhole yourself if you have just one strong look.  yeah well i say she had dozens of other shots with different looks than this and you all picked this one just so you could label her versatility challenged.  yeah, judges, she ain't versatile. she's latina in every damn shot.  and on top of that, now they're scared how much she wants it.  what will happen if she doesn't win, they fear.  i know.  after a swift cha cha diva swish and prance out of the judging chamber, she'd still do everything she could to make it in modeling.  i've wanted her to win since she was a semi-finalist in cycle 7, okay?  jaslene...best...win. but if she doesn't, she'll still make it because she'll never give up and i need her to succeed so she will.  please.

natasha was sick and could not even get it together for one decent shot.  but her portfolio pulled her through.  still she could have pulled a danielle evans if she'd come up with a superb shot, like totally sick danielle had on that elephant in cycle 6.  memo to future antm contestants:  if you're sick, go to the hospital and get an iv and some quick energy shot of niacin or whatever it takes to be coherent for half an hour so you can get a decent shot, okay?  this is your chance.  use it.  because if you don't, tyra will just pull out that same old story of how she was sick with a 130 degree fever and ricketts and boobonic plague and it was snowing and on fire and the earth was flying into the sun and she got a great shot anyway dammit.

what a slam to go out after your best shot.  it would have been different if dionne didn't need complete direction during a shoot.  she doesn't bring anything to set and tyra hates nothing more than those who actually live up to model stereotypes.  now dionne isn't dumb, but when it comes to modeling ideas, she's empty, lacking self-awareness or imagination.  i'm not confident she has a future in the biz.  maybe catalog.  i'm thinking macy's.

renee used her momentum from the challenge win to give this shot that emphasized her statuesque cate blanchett vibe.  they keep telling her she looks too old.  then get her better makeup and lighting.  smear some vaseline on that lens.  that's what they do for dianne sawyer, right?  or is that cybil sheppard?  or greer childers from the body flex infomercial?  anyway, there's plenty of vaseline to go around.

at judging, the ladies were asked who should win and who shouldn't.  let the ganging up commence.  natasha was chosen as who shouldn't win by jas, ren and dio (she's fake and something's missing from her personality they all said), which nata perfectly deflected by telling the judges the others were jealous of her east european features because they are the most marketable right now, and that if giselle were still in it, the others would pick on her too because they'd see her as the biggest threat.  thing is, nata's right.  and dionne's out.  because when asked who should win, she chose jaslene.  brilliant, dionne.

for the finale, they'll shoot a covergirl commercial and then, if it goes as in previous cycles, the final two will have a runway duel.  i hope the final three get to do the runway show.  that would be a good change.  in the judge's minds, each of those remaining have their positives and negatives.  what's for certain is that the winner will truly be america's next top model, at least for five seconds until the next new thing walks into a real agency and supplants dear jas, nata or ren's place in modeling society.  is it too late for me to get a sex change, drop 15 years, and sign up for cycle 9?  i've got to get up close to this shit.

america's next top model week 9 rundown

go see week resolved the issue that has been paining me all cycle:  why do i hate brittany?  because she's a courtney love level high maintenance basketcase, just without the right hook.  plus her walk is fucked.  her elimination fate was sealed when the guest judge was the head of the australian modeling agency that sent them all out on the go sees, and most importantly enforced the 4:30pm deadline to be back at her agency.  dionne and renee were back with plenty of time to spare, probably because half the fashion designers didn't want to be in the same room with them too long.  jaslene made a good impression on all the designers and showed surprising and key, since it had been the judges biggest critique of her in the past, ver-sa-ti-li-ty.  plus she made it back at 4:29pm, thankfully.  natasha was a couple of minutes late and handled it gracefully, by which i mean leaving without a fuss and then saying to the camera that if she'd been on time she would have won, which was later revealed to not be true.  brittany was several minutes late and seeing natasha by the entrance didn't even go in.  But within earshot of the guest judge, right by her agency's front door, had a mega freakout, hurling her book to the ground, screaming how it was all her cabby's fault, though the clip showed it hadn't been, and just being a ridiculous crybaby in general, despite natasha's trying to get her to shut up.  it was later revealed in judging that this was the first time in antm history that someone, in this case brittany, didn't book a single pretend job on the pretend go sees. way to go, brittany!  home that is.

