Shebangabang's Next Top Model Series Two #7

Usually by episode seven of a series of Top Model, I’ll have all my preferences sorted out – who my favourites are, who I love to hate, who’s the most likely to go on a murderous spree – but nup. The best I’ve managed is to come up with the worst nicknames ever for each of the girls.



Danielle = Scarecrow Beanie

Holly = Hatchet-Face

Courtenay = Sees Around Corners

Michaela = Dimples McGee

Dakota = Batshit Crazy

Lara = Wake Me When It’s Over

Nellie And Elza = We Met Across A Crowded Womb.


The problem is that by the time I’ve called each of them by name, the end credits are already rolling.


This is what I remember, anyway:



The Judges


Sara Tetro
Sara, I do believe that’s a slouchy graphic t-shirt worn under a tuxedo jacket, sitting beneath some gently tousled hair. Which I think looks good. Which really makes this quite a short paragraph.


Chris Sisarich
I’ve nailed it! I’ve finally figured out why it irritates me so to see you wearing an unnecessary amount of clothing, Chris – and it’s not just because the fewer the layers of fabric between you and me, the higher I think my chances are of finally toasting and buttering you. It’s because unless I can see the outline of your torso, you’re... um...



You’re boring.


You’re white hot in a way that only my pants understand, but you’re boring.

Now come and nuzzle my buttock and let’s forget all about it.

Colin Mathura-Jeffree

YES! At last! Finally you bring the accessorised kook, Colin Hyphenated-Surname. We’ve got pink with tan, we’ve got pants tucked into socks, we’ve got dangling braces, we’ve got a yellow bow tie with a plaid shirt – we’ve got a massive sigh of relief and a barely-disguised facial expression of horror.
Thank you for once again choosing your outfits from a homeless blind person’s wardrobe, in the dark, after spinning around so much you’ve fallen over.
Mind you, it’s apparent that no matter what you’re wearing, you still have a magnificent walk. Holly even comments that you “look like Tyra Banks from behind”.
Wait – I think I have a picture of it somewhere.

Oh, no, sorry – that’s just a picture of an ass. Tyra wants you to know that you can kiss it, though.


The Icksint
This is that bit whereby the simple transmogrification of certain vowels makes things sound piss-funny. As a side note, try saying ‘transmogrification’ with a Kiwi accent. It’s piss-funny.

Beck To Bay-sucks = Strupped down to the beer munna-mum.


Hups = Those thungs at the top of your ligs.

Ligs = Those thungs denglung from your hups.


Widges = A style of shoe, or a kind of delushus chup.

Chuckun Wungs = What Colin Mathura-Jeffree keeps in his hendbeg, or something you eat wuth widges.



Budgetirry Lumutations

I’m going to start a fundraising campaign in order to cover one more cameraman’s salary, so that important footage is not missed. If there’s anything that Australia’s Next Top Model has taught us (and let’s be honest, it’s taught us a LOT, like exactly how shiny a human can be, and how buying cheap earphones is a bad idea), it’s that when a bogan punches a wall, WE NEED TO SEE IT. We’re told that Danielle punched a wall, and we see her bandaged finger afterwards, but WE WANT KNUCKLES ON GYPROCK, YO. It’s just television science.

Not that I’m saying the budget for this show is low. Elza looks totally jazzed about her challenge-winning prize of a pair of flup-flops. Honest.



Bist Buts


• The bist of all buts, winning the coveted Bist But Trophy, filled with smaller trophies also intended as prizes for the bist but, is the image of Colin Mathura-Jeffree running in high heels, trying to kick the girls after yelling “BULLRUSH!”. See, that’s the thing about fashion. It doesn’t have to make sense, it just has to wear stripy socks.


• Danielle kicks off one of her heels, which flies forward to hit Elza in the back of the head. Danielle instantly becomes my new hero, and not just because I’m scared she has a fork hidden in her beanie that she wants to stab my face with.


• The first Sara-Mail of the week is hidden in the bookshelf. It takes the girls eight years to find it. The first excursion of the week is to a university, where Lara asks “What are we doing here?”. Nobody can answer her.


• Dakota thinks that Juicy Couture is an Italian Designer. Gianni Versace and Pierre Cardin turn in their graves.


