These are actually shots of a Chicago reading, but you get the idea.
If you live in New York City or environs, slide on down to the Pinchbottom Burlesque’s Naked Girls Reading show tonight at Madame X to hear the timeless classic A Christmas Carol read by the lovely and talented Nasty Canasta and friends.
Miz Canasta.
On Thursday, December 16, at 8:00pm, host Nasty Canasta (declared by the New York Times to be “perhaps the loveliest and certainly the nudest Scrooge in history”) leads an all-star cast of exhibitionists in an in-the-buff reading of this special version of A Christmas Carol, just as Dickens himself originally performed it — although perhaps a bit more naked.
Naked Girls Reading has clearly evolved into something more than just titillation. It is titillating, but, after the first thrill of the initial disrobing, the pleasure of seeing beautiful women undressed fades besides the sense of intimacy achieved from someone bearing both their body and their soul at the same time. It was a remarkable experience.
To summarize: Pinchbottom Burlesque will be performing their Naked Girls Reading of A Christmas Carol tonight at 8 pm, upstairs at Madame X, 94 W. Houston St. (between Thompson and Laguardia). Tickets are $20-$40 and can be purchased in advance from Pinchbottom’s official site. Go check out the show that NBC New York said, “will leave your chestnuts very warm indeed” — and, if you do swing by, send pictures or it didn’t happen.
Bitch, why do you tell me this fucking news when I do not live in New York goddamned City and cannot attend? Relax, neither do I. And may I add you cuss a lot? Because I am filled with holiday spirit, here’s a quick and generous guide to the doings of Naked Girls Reading around the rest of North America, Potty McSwearmouth.
Naked Girls Reading Elsewhere:
In Chicago, home of the original show, the Naked Girls have already celebrated Dickens, on December 3rd. Sorry, dudes.
Seattle gals.
The ‘Couv: The lovely and talented ladies of Naked Girls Reading in Vancouver (B.C., not WA) will be reading How the Grinch Stole Christmas December 23 at Beaumont Studios, 316 W. 5th Ave. Doors open at 8, show starts 8:30. Advance tickets $15 general, $20 front row. At door +$5.
Madison nakies had a slumber party on December 12, where they read classic tales of teenage awkwardness. Look for more events from the Wisconsin chapter in the near future.
Seattle: Seatown’s Naked Girls Reading appear to be cooling their jets after a very big and successful to-do last month. They’ll get back to you, but they’re washing their hair.
Photo of SF Naked Girls Reading by Shilo McCabe, of the extraordinary Sex Positive Photo Project on the blogger.
San Francisco’s chapter will not be doing a reading of A Christmas Carol, but check out “International Day to End Violence Against Sex Workers” on December 17th at the Center for Sex and Culture. 1519 Mission Street @ 11th. Doors open at 8:30, show starts at 9. $15 gen. adm, $20 special reserve seats. Readings will come from pieces written by actual sex workers.
For more on the doings of chapters in Toronto, Dallas, Los Angeles, et al, please do hit up the Naked Girls Reading official site, and, hey — don’t be afraid to practice at home.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last forever: I was wrong.
I’m’a lead off this story with the reminder that I’m lactose intolerant. So. I was at a friendoh’s place recently and after some pizza I found myself with time on my hands in the bathroom. All there was to read was People or something like that, so I flopped it open at random.
I do not know who they are but I like the one on the right because she has Crazy Eyes.
The page to which I opened had the headline “Who wore it best?” and showed three women who were I’m assuming celebrities — I did not really recognize them because none of them were Muppets, former guest stars on Star Trek TNG, or playmates of the month — all wearing the same dress at various red carpet events. I thought, given the human tendency toward recognizing and enjoying that which is patterned and symmetrical, this is an intriguing premise — only what would be better is if they were not in boring clothes at a boring party.
Twins Maurine and Noreene via thesisterproject. I’m going with Noreene because she looks more fun (open smile, body toward camera).
