Australia's Next Top Westie Scrag Series Eight #2

Of the following things normally associated with models, which is the odd thing out?

a) A good old-fashioned arse-flashing;

b) A good old-fashioned tongue-piercing;

c) A good old-fashioned mauling of the English language; or

d) Cultural sensitivity.

That’s right.

It are d).

Pack your bags, jump on an obscure budget airline, and touch as many people on the head as possible, it’s the ‘Thai Me Kangaroo Down, Scrag’ episode of Australia’s Next Top Model.

It’s Pratanum Comedy.

Housekeeping.

We now have opening credits, with the scrags’ names and everything! Now we can put names to faces, unlike that little dangly bit at the back of your throat, because WHAT is the name of that thing.

Speaking of things:

It’s been a slow week in the quest to find Australia’s Most Overused Catchphrase, with a lot of the classics scoring zero, just like George Michael in a driving test, or me counting the number of free frocks Alex Perry has given me even though I’ve Photoshopped him with actual laser eyes this year. The current tally leader is ‘expensive’, with only 2 points this week for ‘journey’ which I think might actually be an arrestable offence in this country.

Aaaand we’re off to the exotic Asian destination of Thailand. As Dajana puts it, “When Jen told us that we were going to Thailand I went absolutely beserk, my like, legs were on the ceiling”.

Her legs, right, were on the ceiling. I customarily defer to Lionel Richie at times like this. Thoughts, Lionel?

 I COULDN’T TELL YOU, LIONEL. Let’s ask the legs.

Yes, it's you we're looking for.

A quick Thai montage later, and  we arrive at the Hotel Muse, where Chanique muses “We saw massive billboards everywhere, and it was all written in Thai”, because I have to give you an IQ frame of reference for what she says next.

The modules are greeted at the hotel with complementary drinks, at which point Chanique says, with customary Australian questioning intonation: “I think they said it was butterfly pee?”.

That’s right. And after five almost wasted minutes on Wikipedia, I finally found a picture of a butterfly pee farm.

After squealing at the embroidered pillow cases, the cotton for which was bought with the money they saved on flights on well-known Scoot Airlines, the girls quickly fulfil their mandatory pillow-fight obligations, followed by a quick break so that straight male viewers of the show can clean themselves up a bit. Yes, both of them.

Morning comes, and it’s time for another Thailand montage – Tuk-tuks, policemen, traffic, and this dog.

Just look at this little guy with his world-weary canine ennui. LOOK AT HIM.

Learnment

Whilst frolicking nonchalantly in the pool specifically to make me feel bad about my body, Dajana commentates the situation with “We’re all splashing each other, having some fun, and then this waiter just comes out of nowhere”. NOWHERE.

Because nowhere is a door now.

The waiter passes the girls an envelope.

ERIKA MAIL!

I mean

JODHI MAIL!

I mean

SARAH MAIL!

I mean

JEN MAIL!

I mean really.

The girls arrive at a temple to the sound of flutes and of Dajana saying “We got these weird unflattering white costumes and we had no idea, I thought we were going to see some asylum or some psych ward or something’.

No. Just Charlotte Dawson.

Which is marginally more topical than is perhaps comfortable, but let’s move on.

Shannon’s impression is different to Dajana’s, and she says ‘We ended up at the most beautiful temple that I could ever imagine’.

I dunno, Shannon. I’m sure you can imagine some very nice temples.

And that's where they keep the religions.

Dawso greets them with an excellent hairdo and a far less excellent Thai accent, and explains what they’re doing there: “Modelling is very much about your external beauty, but today we’re going to see how you shine from the inside, because model bookers are always totally swayed by your inner peace and not just by your symmetry and oddly jutting collarbones, shut up we’re making a show here it doesn’t have to always be realistic so you guys on the forums can just SHUT UP”.

That’s exactly what she says.

The modules enter the temple, and Jade says sagely “I studied Buddhism at university, so to finally meet monks was something really special for me. I was surprised they weren’t swinging from the trees eating bananas, though. Weird.”.

