ANTM, kooky girls and one tranny mess (and I'm not talking about Tyra).

I've been hooked on ANTM (America's Next Top Model, and that's the last time I'll actually write that) for years now. When it first came out, I thought, oh jeez, how stooooopid! A modeling contest? With Tyra Banks? Ugh. Sickening!

Then one day I watched it for whatever reason (boredom) and I was hooked. I mean, who doesn't love kooky girls stuck in a modeling bitchfest? I do!

Mateo has a monopoly over the TV during the day, and my husband and I watch "our" shows together at night, so it leaves little time for me to watch a full episode of anything I like. (And yes, I'm very concerned about how I will be able to watch Lost without interruption when it starts again.) Now that I have less and less time to sit down, by myself, uninterrupted to watch a show I like that my husband doesn't, I have to watch my favorite silly shows in pieces. Ten minutes here, five there, and sometimes a whopping 20 minutes!

Last night I started the first episode of ANTM. It took me 10 minutes of it to realize just how silly things have gotten in the world of Tyra land.

The progression of years has convinced people to give them more money for nicely designed setups (not to mention the house or apartment the kooky girls live in). So you'd think, at this point, with the show's success, they would have realized silly props and goofy voice overs isn't really necessary. Dontcha think?

Well, I do.

I was not humored. I felt duped. My dear ANTM was folding out to be a sad and sorry FX nightmare where the men were dressed to look like space age wonders with weirdly white hair.

The girls (and one hot mess of a tranny - if you didn't know about that, it's really not hard to figure out which one I'm talking about, and I'm sorry, if a female born as such looked like that, she would not be choosen to be a model, that boy needs a serious make-over) were told to change into these black jumpsuit things with high heeled boots (ick, sorry, but ICK), and to get a "body scan" done on some platform thing.

Since I didn't get that far into the show before I had to turn it off and watch Project Runway with the husband (yes, he likes Project Runway but doesn't like ANTM, go figure), I never found out if these body scans were real or fake and for show or what. Because to me, all the girls did was get on the platform while some little Asian man pretended to touch buttons and flip switches. Post production work provided fantastic green "rays" of light "scanning" their bodies as they posed their kooky model poses.

After that business was done, they were taken into another room where they were told to walk down a catwalk while their movements were being recorded from sensors, presumably in the jumpsuit, but even that I'm not sure of. So each of them strutted their stuff, the Jays in white hair made their catty comments, and then the gals were told that some tube thing at the end of the catwalk was the "turn these kooky gals into perfect models" machine.

Sadly, at least how it was edited, it seemed the girls really thought they were going to walk into the tube thing and come out looking like Naomi Campbell or Heidi Klum, or, in the case of the hot tranny mess, Ru Paul.

At this point, if I was one of the contestants, I would be standing there with a frowny expression on my face, wanting desperately to raise my skinny stick arm up (that would be my fantasy skinny stick arm since I do not have one attached to my torso in real life), and ask the Jays and all the other production people, including Tyra, who I just knew was hiding in the stupid gigantic toilet paper tube of a "turn these kooky gals into perfect models" machine, if they all thought we were that stupid.

But, of course, all the girls just oohed and aaahed and acted like everything was real.

It must be the Asian man who was still messing with the "equipment" behind the Jays the convinced them that this was all.... so....real.

During this whole time, Tyra's voice was spouting of robotic nonsense until the tube thing began to shake and smoke and emit green rays of light (post production), and low and behold, the doors open and there stands....robot Tyra.

Yawn.

Man her thighs are getting thick.

Tyra did some fantastic head moves to make some of the more stupid girls believe she really was a robot, and then told them how this is Cycle 10, and that means the best of the best and new things and blah blah blah, and I'll see you later.

The girls screamed in glee.

Then...mysteriously (I think the Asian man had something to do with it), the Jays and Tyra disappeared in a cloud of smoke! Phft! Gone!

Pan to the girls who look amazed, and even the Asian man looked around like, "where did they go?"

It was then I wished someone was with me, watching this, so I could complain about how stupid things have gotten in Tyra land, but my husband was ignoring me as he got dinner together and Mateo was asleep, and the cats only want my undying affection and really don't care about TV unless a dog or some other animal is on the screen.

Ten minutes down, 110 minutes more to go.