18-Year-Olds Wannabe Models

I managed to skip a month in this blog, and I've blocked out the entire summer of BB. It's like it never happened. Who cares which hamster hid himself in a storage box in the back yard to escape the cameras long enough to masturbate, all while keeping his microphone on? It's a distant memory. I can't even remember his name anymore.

So it's on to the model wannabes of America's Next Top Model. I've gone through half a dozen of this season's contestants so far. It's an easy gig; recycle questions that you asked last week and throw in a few personal things so they know you half-watched the show. I did a little trick during Big Brother where I would read aloud the names of the other contestants, and the interviewee would give their opinion of each person. Easy peasy, folks. But I can't diss it too much, because the girls love to chat about each other. It really gets them to open up and start gabbing.

Still, many of them are so young, they don't have any life experience or anything that makes them interesting. Kahlen from Cycle 4 was so inarticulate I nearly threw the damn interview in the trash. What can you do with someone who stops themselves mid-senten - changing their grammar aro- so you see I think it was diffi- and anyways, speaking in complete sentences is so - You get the picture.

This "cycle" (ooh, we can't just call it a season like the rest of TVland), the most frustrating girl I've interviewed so far is Ebony. Here's a girl who's 18 years old, who made the age deadline by less than a week, whose head is still pretty much in the hallways of high school. She had been doing phone interviews all day, and I got an unlucky late afternoon time slot. The girl was so exhausted she was almost slurring her words.

Maybe we all get a little juvenile when we're tired, but it was painfully obvious that the girl given a makeover that was supposed to read "urban sophisticated" was ready to go home to Mama. This is the girl who said the best part of the experience was that she got her own bed. She'd only ever slept in a bunk bed with her sister, you see. Having her own bed was "tight."

I don't mean to rag on Ebony (although a little giggle about her photographic memory and an unconvincing, "I dunno, it helps on tests I guess" didn't really endear me to her as a former nerd/smart kid), it's just that she hasn't done anything with her life yet. Go to college - get some polish, read Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance and start wearing black turtlenecks. Give me a call when you've learned what it is to wake up in a puddle of your own sick. *sigh* Okay, maybe that's taking it too far, but it's like interviewing Strawberry Shortcake each week, with a little catty talk about the other 18YO's thrown in.

Enough of this silly reality TV. Announcing...Lavagirl!





Lavagirl is a superheroine who gets to have hot pink hair. Need I say more? She's a 5-year-old's dream without having to be the same old princess that everyone else is. On Halloween night, she will be wired - and not just from the sugar. We have glowing light strips to wind around her for her stroll through the neighborhood. More pics to follow (hopefully!).