• The photo shoot, themed according to different wacky varieties of Herbal Essences shampoo, involves bizarre props like tigers and topiary and telephones, and photographer Russ Flatt who giggles and squeals like soprano helium. It’s kind of awesome, and affords me the opportunity to regale my housemates with hilarious jokes about ‘trimming the hedges’, ‘taming the tiger’ and ‘looking like a gigantic slut’. The housemates didn’t laugh, though. I don’t think they understand sophisticated humour.


• Michaela is completely and gob-smackingly gorgeous, and that’s my daily quota of sincerity suddenly all used up.


• If the twins ever form a band, it will be called The Robots Of Retard, and their set list will look like this:

And yes, it would be in Comic Sans. Typeface of choice for retards.


• Holly is contstantly told she has dead eyes, and I can only assume that they died of starvation. That is one skunny butch. Her photo this week looks like someone’s personal collection of acute angles, wrapped in a black dress, wrapped in crying. In a surprise tantamount to opening a clear plastic bag of grapes and finding grapes inside, Holly is sent home.



E haere ra, Holly! Remember that the square of the length of your hypotenuse is equal to the sum of the squares of the lengths of your other two sides!

Shebangabang's Next Top Model Series Two #6

Smear on some gel, drape yourselves in fluorescent pink, worship Molly Ringwald and not think George Michael is an extreme and blatant homosexual, because ladies and gays*, we’re going back in time.



Back to a time when hot men dressed demurely instead of letting me see the outline of their nipples through their shirt. Looking at you, Sisarich.

Back to when dresses were flammable and eyeliner was applied with trowels and gusto. Looking at you, everybody.

Back to that bit of history where ginger people were allowed to walk amongst us with impunity and enter modelling competitions instead of – oh, I don’t know – pretty people. Looking at you, twins and Rick Astley.

This week’s episode of New Zealand’s Next Top Model is, dare I say it, rit-ro-spick-tuv. Or fifteen different kinds of stupid. I can never tell those two apart.




The Judges

Sara Tetro
Sara, I wore that dress to my Year 10 formal**, except I don’t think my taffeta was as shiny or my sleeves as puffy. I’m glad your laryngitis is cured and your voice is back, because now you can give yourself a good talking to. Maybe mid-sentence, you could remind yourself that it’s not nineteen-eighty-sux.


Chris Sisarich
I’m not sure I’m getting through to you, Chris “Please Drink A Shot From My Belly Button” Sisarich. I’m counting three layers of clothing and a tie, when I should be counting how many nude yous I can see on my screen. Please. For the love of all that is hairy and lightly oiled. Stop putting clothes on.


Colin Mathura-Jeffree
Colin Hyphenated-Surname, I see what you’re doing now, with your mildly odd cinched waistcoat, not-particularly-alarming tousled hair and barely-noteworthy printed silk jacket. You think I’ve been paying too much attention to your appearance, and not enough to the fact that you’ve been working on your catty comments and gymnastic skill with witticisms.


I SEE NOW.


Allow me to offer a sincere apology. Why, if you’d crimped or teased or skinned something or made a lightning bolt your signature make-up motif, I never would have noticed the pearls of perspicacity plummeting from your perfect pout.
It’s taken me hours, but after much deliberation, I’ve at last chosen my favourite. A nugget so perfect in its vitriolic simplicity that bitchy angels stop criticising each others’ harp playing and listen with wonder. Yes, faced with Dakota’s greasy, knotty hair crammed under an uncouth beanie, you take a sweet, serene breath and utter:


“You look like you’ve been living under a bridge”.

Wait – I think I have a picture of it here somewhere...

Ace burn, my friend. Ace. Burn.***

The Icksint
If you want to be in a place where everybody knows your name, try Cheers.
If you want to be in a place where vowels are interchanged, try New Zealand.

Glutter = what Sara Tetro blows at you in the opening criduts.

Body Ummage = How you see yoursilf, like, un the murror end thet.

Tum Tems = What you shouldn’t eat if you want to maintain a good body ummage.


The Jum = Where you go if you don’t want to git fet. Or if you do want to git fut.


Un Peers = Two by two.

