America's Next Top Recap: Grabbing the Bully by the Horns

One day I’ll write a proper recap for the newest cycle of “America’s Next Top Model” – today is not that day.

Tomorrow, I leave for Minnesota for a week. I still have to fold laundry, cook dinner, pack my suitcase and complete a bunch of other chores that haven’t even occurred to me yet.

Still, I didn’t want to leave without giving you my thoughts on the latest episode of “America’s Next Top Model.” Here they are, as they occurred to me last night:

- In my season premiere recap, Anamaria was the one finalist who didn’t stand out for me in any way. When she started getting a weirdly high amount of screen time early in this episode (and she mostly spent it bashing the other girls and acting like a beyotch), I turned to Erica and I said, “She’s going to be eliminated.” More on that later.

- The girls looked absolutely freaked out when Harry Perry approached them and started serenading them. (It’s ok ladies – I would’ve been freaked out too.)

- I love that Chris made an effort to sit down and talk with Ann. Even though we’re not in the 1950s anymore, the house usually ends up being divided along racial lines.

- Chris learned that Ann’s ideal man is a 60-year-old hobo. (Come back, Harry Perry!)

- We also learned that Kayla (pictured, left) is a lesbian, something that she really struggled with growing up. Mostly though, Kayla coming to terms with that ended up making all the other girls’ “issues” during the photo shoot look dumb. (Boo hoo! Kids made fun of my big face.)

- The alternate title for this recap was “High Fashion”, because I wanted to use this cool picture of the aerial runway I found, but then I noticed that the title for last week’s recap was “Are You High…Fashion?” (That’s been your weekly look into my blog’s deleted scenes.)

-I liked the runway show, but I would’ve liked it a lot more without the wimpy harnesses. (Just kidding…mostly.)

- The week’s photo shoot sought to bring attention to the issue of teenage bullying. The girls would pose with two words written on their body – one word was an insult hurled at them when they were young, and the other was their “power” word to help them overcome it.

-I get that they were rebelling against bullying and overcoming their issues – but why did they have to be in bikinis to do so. (More importantly, why am I complaining?!)

- I actually felt Kacey’s “Oreo” pain. I’m a guy that can usually let anything slide off my back, but one of the things that REALLY annoy me is the “Oreo/talk like a white person” insult – as if white people are the only ones who are capable of being articulate. End of mini rant.

- I would’ve been one of the people with a “Who the hell is that?” look on his face when Demi Lovato showed up.

- Why was Demi Lovato there again?

-In what universe is “Big Square Head” a positive “power” word? (Is that like the Big Giant Head from “3rd Rock from the Sun”? Thanks for the laugh, Jane.

-The fact that I didn’t have to look up the spelling of Diane von Furstenberg = gay trap! (Thanks a lot, “Project Runway.”) I guess it could mean I’m good at spelling. Nah…gay trap!

- Best pics of the week: Ann (hair and makeup washed away the mannish “giant” and made her into a great looking “amazon”), Kayla (looking lovely and hopeful), and Chelsey (working the gap).

- Worst: Rhianna (sneakily bad), Anamaria and Terra, who ended up in the bottom two.

- Terra CLEARLY had the worse picture, in my opinion, but Anamaria was still suffering from serious issues. Earlier she’d told the girls about the calorie restricting diet she was on to keep her weight at 110lbs. Most alarmingly, she insisted that she was perfectly healthy, despite the fact that you could count every single one of her ribs and that, instead of having an ass, that part of her body looked like a right angle in her picture. I’m not sorry she’s gone because she acted like a bitch for pretty much this entire episode, but she seems to be suffering from some sort of body dysmorphic disorder, so I hope she gets help.

So what’d you think of this episode? Should the show use Harry Perry’s version of the “Top Model” theme song? (By the way, I needed Erica’s help to identify what the hell he was singing.) Was Mr. Jay really a band geek? Finally, why were Tyra and Kayla sitting on the ground when they were talking?