Worst. Gay Man. Ever.

Not to be All Jamie Lynn, All the Time, but I was getting my hair did the other day by my Hawaii Local hairdresser, Awa. Awa is, without doubt, a gay man (though there is a little doubt in my mother's mind because he's expressed interest to her in wanting to go surfing with me and told me that he and i should go "listen to music" together. Between that and Jose, the lab technician who drew my blood whilst asking me to accompany him to a christmas party the following evening, my mom has been on "get my daughter married" overdrive). Anyway, I'm not a big talker when it comes to getting my hair cut, which is why I go to a Japanese salon in New York where they hardly speak English, but when I am with hair people, I worry that they'll think I'm a bore, so I'll throw a few crumbs of convo out before i stop talking...

Awa had just made a pregnancy joke about someone in the chair next to us (or something), so I saw that as the perfect opportunity to bring up america's favorite Afterschool Special, Jamie Lynn Spears. I said, "Did you hear about Britney Spears' little sister?" and he got a confused look on his face and said "no." So I said "that 16 year old got herself knocked up!" Awa responded "Wait. Which one's Britney Spears? The crazy one with two kids?"

WHAAT?!?!? what gay man is unsure of brit brit's identity??!?!?!? my mind was blown. maybe he isn't gay after all...

report from the underground

i'm currently in hiding because i don't want to be questioned by the press in regards to jamie lynn spears' pregnancy, so don't expect too much in terms of reality corner for the next, oh, two and a half weeks. in fact, expect nothing.

is anyone else watching crowned though? god that show is so bad, and i have so much hatred for a couple of those phonies.

FRC: PR - farewell jack

alright i have a trip to pack for, and when it comes to packing, i overstress...so basically i don't have time to rewatch project runway in order to give you a proper recap. so, let's just use this as a "discussion space"

- first of all, i am so far behind on my fafa team that i'm not even gonna try anymore. if a team member of mine is off the show, i'll replace them, but that's about it. i'm really not good at this one.

- number 2. a couple episodes ago, when they brought up jack's hiv--but for literally two seconds as he said something like 'i've had hiv for a thousand years and i feel the best i've ever felt right now'--i had a feeling that we'd be hearing about it again. ESPECIALLY in conjunction with those season preview clips of him crying next to tim gunn addressing the designers. it was just too big of an issue for them to throw out in one line and not elaborate on at all. i was going to bring that up in that episode's recap, but i didn't want to be insensitive. so here we are, two episodes later and jack has something going on with his lip. it escalates quickly enough that he pulls tim aside during the challenge and expresses his concerns. sad train was that jack opted to leave the show to take care of his health (:( !) but the unexpectedly pleasant news here was that chris got to come back. i was actually really happy about this...i felt ricky should've been booted last week so i'm glad he got a second chance.

- unfortunately for chris, he got thrown right in the middle of a challenge and had to scramble to present something. this got him in the bottom three, but we all knew that none of those judges were cold hearted enough to immediately cast him back out.

- the challenge: women who recently lost astounding amounts of weight brought in their old favorite outfits. the designers had to use the old outfits (plus some new materials if they needed) to make completely new outfits flattering the new bods. Kevin, Christian, and Jillian were top three with Christian winning immunity. My whole viewing party thought Kevin should've won that, but we aren't pros or anthing. Elisa, Chris, and Steven were in the bottom three, but Steven was the one who inexplicably turned a great opportunity (old wedding dress) into a nun/schoolmarm's outfit... it was weird and bad and for that the sweet squinty eyed oddball went home.

FRC: Crowned

yo, i just watched that new cw show crowned and it was all sorts of wack. it was like an hour long trek into awkwardville with stops at I Feel Sorry For You Lane and This is So Painful Junction. and once i'd reached the end, when it was just so unbearable, it took an amazing turn into the land of wonderful. they were down to two mother daughter pairs known as the Reigning A's and the Blonde Bombshells, and Shanna Moakler (the tyra of the show) says to them that it's now time for one of the teams to be de-sashed. she then very seriously says "Blonde Bombshells, will you please get the de-sashing scissors." The Blondies are all sad, but go and get the scissors. Then Shanna, that bitch, goes, "now please cut the sashes off the Reigning A's." !!! OH SNAP!!

FRC: ANTM - another top model. yay.

before this episode aired, i downsized my fantasy team to only include saleisha. i didn't want to risk the 15 point loss if my second team member was kicked out second. so basically, i was confident that saleisha would win, because she has confidence. tzone confidence. i also thought that jenah was being pushed to win, so she'd get to the top 2 on the strength of her pictures alone. good thing i didn't bet on that one. spoiler alert.

the top 3 do a commercial and photo shoot for covergirl flavored lipgloss. jaslene comes out and y'all, she really needs to eat a sandwich. fo' real. chantal requires minimal direction and aces her commercial. both jenah and saleisha blow multiple takes -- jenah was able to clean up her act after being threatened with cue cards, saleisha needed to take a moment to cry and required like 20 takes. at this point, i fear for my fantasy team.

panel #1 - most potential/least potential thing. they all say themselves as most of course. saleisha and chantal both say jenah for least, chantal going so far as to say she wouldn't want her little sister looking up to jenah. ouch. jenah says chantal has the least potential because she is the most amateur. the judges think saleisha did alright, but shot her down with some comments from jay. chantal got cheered for her sincerity and photo. tyra felt jenah was making fun of the commercial in her take. ruh roh. jenah goes on a rant about being misunderstood. tyra prods in her way, getting to the bottom of it. she pokes, jenah deflects, she pokes, there's a crack, one more poke and jenah's down for the count. has jenah saved herself here or is this breakdown a little too late? her photo gets rave reviews as usual.

chantal is the first finalist through. i'm seriously concerned for my team here, especially after jenah's breakthrough. jenah takes stunning photos, saleisha went to tyra's tzone camp. saleisha is sobbing! oh hell they all are. saleisha's ass gets saved and she's our second finalist.

god every time ann shoket is on screen, i hate her more. the runway show this time is weird...they seem to have given up attempting to find an audience for these things. the only audience is the judges, but it's still like this huge production. jaslene says how she had to go to the bathroom to cry before her final runway showdown. and by cry, she means throw up. saleisha walks the hell out of this...there's really no contest between the two when it comes to walking. chantal trips a man on stilts with her dress and it's hilarious. and then they keep replaying it. awesome.

final panel. we hear the prizes for the last time this calendar year. miss j's fro is huge. twiggy is secretly clawing at the table, knowing she'll soon be free forever. they go through the side by side photo shoot reminiscing, but they only go through like three. i love chantal's dress. saleisha is pretty much declared runway winner. tyra admits that she didn't think either would make it far but now she sees they both want it. then she talks about how she's gonna crush the girl who loses and you can practically see her drooling for it. there's suspense and there's the plasma screen. i was wrong about the prize thing, we hear them again. the photo is revealed and it's Saleisha! too bad she pissed me off towards the end, i might've cared more. but i got the most points i could've out of this episode and placed 198th overall. i'm a winner too.

Kid Nation Finale

so i just watched the finale of kid nation and it made me so emotional! i felt like i had spent 40 days with these kids and was saying goodbye to my friends forever. sad! did anyone else watch the full season and if so, were you similarly affected?

woe is me

here is a tale explaining how i've ended up here, typing at my computer at you guys, drugged up, naked, and painted pink...

i've been doing some work here and there for this new discovery planet green show called wasted. i'm gonna sum it up quick here (though it took me about three weeks to figure the whole thing out)-- basically we collect a family's trash for a month, this poor girl liz separates it into compost, recyclables, etc, we show the family how much of what they throw away is harmful to the environment and teach them little tips on how to make their waste less harmful to the environment. needless to say, we PA's deal with a lot of garbage on this shoot. like literal garbage.

so yesterday, at some point in the day, my neck starts getting all itchy...i just figure it's a bug bite. as i'm going home, my wrist starts itching in a major way...when i looked at it, it seemed rash-like, so as soon as i got home, i stripped and prepared for the worst. i'm not gonna get into details here, but basically i had an allergic reaction to something all over my body. i flipped out, called my mom, and started covering myself in calamine lotion (thank god for those spider bites in the hamptons two years ago)...i then popped an allegra and an ibuprofen, threw on a huge shirt (it seemed to be worse on the parts of my body that had tight clothing on) and tried to stay still in bed. my mom informed me that some pharmacist she just happened to talk to said it was probably hives. !!! grosss. i believe the last time i had all over hives was when i was a baby...a reaction to penicillin. my best guess was that the moldy food i was dealing with earlier in the day was the culprit.

so like, now i'm at a complete loss. there's nothing i can do but mosey around my house. i went over to a friend's last night because they had gotten better, but when i got home, i had to do the stripping and pinking because apparently i'll never be able to wear clothes again. does anyone know how long i can expect this to last? there are things i need to do in the outside world, and i'm kind of tired of seeing myself naked. and pink. i don't mind the benadryl though...

Becca's knock'em out holiday One Two Punch

Serve this delicious treat at your next holiday party, and i guarantee that your guests won't recover from your soirée for days.