Sunnergy = what you try to create when you work un peers.

The Fruckin’ Dushes = Those thungs un the sunk after brikfast.

Stink = I have no idea what ‘stink’ means, but I’m certain it’s way gangsta, therefore I will be using it to sound contemporary and street from now on.



Budgetirry Lumutations
Holly’s challenge prize in this episode was a year’s supply of Cover Girl cosmetics, presumably because the production budget couldn’t afford half a shoe or a dinner-pack of sushi.
Holly plans to give away her prize as a series of birthday and Christmas presents, presumably because she hates her friends.



Bist Buts

• One of this week’s Sara-Mails is found – no wait for it – floating, right – hold onto your pancreas, this is amazing – on a cushion, right – but there’s more – IN THE POOL. I’m now accepting typed explanations from advanced physicists describing exactly how the universe is able to fit this much wacky in it.
 • I don’t want to be mean to retarded people, but I’m pretty sure the twins are. Nobody gets that much pleasure out of decorating cupcakes without some degree of brain damage, although it could just be the blatantly obvious virginity talking. One day they’ll probably realise that once you’ve had sex, cupcakes can pretty much go fuck themselves. Wait, now I feel bad for using the word ‘retarded’, when clearly the phrase ‘wears a hat with a big bow on it’ would have worked just as well.


• Dakota flirts like a boa constrictor swallowing a pig, with lines like “Hottest muffin in the oven”, and “Does he have a mirror in his pants? Because I can see myself in them”. Did anyone else feel uncomfortable when she was trying to chat up the personal trainer? No? Just me and DOCS, then?


• Holly is worried that fitness guy Brad will find some fat on her. She needn’t worry. He has as much chance of finding fat as he does a sense of humour or a soul. Lighten up, Holly. Have a cupcake.


• Admittedly Holly does brighten a little when she wins the make-up challenge for her great eyeliner job on Courtenay. She scores extra points for all the walking she has to do. IT’S FUNNY BECAUSE COURTENAY’S EYES ARE REALLY FAR APART.


• If you’d like to buy any of the outfits from this week’s photo shoot, just download your free voucher from Lady Flammable’s House Of Polyester Tack from their website at www.slutslutslutslutslutslutslut.com.nz .


• I can’t figure out whether Danielle is growing on me, or if I just want to say nice things about her so she doesn’t shiv me in the ribs.

At elimination, it comes down to two girls – Lauren the Naive and Eva the Even Naiver.



SHOCK TWUST!!


They both get the boot!

E haere ra, Lauren, and Eva! You were absolutely and without doubt on the show for a bit.



*Apologies to any straight men reading, but seriously, unless you’ve got a massive crush on me, I really don’t know why you’re reading this. And if you do have a massive crush on me, make with the flowers, jewellery and penis already.
 **It probably goes without saying that I did not get laid at my Year 10 formal.


***Really, though, if you didn’t stop reading at ‘perspicacity’, you probably already got that, huh.

Shebangabang's Next Top Model Series Two #5

A lot of people ask me* what the appeal of the Next Top Model franchise is. After careful consideration, a thoughtful expression and probably some toast, I usually answer: “It’s the hair. And the make-up. And of course the amazing designer clothes the girls get to wear. Also the exotic locations, the hilarious twists and the relentlessly high drama”. Then, of course, I usually roll over and see if James Franco is rested enough for another go.



And you know what this episode of New Zealand’s Next Top Model didn’t have? Hair, make-up, designer clothes, exotic locations, twists, drama or James Franco.


It did, however, have a care package from Lara’s granddad, so let’s ride that roller coaster all the way to excitement-town with a change of underwear along the way.


The Judges


Sara Tetro

Sara’s elimination outfit was previously worn by someone who was brutally murdered by machine-gun fire, first around the knees and then around the chest. That must be true, because I’m sure there can’t be a dress in existence that has knee and boob mega-mesh.
NO THERE ISN’T.


Chris Sisarich
Chris. Darling. You’re wearing two layers of clothing. This is twice as upsetting as only one layer of clothing, and makes it twice as difficult to see the outline of your pert manly nipples through your shirt.
That must be true, because lick my face, that’s why.