That’s exactly what she says.

Everyone sits on the floor and a wise monk raps to them about life.

I did not know that.

 Taylor is deeply affected by the experience, and says “I was thinking about my mum the whole time when the monk was talking. She was the first thing. And then my horse as well. Like, I miss my horse”.

You do look a lot like her, Taylor. YOUR MUM, I MEAN.

The monk then leads the scrags in meditation, and lists the different sorts of meditation.

Sitting meditation.

Standing meditation.

Walking meditation.

Lying meditation.

That awesome dog meditation.

And Dajana totally fell asleep meditation.

Time to exaggerate Dajana’s ethnic background with some well-known stereotypes, you guys!

Gettin' Woggy Wid It

Dawso leads the modules out to the lawn to practice their mad new meditation skillz, but Rhiannon doesn’t take it particularly seriously, because ‘In Australia religion isn’t like, the biggest thing, like, it is here, so at the time it was a little bit funny’. Being different is funny, you guys. You know, like making fun of wogs and stuff. Coughetty-cough.

A few people show their annoyance with Rhiannon by giving her a sideways glance, or ‘pigeon-eye’.*

You. Bitch.

Challenged.

Back at Hotel Muse, Dawso and Diddles come up with a challenge for the scrags by looking around them, seeing a sign, and going “Oh right, ‘muse’, nice one”.

In three teams, the modules must select someone to be their muse, and then style that someone in a Manning Cartell frock with accessories purchased from the local market.

So they must choose a muse, choose some shoes, and neither snooze nor lose.

Wordplay, my friends.

Off to market we go! I hope the girls aren’t looking for any silver or gold at these markets.

Veeeery specific market.

Yes, yes, I know. Take it away, adamant little guy.

We're overseas. It was bound to happen sooner or later.

Brooke mentions that she’s surprised, as the market is different to what she was expecting. “There were stalls everywhere and people everywhere”. WHAT? WHERE IS THIS MARKET? WEIRD CRAZY MARKET WORLD? GET OUT.

Ashley gets upset because her team isn’t listening to her opinions. Lord knows I always take my high-fashion style tips from someone with a pierced tongue, denim cut-offs, and the inability to pronounce the word ‘muse’. It’s like Modigliani taking weight-loss tips from Rubens or, for the lowbrow amongst you, like Miley Cyrus giving anyone advice about anything ever.

Most of the teams have clear-cut, self-appointed leaders, giving me the opportunity to come good on my promise to reference an old-timey TV theme in each recap, with bonus what-Alyssa-Milano-looked-like-in-that-five-minutes-she-was-flat-chested.

And those forty years that Judith Light was.

Arguments are had. Bartering is done. Sequinned shorts are inexplicably bought. Abbie’s arse is given its first outing.

If you missed it, don't worry - you'll see it again.

Taylor flags down the cultural sensitivity bus and buys a ticket by whining that there’s “So many people and so hot. Disgusting”, but Dajana grabs the wheel and drives straight to This Is Actually Considered Quite RudeTown by patting one of the stall-holders on the head.

The power of Christ compels you, fulleee

I guess it’s fine. She didn’t know that's pretty much a no-no here. She may have missed this billboard at the airport.

Once all the shopping and muse-styling has been completed, Dawso and Diddles welcome the modules back to the hotel to judge their elegant and understated HOLY MOTHER OF FUCK WHAT IS THAT.

What was meant to be ‘sophisticated accents’ turns out to be ‘that brat prince guy from Temple Of Doom’.

I just wish you and Short Round could get along.

What was meant to be a ‘bold statement’ turns out to be ‘Pris from BladeRunner’.

Let's flip this turtle on its back, eh?

And what was meant to be ‘sporty chic’ turns out to be ‘Sporty Spice’.

And doesn't she look happy about it.

Also, someone dresses as my year 8 woodwork teacher.