for what turned out to be a double fashion shoot, tyra was the photog and a mighty encouraging one at that - gentle yet firm, fun yet professional, talented yet untalented.  at one point, tyra said "i have to peepee, mommie."  guess the beach did not have a cabana with a loo, or whatever the aussie way is to say portable beach pisspot.  tyra mainly does her photog schtick to get a sense of how the ladies are on set, but this cycle clearly had a goal to showcase her skills more.  past cycles, tyra did quickie, low tech face shoes, not whole bodies with complex lighting.  tyra clearly knows what she's doing behind the lens, else someone's really good at photoshop.  the task was posing for both a men's mag (fhm, stuff, and um, hot rod mamas?) and a women's mag (vogue, cosmo, and um, playgirl?) showing the range it takes to make bucks.  wish there had been a third shot, posing for a bored bus traveler mag (harper's, utne reader, mega sudoku challenge).  so who did how?

jaslene kinda looks like her male model cohort and he kinda looks hot, so i guess she does too.  did i mention i'm homosexual?

barbie's feet don't ever relax from high heel position either.  i don't know why the women's mag shots are in black and white.  possibly all women are colorblind?

if she doesn't win, it will take natasha about three seconds to book a job.  if she does, five seconds.  while i don't want her, i do want to be her, on her weekend off near a military base.  that came out wrong.  what i mean to say is i'd like to look like her for a weekend and be fucked by hundreds of military men.  i hope that's clear now.  oh, and i'd like to be on top some of the time.

anna nicole is lucky natasha wasn't around back in the '90s day to steal her guess! jeans gig.  still sexy, which is not going to go away unless natasha gets really purposefully awkward in a shot, but the focus is on fashionable exhaustion not on titillation, so it works.

b is for the many ways i dislike you.  rittany is for all the other ways i dislike you.  bye.

you were really good as rogue in x-men, but you're not a model.

stiff and invulnerable.  i.  am.  not.  feeling.  it.

pssst, dionne, there's a guy behind you.  possibly you could interact with him in some way?  just a widdle bit?  you were really good at interacting during the go sees when you begged every designer to give you some of their clothes, which i'm shocked was not brought up in panel.

dammit, renee was good at this, and could be a threat to either jaslene's or natasha's victory.  she even pushed out her butt in this shot, garnering praise from tyra in judging for knowing how to work her body.  nothing like having a husband to make you be able to realistically portray desiring another man (besides the one you're stuck with for the rest of your life).

while i appreciate the generic artiness of this shot, isn't the pull my finger look more suited for a men's magazine?  tyra liked how in this shot she arched her back, instead of sticking our her butt.  tyra sure likes the weirdest things.

next episode, zsa-zsa jaslene, meany dionne, and grrr renee apparently gang up on natasha in some non-physical way, which becomes obvious to the judges, thereby guaranteeing natasha making it to final three because bad deeds shall not be rewarded in tyraland.  so where's my ticket to tyraland?  i need one real bad and i'll stomp on anyone to get it.

america's next top model week 8 1/2 rundown

in an effort to build suspense, or really to maximize the overlap into may sweeps, this past episode was a clip show.  still there were a few previously unaired bits, in which we learned:

• during the acting challenge, natasha did a ridiculously accurate impression of tyra in judging panel mode.  after asking a model why she wanted to win and hearing something to the effect of "as a beautiful black woman, i want to positively represent my black sisters and be a positive role model of positivity in a positive manner", natasha tyraed her response: "your believing you are a beautiful black woman makes me as a black woman feel even more beautiful in my black womanhood."  yes i just used tyra as a verb, and while it can have many meanings in this case it indicates "say slowly in a deadpan, overly serious and self-aware manner."
• renee and natasha spent three hours cleaning the pigsty of a bathroom during which jael walked past and said "what are you doing?"  um, they're cleaning.  have you heard of it?
• cassandra got actual frostbite from holding ice cream too long and not complaining after her fingers went numb.  this (as ms. jay says) "no neck monster" pic was her swan song anyway, so it was hardly worth it.  great gams though.