PREP TIME 10 Min

READY IN 10 Min


INGREDIENTS


* 1 1/2 cups rum

* 1/3 cup banana liqueur

* 1 ½ cups lighter fluid

* 1 dash grenadine syrup

* 1 (6 ounce) can frozen orange juice concentrate

* 5 roofies

* 1 (6 ounce) can frozen pineapple juice concentrate

* 1 orange, sliced into rounds

* 1 lime, sliced into rounds

* 1 lemon, sliced into rounds


DIRECTIONS

In a large punch bowl, prepare the orange and pineapple juice and roofies according to package directions. Stir in the rum, banana liqueur, lighter fluid and Grenadine. Float slices of orange, lime and lemon on top.


Chef's Note: ingestion of this punch may cause black-outs, coma, or death.

FRC: PR - i call bullshit

nina garcia hangs with the designers and there are photos of outdated trends that each designer must choose. after every trend is assigned, they are broken into groups of three. the groups are as follows: Team Christian (zoot suit) has Jack (pleather) and Kit (fringe), Team Chris (shoulder pads) consists of Sweet P (baggy sweater) and Steven (dance wear), Team Ricky (neon) is Victorya (underwears as outerwears) and Elisa (cut outs) and Team Jillian (overalls) has kevin (70's flair) and Rami (poodle skirt). for their challenge they must make three looks incorporating their three trends...it's up to them whether they want to make one of each or if they want all three of their items to incorporate all three trends.

bossy victorya says she doesn't want to be the bossy cow, but that's a goal she doesn't achieve. she does not play well with others. she has words with ricky, her captain that she does not treat as such. jillian is similarly dissapointed in kevin, but he pulls through in the final moments. this week's gues judge is donna karan and wooff! has she always been a fuggo? jillian's team has some interesting stuff (i liked rami's slightly milkmaidish poodle dress), chris's team was meh, christian's team had some good items, and team ricky was byfar the worst. jillian's team is immediately named the winning team and all three are safe next week. christian's team is also in. chris's collection lacks cohesion, ricky's looks poorly made...in both situations, the captain's design was the worst of the three.

sweet p, elisa, steve, and victorya are all in. it's down to ricky and chris. ricky has been subpar (for a few weeks now) and was a poor leader, chris failed as a leader and his look was outdated. even though this was chris' first real misstep though, the judges must be hypnotized by ricky's hats because ricky is safe. shocker! and said. i would've loved to see more stuff from chris and not ricky since ricky always makes the same thing. boo.

FRC: ANTM - the four "beauties"

The lasses return to their suite and are greeted by Heathermail! Bianca cannot believe the same girl she bullied like a first grade crush wrote it. LOVERS. but then she says that heather's absence didn't make a difference because of her antisocial tendencies. or maybe, biyanka, it made all the difference in the world. they are en route to beijing and jenah makes the mistake of saying to a bus full of bitches that are her competition that she can't even picture going home, she can't envision it -- she came here to win. see ya in the bottom two toofy!

the girls are taken to miss j and twiggy where they learn the Tale of Four Beauties (what is this, Legends of the Hidden Temple?[watch that whole video. it's hilarious.]) they each get a Beauty dress and have an hour and $200 to shop at the mall and modernize the outfit. bianca tricks Idiot Jenah into thinking that there's "a lot of good stuff" "across the street". Idiot.

twiggy says all her lines to the girls like she's hosting a telethon. stupid ann shoket is back and there's this weird insert take of her saying something stupid. saleisha is so smug and it's really starting to annoy me. jenah shows a little bit of life here by winning the challenge. she shares her prize of custom made couture dresses with chantal (this girl has gotten a lot of prizes for someone who doesn't win challenges) and b is totally salty about it. in addition, jenah wins one on one time runway tips with miss j.

back at the hotel, it seems like saleisha doesn't have problems sharing a bed anymore. jenahs says she's homesick and just wants to get this over with so she can go home. kiss of death, right? strike three? wrong!

the girls go to the great wall for their photo shoot. hehe, jay is wearing tight pants and said "erect". tyra is the photographer. enough with the ni haos! sheesh! chantal gets raves all around. jenah showed her nerves. good ol biyanka took a while to get into it but delivered some good shots. tyra jizzes all over herself about saleisha. jay says its her best shoot to date. at the end, they must do a group shot and must stand out.

ann nose-ket is the guest judge at panel this week. tyra is such a bitch. she says something to jenah that she knows will make her cry, and when jenah does start crying, tyra goes "tell me what's going on?" in her best sincere voice. ugh. chantal's pic is awesome, saleisha's is cool, if you disregard the fact that she's shaped like a swastika. oh my god, heather is still covergrirl of the week! ha!

the judges decide chantal sticks out the most in the group photo and she gets called first. she's also the only girl that gets the group shot for her portfolio. saleisha's called second. no surpries so far. bianca has come so far, but has so far to go. jenah has basically thrown in the towel. and- serious shocker for real (like, really?) -- jenah is safe and bianca goes home. whaaa?!?!

so, guys, i don't know. the top three isn't doing it for me this year. like, i understand why they've all made it up there...but saleisha rapidly loses points with me each week (i do think she might win), i've never been big on chantal, though i'm liking her a little better recently, and jenah is just like...i mean she takes beautiful pictures and a little makeup and a brush does wonders for her, but she's got kind of a stanky personality, and she doesn't want to be there. what the ef?

Holiday gift buying guide part 1

I'm sure that many of you are just like me..unemployed, bored, living in a basement apartment in astoria, and short on funds but tall on the giving spirit! so in honor of the 21 days of christmas i give to you - becca's 21 christmas gift for $1 and under.

1. An E-card - nothing says you care like an E-card

2. A broken computer that you found in the trash - this was once a very expensive item



3. Go through your gift recipients mail...you are bound to find some of those free address labels that you get this time of year from organizations who hope you'll donate money to them. give those address labels to them as a gift from you. BONUS: it's personalized!

4. One of those weird dvds from the $1 rack at wal-mart

5. A 99cent bag of doritos (or 4 25cent bags)

6. A single song from itunes

7. A facebook gift -once it is give n it shows up on the person's facebook profile and everyone gets to see how generous you are.

8. Homemade coupons to play your nintendo Wii/use your computer/hang out with your dog/watch your tv etc.

9. A gift bag (from the dollar store) with nothing in it – say that it contains the tiniest gift in the world.

10. The dice from one of your board games – your monopoly game is just gathering dust anyway.

11. Call a radio station and give a shoutout to your loved one and then dedicate a song to them - fyi - make sure that the radio is on and tuned to the radio station of choice

12. Give them a list of all your favorite youtube videos and the links to them – hours of viewing enjoyment

13. That toothbrush you bought a couple years ago, but never used....except to brush your dogs teeth that one time.

14. Your broken hair straightening iron – (bonus if you still have the original box it came in) they won't realize it's broken until you are long gone.

15. Your favorite stuffed animal from childhood – cry when you give it to them and they'll probably give it back.

16. A key to your apartment or your car - it looks like you mean business, yet costs next to nothing

17. your library card – millions of books right at their fingertips - but tell them if they rack up any fines it's their problem

18. this

19. this

20. A metro card with $1.00 on it – it's ½ way to an entire subway ride of wonder!


21. A pigeon - it sounds better if you call it a gray dove

FRC: PR - egads, it's menswear!

this week's challenge involves tiki barber (ex football player, current today show something), as identified by the only straight male, kevin. they must design a three piece menswear outfit for tiki to wear on the today show. there's a little bit of a controversy with jack using his shorts as a pattern and sharing with others, but i say, anything that gets jack to take off his bottoms is fine with me. everyone's way excited for the hot male models, but not excited about the difficulty of the project nor with their respective executions. many are not ready for their models and ricky even puts his to work sewing buttons. i think carmen, sweet p, and ricky might be in trouble here.

kit, jack, and kevin are top 3, and as suspected, carmen, sweet p and ricky are the bottom. nina garcia looks like she's gonna vomit everywhere when considering the bottom 3 designs. jack wins immunity and it comes down to carmen and ricky. unfortunately for my project runway points, carmen gets auf'd.

Crazy Roundup

Here's a list of crazy things that have happened recently, four of which happened yesterday...

1) I saw a woman walking down the sidewalk wearing a blue baggy work shirt, a con ed helmet and carrying a yellow wet floor/watch your step sign. All of this seemed pretty convincing attire for a worker...what gave me pause was what she was clutching in her left hand - a corona bucket used to carry her umbrella (it was a sunny day). still, though, it appeared as though she was a normal and not a crazy...until she came to a full stop and started michael jackson dancing.

2) I was walking to pick up a rental van for work when i noticed a large group of unkempt babbling folks in front of me. it was too late before i realized that it was a mass of homeless people all waiting for something, and i was already amongst them, traveling through the nucleus in order to get to the rental place. i suddenly felt very uneasy, as though i could be shanked for my egg and cheese at any second. homeless people to me are like stray cats...one at a time, they make me sad, but in large groups i just want to back away slowly.

3) Driving out in long island, i passed a white SUV on the opposite side of the northern parkway with its whole front completely aflame. i don't think i'd ever seen anything like that that wasn't cgi'd.

4) my co-worker and i were sitting in a van behind some building at some studio down at the brooklyn navy yards and we were waiting for a security guard to come and help us locate a storage container. we were shooting the shit when we suddenly heard a male voice shout something to us. we both looked to the left and saw a car with its headlights blinking, but could see no man. he said something else and the lights blinked again at the same time. it happened once more and i was really starting to think that we had just met kitt. then the security guard appeared.