Welcome to the inaugural edition of Showdown! where we decide between either a) two people in one picture or b) two or more pictures of people with something in common: age, hair color, a thematic prop, or, in special cases — such as today — which playmate has put forth the best of two similar photos.
The face-down twin in the background is totally “selling it” better than the one in the foreground, who looks more like “asleep while sick” than “dead from axe wounds.” Fuck, why did I use this picture, now I’m going to have nightmares.
In fact we have already done a Showdown! by accident, which I will put together and repeat as today’s Flashback Friday. Anyway, here is the inaugural outing of this thrilling new category: Showdown!: Yellow Rain Slicker edition.
I noticed that the same slicker was used in the photoshoots of Delores Wells, Miss June 1960 and Sheralee Connors, Playboy‘s Miss July 1961. (Spoiler: they are both coming up as Girls of Summer.) Who rocked it harder?
left: Ms. Wells ; right: Ms. Connors. Click either picture to enlarge.
The weight of the world
is love.
Under the burden
of solitude,
under the burden
of dissatisfaction
the weight,
the weight we carry
is love.
Who can deny?
In dreams
it touches
the body,
in thought
constructs
a miracle,
in imagination
anguishes
till born
in human–
looks out of the heart
burning with purity–
for the burden of life
is love,
but we carry the weight
wearily,
and so must rest
in the arms of love
at last,
must rest in the arms
of love.
No rest
without love,
no sleep
without dreams
of love–
be mad or chill
obsessed with angels
or machines,
the final wish
is love
–cannot be bitter,
cannot deny,
cannot withhold
if denied:
the weight is too heavy
–must give
for no return
as thought
is given
in solitude
in all the excellence
of its excess.
The warm bodies
shine together
in the darkness,
the hand moves
to the center
of the flesh,
the skin trembles
in happiness
and the soul comes
joyful to the eye–
yes, yes,
that’s what
I wanted,
I always wanted,
I always wanted,
to return
to the body
where I was born.
Alles Vergängliche ist nur ein Gleichnis;
Das Ewig-Weibliche zieht uns hinan.
All that is perishable is but an allegory;
The Eternal Feminine draws us on.
(Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Faust, Act 5, “Heaven.” Final lines of the play.)
I interpret that to mean this: The things of men’s making that fade and grow dusty and entropically fall into disuse and destroy themselves in time are not to be worried over in their passing because they were never intended as anything but pictures to make us understand the continually Creative beyond that awaits, endlessly pouring out life, when we follow our dead objects to the grave.
Photograph by Michael Demeo.
I have contemplated it for about thirty seconds and I think I really dig this dynamic vision of Heaven suggested in the final lines of Faust. It is more exotic and vibrant than the tired old “flights of angels/peaceful rest” saw, yes? Like you are expecting to alight on some pastel cloud and hear harp-arrangments of soothing Bach chorales while you kick back with a lemonade, and instead someone shoves crazily-bubbling champagne at you, a tall fancy neverending flute for each hand, and the invisible stereo plays only ODE TO JOY, the good part, OVER AND OVER, forever and instead of the pastel cloud you are instantly transported to the front row of an endless big bang!, watching the universe eternally fling fire and stars at itself! for all time.
Turns out heaven is a hell of a party and all your friends are there and your dead pets are live again and in their prime waiting to play whenever you like only they don’t shed anymore and your family all get along great and you can finally tell all the people you liked in your life but never told about your true feelings for fear you’d look like an idiot that you always liked them so much and they are all great with that and like you back and no one is bothered about sharing. And you are holding a sparkler. On a rearing t-rex.
William Blake Month ends today (unless I change my mind), and I’d promised that America: A Prophecy would be continued, so here are excerpts from the rising action and “Finis.”
The terror like a comet,
or more like the planet red
That once inclos’d the terrible wandering
comets in its sphere.
