The FORTRESS of SOLITUDE

In keeping, I've decided to recap last night's SHOCKER of an episode of Canada's Next Top Model. I say shocker, which it was, but sadly it wasn't enough of a shocker that I couldn't figure out exactly where along the way that I'd been duped by those oh so clever and slimey producers.
The episode started off as 99.9% of Top Model (American or Canadian or the recently added, Oman's Next Top Model, judged by The Sultanate of Oman - who also helps to choose the lovely cookies they sell at my local No Frills) episodes usually start off - with bitching, gloating and the general all-around vapid idiocy that I have come to expect/loathe/admire about CNTM.
Thankfully, though, this time it was my personal fave, Tenika, who was doing most of the gloating. Deservedly so in some ways, although most would agree that she's clearly delusional about her impact on society as a whole whether she wins this stupid reality show or not. Just look at her shit eating grin in the opening shot:


Creepy Andrea, for her part, was just pathetically thankful that the judges had been snowed for another week (or they just had girls higher on their hit list) than her. Way to go for the gold Andrea. How about a hamburger to celebrate?


Brandi, of course, was DESPERATE to be the 'bitch' - so she faked some sincerity and then spat out "1 down, 6 to go!" UGH. Alanna continued her crying fit from last week about her 'athletic body' which was weird, coz she was crying about her 'acne' last time - I guess her personality is multi-faceted...or just dual-faceted. Either way, that's about 5 more facets than the rest have put together.
Things got to a quick start as the girls were herded into a make-up trailer. Andrea commented on how the make-up was very 'vintage.' *cough* The girls were made up with bleached out faces, nasty hair and freakish eyebrows.


The shoot was done in a very old, European style room for a picture trying to emulate French Vogue, as the annoying stylist-woman with the fake English accent told me. The girls also had to pose with a falcon, which I thought was pretty cool and a helluva lot more stylin' than the ANTM photoshoot involving the pidgeons that the girls did in London, England. In the pidgeon's favour, however, the falcon did manage to crap on the floor (at least once that we saw). When it did, Fake British Lady said, "He haa-s POOP-ed al-RED-EE to-DAY."
Suddenly, the hair stylist comes on and says that Alanna has a 'wider' face (...wtf?) so they're going to give her more height (in the form of chocolate covered onion-rings piled on her cranium).


The girls started going by, one by one, posing and carrying the falcon around. Sisi seemed the most at ease with the bird, moving it around and things, while the other girls looked like mannequins with moving heads. Beginning with Creepy Andrea, the girls all stated how amazingly challenging it was to pose without moving. Sure...and your shit cures cancer - I've heard it before, bitch. Brandi, to her credit, comes on and lets us all know that "sometimes [she] can be TOO sexy" and to counter that, they've made her up to look like a boy. I love how women are trained to think that not wearing making up or looking ugly (for a limited amount of time) is somehow a tedious and difficult experience. They win Oscars for it all the time.


The photoshoot wrapped and Sisi started commenting on how in the house "your friendships change, your alliances change" - um, when did this become 'Survivor,' lady? Alliances? Gimme a break. I hate this chick. She also said, "It would really suck if i didn't win this because I'd be losing to a bunch of stupid, vain, lame, fake girls." As much as I hate her, Sisi hates the word 'and.'
After the break, Tricia H. (I've officially given up on her last name) showed up and start posing the girls for a group shot. The fun never ends. But wait...the real fun begins. No sooner had Sisi retracted her claws before the commercial break, but Tenika goes off, talking smack about Sisi and how she doesn't realize that people don't like her, she's weak, she plays for pity, etc. This is getting good, now.
Of course, Sisi had to retaliate (all through editing of course) so her interview clip came up and she goes, 'It seems the more confident I am in myself; the more confortable I am; they see me more of a threat." Seriously, that quote is unaltered. Didn't they rag on poor Danielle on ANTM coz she sounded like a hillbilly and that was unmarketable. Interesting.
Andrea started off on Brandi, completely out of the blue and said, "Brandi is a really interesting person to talk to - when she's sober." Nice qualifier! I'll have to remember that one. Sisi then went off on Andrea, saying, "I dunno what it is, but Andrea rubs me the wrong way."
These bitches have some serious issues, methinks.
The girls then returned to the house and got some Tricia-Mail, not to be confused or associated with Tyra-Mail in anyway, shape or form. Tricia said something about getting ready for 11am the next day. Nice - a sleep in.
Then Tenika and Andrea had a little heart to heart as the two have grown close over the course of the show. We were then provided with a breakdown of Tenika's hair problems since her makeover, which are understanable, really. Since they put extensions in her her, she has to comb it out nightly which takes up to two hours. Then she washes it and dries it, which takes a long time, also, since its lengthy.
Sisi, of course, wanted none of this, complaining not necessarily about the hair-drying to the wee hours in general, but the fact that it was a very stuttery, start then stop then start sort of ordeal. Fair enough, but seriously...with her straight Asian hair that dries in 10 minutes, should she REALLY be complaining? No, of course not - but Sisi is nothing if not consistent.