america's next top model week 8 rundown

the biggest slap in the face to the antm empire (greater even than the dual appearance of cycle 2 and cycle 4 winners yoanna house and naima mora in sheer cover infomercial before and after shots) just hit newsstands.  the may cover of vogue, while realizing tyra's dream of finally putting damn models back on the cover of a fashion magazine instead of jennifer aniston for example, not so subtly slammed the hell out of antm with the tagline "the world's next top models..."  second slap to tyra and powermodels of color in general is the placement of chanel iman (yes that's her real name) on the inside flap.  still as the cover asks "is the hpv vaccine right for all women?" so maybe the cycle 8 winner can model in an hpv vaccine ad, unless jaslene's cervix reads too draggy for the room.

this week the dollbots flew to australia, the location revealed by a plushie dream come true tyra in a kangaroo costume, or maybe her everyday look is a costume and tyra is genuinely a kangaroo.  she took the head part off, like marlene deitrich in that gorilla suit in blonde venus was it?  except unlike marlene tyra's reveal was not preceded by a massively racist 1930s musical number.  after jetting to sydney (during which there unfortunately was no graphic shown where their oversized heads were superimposed on the airplane windows like producers have done the last two cycles) the ladies immediately had to interview locals about fashion don'ts while incorporating as much aussie slang as possible.  the winner would make multiple appearances as a tyra show correspondent.  shockingly, natasha worked it out and won.  unshockingly, jael failed horrendously.

the main effort was a commercial for, of course, cover girl!  i must yell cover girl!  as everyone always does on antm.  jael's body language upon arrival at the shoot is prescient.  as she said about 70 times during the shoot, she does not feel comfortable with a cover girl! commercial because it's not a match for her personality.  i can't fully recreate her every word/action, except with one word - meltdown.  while on the ranch set girl talked to a chicken, for real.

did i mention they had to speak in australian accents?  quite the challenge for jaslene and natasha, and as it turned out, everybody.

jaslene was the only one to make it through the full script without the need for cue cards.  still she was a bit stiff.  did i say last time it wasn't fair to label her too draggy?  i take it halfway back.  she is draggy, but just draggy enough, not too draggy.  while she didn't pull off the accent, she did manage to not sound like herself, which was quite an achievement.  still love her, but her chances of winning are looking poor.  her presence is a bit too slight.

could anyone look more cg than this?  she has a megawatt smile and can pull off semi-high fashion and commercial.  natasha had the best energy, and actually slightly presented an australian accent which impressed the judges to no end.  i think she's pulled a borat and thrived off the judges and fellow contestants' stereotypes of, in this case, russian people as backward in some way, so when she demonstrates average or slightly above average smarts, she comes off as brilliant.  plus she really does follow the judges advice, which they love to see especially when it turns out they are right.  by the way, i don't have any of those stereotypes, because my heritage is part ukranian, not that i know shit about the ukraine.  but really i think i'm loving her because she's the female alexei nemov, except she's not a gymnast and i don't want to fuck her like i do him.  make that muscle alexei.  you can leave your wife alone for one night.

brittany had some huge car accident/head injury a few years ago, so her short term memory is shot, not that there is any proof how good it was before the accident.  but i believe her because even nerves wouldn't result in how many takes she needed, even with cue cards.  she'd forget her lines the moment she read them before she had time to get them out of her mouth.  still she worked the occasional aussie lilt into it and looked very cover girl!  i can't stop shouting that.  i don't hate her anymore.  i just think she'd be better if she were living in the '50s modeling in a department store window.  anything so i don't have to look at her.  ok, i admit it, i do hate her but i don't completely know why, unless it's that i perceive her as a threat to jaslene making the final runway show.

i don't have a pic of dionne on set, just in makeup, getting ready to disappoint.  mr. jay loves saying that "on set" part, as if the antm models are important - "we have modelicia on set..." whatevs.  she looked great, but as a commercial spokesmodelperson was so horrible.  she does not know how to sell makeup.  and i don't feel she wants it the most.  natasha, renee and jaslene have her beat on that front, at least in terms of the judges' perceptions.  and you got to want it to get it.