5) on the subways here in nyc, each car has two pairs of what i like to call 'lovebird seats' on either side. lovebird seats are located against the end of the car and another railing or wall that's right next to the door. they are really just two seats with no room for improvising. for the majority of my trip, i was sitting in one next to a skinny lady, so we both had ample room. three stops before where i was to depart, my riding partner got off. i was reading a magazine (as i do) and listening to my ipod (same) so i really don't pay attention to what's going on around me, but i felt somebody sit down in her place and i could tell it was a large man. at first, i could just feel the weight of him sitting and my personal space wasn't violated, so i just assumed that it was a big boned man...but then the fat started seeping into my space and i was slowly pushed against the wall of the subway car, possibly even going in a diagonal fashion. i quickly glanced to my side to see if jabba had come to exact revenge and a little bald headed face (attached to jabba's body in a coat made with the most fabric i've seen for one garment) turned to me and sweetly said "sorry!". my heart broke a little and i diagonally said 'it's ok!' and continued reading. when my stop came, i struggled to look around him to make sure it was where i needed to be, then wriggled out of my seat and headed for the doors. he grimaced at me with his jack-o-lantern teeth, in what i can only assume was meant to be a smile and he apologized once more. again, my heart broke and again, i brushed it off saying 'it's ok!'. he then very enthusiastically said 'have a nice day!' and i returned the sentiment.

i can has?

in honor of poor heather's antm departure, i wanted to do something special to let her and the world know that i'm still on team heather (even though i dropped her from my team...7th place bitches!!) brainstorming with my brother, i thought it might be a genius idea to make a website devoted to her filled with all lolheathers and it would be called "icanhasassburger.com"...my brother made the very good point that it would be difficult to make a whole website out of just that. i helped validate his point by adding "especially if she's never on any other shows". so we'll start slow...and who knows, maybe one day it could be filled with a variety of peeps (i'm sure at least one of the kid nation kids could qualify).



caption from brother, screenshot from fourfour. speaking of fourfour, check out this post- not only is there a jade update, but there's so much top model info that you should just go there and read it instead of me telling you what it says.

FRC: ANTM - As-BYE-gers

Heather laments her position in the previous panel's bottom two and everyone tries to make a big deal about how heather had to do a line by line reading for her commercial. umm, every cycle at least three girls have to do this. chill.

the challenge this week is go-sees. (eee!) they each get a translator to help them with the cab, but once out of the car, they must find the place on their own. heather has extreme difficulty with this. i think her and jenah will be in the bottom with heather going home. calling it. bianca does really well, chantal does alright (aside from forgetting to wear nude underoos on go-see day. idiot.) and saleisha gets called dull by one desinger (snap!). jenah gets told that her walk was terrible. saleisha makes it back to the agency first and bianca gets in just under the wire. the rest of the girls are LATE!!! will they ever learn? they get thrown into a fiery pit as punishment. jenah was fifteen minnutes late with chantal five minutes behind her. heather i think came in the next day. she somehow misplaced her cab. or, as she adorably kept calling it, her "cabbie". bianca wins the challenge and gets to appear in the 2008 beijing olympics ad. weird...because the picture they used has nothing to do with olympics or beijing.

the shoot this week will be photographed by the sexy nigel barker. the girls must stand out amongst chinese lions and dragons. (o mai!) jenah pulls a caridee and says something stupid to nigel. none of the girls seem to have knocked it out of the park on this one.

the judges like chantal's picture, love bianca's body language (but not her facial expression), are nervous about jenah's personality, loved everything about saleisha, and are surprised by heather's sexy. four girls are going to beijing and one girl is going home.

saleisha is called first, followed by bianca and chantal. jenah is not very likeable and heather has asperger's, but the two-time curse gets heather this week (watch your back next time jenah), so jenah gets to go to beijing. evil bianca gets a hint of a smile on her face. HOWEVER, when heather is hugging bianca goodbye, bianca affectionately grabs heather's chin. LOVERS! who wants to bet that heather will continue getting covergirl of the week?

on a side note...isn't it weird how the fadeout picture with two blond salts and two short haired peppers make it seem like we're all seeing double?

on another side note: Thanks to my wife for pointing it out, I am 7th on the leaderboard with my antm fantasy team for this week's scores! wooo!! i'm still 501st place overall, but for the week, i'm a star! i even got a trophy for my genius efforts.

Gossip Girl Insight of the Week

Mom Van der Woodsen says there's nothing wrong with Chinese food on Thanksgiving, which...may be true, but I can say from experience 'good luck finding a chinese restaurant open on turkey day'.

FRC: ANTM/PR

China!
The girls are packing to go to china and bianca gets irritated at heather. i'm so curious about the relationship between these two because at first glance, it seems as though they don't get along. heather annoys bianca, so bianca is mean in return. but then there are shots of the two of them having a heart to heart or bianca giving heather advice. but bianca's pretty evil so maybe this is as much as a black nub heart like hers can love.

in shanghai, the girls show off their ni hao...what we'll soon learn is the only word they were prepared with. they go to their awesome penthouse and are greeted by tyra mail. i will not repeat the joke i made at this point to my brother, but he and i can just take a moment to remember that. and i'm back. the six run to their room and find that there are five beds...four twin and one super king. saleisha decides she wants me to hate her by claiming the king and being unwilling to share with heather (caught without a bed). saleisha sticks with her decision and says she won't share a bed unless it's with a male. oh, but you'll shower with everyone? weird. why doesn't someone just tell her to take a twin so someone else can share? she's being such an on purpose brat. the worst kind. bianca calls heather a joke.

chantal wins me over by helping heather out. bianca and jenah say they'll share so everyone can have a bed. see that? she was mean but she helped. bianca says that heather needs to learn how to stand up for herself. as evil as she is, she's usually right.

the girls go to shanghai studios to learn martial arts stuff. they must perform these positions whilst being hoisted in the air by a huge crane and four men. here's where we learn that bianca now has a fear of heights. jenah and chantal are first. they suck. lisa and saleisha are next. lisa works through her fear of heights. bianca and heather are next and bianca is not confident she'll be able to do it. she flips out and hilariously ponders how she can trust the four guys when she doesn't even trust some family members. heather tries to talk her through it. bianca makes a feeble attempt at going off the ground, but then screams to be taken down and is disqualified. heather goes alone and is impressive enough to win the challenge. she must've been thankful for chantal's earlier chivalry, because she chooses to share her shopping spree challenge win with chantal. ouch for bianca, who couldn't stop talking about wanting to go shopping. heather says she would've picked bianca but it was time to dole out the tough love. heather and bianca are secretly in love i bet.

it's time for another covergirl commercial. this time though, they don't have to do it in a foreign language. they are subpar as usual. ackshuloly, saleisha and chantal are decent. heather is particularly bad.

heather is covergirl of the week again. the judges loved chantal's commercial and shoot. they think heather's pic was great but were discouraged by her commercial. j. alexander thinks saleisha has plateaued. nigel doesn't like jenah as a person. the judges think bianca is beautiful but could be more.

chantal is called first, followed by saleisha, bianca and then jenah. lisa has died inside and heather has asperger's, so lisa goes home. next week: go-sees. i think it'll be between heather and...i wanna say chantal, but she shows personality better than jenah. hm...do any of you have predictions?



sarah jessica parker
i'm not gonna do a full project runway recap here because i just got home from oklahoma yesterday and it's late right now...so...basically it wasn't exciting enough for me to want to sit through again. off the top of my head...sarah jessica parker commissioned a two piece affordable outfit that "may be" put in her 'bitten' line. similar to the miss america pageant dress last season, they all had to pitch to sjp individually and she chose half that she would like to see made. from there, the chosen ones picked teammates and had 15 dollars to realize their designs (the outfit had to retail for $40). some of these guys were hyperventillating all over themselves about sjp. i'm not gonna remember what all the teams were...but i think victorya won (correct me if i'm wrong) and the bottom teams were carmen and marco (i think his real name is christian, but he reminds me of the gay kid from degrassi) and marion and steven. marion and steven were more boring, and the atrocity came from the mind of marion, so he went home. did i miss anything?

FRC: KN - catch up

oh my god guys, i wish more of you watched kid nation, because shit is going doooowwwnnn!!!! i've finally caught up with the goings on and we've got ourselves quite the cliff hanger. are you kind of excited for a possible all male council of DK, Blaine, Greg, and Michael?!? THE DRAMA!!!!

gold stars have gone to DK, Nathan (homeschooled), Kennedy (some weirdo that i'm sure we won't hear from again) and Blaine (finally out of greg's shadow and looking great in yellow). one kid has gone home (Randi, yellow, 11) and DK almost did before guylan talked him into staying.

FRC: ANTM - Model Wasteland

Heather is super bummed over Sarah's departure and is taking it a lot harder than any pervious oustings. The first Tyramail has the word aMUSE in it and chantal thinks that tyra is going to teach them how to be inspiring. if only it were that easy, chantal. benny ninja is back AGAIN and seriously, B, cool it. Thrice is enough. the girls have some sort of project runway challenge where they pair up with fashion design students and make a dress out of an existing large, matronly dress. oh yeah, make fun of the fatties now that sarah is gone. lisa's designer asks her about herself and she says she "likes to draw and show her legs." well, the stripper thing gets clearer and clearer each day, doesn't it. the winner of the challenge will appear in some jewelry ad in their holiday issue.

on the runway, the girls must tell the crowd some backstory about the design, which trips heather up. lisa also does miserably. bianca and jenah do well in my opinion, but the judges choose saleisha as a winner. she chooses bianca and lisa to be in the shoot with her. heather takes the judges criticism rather harshly and it affects her 'tude for the rest of the evening and for the next day's photo shoot.

there is some weird and stupid (and questionable..do they always shower together?) shower drama and heather flips her shit.

the girls go out to the desert (but not to, as a friend suggested, make a spice girls video) and are told that they will be photographed with a flaming car.

