fourfour

Signature walk your ass out of here

For shame! All that rouge and nowhere to go.

The return of Sheena

 

Last week, Sheena came by and I interviewed her all over again about her time on ANTM. A few tidbits:

-    She has never felt the effect of the supposed Top Model stigma.
-    There are cameras and microphones in the bathroom.
-    Tyra's internal monologue is probably in a British accent.
-    She was not able to apply any of the show's lessons to life.
-    She was paid for her participation on this cycle.
-    They were not sleep-deprived and they were allowed to read and listen to music.
-    She made them write into her contract that they wouldn't mess with her hair during Ty-overs.

Also, my "Not Here To Make Friends" shirt comes via ThinkGeek. I've been dying for a chance to wear it in the presence of someone on reality TV. Thank you, ThinkGeek!

This isn't the time for pretty

The title of this post quotes Nigel, who simultaneously meant to compliment Isis' face and critique her lack of effort. If you ask me, though, it's a really good comment on this entire cycle (nay, show!) without qualification. It cold even be the tag line: "ANTM All-Stars: This isn't the time for pretty."

America's Next Top Next Top Model

Another fall, another cycle of ANTM. But this time is different! Bringing me out of recap hiatus is the All-Stars angle of this cycle.

But it is a bittersweet return.

Wackness begets wackness

 

One of the things that I've always loved about the very idea of America's Next Top Model is that as a reality show about the modeling industry, it is essentially a fun-house mirror held up to another fun-house mirror. The resulting distortion of the way the world really works is absurd (and the fact that next cycle will be something meta as an "all-stars" edition means that we're adding yet another mirror to the chain -- a reality show surveying a reality show surveying the modeling industry -- and that promises to be so futile and ridiculous that I don't think I'll be able to restrain myself from writing about it in some capacity).

Anyway, that mirror/mirror/mirror effect is going on in this child's karaoke-style style performance of DC Talk's "Nu Thang," in which the Christian hip-hop-ish collective's divine wackness is filtered through the inherent wackness of a prepubescent child. This is way too special for me to just file away in the lefthand gutter of this blog under "My Hero" -- at last, someone on Earth has the capacity to make DC Talk look cool by comparison. A momentous occasion! (via Paul M., and America's Next Top Tumblr, Christian Nightmares)

Scanning my life

I spent last week between jobs and attempting to organize my life. I wasn't entirely successful. I learned what I already knew: I have so much crap that I never, ever want to throw away. Below is some of it, scanned. Aren't you lucky, getting to look at my hoarding?

Now that I've made this post sound as unappetizing as possible (no cats were flattened in the making of it, I assure you!), the answer to a recurring question I've been asked more than once -- "What do you look like with hair?" -- is below, among many things that I think are actually interesting...

Nevermore

Without making a big deal out of what is not at all a big deal, I should inform you that I will no longer be writing recaps of America's Next Top Model on this blog. I no longer have the time and, frankly, the interest. Once upon a time, spending 10+ hours on a recap of this show was an accurate reflection of my love for it. But like everyone else, my interest in it has waned over the years. Right now, with what I have going on, I have time to either only cover ANTM or only cover (some of) the other pop cultural stuff I'm into at any given moment. To go the former route would turn this blog into a complete distortion of my interests, and that is so not the point.

If there is little incentive from within, there's probably even less from without (I at least feel an odd sense of guilt about all this!) -- over the cycles, traffic on the recaps has declined. When I started, I could take a few days to put together a recap and it was no big deal -- things move so fast on the Internet now that by the time Monday rolls around, a million other people have written about it and nobody cares anymore. And also maybe I've gotten worse. I don't know. Basically, killing weekends on virtually thankless posts isn't really something I'd be into doing even if I had the time.

Maybe I'll tweet about the show, but stuff that's taking up my time tends to fall on Wednesdays, anyway. So probably not. I'll never say never (but I will say, "Nevermore," apparently), so maybe I'll notice a trend on the show and write something about it mid-season. But probably not that either. Oh well. It was bound to happen. I'm 32, you know? I will continue to update this blog as actively as possible with things that catch my interest, but as far as ANTM is concerned, I'm the opposite of these people:

 

Appropriate, right?

Not in Kansas Anymore: a supercut

Above is the fruit of a few months of work: various instances of people saying something close to, "We're not in Kansas anymore." Despite the fact that no one gets the original line from the The Wizard of Oz completey right ("Toto, I have a feeling we're not in Kansas anymore"), it nonetheless evokes that film every time it's said. What's interesting to me about that is that it's at cliche status at this point, yet unlike, say, "catch-22" or the also frequently mangled "You're going to need a bigger boat," the saying hasn't superseded its source, no matter how many times it's been said (as evident in the amount of times Toto and Dorothy are brought up alongside it). It's pretty amazing how tenacious a hold Oz still has on pop culture (I find myself referencing it constantly, and not just in the "Kansas" way).

A full list of the movies and TV shows included in this clip are below. Supercut spoiler alert!

You will see me again

 

With last week's end of America's Next Top Model Cycle 15, I thought this cut of exit interviews throughout the years was appropriate. Above are some of the more self-aggrandizing examples that being eliminated has produced -- so many of these girls vow to us that we'll see them again and that they'll be as big as Tyra Banks promised. How many of the 50 or so girls above have made good on that promise? The answer, of course, is virtually zero (I guess Fatima has done all right?). I don't know if that makes this video hilarious or so, so sad (but I'm thinking it's the latter).

This cliche is, of course, prevalent on unscripted TV in general (American Idol has a large number of people who voice such this-isn't-the-last-you've-seen-of-me sentiment), but I think it's hilarious how many examples come from ANTM alone. A lot of girls would kill to be saying, "A lot of girls would kill..." upon being eliminated from clown school, apparently.

(All credit goes to reader Mike [aka rustyspigot] for giving me this idea over a year ago. Sometimes I'm a little slow on the uptake, but I generally come around.)

The days of choosing between volume and length are over

The amount of bacon sandwiches a $100,000 CoverGirl modeling contract can buy is truly jaw-dropping.