Then Mars thou wast our center,
& the planets three flew round
Thy crimson disk; so e’er the Sun
was rent from thy red sphere;
The Spectre glowd his horrid length
staining the temple long
With beams of blood; &
thus a voice came forth, and shook the temple
That stony law I stamp to dust:
and scatter religion abroad
To the four winds as a torn book,
& none shall gather the leaves;
But they shall rot on desert sands,
& consume in bottomless deeps;
To make the deserts blossom,
& the deeps shrink to their fountains,
And to renew the fiery joy,
and burst the stony roof.
That pale religious lechery,
seeking Virginity,
May find it in a harlot,
and in coarse-clad honesty
The undefil’d tho’ ravish’d
in her cradle night and morn:
For every thing that lives is holy,
life delights in life;
Because the soul of sweet delight
can never be defil’d.
Fires inwrap the earthly globe,
yet man is not consumd;
“Laura” by Ryan McGinley, 2010.
Sound! sound! my loud war-trumpets
& alarm my Thirteen Angels!
Loud howls the eternal Wolf!
the eternal Lion lashes his tail!
America is darkned;
and my punishing Demons terrified
Crouch howling before their caverns
deep like skins dry’d in the wind.
They cannot smite the wheat,
nor quench the fatness of the earth.
They cannot smite with sorrows,
nor subdue the plow and spade.
They cannot wall the city,
nor moat round the castle of princes.
They cannot bring the stubbed oak
to overgrow the hills.
Who commanded this?
what God? what Angel!
To keep the gen’rous from experience
till the ungenerous
Are unrestraind performers
of the energies of nature;
Till pity is become a trade,
and generosity a science,
That men get rich by,
& the sandy desert is giv’n to the strong
What God is he, writes laws of peace,
& clothes him in a tempest
What pitying Angel lusts for tears,
and fans himself with sighs
What crawling villain preaches abstinence
& wraps himself
In fat of lambs? no more I follow,
no more obedience pay.
“Blood falls” by Ryan McGinley.
And the flame folded roaring fierce
within the pitchy night
Before the Demon red,
who burnt towards America,
In black smoke thunders
& loud winds rejoicing in its terror
Breaking in smoky wreaths from the wild deep,
& gath’ring thick
In flames as of a furnace
on the land from North to South
I think this is the Tacoma Narrows.*
His plagues obedient to his voice
flew forth out of their clouds
Falling upon America,
as a storm to cut them off
Dark is the heaven above, & cold
& hard the earth beneath;
And as a plague wind fill’d with insects
cuts off man & beast;
And as a sea o’erwhelms a land
in the day of an earthquake;
“Extranas formas aerodinamica” by profundorosso on the flickr.
Fury! rage! madness! in a wind
swept through America
And the red flames of Orc
that folded roaring fierce around
The angry shores,
and the fierce rushing of th’inhabitants together:
The citizens of New-York
close their books & lock their chests;
The mariners of Boston
drop their anchors and unlade;
The scribe of Pensylvania
casts his pen upon the earth;
The builder of Virginia
throws his hammer down in fear.
Then had America been lost,
o’erwhelm’d by the Atlantic,
And Earth had lost another portion
of the infinite,
But all rush together in the night
in wrath and raging fire
The red fires rag’d! the plagues recoil’d!
then rolld they back with fury.
(William Blake, excerpts from America: A Prophecy.)
*Along with the eruption of Mt. St. Helens, the collapse of the Tacoma Narrows Bridge was still a gruesomely hot topic in the overheard adult conversations of my early childhood in the Sound. I didn’t fully understand what happened in either case but my morbid imagination obsessed over the half-described tragic events and I was terrified of taking the car over the spans from island to island. I used to fold my little hands over my eyes as I sat on the couch in our trailer waiting for my dad to come home and pray he would take his car up on the ferry instead of driving over the bridge, and any loud noises from trucks going over the shabbily paved nearby highway were certainly the rumblings of another volcanic eruption which would bury us all in ash. I guess what I’m saying is I’ve always had an acute overawareness and fear of cataclysmic death. I have no idea why.