jael wasn't kidding when she griped about not being able to perk it up for camera.  she wanted an anarchist type makeup commercial, which at least in this spontaneous shot with brittany, she proves well suited. while she was doomed from the start, and 105% crazy throughout, she did bring out one of my main points which is the whole cg sponsorship partially sucks out the high fashion element meaning the winner won't really ever be the type that could land the cover of vogue for real.  bye, jael.  i severely won't miss you.  i suggest beauty school so you can become a beauty school dropout.  or hell, make your own makeup line - face stencils that spell out words like "revolt", "anger" and "chaos" all in the appropriately rattled, distressed font.

all i have to say about renee, besides how loud and manly (in a bad way) her croc hunter accent was, is "katherine helmond called.  she wants her scene from brazil back."

five left.  and two of those i picked as among the top four based solely on their first published shots (before the show even aired) are still in it - jaslene and natasha - which, statistically, means...nothing.

america's next top model week 7 rundown

this week's challenge was excrutiating, but what could be expected when it's an acting challenge led by tia mowry (or was it her twin sis tamara)?  jaslene screeched later in confessional: "sister sister!" because that's what the mowry's are best known for.  this confessional was immediately followed by the mowry emphasizing her current role in the cw sitcom the game, which would for sure be cancelled if it were held up to the rating standards of any other network.  no tia/tamara, you will always be sister sister. renee won because she was the best, yet somehow still bad.  whitney grimaced because she had felt she should own the acting competition.  finally something i can win at, she'd said, meaning she'd given up on winning at actually modelling.  the main shoot was so meta, involving dramas/models from previous cycles.  i will judge this cycle's crop and the oldies.  utter complete total full judgment of all available targets is my top priority.

the stupidest drama in antm history was the whole red bull/granola bar bs.  bre was such a damn baby about it.  and despite what the box says, granola bars are generally all sugar and fat, maybe yummy but not all that healthy.  bre's makeup wears her.  i've been over her since i first saw her.  as for jaslene, the judges are intent on marking her as early favorite who's now in a dangerous downward slide.  while she's not as immediately versatile as i'd initially hoped, i believe she deserves as much slack as those who start out horribly slow and then grow.  each should be held to an equal standard every week and by that standard, i still believe jaslene shines.  plus i'm sick of the whole drag queen label on her.  though she did label herself that last week, it was in a positive way, not how the judges are saying it.  what's any more drag about her than any of the other models?  they are all makeup splattered blow up dolls with limited emotional range.  oh, right, she's latina and sassy, so that equals drag queen apparently.  well excuse her for being too feminine and having a cleft chin. 

natasha nailed it.  despite the theme, it was still supposed to be about the shoes and natasha served up her tootsies like a pro.  michelle is still a no-neck monster, but now she's added lead dixie chick natalie maines lookalike to her limited modeling resume (she was on the janice dickinson modeling agency for an episode and didn't make the cut which is so tragic).

brittany got nothing but praise, both for her eye contact and her matching of the awkward body lines of amanda and michelle.  the concept for her shoot was so damn simple though - triplets.  tyra mercifully had brittany's painful weave removed.  i'm hoping something else is soon attached to brittany's body which makes her suffer, perhaps a sisyphus beer hat where the crazy straws are just ever so slightly out of reach.

lesbionic kim came back to make dionne uncomfortable with her lesbionicness.  dionne said she doesn't even kiss her boyfriend, which seems an extreme reaction to having been previously knocked up.  praise was heaped on dionne for her going for it, though in this shot she seems totally uncomfortable and looks so damn draggy, but in a bad way.  kim is damn hot, but not high fashion model.  more lesbian sears catalog, which is redundant.

jael go home now. you can't faint right. faint is not sex. you are out of control and can't take direction.  you can't even model the shoes well.  who wants to see the damn soles?  rebecca, who had fainted at panel because of a medical condition they are herein making fun of (like michelle's skin condition they had natasha mock) looks down on you literally and figuratively.  now that whitney's gone, it's your turn to go go go go go. 