BIANCA - looks awesome...pigford-arc in full effect
HEATHER - is kind of lost. the poor challenge performance and evaluation killed her confidence, but its her first misstep. the pic is not terrible, but its definitely not her best.
CHANTAL - anything but modest. turns out a great photo though.
SALEISHA - her hair looks cute like this.
AMBREAL - go home!
JENAH - fab as usual. the pic is great.
LISA - does not do a fantastic job here.

there's more stupid shower shit that's just heather redirecting her frustration.

PANEL:
During the judge introductions, there are weird chinese dragon puppets randomly popping up in the background. then a big ol' lion comes prancing out. a chinese one that's really people, not like, mufasa. tyra announces that they are all going to china!!!! guys with swords come out, there is general ado. it's no "australia, hop to it!!" but she's trying. tyra breaks the news that someone still has to get the fuck out though. bianca is called first, followed by jenah, saleisha, chantal, and heather. its between lisa and ambreal. like there's any question. see ya ambreal.


so a few weeks ago, i was so fed up with dropping someone from my team who would then earn mad points, that i decided i would revert to my original team and leave it alone. well, i never reverted back to my original three (lisa, saleisha, heather) but i've left it alone with bianca, lisa, and heather. this team has gotten me some points, but my original three have really been raking it in recently and of course i'm kicking myself for not going back. my wife made a good point that commercials are next (and probs in a foreign language) which doesn't bode well for heather. since we're down to a low number, should i satart playing the game again? should i forgive jenah for being fug in real life and stunning in pics and just put her on my team already? does any of this matter? honestly though, i think it'll be between chantal and lisa going home next week...and i think the top three will be bianca, saleisha, and jenah. do you guys have top three predictions yet?

Gossip Girl Insight of the Week

We all know I loves me some Gossip Girl, but I must reproduce a quote here that's really spot on. I obsessively read TWOP's recaps for about 60% of the shows i watch because usually they're funny...though sometimes i read them to get tidbits of info that i missed during the show. Basically, I read enough of these that I have favorite recappers (Potes, M. Giant) and ones that I don't love as much (Jacob). Jacob does the American Idol Recaps as well as Gossip Girl and is prone to ridiculous self-indulgent tangents and i just want to reach through the screen sometimes and say "all i want is a hilarious recap, don't try and wow me with your weird brain!!" anyway, i would just stop reading them, but I watch gossip girl with a group of 3 to 7 girls every week and i have a hard time following the story sometimes, so Jacob keeps me in check. Here is something he said about last week's ep that is so hilariously true, i wanted to share it with other gg fans out there to see if you guys agree:

I am so confused by the timeline of this show because sometimes they're at school and it's the middle of the night and sometimes half of them are at school and the other half are at a strip club and sometimes they're having dinner before or during breakfast. The snow is constantly coming down in June on this show.

right?

FRC: Project Runway

Alrighty. Welcome back PR! There wasn't anything too thrilling this episode, so we'll just kind of use this as an introduction to our cast based on our first glances of them...

RAMI KASHOU - bald and foreign
CHRIS - John Goodman
ChRISTIAN SIRIANO - i hate him based only on his asymmetric haircut
JILLIAN LEWIS - wears cute things, that's gotta be good
KIT "PISTOL" SCARBO - blond
KEVIN CHRISTIANA - joey fatone + javier bardem
JACK MACKENROTH - stud
STEVEN ROSENGARD - apparently just missed out being a contestant last year
SIMONE LeBLANC - cool name
ELISA JIMENEZ - uh oh. one of the crazies i fear. what was the name of that unbearable one last year?
MARION LEE - a boy
RICKY LIZALDE - wears black
"SWEET P" VAUGHN - is this how olive oyl's baby turned out?
...i've missed one here i think...there should be 15....OH! i think it's the asian one - VICTORYA HONG - asian.

The first challenge requires the contestants to choose from loads of fabric options ($50,000 worth) within ten minutes. Once they're back at their stations they have about 12 hours to design something that reflects their style. BORING. you're giving them actual fabric?!?

So far, watching the contestants work, I am taken by Rami and Jack's dresses in particular.

The models are sent in (already assigned) for fitting and final touches. tim gunn also points out the bluefly.com accessory wall. the models are dressed and sent through the works for the first runway show. everything goes by too fast for me to comment on each thing, so i'll just bring out the six for you.

ELISA - lea - that train was a BAD idea. Bottom 3.
SIMONE - lauren - nothing special. and also, fug. Bottom 3
RICKY - wendy - produces a nice dress, but could've done better. Bottom 3
CHRISTIAN - lisa - his outfit reminds me of a terrier. something a terrier would wear. Top 3.
VICTORYA - jacqueline - cute black dries that ties the arms down. Top 3.
RAMI - ashley - dress looks gorgeous! Top 3.

Rami wins the challenge and immunity. Christian, Victorya and Ricky are all safe. It's between cool name and crazy...but we all know that crazy makes good tv, so elise is safe and Simone gets auf'd.

i started my team too late for the first ep, but hopefully i can jump right back in.

kid nation - mini recap

so i know that sara's not covering kid nation any more, but last night i watched like 12 hours of tv and ended up watching a bit of CTS's fave - kid nation.

honestly, there's only a very short moment in the show that i'd like to comment on.....and it probably has less to do with the kids and more to do with the editors.

i'm going to warn everyone now by saying that - this may be one of those things that is only funny to becca and not to anybody else. there are many of these things that only i find funny....like the time i saw a guy in a subway station in paris having a lengthy phone conversation on a banana. apparently, since the guy was insane, i was an asshole for laughing. i also enjoy america's funniest home videos....and poop jokes.

ok- back to kid nation. so the kids are all pissed off because they mix up the teams and the red team gets a cute little nerdy kid who apparently doesn't pull his weight or something and they all go nuts. what's funny is that this other kid gets all angry and yells at their team leader and then goes outside and throws some sticks into a fire and screams to no one in particular (the camera man i guess) - "i don't want to live with the new kid! he sings in his sleep!". then there's a transitional shot of their cabin at night with nobody around all you hear is the sound of a kid singing some uninteligible song (if i could give it a genre i would say that it sounds like a medieval christmas carol sung in falsetto by a muppet), and then you hear another kid scream...."SHUT UP!!!!". End Scene.

That was the best 10 seconds of the entire 12 hours of tv I watched yesterday.

FRC: ANTM - Plus size time

do you guys also like to watch the opening credits and, in addition to saying "gone" after the booted ones are shown, reminisce about those awful days when mila and victoria (veronica?) were around?

ambreal blahs about how ebony should be there and not her, and i agree. i personally think tyra should have just cut them both loose. sarah blahs about how her possibly losing weight (though she doesn't see it) is affecting her standing. is thems the plus size bells i hear chiming? cut to: chantal saying she can do no wrong. and here we have chantal's first strike. i think we've also got a good idea of our bottom two already. bianca continues lashing out by backhanding heather (but i'm sure she's just a kitten under all those mean words. one of those hairless ones, but a kitten nonetheless.)

the girls are taken to a ballet studio where there are the blandest, most unflattering nude colored leotards that the girls must put on. the tights come up to the natural waist, and the long-sleeved scoop neck does nothing but complete their Band Aid look. tyra comes out OF COURSE in a fancy nicer ballet get up. a magenta skirt, black spaghetti strap v neck top, black pantyhose and leg warmers. what i would've given to see her in that sausage thing the girls were punished with. i'm half expecting some tabloid to discover that she's hiding a youngerberry tree and that she is being sustained by the energy and youth of these girls.

tyra teaches the girls how to move. ugh. ambreal sucks. tyty teaches the sexy wall slide and oh my god i love heather, but she should stay away from the sexy wall slide....it looks like she learned how to sexy wall slide from a bear named baloo. then she brings out a bunch of knee pads and says "On your knees it's bj time!!" jk. they sexy crawl.

there's a hilarious moment back at the house where all the skinny girls are griping about their weight and bianca says that she weighs the most in the house and sarah goes "Really, Bianca? You really wanna do this?"aww, i love sarah. even though her friend choice was sometimes suspect.

the girls are taken to a theater where bianca tells us that famous music video director Jessy terrero is there. a week ago i would've said "who?" but i just worked on one of his music videos so i have actually heard of him. ca-razy. in lieu of a photo shoot, the girls are all going to be in an enrique iglesias music vid, with two girls getting featured based on absolutely nothing but whom enrique wants to bone hardest. am i right?! chantal strike 2s herself with some comment. the theme of the video is vampires...but i don't get an idea of the plot. i think it's something like 'the tale of sexy vampires whom enrique iglesias wants to bone". lisa is the primary pick (they were told at first that only one girl would be featured) and heather the second.