I’d like to juxtapose the original text that accompanied Ms. Enwright’s Playboy gatefold appearance with some excerpts from a review of The Playmate Book (Taschen, 2006) by Joan Acocella, a writer whose work I like and find thought-provoking.
Hugh Hefner, the founder and editor-in-chief of Playboy, always said that his ideal for the magazine’s famous Playmate of the Month, the woman in the centerfold photo, was “the girl next door with her clothes off.”
(Acocella, Joan. “The Girls Next Door: Life in the centerfold.” Review of Gretchen Edgren’s The Playmate Book. The New Yorker. March 20, 2006.)
Okay: agree.
In other words, he was trying to take his readers back to a time before their first sexual experience, a time when they still liked their stuffed bear and thought that a naked woman might be something like that.
(Ibid.)
Mm. Mainly disagree.
It’s my opinion that the prose and pictures, especially in the early years, treated the reader as a fellow experienced swinging single dude, talking man-to-man. We have talked before about how the pictures are composed to have an implicit male presence, like the reader is the model’s partner and has only just stepped out of frame, maybe to take the picture he’s looking at. Take the following as an example:
Picnic laid out with thermos and two cups. Hello.
Like the best of mid-July days, Carrie seems to be destined expressly for the informal, easygoing pleasures of life, and is, as a consequence, a refreshingly unaffected companion.
“I am,” says [Ms. Enwright] in thoughtful self-summation, “a very healthy, well-adjusted, fun-loving kind of girl.”
(“Summer Idyl.” Playboy, July 1963.)
A non-threatening introduction, yes, but pretty come-hither. Not exactly teddy bear fare — and neither is the pose particularly “cuddly.”
There is one basic model. On top is the face of Shirley Temple; below is the body of Jayne Mansfield.
(Acocella.)
Somewhat disagree. I believe there was slightly more variety in the Sixties and Seventies than Ms. Acocella sugests, but I admit I am omitting the portion where she talks about some of the noteworthy veers from the norm (Joni Mattis, yay!) and I don’t want you to think she didn’t acknowledge that in her review. Please be aware that she did. Don’t want to look all biased.
[Playboy draws] simultaneously, on two opposing trends that have … come to dominate American mass culture: on the one hand, our country’s idea of its Huck Finn innocence; on the other, the enthusiastic lewdness of our advertising and entertainment.
(Acocella.)
Agree. Yes. 100%. That is its appeal, that the magazine attracts that dichotomy in American consumerism and in our own idea of beauty, sex, and ourselves.
Hence the surprise and the popularity of Playboy. The magazine proposed that … sex for sex’s sake, was wholesome, good for you: a novel idea in the nineteen-fifties.
(Acocella.)
Agree. This also undermines the beginning sentence with its teddy-bear going-for-innocent-investigative-interest suggestion, but I’m okay with undoing that assertion because I disagreed with it.
“I don’t much care whether I eventually live in a mansion or in a tree house, so long as the man I’m married to is fun to be with.”
(“Summer Idyl.”)
[As the pin-ups progressed] We get the great outdoors: Playmates taking sunbaths, unpacking picnics, hoisting their innocent bottoms into hammocks. Above all, we get youth.
(Acocella.)
Most of them have chubby cheeks, and flash us sweet smiles. At the same time, many of these nice little girls are fantastically large-breasted. Strange to say, this top-loading often makes them appear more childlike. The breasts are smooth and round and pink; they look like balloons or beach balls. The girl seems delighted to have them, as if they had just been delivered by Santa Claus.
(Acocella.)
Ha! Somewhat agree. That Santa. He always knows. But this shoot and Cheryl Kubert are both good examples, just as recent citation on this journal, of gatefolds that featured a model mainly not smiling. Ms. Enwright even keeps her mouth closed.
What is so bewildering about [modern vs. old-school] Playboy centerfolds is their [the modern ones’] utter texturelessness: their lack of any question, any traction, any grain of sand from which the sexual imagination could make a pearl.
(Acocella)
Very Strongly AGREE.