i know renee is in this shot, but all i see is joanie.  judges agreed and got in a dig about how while renee had needed to ugly it up (not resting on pretty) she shouldn't have gone this ugly.  they also said in person she looks too old.  i would add that she's fake, which is of course why she won the acting challenge, for which she (and dionne who she picked as her friend) got to see their kids/family.  i bet her baby is an actor too.  hopefully when they go overseas next episode they pick somewhere that bitch is illegal.  at least she modelled the shoes well.  i'd rather look at them than her.  joanie is so hot.  renee who.

america's next top model week 6 rundown

for once acknowledging the actual world of modeling and in an attempt to stem the failure of the soon to be winner, twiggy (doing tyra's bidding) asked the ladies to select new names for themselves because the business requires full throttle standing out action.  just eliminating the wrong name won't catapult someone to stardom, but it will at least eliminate another obstacle.  jael and jaslene wisely chose the self-confident route and maintained their monikers since they already stand out just fine.  most memorably dionne went with hoolahay, which was later switched by tyra to brown.  natasha chose nata.  brittany chose brit.  and always the role model, tyra chose jesus.  names of some of the actual top models in the world (not just in "america") at least as ranked by models.com include stam, iselin, freja, doutzen and malgosia.  oh, and jaslene.  i'm hoping.

brandishing their names (some new) the ladies attended a smartwater product placement party and the other namedropped guests included 50 cent, paris and nicole, and that's about it.  they were called in to see tyra colleague and business associate benny medina and some other camp tyra members and had to make an impression.  jael and nata failed to make a positive one due to having been in the pool - in the middle of an evening cocktail party.  jael was pushed by 50 because she wouldn't leave him alone over and over and over and nata jumped in after because she loves peer pressure.  hoolahay (dionne) made the best impression according to mr. medina i'm pretty sure because she mentioned doing the show for her daughter and how much she missed her daughter.  or son.  some kid thing.  all that mattered was she cried.

the shoot was to create a model card showcasing a variety of expressions, meaning it veered sharply into commercial modeling territory.  the ladies were supposed to pick four aspects of their personalities (for some four was three more than they actually possess).  how did they do?  below are the cards even worth discussing, first those of my remaining two faves jaslene and natasha, then some of the rest.  i've left off whitney (who was awful) and sarah (who was even worse and got kicked off).

jaslene best be careful about her adjectives, as the urban dictionary definition of modeleque is "being like a paid high fashion model in appearance and mannerisms, but amateurish, and more often than not, the subject themselves is the only one who thinks so".  this was not jaslene's best week, though she suspiciously nailed "drag queen", creating a jon leguizamo in to wong foo feel.  potential kiss of death - tyra said that jaslene looks like janice dickinson, which by the way she totally doesn't.  tyra's just having vicious diva flashbacks.  poor tyra.

natasha was smart enough to set the bar extremely low for herself.  i would have liked one shot of the four where she wasn't touching her head/face/hair.  "happy" is so covergirl it hurts.

perfect expressions, fully inhabiting the frame.  i still hate her.  and so does her weave.  she finally complained because it's totally pulling on her real hair very badly, which if i were conspiratorially minded, i'd say the hair has been fine and brittany just fucked with it herself, then complained later so it seemed like it had been hurting her for a long time and she was so tough that she put up with it.  oh and i hate brittany.  she's the little red haired girl who wouldn't pay attention to charlie brown.

the guest judge i think it was said her "hood" pic looked like an angry housewife which miss jay said is the same thing.  "sensitive" looks like she heard someone died who she knows but doesn't know that well and people are watching her reaction and she's deciding how much energy to put into crying which i suppose miss jay would say is the same thing as sensitive.