JENAH - the judges are underwhelmed. she was at the top too long...needed a break anyway.
HEATHER - does really well but faints and spazzes out during the final group scene. she hadn't eaten all day. yet sarah's the one with the weight problem.
CHANTAL - confident, but sucks today.
AMBREAL - please. mercy kill. tyra thought her take on the wall slide was too hoochie. if heather got the wall slide it would've been baloo-chie.
LISA - i expected better from a stripper, but the judges thought she did great.
SARAH - i thought she looked hot, but she was self-conscious about her bod. nigel brings up sarah's weight issue again almost verbatim and weirdly pretending like it's the first time it's come up. weird. what if they made her go through that every week until they decided when plus size time would come.
SALEISHA - surprised tyra with her range.
BIANCA - did weird kissy faces.

Chantal gets her third strike and is banished to the bottom 2. i didn't notice this the first time i saw the episode, but tyra doesn't seem to know anything about this music video during panel. there's a lot of post audio work and her talking about it really vaguely. i wonder if she knew anything at all before showing up for the day.

heather is covergirl of the week for the millionth time in a row.

lisa is called first, sarah and chantal are last two. sarah is being punished by the curse of the plus size contestant, and chantal was maybe getting too cocky. there's a distant chiming and sarah is sent home. sarah LOSES IT. poor thing. a girl was never more sad to not be fatter. tyra sucks.

cts travel report: austin

this weekend, i headed down to austin, T to see these things three (yeah i rhymed. what of it?):

-my former (and now defunct band) play their first and final show

-the screening of an early cut of a short film i was in last summer

-my wife

the first leg of my flight was from JFK to minneapolis. I woke up at 7:30 (after having two more drinks than i said i was gonna have the night before) in order to have enough time to get ready, take the hour and a half subway ride (seven bucks beats fifty any day) and be at the airport about an hour and a half before the flight. Point is, i was tired. so i immediately went to sleep. i was arisen from a possible openmouth slumber (that i always try to play off on the plane but what's the point) by horrid screeching and squawking; the demon sounds of two young girls...laughing. through the course of the three hour flight, into slumber and ripped out again like a fucking dementor was sucking my soul, i gathered enough information to piece together what was going on. believe you me, the first two or three times, i seriously jolted awake like 'whathafuh?!'

The source of hell's banshees was located directly behind me, emanating from twin 8-year old girls watching tom & jerry, a treat that was only reserved for plane journeys. and judging by the pure primal screech laughter coming from those girls, they really looked forward to their plane journeys. this was not the child's laughter that people claim as their favorite sound or noise. it was a laugh that made me want to stick shards of glass in my ears and chew on the spare pieces. and it was constant throughout the entire flight. luckily, the second leg to austin kind of made up for it when i had no seatmate and could move into my little loveseat.

Anyway, the actual slutfire show was amazing and not just in a hilarious way. i want to buy the cd and the tshirt and its not just because i wrote one of the songs and was on the tshirts. a rough cut of kazoo was screened and aside from not being able to stop thinking about how fat i looked in it, i was pleased with the outcome. that same night, there were two other acts on the bill that were also pretty enjoyable.

the rest of the weekend was also a blast, and not just because people kept telling me i was pretty...or because we went to a coffee shop that i immediately noticed was the setting used for the Day Game episode of the pick up artist. there's something about hanging out at houses and driving to and fro in a car (and compliments) that i really look forward to whenever i leave the city. also, the ol' ball and chain really cracks me up. we wrote a couple new lines for some songs to more accurately reflect the state of the world ("whatta man whatta man whatta man whatta mediocre man. Say it again now!") and how top model contestants should really lower their expectations ("Wanna be in a car show? Na na na na na na"). also, this exchange happened:

martinez-dawes: I just want to be as cool as you are.
dawes-martinez: but you ARE as cool as me am.

austin, texas rating: four golden jabbas

becca's unintentional joke of the week

On Thursday, I went into my local hardware store to buy some screws. I went up to the counter and told the guy that I'd like a box of screws, and his response to me is, "all our screws are loose!"....and so I responded with, "haha, i think we all have a few screws loose here if you know what i mean!". bad-um-bum......

crickets.

and then the hardware store guy says,"we only sell our screws individually". feeling like the loony tune the guy obviously thought i was - i bought three screws.

believe it or not, i actually tried to joke with him again. when he told me that my purchase would be $.20 total, i said something along the lines of, "you drive a hard bargain buddy!".

deafening silence.

word to the wise: hardware stores and improvisational comedy routines do not mix.....that's the nuts and bolts of it. am i right people? anybody? nothing? tough crowd!

CTS Presents: The Headline of the Week!

SIUE students accused of kidnapping, battery with freshly baked cookies

i'm a failure

here i am with an apology and blame...i've had a couple days where i've been up 21-23 hours, a couple weekend days that i've been working, blah blah blah, point is i'm still not all caught up with my dvr or with kid nation. now, i was never planning on doing a top model recap for last week because it was a clip show, but i am going to have to postpone kid nation again (show me hands of anyone who cares). when i do get back on track with that, i'll do a brief summary of what we missed...but it also might not come back considering project runway starts next week, and i'll probably drop kid nation if i can't do all three. (why must they all be on wednesday?!)

as an apology, check out this music video that becca and i were in. our screentime was a total of about 5 seconds, but it's a cute vid and you can see how much becca and i love each other.

CLICK HERE!

also, if you check out Slutfire's myspace page, you'll see they have two new songs up. because of geographic differences, i'm no longer playing in the band, but i did write "ugly roadie". yes!

i'll be back to form soon i hope.

i couldn't resist

Don't make fun

but this is way exciting for me. if you don't know, don't ask.

a short halloween crime drama

since we are all still coming down from our post halloween sugar highs - here's one last halloween post for the year......and it's vintage story, dating back to the early 1990s....it's not that funny simply because it's true.

so after trick or treating my brother and i would meticulously go about counting how much candy we got. i would simply throw mine back in my trick-or-treat bag, while my brother would continue to separate every candy by type into very well organized little groups on his bedroom floor. we came home from school the next day excited to dig into our candy stash when my brother realizes that lo and behold someone had eaten every last one of his tootsie rolls. they had however, left every other candy untouched! it was before ambien hit the markets.....so it wasn't mom sleep eating.....there was only one person in our house it could have been, and that was this sly little fox:



don't let that cute little teddy bear face fool you...mazie was a gangster. man, back in my day - it was a dog eat tootsie roll world out there.

i'm a promise keeper, pt. 2

I'm a promise keeper

and it was worth the wait...

Idiots deserve to be lost

Last night, as I was heading to meet my friends for a halloween good time, I was stopped by a Julie Chen-looking lady (aka the chenbot, host of big brother) asking which direction Bleecker was in. Since i had just exited the subway, it was taking me a couple seconds to get my bearings, so as i was thinking, i responded with an "uhhh..." which i guess can be interpreted as "i don't know"...however, when she followed up her question with "or Lafayette?", I was knocked back into my right mind, got my bearings and said "that way!" (with the enthusiasm implied by an exclamation point) and pointed her in the correct direction. Pleased with myself for helping out a fellow human, i waited on the corner for the walk signal to come on so i could continue on my way. Out of the corner of my eye, i saw her kind of huddle into the man she was with and then the two made an about face and started walking in the direction opposite from what i pointed. I don't know if it was because I was dressed up as Dora the Explorer and looked 6 years old, or if it was the extended "uuhhhhh..." before i committed to the answer, but as they tried to sneakily cross behind me and i heard the Chenbot say to her mate "i KNOW that Bleeker is this way." Ok, first of all, bitch, if you KNEW bleeker was that way, why the hell did you ask me? and second of all, bitch, bleeker was NOT that way and i hope you spent the entire night searching in the wrong area and you missed whatever douchebag party you were headed to. and then i hope when you realized your mistake, and that you should've listened to that little dora on the street corner, i hope your man dumped you.

after a few minutes of fuming over this, i was able to enjoy my evening. some highlights included the best duo ever dressed as a couple Thundercats (i'll post a picture when i get a chance to upload it)...not only did they have the bods for it, but they also made the costumes themselves. I also appreciated a girl named haley dressed as an american apparel ad and a dude on the train dressed as Hulk Hogan. he got points for commitment, since his lower half was only covered by yellow wrestling speedos. he also got points for putting up with all the shit he was getting from dudes that were clearly not as secure in their manhood as he whilst riding the train.

and finally, completely unrelated, i opened up the cnn website today and was greeted with a headline that made me giggle. Officer shot in donut shop robbery dies ..not the dying aspect of it, of course. and then i outright laughed when i thought more about a cop meeting his maker in a donut shop. and then i actually clicked on the article and read it and i got sad.
but i mean...it's still kind of funny right?