Although admiteddly Mr Murcutt had at least some circulation in his ankles.

Abbie ruins her team’s chances at winning by giggling through the entire thing, and Jade ruins her team’s chances by allowing herself to be styled by her team, so the challenge winner is April. Although of course, the real winner is everyone except Manning Cartell’s marketing team.

Phoy-toys

All of a sudden we’re in a rice paddy with Diddles, an elephant, photographer Kane Skennar (because god forbid they’d use a photographer that I can spell without Googling), and Diddles’ nipples.  Shanali gushes ‘I could not believe we were going to be working with an elephant’, which is ironic because almost immediately, as if on cue, they don’t. The only real look-in the elephant gets is when Abbie auditions it for a part in her new movie Arse-Flash Two: Elephant Harder.

Nobody talk about the arse in the room.

The brief for the photo shoot is ‘rich, lost traveller’, or ‘grubby hot mess’, and the clothes are one hundred percent gorgeous and eighty-five percent held on by bulldog clips.

Maddy Banana Paddy looks frightened of being one of the most beautiful people anybody’s ever seen, which is “understandable”.

The photographer says that Shannon isn’t aware of her body, which will come as a shock next time she’s being fitted for any kind of harness, and that Abbie is very aware of her body, which comes as a shock because you’d think she’d be aware of feeling the breeze on her arse at least once.

Shanali, who is perfect and who I probably think should win, doesn’t do anything wrong and this is the end of this sentence.

Although a push-up wouldn't kill you, doll.

Rhiannon walks like she’s had both a sedative and a Red Bull and they’re fighting for supremacy in her system in the 1990s.

April is as good as any robot from France that I’ve seen. April, if you’re reading this: o1o1o11o1o1o1oo1o1o11o. You’re welcome.

Jade wears a jacket with birds on it that I want right now give it to me right now don't even stop for coffee.

Duckie, Brooke and Taylah are delicious, poor Chanique is stiff and emotionless until she leaves the set and has a blub, Taylor is a bit of an ungrateful whining brat, and I can’t tell which is Ashley’s right leg and which is Ashley’s left leg.

Can we get an ambulance to the rice paddy stat, please.

Eliminationosity

BOOM, and we’re sent screeching back to the Eliminatorium, where Jen Hawkins Mrs Everything decides to deliver her autocue puns from a black and white frock, Dawso winks hello and then has to have a lie down to recover from the muscle strain, Shiny Alex Perry has to speak loudly to be heard over the sound of his shirt seams creaking, and Diddles oooh-wee-ooh, he looks just like Buddy Holly.

Woah-oh, and you're Mary Tyler Moore

Photographs are ummed and aaahed over, and it looks like it’s going to be very difficult to pick a loser.  What do you think, Buddy Holly?

It all just looks like a plane crash to me.

What about you, Amazing Psychic Desk? What do you think?

Well, you're no fucking help at all, Amazing Psychic Desk.

After a bit of zingy Dawso-and-Shiny-Alex-Perry banter like ‘I hate this shot so badly I can hardly contain myself’, ‘Those eyes are burning holes into my botoxed head’, and ‘It looks like you’ve been sitting unsuccessfully on the toilet for about an hour’, I still want that jacket with the birds on it, yet I still don’t have it and I can’t work out why.

Oh, and Shiny Alex Perry uses the word ‘gaping’, which again gets him trophy of the week.

The Gaping Trophy, for people who say 'gaping'.

Deliberation happens, April gets photo of the week and almost shows emotion, and it eventually comes down to Chanique and Shannon.

Shannon says ‘My heart just blew out of my body’.

Yeah, I never wrote a song about that.

Finally, after fifty hours and a nap, the admittedly-adorable-but-not-very-good-at-modelling Chanique is given the ol’ PEW PEW.

KA-WOOMSH

 Bye, Chanique! You're pretty. Any last words?

Exactly.

*Copyright 2011, 'Doik' Simone from Series 7