"pink 2001"   "if i were a true anarchist, i'd be out of frame"
"i can make my bicep disappear"  "$50 to pee on you"

"bitch" "bitch"
"bitch" "excedrin"

america's next top model week 5 rundown

i swear one of my girls is going to win.  jaslene and natasha are still alive in this mess and now that natasha has nearly completely redeemed herself in my eyes, hopes of my predicting the winner don't rest solely on jaslene.  oh but jaslene is going to win.  or should.  or better dammit.  dartmouth whitney didn't listen to natasha during the challenge so their team lost, meaning russiany natasha understood english better than whitney.  they had to dress up in low rent department store clothes and form some sort of pathetic tableau.  whitney did not get on the podium, but instead fully sat on the floor, despite natasha's pleas, so their team was eliminated.

oh and natasha talked to her baby (or at least baby-talked to somebody) then had semi-phone sex with her 40something hubby (pussycat growl of desire).  all this while whitney dished that her husband had married natasha without having met her.  what is wrong with being a mail order bride anyway?  even those we meet, we haven't really met.  can one really know another?

it all circles around whitney, with renee showing her hateful faux concern to whitney with "do you really think a plus size model can ever be on the cover of vogue?  i mean, i wish one could be, but i don't see it happening" all the time sitting on whitney's bed of 2 more weeks til she gets cut.  whitney's like:  "get out of my face!"  of course her plus/normal sized cohort diana or diane (i just couldn't ever be bothered to learn her name because she had only half a facial expression) was the one to go this week.  hey tyra, it's great you wanted two normal sized models this time, but maybe you could have picked two that could actually model.  modeling industry affirmative action is for qualified candidates, otherwise it's a token thing that just reinforces the status quo in the end.

so for the photoshoot, enter the male models who elicit glee from the contestants, and are then revealed to be drag queen set decoration.  the ladies would be gents and vice versa and as it turned out, judges wanted realness.

jaslene is so effortlessly hot.  not just passing, but passing as a calmsexystrong guy who i want to kiss.  her girlfriend is cute too.  but what's up with the pink set?  is that supposed to make them look more male in contrast?  i know i look my malest when i'm surrounded by the pink.

natasha was so damn real as a teenybopper white hiphopper, which since it has a poser element built in, probably helped her pass.  her body language was sick real.  she even took a gum wrapper to make a mini-grill.  dorkface judges were all, hey you know what's similar about this week's pic and when she didn't say "i'm upside down again" they pointed it out.  first off, dorkface judges, she's not upside down this time, she's sideways.   you would be really bad crime scene investigators if you can't tell the difference.  secondly, if you don't like pictures of her like that, pick a different one.  i saw her take dozens of shots and most looked good and in lots of them her neck wasn't bent like that, 'kay?  the best part is she followed the judges advice of studying fashion magazines and practicing her facial expressions.  which was amazing because i didn't know they let them out of the house to buy a magazine.  i suddenly like her and it's not just because i'm part ukranian, genetically anyway.

brittany (and the other two below) were not in my top four, which had been based just on the first released shots, not on any walking or talking activities.  she's kinda kristen mcmenamy except i loved kristen and i hate brittany.  she's a snot who as a boy looks like topher grace, which doesn't help anything.  she's definitely going to make the cut to go overseas, which i'm thinking this cycle could mean rio or moscow.  did i mention i hate brittany?  unfortunately, she knows how to pose.  fortunately, she doesn't know how to strut.

dionne looks good, but she does not mix it up on set.  she gives zero variety, yet still ends up with a good shot.  but since the judges see every frame she's fixing to get cut.  she gives great confessional though.  if only she can bring that personality on set, she'll be a threat.  she is so femme from the knees down in this shot.

dear jael, didn't sonny bono crash into a damn tree and die?  why resurrect that, or is your quizzical, lost look that of a dead republican brought back to life for fashion?  please go home now.  p.s. your queen is ruling the shot and she's not even cher. 

america's next top model week 4 rundown

oh geez, i thought picking four wannabe models would up my odds of semi-predicting the winner.  only 4 weeks in, and another one of my picks is out.  i believe felicia, cursed by a resemblance to her tyraness, was held to a higher standard.  nobody who looks like tyra can be anything but flawless so as not to besmirch the good tyra name/look.  my fave jaslene is still hanging in.  damn she's good.  damn.  next week i'll have to adopt a couple of newbies so i have more photos to dish about than jaslene's and natasha's.  and since i want jaslene to win real bad, such newbie dish may tend towards the hateful.  ooh they put dani evans (past winner) in a real cover girl commercial, just for a couple seconds at the end after the queen, the latifah, did her mascara pitch, but still she was there, hopefully not just working off her $100k cover girl contract but getting into some new dough.