Sisi is certainly a woman of action - she got up and barged into the bathroom, shocking a naked, hair-drying Tenika, screaming, "Can you stop drying YO hair?!" (Tenika and Brandi came up with the pronounciation on that one.) And so erupted one of the more entertaining moments on CNTM thus far. Enjoy!


One thing that was really apparent was the way in which Sisi manipulated private conversations with people to suit her own ends. But the bitch totally got owned when Ylenia came in and said, "It wasn't like that. I didn't COMPLAIN to you." Nice!
Next the girls went to their media training. Here it is in a nutshell: It involved Jeanne Becker and some dude who wrote some book about modelling - they lectured the girls about the dangers of drugs (to counter act the bad press that Kate Moss gave the modelling insdustry with her vaccuum-nose). The end. Everyone was their usual selves; Tenika was manipulative, Sisi was versatile, Andrea was creepy and weird, Ylenia was lovely, Brandi was flustered, Andrea was lost, etc., etc., etc. It never fucking CHANGES.
When they returned to the house, a 180 degree turn was taken by everyone. Brandi became funny, Tenika became a back-stabbing, full on bitch, Sisi became nice and caring and Andrea became sincere (in a non-weepy way). Andrea and Sisi had a heart-to-heart in the hot tub while the girls who 'like to drink' were in the sauna talking trash about them. How typical.

Let's fast-forward to the judgement room, shall we? Nothing else interesting happened that I haven't mentioned here, so let's move on.

The girls entered the judgement chamber in their usual melo-dramatically lit way. Stacy continued her 'creep-me-the-fuck-out' quest, with surprisingly effective results this go-round:


The girls were then put through the paces in another interview segment, this time in front of all the judges. It was the same typical crap that we've come to expect, just well lit. After the interviews, the judges commented on each girl's performance as they evaluated her picture with the falcon from earlier.
First up was Brandi, whom the judges thought was holding back at which point she burst into tears, saying that she finds it hard to open up but that she's trying to show the judges that she can do it. Lame.


Then they showed her picture. I dunno about you, but if this was supposed to be European looking, like French Vogue, I have to say that its true what American's think about the French...take of that what you will. But they didn't change 'em to Freedom Fries for no reason, yo.



Then it was Tenika's turn. They started right into her, saying she clearly wasn't passionate about modelling, at which point Tenika burst into a long and over-wrought diatribe about how she thought that she should have gone into law, but that she was now pretty, kinda, sorta sure she should go into modelling, or perhaps television, but whichever they wanted to give her was cool. It was at this point that my love of Tenika pretty much dissolved to that little nubbin of soap that's left with one pube still clinging on for dear life, hoping his buddies will come back to the party.
But to add insult to injury, the bitch went into the WORST fake CRYING I've seen in a LONG time. She'd seen Brandi do it convincingly, so she probably thought that being the Great Tenika, she could easily get away with it. Not so. The Great Tenika's powers don't extend into the realm of convincing melodrama, sadly. That was the point at which the nubbin disappeared down the drain, kids.
Here's her pic:


Here are the rest of the girl's pics:

Alanna


Ylenia