America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 Recap: Beware of the Bird

(note: I will eventually post my spectacular soul moving Chicago pics, as soon as they are finished uploading to Flickr, which at the rate they're going should be by sometime next August..)

Once upon a time, in a large metropolis by the sea, a very pretty very old princess was getting cosmopolitan bored. Princess Paulina had once been a great beauty, renown for her wrinkled nose and very curly tail. Now she sat in her gardens sighing, while courtiers pranced around her, vying for her attention. The sad, sad life of a washed up fashion whale was hers, doomed to flounder on the sand, gasping for air, while well meaning commoners doused her with water.

4 travelers came one night to the gates of the city. The Queen, the Prince, the Tin Man, and the Rogue had been wandering the countryside for weeks, searching for the famed Cover Girl Contract of Certain Fame. Apprehended by the royal guards, they were brought before the Princess Paulina, who clapped and laughed with joy at the prospect of new entertainment, as she had tired of imitating strange fey English men. Her handmaids held the prisoners down, and dressed them in garish flounces and ribbons. The Princess then brought out her favorite pet, a large black bear by the name Fernando, who had once hunted on the slopes of Siberia, who had once drank the waters of the mighty Volga, and who now in his captured senility danced an awkward samba with our terrified heroes.

One by one the bear paraded them around the great hall/rooftop. First the Tin Man, whose joints screamed for oil and love, but the cries fell on deaf royal ears. The Queen persevered, knowing that true royal blood can handle any task, and not even a bear’s hot breath can melt a truly cool exterior. She glided and smiled, twirled and plotted. The Princess glared, jealous of her true grace, and declared “desperation is not sexy”. Next came the Prince, awkward, plain, and stumble-footed. Dancing was clearly not his forte. Oh but the Rogue! The Rogue had fought her way through dancehalls before, and as she enchanted the court, she slyly picked the pocket of several fictional cameramen.
The Princess, having snarked to her fill, threw the travelers into the great Condo Lofts of Doom, a terrible plastic place, perpetually enrobed in gloom. The party diligently practiced their best jester routines, or as the Rogue referred to it, their “chiki chiki tooming”. But just as exhaustion and corns were beginning to overtake them, an ominous missal appeared from the heavens, bearing the alien crest of their homeland The Federated States of Weird Flags as if to taunt them. A riddle! They were to “pushed out of the nest”! No one slept in that terrible place that night.

The next morning (though it remained darkest night over the Towering Condos) the brave foursome were hogtied and driven in an evil smelling van to the Vast Feral Forest. The Prince recalled various legends placing this as the home of a Wild Haired Wild Eyed Woman, who devoured young girls and sucked on their bones to build her sets. And sure enough, not 3 parsecs from the middle of nowhere, the Wild Haired Wild Eyed Woman blocked their path, her legs crossed to her shoulders, her eyes of glass gleaming black. She stared them down, contemplating their fate, as they sat idling in the humidity. Finally, a slow smile spread across her oil slicked face. The travelers shook to their well heeled toes.

First she took the Tin Man. The Tin Man had resolved to have a heart, to be brave as he left, and set a good example for the others left behind. He hardly trembled at all as the forest witch covered him with chicken feathers and threw him into a giant nest. It was the nest of a Giant Condor, and he was to be dinner for its young ones. But the little monsters took one look at the unappealing metal, one nip at an unprotected elbow, and promptly threw him out.

Next the Rogue volunteered, certain she could slay whatever evil lay wait. She blended into the shadows of the nest, and rearranged her hair to look like twigs, and the stupid birds didn’t even see her.

The Frustrated Witch shook with anger, and roughly grabbed the Queen, who merely sat in the corner of the nest and looked kindly but firmly at the baby condors. Within the course of fifteen minutes, she had taught them how to distinguish a salad fork from a tuning fork, and which way the world turns in a leap year.

Finally, came the Prince, willingly. He longed to be done with his impossible journey, and lay complacently within the prickly walls of the nest, awaiting his fate. Unfortunately, this is a charmed Prince, the Prince of our story, and nothing bad can happen to him, no matter what he does or fails to do. As the Prince lay there waiting to be devoured, the mother Condor came swooping down. For a long moment, it seemed as if his eyeballs were destined to be jellied candies down the avian gullet, and really, no worse for the world. But the gracious, heroic Queen, aware that no royalty would fail to sacrifice itself for its people, threw herself across the path of the giant bird, and was carried away in it vicious talons. The Rogue, with no further thought for the sacrificed Queen, quickly took the opportunity to steal away into forest, and the cowering Prince and hesitant Tin Man followed suit.