as for the current cycle, this week the ladies had to pose as if they'd been killed by a fellow antm model, because apparently that's lighter fare than posing as if you'd been killed by a man.  it's still fucking sick.  death glamour for all - and i thought kate moss had cornered the market on that.  what exceptionally tragic (and planned by producers) timing for jael, who'd just lost a friend to an od in real life.

jaslene served up that flawless broke down doll look, as miss j. says.  judges loved how she managed eye contact, yet still looked dead.  the spidery mascara helped.  in this pic, jaslene is over it and i am not over her.  in panel, she gave a special high energy jaslene bounce as she approached the judges, determined that they would not cite her for lack of flava once again.  they didn't.  she's through.  and even renee, the self-proclaimed bitch (who's totally being a bitch becaues she knows producers like to designate an official cycle bitch and keep her in for more weeks than she deserves if it were just going off modeling ability) had to give jaslene recognition for her ability to take a great picture.  you know you're doing well when other models gather behind the photographer to study your work.  jaslene was not intimidated.  by the way, if this whole modeling thing doesn't work out, i'll bet there are some necrofetishists who love a "dead" girl who can maintain eye contact.

i knew felicia was gone when just before the commercial break leading into panel, she said she felt totally safe.  judges said she didn't bring anything to the picture, that she was just laying there.  personally i think most people just look like hell upside down.  there was a whole golden girls on that when blanche looked at herself in a mirror, well not upside down, but down anyway, and just about had a fiftysomething heart attack.  if a photographer ever puts you in a useless pose, risk being deemed a control freak and make up a pose that works for you.  felicia could have at least smeared some blood on her face.  what confuses me is how they never once complimented her legs.  incroyable.  that's french.  bye, fel.

they stuck natasha upside down again, so for here i've flipped her photo.  yo panel, natasha looks more deader than felicia.  and when tyra asked her what's the same about this weeks picture, natasha didn't even know to say that she was upside down again.  natasha doesn't understand the concept of "same" which is going to make it really hard for her to follow driving directions like "take a right, then another right."  natasha is forever lost and still doing the tight lip push out serial pout.  she'll never get pegged as a one look model, because she only has a half a look.  i'm not saying she should have gone this week, but felicia shouldn't have either.  jael should have, but her friend od'ing get out of jail free and pass go card lasted another week.  next episode best be a full on beauty shot.  let's separate the wheat from the chaff, okay?  jaslene is wheat.  i'm hungry for oatmeal now.  are oats wheat?  no, that's cream of wheat.  this is total natasha non-reasoning.  i feel so close to her now.  yuck.

america's next top model week 3 rundown

week 3 was full of death, weaves and ice cream.  jael got a call from home that her friend died of a courtney love.  jael sat for hours in the salon chair only to have the hairdo fail and end up with a brownish red mia farrow rosemary's baby on top of her head.  jael cried to the judges about her friend dying.  jael didn't go home.  but neither did the remaining three of my antm four.  will one of my picks win the whole schmeer?  will the winner do any better in the industry than those who've been eliminated already?  will the homophobic (at least in the encouraging the audience to laugh at the homophobic times) will ferrell jon heder male ice skating couple movie rake in millions or pull a donut?  stay tuned.  for now, let's see my three in their (forgive me) sundae best.

oh my goodness jaslene is skinny.  oh my goodness she's kinda missing a leg.  oh my goodness she needs to eat what she's wearing.  oh my goodness i'm hypnotized by her crotch lolly.  how does she manage to have curves while being so lean?  now i'm hypnotized by her ass lolly.  so in judging she walks up to the panel and tyra immediately tells her to take out her earings, which were giant and dangly and not blank canvas enough, which is the look tyra encourages in panel.  jaslene complies.  tyra and the others compliment her photo but pick at her for her lack of flava and personality.  perhaps jaslene was trying to show some of that personality by her giant earings.  what is flava  beyond unique jasleneness?  what is tyra doing demanding flava while simultaneously demanding its erasure?  why is tyra batshit crazy?  jaslene stays.  next week i predict a heel kicked up in the air overly happy shot.  and just to appease tyra, jaslene will sport an "i'm latina dammit and don't you forget it" crop top, which won't be good enough for tyra.  perhaps a carmen miranda hairdo for her next shoot will match tyra's latina stereotypes.  for her makeover, she got thick luxurious curls, but those can always be covered over with fruit.  what tyra wants, tyra gets.