[Hef’s] father was an accountant, his mother a Methodist disciplinarian. He has said that there was never any show of affection in his house. One suspects that there was likewise little evidence of jazz or hors d’oeuvres -— pleasure for its own sake. This is what he set out to sell: an upscale hedonism, promoted by the magazine’s articles and ads as well as by its nudes.
(Acocella.)
Agree, but not sure that it matters.
“For a while I was cashier at the Hollywood Paramount, which was my closest fling with the movie business. Then I worked as a salesgirl in a candy store. Trouble was, I have this terrible sweet tooth and pretty soon I was eating more candy than I sold.”
(“Summer Idyl.”)
“Right now I’m living with my mother and studying like mad to take my state boards in cosmetology. My most active hobby involves artwork, from making seed mosaics of Siamese cats to painting wild, wild oils. I get excited over my finished products — but then, I’m not critically minded.”
(Ibid.)
“I’m crazy about progressive jazz, lasagna, and playing practical jokes on people I like.”
Hell, yeah, lasagna and jazz! This girl is all kinds of easygoing and wonderful. Practical jokes, eh? such as what?
“I have been known to secretly put in cold mashed potatoes as the bottom scoop of someone’s root-beer float, which is a terrible thing to do, but fun!”
(Ibid.)
I have never done that nor even thought of it. Holy god, I can’t wait to do this. She is a comic genius and I am trying this, stickety-stat!
Bookworms are hottttt … even when they are only pretending for a photoshoot.
“I am not the type who always has a book going. I rarely read novels, but occasionally I get on a self-improvement kick, the most recent of which was plowing through Hayakawa’s Language in Thought and Action.”
(Ibid.)
I don’t know why, but I feel like the editors forced her to say she read it all when maybe the truth was that she only started it. Just a feeling. I’m about to talk about why they might’ve done that in a second.
“I love Nina Simone, Miles Davis, Frank Sinatra … — oh, so many more. I’m very congenial toward most performers, and I enjoy nearly all.”
(Ibid.)
Again — wonderful taste. You find that so often in the Sixties write-ups, though, that the girls are prompted to talk about foodie foolery, jazz, politics, photography, and art. I’m not sure when that fizzled out, but it has. And I can totally admit that probably 30% of it was bullshit and only 7 out of 10 of these girls knew what they were talking about (if they even said it to begin with) or collected Bird and bebop on vinyl and the like, but I still feel good about the fact that it was important to the editorial staff for their vision of the ideal Playmate that these intriguing, intelligent statements seem true. Ms. Acocella addresses this:
That, in the end, is the most striking thing about Playboy’s centerfolds: how old-fashioned they seem. This whole “bachelor” world, with the brandy snifters and the attractive guest arriving for the night: did it ever exist? Yes, as a fantasy. Now, however, it is the property of homosexuals.
Today, if you try to present yourself as a suave middle-aged bachelor, people will assume you’re gay.
(Acocella.)
Ha! and again, I have to say agree, not in that groovy archaic pursuits are strictly the male provenance of neato gay guys (I like any man that goes for records and cares about dorky esoterica) but, yeah, society-wide, that would be the humorous judgment in the sense of stereotyping.
You know. Like when Bart and Millhouse tried to be Playdudes. That was hilarious. All pimped out in smoking jackets up in the treehouse.
“Too much of the time I use my heart and not my head. I’m really a very gullible girl. I wish on first stars and believe in miracles.”
(“Summer Idyl.”)
That is very sweet and touching. It is not full of trying-to-be-sexy artifice, nor is it overly cloying or disingenuous.
“Of course it’s a trite observation, but what I want most in life is happiness. What else is there?”
(Ibid.)
And who can improve on that desire? Well-wished, Ms. Enwright, and I hope she found her happiness. That’s not trite: it’s natural.
What Ms. Acocella observes in the unnaturally smooth, airbrushed featurelessness of the current crop of sexless-and-vaginally-shaved-for-maximum-Barbie-resemblance centerfolds mostly found on the newsstands today is resonantly true.
