Tipster: " I REALLY need you to mention... the bizarre sequence during the makeover where Tyra is dressed like a psycho fairy thing and speaking in the most bizarre (maybe really bad pseudo-British) accent."
Last night's premiere of the latest cycle of America's Next Top Model unveiled this season's epic theme—"As sci fi as we can possibly make this using things found at a dollar store"—to much squealy delight from the carefully selected pool of regular- and plus-sized replicants. While the audience seems to be dwindling for such catwalk-crawling minstrel shows (the ratings hit an all-time low), the series is to be commended for never failing to adapt and innovate. Take, for example, the introduction of exciting Glamonator 11.0 technology: A more sophisticated descendant of the Sleeper Orgasmatron, it's capable of producing an amazingly convincing hologram of a completely-over-it reality hostess who wishes she could fold up shop on this ghetto-ass exercise in model-search futility to spend more time on her Emmy-winning talk show. Smile with your circuits, ladies!
Easy, Breezy, Beautiful, Coverperson: Reality TV Transgender Acceptance Alert! Proving itself once again to be at the forefront of social progress, the competitive reality genre has taken a giant leap forward by selecting its first (openly) transsexual contestant: America's Next Top Model's new season will feature 22-year-old aspiring model Isis, who describes herself as "a woman born physically male." It's a decision GLAAD calls "an unprecedented opportunity for a community that is underrepresented on television." We here at Defamer would like to voice our own wholehearted approval, so long as host Tyra Banks promises to resist using the phrase "smile with your phantom balls" at the judging panel. [Us]
So yeah, one of the contestants on the next cycle of Tyra Banks' home movie series America's Next Top Model is transgendered. (Or "tranny," as they prefer to be called. Much like Native Americans prefer "Injun.") There was a big splashy announcement about it on Us Weekly this morning, all in the hopes, I'm sure, that people will come lumbering up to their screens when the show airs so they can point and heehaw at the strange thing. Gender politics aside, it seems like sort of a dopey blunder to air this information before the show airs, doesn't it? Why not let the drama unfold organically, letting the audience figure it out at the same time as the other contestants. I mean it would probably come finger snapping out after like three seconds because these girls always love to talk about their damn issues, but still. At least then it wouldn't seem like this big gimmicky thing, like having a plus sized model win a fixed competition last go around. Now it's not so much of a "surprise tranny! so what? what're you gonna do about it?" like it could be. It's just a "hey hey hey! look look! weird person! whole lotta weirdness going on between the legs! wait look back at me I'm still Tyra!" and great googly moogly that is a tiresome old trope. And the pre-arranged shock value is only going to be good for one episode this way. Ah well. Meet the whole cast at Jezebel.
The Real World is moving to Red Hook and Top Chef could be taking over Williamsburg, but plenty of neighborhoods—and pricey developments—have earned face time on reality TV over the past few years. After the jump, our roundup of the most notorious reality TV abodes in New York City.
Television networks, still reeling from strike-related ratings slips, have gone and broken the glass on their last-resort failsafe. They're cutting costs on reality shows. Executives are looking to further streamline the already seductively cheap 'n easy (that's why there are so many of 'em!) younger siblings of scripted programming by cutting down on non-studio filming and long editing times. Expect more shows, like the odious hit game show Moment of Truth (where contestants reveal terrible secrets while drooling for cash), that really only amount to "two people sitting in chairs onstage." More expensive reality shows like Hell's Kitchen need to be overseas hits before American networks will consider producing their own versions, which doesn't happen every day. What could this mean for reality favorites like Top Chef, Project Runway, and America's Next Top Model? We have some grim forecasts after the jump.
Well, in the end it goes to Cook in a landslide. I am surprised! I thought the squealing masses of girls and soft dulcet tones of Archie's "Imagine" repeat on Tuesday night would win over middle ground voters who might have found Cook to be too edgy. But no, in a 12 million vote landslide, our combovered pal from Kansas City tearily took the crown and Simon and company rejoiced. I guess 19 and the judges were behind Cook all along. Perhaps the over the top Archie plaudits were just a calculated bait and switch. Or maybe there's nothing so cynical about American Idol after all. Good for Cook. Instant fame! Who else has won grand television prizes this year, on shows like America's Next Top Model and Project Runway? After the jump, take a tour through this year in winning things, starting, of course, with Mr. Cook.