The Tin Man knew though, as he followed those two into the dense vines, that his time would soon come. He knew they would soon require a boat or a weapon or a mirror, and would fall upon him as desperate selfish people do. The Queen, his only true protection, was gone…and the can opener awaited.

To be continued….

America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 Recap: Доброе утро, дамы, вы готовы служить Ваш Славные лидером?

Let me preface this by saying that I would very much like someone to create a Soviet propaganda style poster of Tyra, hands on hips, staring determined into the distance, with the caption “You want to be on top?”

If you could do that for me I would be eternally grateful.

Last night’s episode was really a study in how rich people earn the resentment of the working classes. Things started off innocently enough, with Celia pretending to be the horse she had as a girl. Her impression was tinged with sadness, suggesting a glue factory end for Horsie.

This horsing around, sweet and innocent, was quickly swept under by the wave of dark insidious class warfare that precedes Natalie every time she enters a room. The girls had been having an impromptu Thanksgiving Dinner, a reminder of how communities celebrated their collective achievements back before iPhones and Ayn Rand. After everyone had consumed their three mouthfuls, the group peacefully combined their efforts in the clean up. Except for Natalie, who claimed her blood had been too thickened by the chicken to assist at the moment, but she would be right there. A paltry excuse, my Palo Verde Princess. She heard the masses rumbling in the kitchen, using the crude unintelligible slang that is their dialect, and tried to justify it as humor. A joke! She cried. But the hardworking plebeians knew better.

Which is when Natalie’s true colors came out. “I’m sorry your neighborhood is not as nice as mine” she said, implying that their bitterness was formed from jealousy. “I just can’t talk to them, it’s impossible” she said, sweeping aside their criticisms as the sickened idiot ramblings of lead poisoned peasants.

Of course, Aminat talking, at all, did not help her point. “She’s prettier, she’s taller, and she’s skinnier. She thinks this makes her better than us.” Well, darling, technically it does. In Tyra Country, that is.

Having spent sleepless nights pondering the inherent injustice of the genetic pecking order, the girls then went to their first challenge. Paulina, a striking example of Mother Russia’s native bloodlines, had the enviable task of teaching the girls to move their facial muscles and vocal cords in some manner resembling emotion. “Every day in modeling is an audition” she announced. Think about that. The girls practiced saying lines to each other, which led to Aminat screaming everything, because the only emotion she’s ever known is the anger and fire of the culturally downtrodden. Or because she’s a flat limited mean personality who I seriously have come to hate. Then, after everyone did miserably, Paulina brought out her secret weapon, Clay Aiken! Sadly, boyfriend and baby were not in tow.

Pho then inexplicably said Clay Aiken was “pretty much a genius”. What?

The girls had to act out a scene of capitalistic arrogance with Clay, in which most of them sucked harder than Stalin’s death squads. Celia did well, because she’s not an idiot. And London did well, because she comes from a family of actors? Who the hell is London? First she was a street preacher, now she’s descended from a whole family of actors? Also why are her legs expanding at such a rapid rate, is she pregnant? London is a mystery wrapped in a headband wrapped in shorts wrapped in a mystery. Clay then won my indifferent allegiance forever when he said Tahlia’s suckiness was due to “laziness and insecurity.”

After the teach, which London won but then couldn’t fit in any of the clothes they gave her, Glorious Leader Tyra deployed one of her fem-bots to spy on the earnest students.
McKay’s little montage where they showed her being made up was incredibly creepy. It made me fear for the futures of our little fashion farmers. Her facial muscles seemed to have been frozen by overuse of bad foundation; her eyes radiated nothing but the empty wiring and diodes behind them. She awkwardly tried to coax the suspects into conversation, of which only Tahlia was stupid enough to fall for.

All of this was in preparation for The Commercial. America’s Next Top Model needs to embody the virtues and ideals of Our Glorious Leader, The Easiness, The Breeziness. Because of droughts this year, the girls actually got Teleprompters, which is INSANE. And yet they still failed to impress the Caucus. Celia was dressed up as an evil school marm. Allison smiled, and tried to move her face, and yet still couldn’t get an Amen from the judges. Tahlia whined, because that is her secret power. And then Aminat walked in front of a high window, and all I could think was “jump, you lispy frog! Jump!”