FRC: ANTM - ebony grows a pair

i apologize for how late this is. Also, I'm not going to be able to do a kid nation recap before the next episode airs (i haven't even seen last week's ep yet), so let's just cut our losses and move on. a girl's gotta pay her rent.

so, i effin did it again. i took heather off my team last week because she wasn't getting me any points and of course here's the week she finally gets pointage. whatever, i really screwed up with my fantasy top model. nothing i can do now that i'm 1338th place. :(

tyson beckford comes to the house and i shit a brick. never have i wanted to be a 9th rate contestant on a televised modeling show more. he talks to them about something to do with spokesmodeling, but i'm too busy thinking about his arms. and his face. that chest....oh sorry. (also notable...he's wearing jeans and a black tank top.. [those arms...] tyra would be pleased) then tyson eats ambreal's mango (an actual mango), skin and all. i've loved this man for a long time, so i'm gonna let that slide. the girls have to split into groups of three and do a 30 second psa for Keep A Child Alive. ambreal, heather, and jenah win. points disappear before my eyes again. some lady picks one name at random to do a shoot with mary j. blige. the other two get gift baskets (aka the shaft). heather's name is drawn and she does a pretty good job at the shoot and looks beautiful. team heather! also they put loads of tanner on her.

during an impromptu sleepover, ebony voices that she wants to go home. other girls are shocked.

photo shoot - recyclable materials.

HEATHER - aluminum cans - heather takes a straight on photo and it works. see, she had nothing to worry about. got you again, asperger's.
CHANTAL - paper. the judges are split.
SARAH - garbage bags. judges think she's losing weight even though she says she isn't. if she gets booted for this, i'm gonna be pissed. a couple weeks ago, tyra said something like 'usually, people tell you to lose weight, but not us.' and it's like, get off your flippin high horse tyra, the only reason you're telling her not to lose weight is because you don't think she can cut it as a "real model". so just shut up.
SALEISHA - car parts - looks so rihanna. if you look past her bad hair. that hair that could work as an umbrella. ella. ella. ee. ee. ee.
EBONY - bubble wrap - the judges think she has an attitude problem despite some good pics (not this week's though). i guess that weave made her a little too naomi.
JENAH - cardboard - i give jenah a hard time for that ratty hair and those front teeth, but she always turns out a stunning photo.
BIANCA - oil - looks a lot like lil eva pigford in her pic. do i sense a parallel character arc?
LISA - plastic bottles - judges think she's being too safe with her risk taking. whaaa?
AMBREAL - newspaper. sucks. everyone thinks so! (wait, who are we talking about?)

ebony confessionalizes that she doesn't like the criticism of photo shoots and panel, so she's hoping tyra will send her home. geez, i wonder where this is going.

saleisha is called first. others follow until ebony and ambreal are left. the last photo in tyra's hand is ebony, so technically i was right in calling ambreal's booting last week. however, ebony speaks up and says she doesn't want to be there. so, tyra says something to make it look like she was the one doing the dumping and not ebony, and then basically says 'shove off, puta'. it kind of pisses me off that tyra's all 'talk to mama' about it and then berates her. what a bitch. poor ambreal is just standing there (all invisible) like 'what does this mean for me?'. after tyra's done spitting ebony out, and after she's basically told ambreal that she sucks, she tries to make a quick recovery and be all 'fate is smiling on you! you have another chance!' about it. she'll go next week.

you know what? i'm not done with this...because ebony basically figured out that she didn't want to be a model. which is totally valid. she didn't suck, it just didn't make her happy. she thought she wanted it, but going through the process made her aware that she didn't. so good for her for leaving and knowing that it wasn't for her. fuck tyra for not being able to look past her pride and realize that it was better that ebony came to this realization and stuck with what she wanted instead of staying for camera time or some other lameoid reason and taking someone else's spot who actually wanted it.

oh tyra

does everyone remember the photoshoot last cycle on top model wherein each contestant had to shoot four pics representing four different characteristics presented on a one sheet? well, ready your "oh no she di-int" face and hear this...i was walking down the streets of manhattan today and i saw a couple posters for tyra's daytime talk show. this ad was made in the exact same vein of that photoshoot. four tyras, four different expressions, four words summing up "characteristics". i was in a bit of a rush, so i didn't get to see all four words she chose, but the two i saw were enough ty-ty for me: Glamunicator and Gabologist. ready?

OH NO SHE DI-INT!

FRC: KN - Politics Week

so, listen...i rely a lot on the comments left (or not left) for all my reality corner shows because it gives me a feel of who (if anyone) is reading or relying on posts about specific shows. i know for sure that the top model recaps don't fall on deaf eyes, but when it comes to the kid nation recap, the only people that i think are enthusiastic about reading them are my dear partner in crime, Becca, and my dear brother. and ricky doesn't even watch the show! so, due to my recent busy schedule, i'm going to introduce a new format for the Kid Nation recaps (and any subsequent shows that don't seem to need such a thorough walkthrough) called Oh Shit! Recaps. Let's begin.

Oh shit! Yellow team is bratty!
Oh shit! Apparently blue team hates their leader!
Oh shit! Reelections!
Oh shit! Green team, a team Laurel put together by handpicking kids that exhibited leadership skills and ability, decide they love Laurel as their leader. i would've bet money that laurel would've been the only council member running unopposed. and i would've won that bet.
Oh shit! Olivia's a bitch!
Oh shit! No Taylor di-int!
Oh shit! Yellow is upper class (thanks to zach)! and green is finally in the top 2 districts! (for the record, red are cooks and blue are laborers. haha!)
Oh shit! the council chooses toothbrushes over a barbeque party! you're telling me these kids haven't been brushing their teeth? were they told not to bring toothbrushes? cuz that's fucked up.
Oh shit! I don't know who this Markelle (red) character is, but methinks he's awesome. he made one of taylor's cronies (the one with the perma-baby face, but not in a cute way [Laila]) flip her shit when he ripped down a vote for taylor poster that laila made. like "no wire hangers!!!" shit flipping. bitch crazy.
Oh shit! greg has a soft side and its adorable! look at him nurturing the psychopathic child of the corn [Laila].
oh shit! greg finally got his gold star! now he can go to college!
oh shit! anjay keeps his seat! guylan replaces mike! (nice! the only vote mike got was the one he cast for himself...Bonanza City: 3, Mike's ego: 0) Zach takes taylor's seat! (randi should get the gold star for going against the gaggle of yellow females and casting her vote for zach...securing his win)

Checking In with Fall TV!

Hello friends -- I apologize for my recent posts being so tv heavy....we all know i have an unhealthy relationship with the idiotbox, but i've been working a lot recently, so its really the only other thing going on in my life right now. I'll try to be more three dimensional in the future. However, we are currently in the present (or actually this would be in the past...awww i'm confusing myself) so let's discuss what tv shows we're all still sticking with.

There are two shows that I ditched without even watching. I had planned on seeing them, but my dvr, fat with 50 shows, was too intimidating for me to think about adding more shows that i wasn't very excited about. Those shows are Moonlight and Fox's Idol-spinoffish thing, The Next Great American Band. Sorry guys.

So you know how I have that rule where I give a show two to three episodes before deciding what to do with it? There was one show that was so absolutely horrific that I couldn't even make it past half an ep, and that show was Carpoolers. It made me sad that so many people saw this piece of crap and still let it go on the air. Really really very sad. The two shows I gave a fair two episode chance to were Chuck and Cane. Chuck really thinks its the shit...like really cute really funny shit. i agree with one of those words. And Cane was a good enough show, but i had to ask myself this: "if i turn off the show right now, will i wonder what happens to any of the characters?" the answer was no, so it got my axe.

If we want to talk real axes, Viva Laughlin is the first big cancel of the season, getting the bad news the day after its second episode aired (which was just three days after the first episode aired). I have both eps sitting on my dvr, and I thought about just erasing them, but I feel like if it was a victim of that quick of an axe drop, it must be TERRIBLE...and those shows can be kind of fun if you're, like, drunk. (for those who care, Nashville was also cancelled, but I had no idea it was even on)

The fantastic news is that Gossip Girl has been picked up for a full season. YES!!! Guiltiest pleasure evar!!! Private Practice was also picked up, so i suppose i'll continue watching it for now... And finally, I'd like to end with a plea. Guys, watch Samantha Who. I had no idea what a great comedic talent christina applegate was...but in addition to that, this show has me LOL-ing for real. Like, rewind and watch that scene again so i can laugh harder LOL-ing. I feel like there were general low expectations for it (hell, i wasn't expecting much) and that makes me nervous that it won't get watched...so i encourage you all to take a gander (it's on monday nights at 9:30 i believe..or maybe 9. eastern) because it is truly hilarious.

So what shows have you all decided to stick with or drop? Let a sister know in the comments.

Fires in CA

those pesky forest fires are burning down peoples homes in california again.....my apartment hasn't been burned down by a forest fire, but it sure does look like it was!

bad dum bum...