Last week we wondered loudly if this season of America's Next Top Model had been fixed. A plus-sized model won and all and yeah, yeah isn't that great. Some people, though, smelled a rat. Did she really deserve to win? Was this just producer plotting to make the show seem more fair? In much the same way that rumors have been circulating that, per producer decree, a woman has to win this (the fourth) season of Top Chef, critics have suggested that the show, after umpteen "cycles" featuring plus-sized girls, predetermined that a "larger" model would win this season. A token, if you will. Adding to the fervor is the Seventeen magazine cover shoot that the winner, Whitney Thompson, received as a prize. Does she really look like a size 14, as she claims she is? Did she just pack on pounds to be The Plus-Sized and then drop weight again after the victory, as some have suggested? Having little to no knowledge of sizes and whatnot (boys!), tell me: does she look like a size 14 in these photos? I'm sure some airbrushing occurred, but does she look anything close to her purported size? It would be something of a scandal if the whole thing was, you know, staged. Click to enlarge (heh) the photo. (More at Mollygood.)
On Wednesday night's finale on the CW, Whitney Thompson became the first plus-size model to win the ANTM competition, a result met with tepid politically correct applause. But not from Gawker's readers: "Are you seriously not gonna say anything about the fact that some fat girl won ANTM over the one who got an excision?" one asks. "It's sooo unfair I don't even now why to make myself puke anymore!" Well, the outcome may indeed have been unfair. Some mean-spirited critics have noted that show creator and host Tyra Banks, a former supermodel, is above her fighting weight. And a friend of a friend of blogger Rich Juzwiak says the show's makers may have-shockingly!-planned on a plus-size victory from this season's very start.
· Here's your first glimpse at Jay Mohr's new CBS sitcom, Project Gary. Did that kid just say, "Tap it?" OMG! He did! LOL! [TV Week]
· People, for crying out loud, it's a picture of Curious George! It's not like he put "OBAMA in '08" underneath a picture of Chim-Chim from Speed Racer. Now that would have been racist. (And just plain mean.) [Boston Herald]
· It's the America's Next Top Model finale liveblog with the Jezebelers! But don't peek yet, 'cause they are three hours ahead. [Jezebel]
· Woody Allen: "Can I ask you what your favorite commandment is?"
Billy Graham: "Right now, it's Honor Thy Father and Thy Mother."
Woody: "Really? That's my least favorite commandment." [BoingBoing]
· Anne Heche is worth $34,840.93, says Anne Heche. [TMZ]
In a stunning development that could throw into jeopardy the jobs of millions of blue collar Americans working in the top-model-refining industry, Tyra Banks may have finally had it with the reality TV competition that effectively launched her star, OK! magazine reports. Things have reportedly gotten "so bad" on the set between Tyra and photo-shoot taskmaster Mr. Jay (who—little known fact—can control the weather by merely rolling back his eyeballs!) that the two "aren't speaking." Even more disturbing, Tyra "only wants to show up on judging day," waiting for the camera's red light to come on before phoning in trademark advice like, "There's a big difference between [wild-eyed facial expression] and [totally fierce facial expression]."
After watching this clip of new ANTM contestant Fatima's greatest hits, we are currently praying to the Top Model gods to please, please send house bitch Fatima home next week (pretty please with Janice Dickinson's remains on top!). Why? Not because she is a former victim of female circumcision (as she will have you know, over and over again), not because she can't even button a sweater, and not because she has a Mischa Barton-like ability to make legs even as skinny as her own look like thunder thighs on top of toothpicks. Nope, none of the above. We need Fatima to go home primarily because if we see Tyra do one more tiger growl impersonation of her, we will personally gut our televisions. And that will not be good for our career.