Colin Mathura-Jeffree
Colin Hyphenated-Surname has a To-Do List, and he’s crossed off the first two items, which are:
1. Grow a tiny little creep-moustache; and
2. Make people watching television say “what the fuuuuuck”.
Honestly, you’re mixing so many different patterns, textures and metaphors that I can’t keep up. Pinstripe with paisley? Postal-worker jacket with a tie? The only way I can work it out is with a desperately difficult mathematical equation:

Plus

 

Plus

Coated in

Equals

That mirror’s for you, Colin. Take a good long hard look at yourself.



The Icksint

Think of this bit as your glossary or lexicon, if you will. Also, say that last sentence with a Kiwi accent. Ut’s choice.


Netch-rule Hebba-tit = Usual surroundings. Dugs.
Try-ung to rep my hid around ut = thunkung.
Homesuck = apparently what you get even if you have your twin sister in the house with you.
Fist Umprishuns = It’s umportant to make good ones.
Hoo Bawl Issunces = A brend of hear products.
Like Kussung An Eshtray = smokung suggarittes.
Silfush Hibbut = smokung suggarittes.
Stunks = smokung suggarittes.


Budgetirry Lumutations
The first photo shoot was taken with a polaroid camera.

The challenge involved walking around the street with a bottle of hair serum.

The challenge winner got her photocopied image on the side of a bottle of water.

One of the Sara-Mails just repeated the word “model” over and over again.

The final photo shoot occurred in the clothes, hair and make-up that the girls turned up with.

Interesting things must be expensive.


Bist Buts
• When Holly’s not busy threatening to punish people for not washing their dishes or scoring glass with her face bones, she likes to spend a relaxing afternoon looking forty-six years old.


• If guest and I-left-my-interesting-in-the-pocket-of-my-other-jeans rugby player Dan Carter is considered hot, then there’s a good chance that my genitals are brok... oooh, okay. There’s a photo of him in his underpants. As you were, ovaries.


• Sending the girls out with a squirty-bottle of hair serum called “None Of Your Frizzness” is not only a gift from the accent gods, it’s also very, very boring. If it wasn’t for Dakota comparing the challenge to selling crack and comparing a woman’s hair to a cat’s arse, and a passer-by making a rude, racist comment about Amelia’s Asian appearance, it would’ve been a but flet. Racist comments are as inappropriate and unnecessary as, say, me showing you this:

Smoothing serum, madam?

• Did you know that if you collect a thousand models’ tears in a crystal bottle, seal it with a stopper made from dried unicorn dung and bury it under a rainbow for a thousand years, the tears turn into wishes? No? THEN EVERYBODY STOP FUCKING CRYING.


• I feel as if I’ve previously misjudged Dakota, but she explained herself so thoroughly this week that I’m re-evaluating. I should have seen it before, to be honest, but when she opened up about her problem, it was all suddenly so clear.

Sara: “Dakota, you’re not always appropriate”.

Dakota: “Sorry. It’s my inappropriateness”.


Eventually, despite her excuse of being rattled due to racial vilification, Amelia is given the boot.


E haere ra, Amelia! I’ll have the number 23 with rice, thanks.






*Shut up. My mum counts.

Shebangabang's Next Top Model Series Two #4

I think I mentioned last week that I could detect a slight hint of crazy wafting on the wind in New Zealand’s Next Top Model.

Well, I’m happy to confirm this week that a rag woven from fine filaments of crazy has been dipped in a bucket of pure distilled crazy and stuffed up my nostrils, with a crazy suppository chaser. Bitches is well crazy.


But, in retrospect, OF COURSE THEY ARE. It’s makeover week! That glorious time in every series where follicles and tempers get shorter, awkward pauses and trails of upset snot on top lips get longer, walls get padded and I go overboard with analogies.


In a nutshell: Ut’s mintewl.