FRC: ANTM - posers!

previously: victoria went back to yale. i don't know if you've heard, but she's a student at yale.

man oh man did i fuck up by switching my team last week. lisa got a bajillion points and i had already dumped her. damn my luck! now i'm in like, a thousandth place. great.

we get a segment on how "annoying" it is that janet has taken it upon herself to be "house mom" and make a chore list. oh yeah, it's so annoying to not want to live in a sty. then we see heather talking about the different ways she thinks each girl can improve and i think it's meant to be seen as heather being gossipy, but i really just think she was asked a question and answered it honestly. and i think that's obvious when bianca asks her to say what is wrong with her own self, and she gives a real answer.

ambreal tells us she's a musical theater major and things in my head fall into place. she also says that she's confident. words of death. i hate lisa's hair. i'm putting her back on my team though.

fucking benny ninja is back again. ugh! and then there's obvi VOing where he's all "i hope you remember me from the Old Navy challenge". oh the one that was like, 5 days ago? yeah, benny, everyone remembers. he's here to help with posing whilst in the air. there are trampolines and girls falling everywhere. poor heather is at the height of her awkwardness here (literally!). we hear ambreal say she thinks she has an edge over the other girls. strike 2.

some girls streak through the house as janet practices her walk and says she feels more mature than the rest of the girls. uh oh.

this weeks' challenge - posing while doing ice skating lifts. haha! hilarious! benny starts to introduce our special guest ice skating celebrity and i cross my fingers hard for nancy kerrigan or tonya harding. naive of me to assume it'd be a lady...we're talking about top model here. lloyd eisler is the guest. benny will shout an emotion at each girl, which they must convey in ice skating pose form. ambreal says she has this in the bag. strike 3 young lady, to the bottom two with you. the EIC of seventeen and cycle 6's Danielle (!) come out to guest judge and Dani has virtually no accent these days. they all pretty much suck here (remember what i said about the heather reaching the height of her awkwardness on the trampolines? that was wrong, she hits it here) but lisa sucks the least (not if you ask all the other girls. oh snap!) and wins the challenge. i see my points disappear before my eyes. she chooses to share the prize with ebony and janet. together, they will shoot an ad in seventeen with dani.

photo shoot: fashion gargoyles. ambreal freaks because of her fear of heights. curiously, lisa's fear of heights is not mentioned. i had high hopes for the potential creativity of this shoot...but honestly, i don't know what's gargoyle about it.
HEATHER: i think she does the best gargoyle posing...but the judges complain that all of her work is in profiles. they'd like her to switch it up.
JENAH: looks like gwen stefani
SARAH: gets shafted in the shoulder wrap department. the one she gets stuck with is decidedly un-gargoyle. not great posing work, either.
JANET: is too preoccupied with her underwears. requires too much direction.
SALEISHA: tyra feels her wake up call worked.
CHANTAL: gets praise.
BIANCA: does great this week (called second.)
LISA: nails the shoot. is sad that everyone hates her. jealous bitches.
AMBREAL: overcomes her fear to do the shoot. problem is, she doesn't do it well.
EBONY: needs to work on personality, but her shoots are getting better and better. there's an awesome moment where tyra outs her for never smiling.

Panel: Lisa is summoned first. janet and ambreal are bottom 2. janet needs too much coaching, and ambreal is getting worse. without explaining why they would boot someone who can be good but needs so much direction over someone who is GETTING WORSE, they send janet home. ambreal will go next week, i'm sure.

unilluminating movie review - memoirs of geisha

i know this movie came out a while ago, but i just watched it on dvd. i'm not quite sure what i expected from a movie about women who's sole purpose in life was to please men and be eye candy, but i still found memoirs of a geisha to be pretty damn shallow.

when doing my web research for a picture that i ended up not being able to upload because blogger is having issues - i found the following amazing tidbit in this article.
it's about gwen stefani and her harajuku girls -
"Stefani infamously requested that reporters not ask about the Harajuku Girls, explaining that she regards her companions as figments of her imagination."

i thought it was hilarious, but perhaps i'm the only person on earth who didn't know that the four japanese women who trail gwen stefani everywhere are just her version of drop dead fred.

Questions...with Sara

There are loads of things i have questions about...and while i can usually find the answers after some extensive google research, sometimes i'm too lazy. or sometimes i want to see what real people think. and sometimes i just can't come up with the right word combo for a search engine. Here is today's question: what the hell happened to full opening credits?? I love a good credit sequence as much as the next guy (that loves credit sequences)...if it's a really good one, I can't even bring myself to fast forward through it. The top model opening is a guilty pleasure, the Deadwood opening is one of my all time favorites, and there's just something about the cold case theme. but i'm watching all these new shows and they're just offering me TITLE CARDS? what the eff man? I thought maybe it was just something they did with pilots or until they knew their shows would be around for a while. i've noticed though, that desperate housewives doesn't use their opening anymore, opting for that pic of the housewives with apples and 'created by marc cherry' as the only representation. Is this following the footsteps of Lost and Heroes? because really I need something more than just a title flash. Really good credit sequences add so much to the anticipation of the show, i think. The sequences for each season of the wire always deliver, keeping the song the same but covered by a different artist each year (come to think of it, HBO always has good openings). But i'm watching all these new shows, waiting for them to blow me away with awesome credits and they just tell me what the hell i'm watching. I know what i'm watching, i want to know who i'm watching-- names of the actors accompanied by sassy/funny/bad ass clips of that person. too much to ask?

Also something interesting...I just lifted up my keyboard wrist pad to place it in a more ideal location and under it I discovered a land of lost eyelashes. Why do they all travel to the same place? is it seen as cool, gelly, lash-refuge? do i lose a lot of eyelashes when i type?

FRC: KN- Oh Lord, Religion?!

Ugh. We come in on morgan and sophia talking about religion, and man, i love sophia more and more each week. Morgan is searching for a purpose (if i wasn't meant to win last week's gold star, then what am i here for?) and sophia doesn't believe in God these days. then we see jared telling some kid about some anti-semite that would tease him all the time. surprisingly (not really) today's journal pushes the town to organize religiously...and..that's a little too far i think. the kids are never just gonna consider what the journal says, they're always gonna act on it. religion is a touchy subject as it is, but to have 39 kids who probably don't really understand their own religions (other than what they know from their parents) try to figure out a way to understand religions different from theirs is a lot to ask. i have a feeling that most of these kids just go through the motions anyway. if anything comes out of this whole thing, i'm calling producer tampering.

the council proposes having one service where everyone can come and say a little bit about their religions. much of the town hates the thought of any service (sophia) and some oppose the mixing of religions into one service (olivia). the council doesn't like to listen to the town's opinions though, so they put their collective foot down and announce that the first service will be later that day. power hungry council! cute lil one-toothed-dark-glasses alex (9--who i have mentioned maybe once but has been quite adorably present from the start) takes it upon himself to survey the town to find out religious statistics.

the town refuses to gather when the council calls them for service. they can't get over how 'narrow-minded' these kids are. well, for one thing, town council, you didn't listen to them when they said they didn't want it, and now they're showing you. and for another thing, i think the council was viewing this more as a "lets learn about each other's religions" as opposed to the town seeing it as their regular service. one girl says she doesn't want to be in service with atheist people. Haha. They don't want to be there either. Many fear impending conflict. The Morganizer puts together an optional late nite last minute prayer circle. Ah, she must've seen that her purpose was to vie for this week's gold star.

SHOWDOWN: the teams must put together a large puzzle of a steeple and then raise it upright with a pulley within 30 minutes. i bet greg's spent some time building churches. it again comes between red and blue for the top, yellow and green for the bottom. blue reclaims upper class, followed by red, yellow back in the kitchen (which no one wants) and poor fucking green scrubbing toilets again. the town reward is either a mini golf course or a library of religious books. they're gonna choose the mini golf, right? No! Can you believe this? the council makes the town decide (laurel needs chapstick) and they choose the holy books. yeah right! those kids have been guilted good. must be a lot of catholics. and THEN, they all go read those books. yeah, right. i'd love to see what happens when the journals about abortion and same sex marriage come in.

little homesick cody (9) reads a letter from his girlfriend (who he's liked since the third grade, which is maybe like 1 year then?) and is all cryface about it. then he says that he just wants to drink a rootbeer and get his mind off it. it's just SODA! where do these kids get these ideas?

taylor does not hold good to her promises and refuses still to work. zach goes on a mission seeking help with the dishes and stupid red leader Mike is all "i was gonna wash my hair" about it. he's no better than taylor. zach collects people from a mixture of districts to chip in and help with the dishes. if only he could get his own district to do their damn job. looks like morgan is gonna have some gold star competition. the morganizer annoys me, so i'd be happy to see that post-losing smile fade once again.

town hall meeting -- everyone disapproves of taylor. she ain't changing. deal with it! :) cody misses his family and his ho, so he opts to leave. his one friend (campbell) cries about it and they practically make out when he leaves. poor campbell. the gold star goes to morgan. ugh. she tries to act all humble like she wasn't expecting it. whatevs. poor greg. he's so misunderstood. we are left with campbell doing shots of rootbeer, mourning the exit of his best bud.

final kid count: 38

FRC: ANTM - Makeovers!!!

Boy oh boy! Previously: Kimberly was sent to continue on her journey to find Nicodemus.

Victoria talks about how she came in as a joke and now, her nerdly instincts to succeed are making her want it fo' real. i smell bottom two! Saleisha says "i'm never gonna be in the bottom two." We now have our bottom two. (Don't these bitches know to watch their confidence?)