Having already reduced their audience's minds and spirits to sad, pulpy smithereens, the crew at America's Next Top Model has now turned its destructive gaze upon real estate. Michael Marvisi, the landlord who rented a beautiful TriBeCa loft to the show's producers, to house 14 crazed, near feral contestants, says that the place was so damaged after their stay that he lost a prospective tenant and has had to spend thousands of dollars on repairs. There was extensive water damage in the bathroom, $20,000 curtains ruined, holes in the walls from crew members drilling (and high heels and fire pokers and talon-like finger nails), there was evidence of food fighting, with ketchup and coffee splattered everywhere, and, perhaps the most haunting and poetic detail, lipstick smeared on the walls. The producers offered to settle for a reported $125,000 (after their initial offer of a Seventeen magazine photo shoot and a Cover Girl contract was deemed to be completely useless by pretty much everyone), but Marvisi has, of course, decided to pursue litigation. Tyra Banks could not be reached for comment and a a $1,500 electricity bill remains unpaid. Much like the women who have competed on the show in years past. [P6]
Everything was going so well for Kimberly, 20, of Worcester, Massachusetts on America's Next Top Model. She had a "stunning" photo shoot, "one of the best so far." Then she had to go and tell host Tyra "Cross Me And I Will Claw Your Eyes Out" Banks that "fashion does not interest me at all... I don't find it interesting." Oh holy god. The judges' jaws dropped, the other models started to lose it, and Tyra yelled "WHY DID YOU COME HERE?!" Never mind that Tyra cut six other models to keep this girl in the running, which is bad enough.No: You do not badmouth fashion to this lioness of modeling. The girl of course barely made it out alive, mostly because she agreed to leave the show. Hopefully on Wednesday Tyra will have to snap someone's neck like a twig, because watching people (try to) cross Banks is awesome:
Did you watch the premiere, on Wednesday night, of the newest iteration of Tyra Banks' hop hop hopping mad clusterfuck America's Next Top Model? You didn't??? You mean you didn't see where the girl talks about drinking her own breast milk or when one lady asks another lady who was circumcised at the age of seven back in Somalia if she "feels like less of a woman"? Well, I'd like to say I didn't either, but sadly, I was coerced. It being the most hideous show ever created, Top Model does warrant some attention, but not too much. Like, don't actually watch it or anything. Instead watch the provided clip, after the jump. It's long, but it's the only nine minutes and twenty five seconds of this show you will ever need to subject yourself to. Oh, and there's a lap dance!
When it comes to Wednesday's reality television options, ladies night on American Idol isn't the only game in town. The CW featured a ladies night of a different sort as Tyra Banks unleashed the Cycle 10 premiere of America's Next Top Model on an unsuspecting world. (Can it only be Cycle 10? It feels more like 87.)
Elyse Sewell, the beat-up ex-girlfriend of the indie-band Shins keyboard player (and former America's Next Top Model contestant!), had to go to court today. "Soon I will find out whether I will be prosecuted or the District Attorney will drop the felony charges," she Livejournals. (She bit the keyboardist in self-defense). She posted a photo of herself standing outside a skeezy motel room, lookin' adorably waifish, yet appropriately demure, in a long black skirt, royal-blue mini-jacket, and T-strap shoes. Tyra would definitely approve! Her verdict, and her wide-eyed shock that her public Livejournal is "tabloid fodder," follows.
America's Next Top Model Cycle One contestant Elyse Sewell and Marty Crandall, her boyfriend and keyboardist for The Shins, both wound up in Sacramento jail accusing the other of domestic abuse. Sewell blogged about the incident on LiveJournal (it's since been switched to private pending the investigation), explaining among other things that the bite mark on Crandall's arm was inflicted in self-defense. If you're having trouble remembering which one she was, we've included some YouTube of her facing off in a nude challenge with eventual winner Adrianne Curry, who, as far as we know, hasn't bitten Peter Brady against his own wishes. [Reality Blurred, YouTube]