felicia looks like tyra.  felicia doesn't look like tyra.  felicia isn't famous enough for anyone to describe someone as looking like felicia so for now she looks like tyra.  not as in love with her t&v lollies as i should be.  and the crotch glob is disconcerting.  how is this not degrading?  if not for her, then for me?  she approached the panel with a michael jacksony lock and pop slide thing which they said she should drop because it made her look too video girl.  dancing aside, i am shocked she wore sneakers to panel.  should running from tyra be necessary, felicia could have just whipped her heels off and booked off the set barefoot anyway.  felicia looks good.  though her brows are overplucked to the max.  i have no idea who she is inside.  i think possibly a stick or a paper airplane or a centipede.  who is the real felicia?  according to her makeover, a woman with straight hair and long bangs.  ah, mystery solved.

they stuck natasha upside down so the blood would rush from her heart to her brain.  unfortunately her heart was bloodless to begin with.  they turned her brunette in her makeover.  yes, that's what the world loves - a dumb brunette.  here she is giving us the same "i'm pretty dammit love me you will love me of course" pout she always does.  she's so much prettier in person.  on film, she's all tight and grumpy.  natasha is a mess, a renée zellwegger squintalike. she's natasha and she needs to go home.  in like six more weeks so i can watch her stay stupidisms and model like a mollusk some more.  i can't wait to forget her.

america's next top model week 2 rundown

this week there were bad walks, exposed boobage, pointless tears, arrogance, self-doubt, cattiness and stupidity.  in short, the ladies went back to high school.  how oh how did my foursome do?  (my cycle long hedge bet is one will stand as the eventual winner.)  the shoot was all about high school clichés.  jewfag wallflower was not one of them, otherwise i would have excelled.

jaslene played the freak.  as far as i can see, her facial expression was nearly identical to last week's, though her body position was suitably modified.  off camera, she proved to wield both arrogance and a thin skin, not the ideal combination for a winner.  but she's still my favorite.  she needs to be okay with people hating on her.  i know tyra is.  jaslene, shed not a tear nevermore not ever, forsooth you are the maiden model of the moment.  that was deep with a capital eep.

tyra made fun of herself for thinking felicia looks great while knowing other people think felicia is a baby tyra.  with this photo, it just can't be denied.  unless they seriously mix up her look in the makeover show (will felicia get a head shave?) felicia just can't win because tyra would be accused of massive egotism.  though tyra is used to that accusation and may just not give a fuck.  plus technically tyra is not the only one picking the winner.  tyracloneness aside, with this display as class jock, felicia shows she's up for any challenge, as long as that challenge is perfectly tailored to her dance background.  she will last weeks and weeks.

samantha played the class tramp, who coincidentally hangs out by the same bleachers as the class freak.  she didn't ride the glamour/slut line right (not slutty enough) so was canned, meaning my four is down to three.  she had a missing tooth which will never be fixed by tyra's dentist and she missed home pathetically.  oh i'm on a famous tv show but please let me get back to my small town i miss my family!  whatevs.  i never even learned if she was okay with being called sam, which would have helped her last longer because it's a sexy name for a girl person.  bye sam. 

natasha failed horribly as teacher's pet, instead serving up an angry school dietician look, and i can't figure out if she really doesn't speak english or if she does but is just stupid and happens to have a russian accent.  if she really doesn't speak english they need to have an interpreter for real.  she's doing the classic resting on pretty thing and the judges hate that so severely i'm surprised she didn't get eliminated this week.  yet i'm so glad she didn't because she's donatella versace crazy but with nothing to lose.  somebody's going to get hurt, like the colorist who tries to turn her into a brunette on the makeover show.  you just know they're going to fuck with her.  love it.