Ken Paves Salon - makeovers. Sigh. some of these could've gone so much better. Tyra shows the girls what they'll look like post makeover with her magical digital composite screen. that it looks like they spent about $2.50 on. Ambreal will be getting a shorter do, Bianca will be given Beyoncé locks, prompting me to dub her Beyancá. Sarah and lisa are both getting Ken Paves' actual hairdo. Victoria, as a friend said, looks like they're just gonna comb her hair. chantal gets a longer weave and straight bangs, jenah is going long and blond. janet will get a trim and some black dye, ebony will get a better weave a la naomi campbell, saleisha gets promised a rhianna-ish bob, and heather gets virtually no change. i'm sure that has nothing to do with people with asperger's being averse to drastic change.

sarah looks GREAT! Victoria is an improvement...anything would've been. heather looks the same. janet looks better definitely, ambreal's cut works well and makes her a little more noticeable. jenah. looks. TERRIBLE!!. lisa looks a little weird, but i'm sure it'll look cool straightened. ebony also turns out well. bianca gets her head shaved since her hair is in such bad shape and cries about it but isn't whiny. jay proposes using paves wigs on shoots, but honestly i think the shaved head looks great on bianca. now that tyra's shaved her head, she's put her in her place. begin redemption arc! chantal has gotten annoying with this weave. and saleisha. oh god. why oh why. they did not have flawless execution here. saleisha looks like a thirteen year old japanese schoolgirl.

challenge: our twice yearly covergirl makeup challenge. they must put on dramatic eye/natural lip makeup, put on an outfit, and march down the runway within five minutes. winner gets to do some covergirl shit. sarah wins!!! hooray! god jenah looks bad.

this week's photoshoot -- girls as flowers and plant life.
BIANCA, SUNFLOWER - not her best work, but she's getting used to the hair...she just needs to 'own it' now.
JANET, HYDRANGEA - gets compared to liza minnelli and..yeah! she does. is told that she has improved, but needs to be less pose-y. (no flower pun intended)
HEATHER, WEED - i wish they'd dressed her up like a marijuana leaf. she's made up like an orc, but it's a great pic.
LISA, BAMBOO - strong face, but she needs to give more
SALEISHA, TULIP - man they really are knocking saleisha down a few notches this week.
SARAH, IVY - judges love her photo, but they're nervous that she's losing weight.
AMBREAL, ROSE - hair is an improvement but she's still kinda eh.
VICTORIA, CACTUS - she's too focused on the nerd thing. we're done. twiggy HATES her because she's always picking fights and talking back.
JENAH, MOSS - the judges love all over jenah. i still say she looks bad.
EBONY, BIRD OF PARADISE - her film blew away the judges, but not her personality
CHANTAL, BABY'S BREATH - i'm over chantal.

victoria talks about how ridiculous this all is. she also thinks about how this has been everyone else's dream for their whole lives and it's only been hers since she tried out for the show as a joke and tyra was feeling quirky so she let her through to the top 13. yeah, she's definitely going home this week. tyra don't stand for girls who wouldn't kill for this shit.

elimination: jenah again is called first. everyone else follows until we are left with victoria and saleisha. but the twigster hates victoria and you don't fuck with twiggles...and saleisha just needed to be humbled, so V gets sent home. determined to remain the weirdo, she immediately removes her shoes. good riddance Geektoria.

public peeing - law enforcement edition

i'm not sure how to classify this post - so i am creating a new cooler than stupid category called the public peeing spotlight!

welcome to the first installment of the public peeing spotlight!

the star of todays spotlight is a man i passed yesterday it who was peeing all over a police car.

it was broad daylight on a pretty populated street and i heard the sound of water flowing...it sounded distinctly of water flowing, but i thought nahhh, couldn't be! but there he was - taking a wiz (how the hell do you spell wiz?) all over a cop car.

if i were a malicious cop car peer (which i am most definitely not!) i think i would pee on the handle on the door....

FRC: KN - Law Time

Again with the epic previouslys. CBS, we've been watching the show...this isn't necessary.

We enter on the kids going crazy on a sugar binge. there's rootbeer and screaming. and the kids are drinking what appears to be boilermakers...where'd they learn that? seriously, though, these kids are out of control. i'm surprised none of them went into a diabetic coma.

coincidentally, after a night of partying til 3 am, the town council reads the journal entry that encourages them to instill a curfew. meanwhile, greg is making quite the effort in trying to awaken the town. they're all acting like they're hungover. oh, kids! one of the girls whines about how greg dragging their sleeping bags (with them in it) into the center of town was way not cool and physically hurt. he calls her a bitch. Laurel reprimands him, saying that they used to respect him and thought he deserved the gold star. past tense. ouch. greg gets all teenage boy and tries to pick a fight with some guy, and his BFF blaine has to pull him off. greg curses at everyone from the window of his bunk.

the town council sets a 9:30 curfew. as in most town meetings, there is general uproar. the older kids of course want a later curfew. colton from the yellow team shuts them up in a manly way. Later, he and his boyz go hiking. they find cows and decide to scare them. the bull stays put and colton has a stand off with him. his friends urge him to back off and get nervous, but damn if colton didn't scare that bull off.

mallory (8) quite adorably tries to clean up the mess from yellow's flour war. with a rake! taylor's district produces a terrible meal and calls it brunch because they're too lazy to start early and don't want to be bothered to make an extra meal. i'm quickly learning that taylor's catchphrase is "deal with it!" it's no "don't threaten me with a good time" though. everyone wants yellow out of the kitchen.

district showdown. it's a complicated plotline, this showdown. basically, the council members are "sheriffs" and will be standing on a podium with wanted posters, shouting out the names of outlaw sheep. all sheep have names painted on them and district-colored playing cards around their necks, with the wanted sheep sporting the ace. each team must catch all three of their outlaws aces in 5 minutes. why do all the kids have bloody lips? guess what? greg has raised sheep before! colton makes quite the show catching aces for yellow. all three of them as a matter of fact. yellow, now as upper class, can do what they do best - nothing. blue comes in second, green FINALLY gets out of the labor class and sophia comes all over the place thinking of getting back to her kitchen officially. red finish with five seconds remaining. the town reward option is either a "frontier microwave" and barrel of cocoa, or 40 pizzas. council meets, taylor wisely points out its between what they want and need. mike always seems to want the want prize. he says it will ruin the town if they don't choose pizza. diva. the council chooses the micro. uproar. mike shows poor form in joining the yelling about not getting pizza and not supporting his council's vote. taylor is "deal with it!"-ing all over the place.

this week, the gold star is between some girl morgan and greg, until olivia nominates her cutey sis, Mallory. she may be small, but she does her part and is way mature. the ceremony would be on mallory's birthday. well played olivia.

at the town meeting, there is an attack on taylor. she gets called out for not doing work whether or not yellow has a job and they tell her they hate her catchphrase. she gets all cry face. sophia takes over jonathan's role at the meeting and there is near mutiny as the town calls for yellow leader reelection. taylor cries more. the town picks on her. then they realize that they, as a group, made an 11 year old girl cry. things get awkward. taylor promises to improve. The council awards the star to mallory. happy birthday! greg, again, is disgruntled.

FRC: Top Model- Farewell Mrs. Brisby

Previously: mila was clearly only chosen to be an easy first out.

so, bianca is a bitch. we knew this because she told us, but she told us that she was a fun bitch and not a mean bitch. that makes her a lying bitch. she helps kimberly with her walk, but confides in the viewing audience that she's purposefully giving kimberly bad advice. strategic, i guess. it's also at this point, two minutes in, where i proclaimed to a room of 7 witnesses my guess that kimberly would be going home. i should liveblog this shit. i'm much better at guessing on the fly.

the girls go to this cheesy fashion madhouse and get all pretend scared. miss jay shows up with 12 straitjackets and the girls must put their heels and crazy jackets on and practice walking whilst restricted.

at the house, bianca gets tired of hearing saleisha yap with tzone confidence about all of her modeling experience, so she calls s borderline plus size. sarah probably thinks 'gulp'. bianca and saleisha start yelling at each other and ebony's all "remember when i was supposed to be the bitch?" Bianca makes threats about hurting her competitors and cutting clothes up. just keep your panty juice to yourself, PLEASE.

that guy from the church fashion shows that i hate comes back and refers to last cycle's high school runway challenge as the "infamous prom fashion show". slow down there, roy. he introduces the challenge, which is a couture runway show for colleen quen, known for restrictive gowns. the winner gets to walk in colleen's paris debut. every time ambreal comes onscreen, i'm like 'who's that?'. saleisha wins the challenge. 6 points!

photo shoot: rock climbing wall in fancy gowns.
panel: tyra does a weird french accent. i don't know

HEATHER- produces a great photo. but between heather pronouncing her syndrome "Ahhs-bergers" and tyra pronouncing it "ass-perjurs", there might be a lot of confusion around here. for the record -- ass-pergers. and yes, heather pronounces her own affliction weirdly. or like a snooty debutante. she likes to class things up.
JANET- does well but needs more consistency
EBONY- lacks confidence this week, but her picture gets good marks.
KIMBERLY- sucks. when i look at her, i think of the secret of nimh. or Witches. when they're in transition, turning into rats.
CHANTAL- i think i might love her and her wonky eye. dye her hair dark and we'll see where we're at.
SARAH- i really like sarah.
LISA- great picture. she's better with her body right now. because of the stripper thing i'm sure.
SALEISHA- i like her a lot, but i'm nervous about what a frontrunner (and bragger) she is...then again, jaslene had a similar arc-- started strong, floundered for a while, then won.
BIANCA- they hate her photo. awkward silence hate. except tyra.
VICTORIA- is such a weirdo. her and her trippin sea nymphs. but she can take a good pic and wears makeup well.
AMBREAL- ???
JENAH- great picture. another girl i like..though when she bares her teeth i get scawwed.

Jenah is called first this week. then everyone else until we're down to bianca and kimberly. we still need bianca for the drama though, and kimberly is useless, so kimberly goes home. later sucka! guess heather can't cling to you now! zing!

next week: MAKEOVERS!!!!