The Judges


Sara Tetro

On the outside, I’m becoming more and more impressed with Sara’s new relaxed attitude towards hair and clothing, despite the fact that this week she’s let someone who drank a combination of black Sambuca and sequins vomit on her shoulder. But hell, we’ve all done that, right? On the inside, though, poor Tit-ro has laryngitis. Mind you, they say she has laryngitis – I think maybe she just burst a blood vessel from pushing out the word “who” too hard in the opening credits. She croaks through the entire elimination process as if she’s just eaten a salad of rasps and broken glass. It’s not funny, though. Other peoples’ illnesses are not funny. Well, until they speak, anyway. Then it’s frigging hilarious. Butter Minthowl?


Chris Sisarich
Not content to let the modules hog the I’ve-just-had-a-haircut spotlight, Chris “These Kegels Are For You” Sisarich has also hed a but of a trum. So have I, Mr Sisarich. So. Have. I.

Colin Mathura-Jeffree

When we first see Colin Hyphenated-Surname, he has clearly chosen his clothes in the dark from a conveyor belt that runs between the hair salon he’s standing in and your colourblind grandfather’s house. Grey striped cardigan mixes with plaid shirt mixes with a brown tie and trouser. It’s the fashion equivalent of Roy Orbison’s driving skills.
Later, however, he redeems himself, and by ‘redeems’ I obviously mean ‘stabs my retinas’.


Colin is wearing a black fur collar. With bonus black fur lapels.


They’re not attached to a jacket, mind.


Colin has a black fur collar and black fur lapels draped around his neck.


Wait – I think I have a picture of it here somewhere...

Welcome back, Colin. Now eat your kibbles.



The Icksint

That bit where I make fun of the Kiwi accent, because I still find it funny, because I’m four.


Potin-shewl = The abulutty to be bitter.


Your Hear’s A Shembulls = Git a hear-cut, kwuck.


Drestuck = Dremetuck


Dremetuck = Drestuck


Munglung = Muxung with people at a cocktail party and trying not to use the word ‘vagina’.


Perrut Shut = What you’ll be cleaning off your leg in the photo shoot.


Budgetirry Lumutations

Viewers, I believe we have a long lingering close-up on a pile of hair on the floor, repeat – a pile of hair on the floor.


Yes, I know I should mention that they got Colin Hyphenated- Surname to sweep up said pile of hair on the floor, but he was just pretending. It’s theatre, you see. Theatre with a big pile of hair.


A few more cents were also saved at the hairdresser, as they didn’t have to use an extra mirror to show Courtenay the back of her head. Because, you see, that’s this week’s Courtenay’s-Eyes-Are-Really-Far-Apart joke.



Bist Buts


• A lot more variety in hairstyles this week, if you don’t count the opening credits – or as I call them, ‘Top-knots In Space’.


• Yeah. I don’t know who Eva is.


• Ladies and gentlemen, it’s a crazy-off. In the ‘Watches You Sleep With A Knife In Her Hand’ corner we have Dakota, who enjoys possessed parrots, dancing in a suit, collecting business cards and using the word “vagina” at cocktail parties. In the ‘Jesus Where Did That Come From’ corner, fresh from the ‘Twins Are Fucking Weird, Man’* Academy we have Elza, who can’t... talk... right... now... because...she’s ... in... spasm...about...people...comparing...her...to...her...sister. Honey, you’re a twin. In a modelling competition. They’re going to compare you. Your name will be “That other ginger”. Deal.


• I was going to say that Danielle’s new hair makes her look like she suddenly stopped surfing three and a half years ago and hasn't had a haircut since, but I won’t, because I’m still convinced there’s a very real chance that she’ll punch me. From New Zealand. Without even getting up out of her chair. She’s like the Chuck Norris of the modelling world, except that Chuck Norris can probably walk in heels.


• Colin calls Danielle “Feral Cheryl”, which means that the search for my next tattoo is over. I’m thinking one word on each buttock, no?


• The jewellery photo shoot with the parrot, who kept crapping on, biting, and generally terrorising the girls, made me sure of just one thing: I would like to buy that parrot a beer.


• Elza wears a straw boater hat to Elimination. This is fantastic for four reasons:

1. I totally lied about the four reasons. Wearing a straw boater hat to Elimination is fucked up.




Aafreen is given the boot because she doesn’t listen to advice and has way too many vowels in her name.


E haere ra, Febreeze! You were a brith of frish air. And a gigantic pain in the arse.


*Yeah, yeah, I know. Except for them.