At judging, Our Glorious Leader was especially cruel. Only Celia, in her awesome silvery dress of special communist power, was able to charm her. Natalie managed to downplay her upper classiness by not being as good, and so the Leader kept her in hopes of converting her to the cause and thereby maybe getting some more sponsors. Revolutions need rich people. Allison was kept solely for entertainment purposes. And finally, finally, finally Tahlia was sent away, repeating under her breath "I will work harder."

Then all the girls repeated the motto of Our Glorious Leader:

"All models are equal.
But some models are more equal than others."

America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 Recap: S-T-U-P-I-D Face

We joined the young ladies as the sun was setting on Celia's Day of Infamy. Exhausted and stained with the drippings of their fallen comrade, they divided into families upon entering the cave, and reclined in posturing relaxation, though the mood between groups was tense and hostile. On one side of the divide, an embarrassed Celia was venting her humiliation to Natalie and Allison. While upstairs, an also embarrassed Tahlia was being convinced to go against her natural instincts and let Sondra and Aminat fight for her. Sondra decided that now the battle was over, it was time to be on the winning side, and whispered conspiracy theories into Tahlia's self-righteous, insecure ear. Which got Frog Face Aminat all sorts of riled up.

Tahlia, weeper though she may be, and consummate victim, had decided to take the high road and not confront Celia. If it had stayed this way, this would have been a minor miracle for ANTM, and definitely a coup of maturity for Tahlia. But sadly, she wasn't being mature, just a coward, and she was more than happy to let the ghetto twins go to bat for her. Without questioning whether these two girls were really offended on her behalf, or just desperate for some excuse to get bitchy with Celia and Natalie, who have been kicking their asses in every challenge.

The highlight of the fight, which reminded me of that ill fated Redman/Method Man sitcom, was Aminat finally revealing she was illiterate and had been learning to read in the evenings while every one else was in the hot tub. She showed off by spelling her name a few dozen times. Then Aminat and Sondra's stock fell irreparably to the bottom of the jar, because ghetto is heavy like lead and sinks you.

Then there was a touching scene where Tahlia came to her senses and talked to Celia directly, in private, and I don't know what they resolved but it was the only decent response to the whole debacle. So good for them. Celia, resolved that she was going home the next day, then picked out her burial clothes which were a full yellow skirt and a leather jacket. And she twirled and twirled until she passed out, dreaming of green hills and post it notes.

For the challenge this week, Jay Manuel illustrated to the girls how expendable and replaceable they were, by crushing a poor mannequin to death and then stabbing it a few times with a wire hanger. Then London volunteered to show everyone a useful thing you can do with wire hangers, but everyone ignored her because Jay was calling them clothes hangers. Which they thought was a compliment! They're so thin! Oh but no, it was what they're NOT supposed to be, and this episode was all about the Singular Memorable Face.

For this, they had to stand behind blow up pictures of Tyra posing as different thing: A Warrior Princess, A Farmer, A Whore. They had to copy the expression of the photo, and let some dirty old men take pictures of them doing it, and everyone failed because the catch is, the faces of the pictures were cut out! How were they supposed to know! Allison proved she is incapable of shutting her mouth, with her little bunny teeth. And Natalie's positronic brain quickly computed the possible angles and chose the most likely expression based on Tyra's body language, age, lighting, stage of her career, and Dow Jones numbers at the time. So she wins.

Next it's fun with pixie sticks! But instead of snorting them, the girls are forced to let underage club boys blow them all over their face. Jay asks the girls to tap into their inner synthenesia and "emote those colors". Then the girls all sit there with the exact same expression and Jay randomly picks who's doing well and who sucks, which is the only perk of his job. London is given the unfortunate makeup job of leprosy. Natalie, of course, has a problem with passion, but it's not her fault, Soong didn't make her that way.