I guess what I’m saying is this: Yeah, there may have never really been a sophisticated scotch-sampling bachelor like the ones to whom Hef designed the magazine to appeal, and there may never have really been a girl next door with her clothes off that just happened to discourse freely on jazz LP’s and modern art while whipping up beef bourguignon in her skivvies, but isn’t the fantasy of that time period, quaint as it may seem now, so much more touching and oddly innocent than the weird highly-structured and false fantasy being sold today?
Photographed by Giasco Bertoli. Ladies’ Gun Club. The term is “Firearms enthusiast.” Never “Gun Nut.”
Forth from the dead dust rattling bones to bones
Join: shaking convuls’d the shivering clay breathes
And all flesh naked stands; Fathers and Friends;
Mothers & Infants; Kings & Warriors;
The Grave is a woman in Blake’s vision. cf: Kali, Shiva, Sekhmet, feral cats who eat their kittens, bathtub ladies from Texas making little angels to be the stars in their hellbound crowns — the Mother/Destroyer, yes? Just like Earth. Just like life.
The Grave shrieks with delight, & shakes
Her hollow womb, & clasps the solid stem;
Her bosom swells with wild desire;
And milk & blood & glandous wine,
In rivers rush & shout & dance,
On mountain, dale and plain.
The SONG of LOS is Ended
(William Blake, excerpt from “The Song of Los.”)
“The Song of Los” is the last of Blake’s so-called Continental Prophesies, where he shared his visions of the future for America, Europe, Africa, and Asia. The excerpt just quoted concludes his prophecy for Asia and Africa.
Golly, good thing Blake was wrong, am I right. Agony and apocalypse, with naked children and flames and howls and shivering clay? In Africa and Asia? What a nut. How off base.
Ugh. Sorry, but as much as I enjoyed putting together DeDe Lind’s post, her comments about the Vietnam War and my subsequent reflections on those words with the ramifications of her centerfold’s popularity has resulted in a chain of thought about the twentieth century and where we’ll go next that has put me in kind of a foul mood. I will try to improve.
The pride of the peacock is the glory of God.
The lust of the goat is the bounty of God.
The wrath of the lion is the wisdom of God.
The nakedness of woman is the work of God.
(William Blake, excerpt from “Proverbs of Hell,” The Marriage of Heaven and Hell.)
“One does not kill oneself for the love of a woman, but because love — any love — reveals us in our nakedness, in our misery, in our vulnerability, in our nothingness.”
(Caesare Pavese, one of the greatest Italian poets and literary minds of the 20th century, c. 1950, just before his death by suicide after his failed affair with American actress Constance Dowling.)
Love strips us painfully, pitifully bare, like some shorn sheep or a little boy who’s just got his first buzzcut: this awkward, naked truth is very accurate, but I’m actually so glad of the many types of love; Sgr. Pavese seems to find all of them disheartening, but, respectfully, I dissent. I have struggled a long time with the difficulty of confronting and revealing my feelings, but I now believe that it is possible to examine my own self and still manage not to fall in to complete despair. Without the love of my family and friends I could never have borne some of the hard hits my heart has taken, historically and up to the present. I wish with all my soul that Sgr. Pavese could have found that same solace, but I wish him all the best in the life he has now. RIP.
Spark up the candles (or, you know, whatever you spark on birthdays) and get ready to sing a happy 34th go-round on this earth with lots of good wishes and eskimo kisses to the lovely and talented Milla Jovovich! One of my favorite Model Citizens, mothers, and all-around good-time gals. Keep on rocking in the free world, kiddo.
High Times, October 1994.
It’s your birthday; do what feels right!
lost credit please help
And we should really all say thank you to Milla for the memories. I mean, you do not even know how grateful I am for the huge folder on my computer, chock-full of amazing pictures of the girl. It took me ages to pick the right ones for this post.
by Ellen Von Unwerth for Vogue Italia, July 2009.