At panel, everyone ooohs and aaahs over the picture in fake British accents, or like they're in a high school acting class which is pretty much the same thing. Pho wins because really she has the prettiest face and I'm predicting her for top 3. The elimination comes down to Sondra and Celia, and based on the way Nigel was HATIN on Celia during deliberation, "I can't even look at her", the entire world is pretty sure Tyra's about to take a rusty nailed studded 2 x 4 and beat Celia to death with it on national television. I think Tyra's pretty sure that she's going to do it herself, because more gibberish than usual comes out of her mouth, which must mean she's excited.

But in a crazy! turn of events, Celia gets another chance because she's really better than the other girls, and this is supposed to be a talent competition. Also Tyra loves having your soul indebted to her. Sondra goes home FINALLY. Her only regret should be that she didn't get sent home last week, before she made a total ass out of herself.

America's Next Top Model Cycle 12 Recap: Seriously, did the producers tell her to do that?

Open letter to Celia:

Alright, so let me preface this by saying that I did not see the end of last night’s episode. I tried to watch it online this morning, but could only find the first part of the show. So I didn’t get to see your spectacular fuck up that everyone else is talking about today. Luckily, there are plenty of quotes, pictures, and commentary available at my fingertips, so I was able to piece it together pretty well.

The episode started well for you. First you were super cute when you opened the Tyra mail and said “it rhymes!” Adorable and condescending. Love it. You survived a pointless visit by Toccara, some ex-contestant who the producers brought in only to prove that their little competition is legit, and listened to her babble about getting to know you all within the space of two minutes. She was annoying, Aminat’s lisp was annoying, and the whole thing was head bashing. But you withstood it, with no audible complaints. I credit your age and maturity for this.

You braved the idiocy of Benny Ninja, a man that makes me cringe with memories of a certain club in Akron where the meth flowed like water and the conversation routinely included discussions of “bitches” and “that slut whore”, while dressed in day-glo feather boas. He brought in his coke connection, who pretended to be a DJ and “dropped some tracks”. This euro-Hall and Oates team made you all dance to crap they would never ever play in real life (who poses to country music?), and laughed snarkily into their red bull and vodkas. But while SOME people flopped around like dead birds (SONDRA), you vogued like your desperate Kentucky soul, the very honor of the Confederacy, depended on it.

Most impressive was the way you stood the “heat” of a thousand congregated gay men in glitter staring you down at the Mansion. It’s obvious you have an inner drag queen, unlike Allison who was leaking confidence like the sawdust in her ragdoll limbs. You even out-dragged Natalie, who’s had experience with posing (i.e. sleeping with agents), but lacked your arrow shooting, Annie Lennox skills.

When I ran out of YouTube videos to watch, I was confident you had this in the bag. And yes, I’ll admit, I’ve called you mean things in the past, like flat iron face, and Neanderthal. But I knew from the moment I saw your squished up brow, you were going to do well in this thing. Not win it, of course, because Cover Girl doesn’t pick weird looking people, but I expected you to make the final four.

I don’t know if it was the humiliation of being made to dress up like a mother vampire with her Transylvanian brood, or maybe your system is in withdrawal from the fumes of the Post It Note factory where you grew up, but something snapped. I know it’s hard, being the oldest in a village of babies. People like Talia ARE horribly annoying (“I wanna go, it’s too hard! Wait, I wanna stay, this is my dream!), but you are expected to be the sane, professional voice of reason in the house.

You may have dreaming about this since you were fourteen, stripping to your undies while your 30 yr old boyfriend took pictures and told you how very unique looking you were. You may feel entitled to this experience, given how many Sears’s auditions you’ve lost. But remember, when you’re old, nobody gives you the excuse of youth. At 25, you’ve gone past the point of “she’ll learn” and “she’s new and this is hard.” You are used goods. You have to be twice as good and twice as nice in order to compete with the dewey 18 yr olds. You're right, it's not fair, but there it is.

If the judges allow you another chance, it’s going to be a short one. So don’t pull any prima donna shit like this again okay? When a girl says she wants to go home, the proper response from now on is to shut the fuck up and let her send herself home. They always do.

If you go home next episode, like we all suspect will happen, please try to remember that your co-workers at the Post It factory don’t want to hear you bitching about your fifteen minutes of fame for the next ten years. It’s just not classy.

Oh, and on the off chance the producers actually paid you to do this, because Sondra was creating disappointingly little tension in the house and they knew Talia was the new cash cow, well I hope you got paid. And thank god Kortnie's gone, right? She reminded me of a member of Heart.