Besides screencaps from films like Dazed and Confused, the Fifth Element, Joan of Arc, and the Resident Evil flicks, I had to decide between photographs from devil-horned shoots with Ellen von Unwerth, topless shenanigans by David La Chapelle, that phatty spread in High Times, even … it was truly a challenge.
Paper magazine, 1994.
Man, this girl has given me some smiles over the years. Do your thing, chicken wing. Haters to the left! You keep on keepin’ on.
I feel like I should mention I’ve been putting these up out of sequence so I don’t totally spoil the plot for you. Don’t forget to add Sam’s Cowboy Kate and Other Stories, the Director’s Cut to your Christmas wish list. You can get it from Powell’s Books, Amazon, or get on a mailing list with Dashwood to see when they get another copy.
Playboy’s Miss November 2002 was actress and model Serria Tawan, seen here in the centerfold posed as a voyeur.
Photographed by Arny Freytag and Stephen Wayda
Note how the light glinting off of the leg of the telescope in the foreground points up a strong diagonal beginning from the bottom left of the composition, that is then intersected by a cross diagonal from the upper left created by her posture and her hand holding one of her braids: together they make an arrow which draws the eye to the undressing couple in the window of the building across the street, who are positioned just above and to the right of the focal attention point of her breasts, making it even more difficult to miss them as the final critical element of the photograph. As your eye moves from left to right, reading the composition, it tells a story: there is a girl. There is a telescope. The girl is using the telescope to look at the couple.
The centerfold was a really good composition. The rest is all over the damned place. Any type of theme with set dressing, poses, or costuming is almost totally absent. Maybe the raincoat is to hint at her being a flasher to boot? Not sure. But it doesn’t get picked back up again even though it’s a fun little kicky erotic detail. Missed opportunity in my book.
WHEN I GET OLDER:
I want a harem of guys like Hef has women. I want them all diverse. Variety is the spice of life for me.
Get it, girl! I like this lady’s style. If you’re looking to join that harem, you can contact her via her profile on the myspace. In several places on that page, Serria directs you to a website, http://askserria.com, but it is not up and running yet, as far as I can tell.
While the braids are lovely, I like her even better in the above pic, with a gently relaxed weave. She looks younger and very soft and romantic. Even without the bangs, I think this look works better for her than the long braids, and it seems she agrees, as she is apparently rocking it on the reg these days (see below). The only trouble is that it makes her look a lot like phony-evil-queen-witch “ANTM” Cycle 9 winner Saleisha Stowers, who my sister-in-law, husband, and I all unilaterally despise.
Left: Serria Tawan. Right: Saleisha Stowers.
That girl and a competitor, Bianca Golden, were unbelievably cruel to standout contestant Heather Kuzmich of Valpariso, Indiana, who had Asperger’s Syndrome for crissake and still mopped the floor with their jealous asses until Go-Sees, which she only blew because she was not being properly aided. Yes, I have every detail of every cycle of the Tyra Banks reality show “America’s Next Top Model” memorized, and may the good god strike me dead if I ever stop loving the parade of tears, catfights, and girl-girl showers that comprise that gory but gorgeous grand guginol.
Anyway, Saleisha and Bianca were rude, catty, and sneaky about Heather, not to mention super-jealous and totally ignorant of the qualities that made her outshine them week after week, and their insecurities drove them to taunt her and talk about her behind her back like they were twelve and not on national fucking television. Because of that I will forever despise their fake sticky-sweet smiles. Although I was on the Bergie’s website a while ago — just window-shopping; like I could possibly afford something from their store right now — and I know for a fact I recognized Heather modelling some of the dresses in the pictures, so in their snotty, sabotaging, difference-hating faces: time has told, success-wise.
Wow, I think I might need to write some more about Top Model another day. It would appear I have Things to Say.
In other news, Kristy Swanson was on the cover of this one. I have never even seen one episode of the television series, so to me it is she who will always be Buffy the Vampire Slayer. Even though vampires are lame, passe, and ridiculous as all hell, that movie is so great.
The Thought Experiment 