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Boarding the cruise ship from hell on 'America's Next Top Model'

Days after arriving in Puerto Rico, I found myself blindfolded and forbidden to speak on a bus full of other young, sweaty, beautiful girls. One by one, I heard them get sick as the bus swerved along miles of narrow, winding roads, and I thanked God for my iron stomach.

We’d spent the previous few days at a hotel, shuttled from suite to suite for assorted physical, psychological, and emotional testing while the producers whittled us down to the 33 contestants who would compete on the first episode of the ninth cycle of America’s Next Top Model. The first audition for the show — my first ever, modeling or otherwise — had been more than six months ago. Now, after months of paperwork, waiting, and having our blood drawn in a Puerto Rican Ramada, we were finally achieving the ultimate goal: we were going to be on TV.

Once the bus stopped, we were once again instructed to sit in silence while the crew set up the cameras outside. Reality TV contestants aren’t allowed to speak when they’re not on camera — it’s called being “on ice.” Eventually we were led, holding hands, out of the bus and in a meandering line across a hot parking lot. Cloth still over our eyes, Miss J’s booming voice was a balm to our ears. “Take off your blindfolds!” she yelled. Blinking the spots from our eyes, we were greeted by the sight of her standing in front of a beautiful cruise ship.

Before we had a chance to find our bearings, we were told Miss J was going through our suitcases and picking out an outfit for each of us, throwing anything she didn’t like overboard. I watched girl after girl look on as their clothes got chucked into the trash. I winced as Miss J threw away my favorite t-shirt, a soft white baseball tee from Rainbow. Later, as we walked off camera, someone handed us the trash bags — the clothes were not being thrown overboard after all — so that we could repack our suitcases in the parking lot of a cruise terminal. This segment, “Fashion Inspection,” did not end up making it to air.

The ‘Top Chef’ patriarch has broken his silence... and it’s not good

Season 19 of Top Chef kicks off tonight — the series has traveled to Houston, yeehaw — but the show remains marred by the disappointing denouement of last season, which ended with an alleged sex pest named Gabe Erales winning the golden chef’s hat, $250,000, and a spot at the Aspen Food & Wine Festival. After reports came out that Erales had recently been fired from an Austin restaurant for sexual misconduct — including sleeping with a member of his kitchen staff and then retaliating against them after the relationship ended — he was swiftly and effectively disappeared as a Top Chef victor (he was noticeably absent from the Aspen event in September, and Bravo hasn’t promoted him in the show’s typical victory lap rounds of press).

Yesterday, I wrote about how no one from Bravo or among the Top Chef brass has commented on their scarlet-lettered winner, with the exception of Padma Lakshmi, who tweeted a call for the network to investigate the allegations. That investigation into Erales’s misdeeds seemingly never happened; the company line seemed to be that since the alleged harassment didn’t occur on set, it was irrelevant to his victory.

No one’s silence on Erales was louder than Tom Colicchio’s. Colicchio, the show’s mentor and lead judge, is a benevolent and genial presence in the kitchen, reminding the contestants to work together and season their food. But finally, eight months after Erales won, Colicchio has addressed the controversy in an interview with the Daily Beast, and his comments are… not great.

I'm sick of being led to the guest room in an 'Architectural Digest' tour

On the most recent installment of Architectural Digest’s “Open Door” series, Shonda Rhimes takes us inside of her New York apartment. We see her living room that doubles as an office, her dining room/library where a TV is mounted on a Murphy bed, her kitchen, and a guest room. Much like when watching her television shows, I enjoyed having her explain everything to me while also thinking, “Damn there’s a lot going on in here.” But there was one issue: amid all the clashing textiles and statement chandeliers, what we pointedly do not see is her bedroom.

When a celebrity would show us their bedroom on MTV Cribs, the common refrain was: This is where the magic happens. Well, the magic has died. Not enough famous people giving tours of their houses want to show us their bedrooms, and it’s a real bummer for nosy people like me.

What are they hiding in there? Or is it some kind of “boundary” they’re trying to set with the public? We’re already in your literal house — just show me the bedroom. The only way I can justify these bedroom omissions is to imagine that these freaks are hiding some weird sex thing they have prominently featured in the boudoir. Perhaps a swing, or a man in a gimp suit who gets paid to stand in the corner all day. Oh, that sounds unlikely? Prove it.

Bigger than all of Italian America

When the New York Times profiled Lori Lightfoot earlier this year, they called the Chicago Mayor a “blunt orator and unflinching negotiator.” This has translated into calling colleagues, at various times, “jackass,” “full of crap,” “petty,” “a dumb, dumb person of color,” and “bush league,” which I don’t understand but sounds rude, as well as saying of one City Council member in particular, “Shitso is an asshole!” Last year, when the Chicago Teachers Union tried to find a “grand compromise” on school closures, so that kids could gradually return to in-person learning while doing their best to ensure teachers didn’t die, for example, Lightfoot wrote a memo insisting that she “will not relent,” then forced an immediate full return to classes. That’s a win for the ladies.

But now Lightfoot, who has been destined for stardom since she lobbied her high school for “more flavorful pizza,” has outdone herself. Specifically, she has outdone herself in the realm of blunt oration and unflinching negotiation. On Thursday morning, The Chicago Tribune broke the following news: Lori Lightfoot has been sued over a distinctly Sopranos-like situation, in which she pissed off the Windy City’s Italian-American community by by removing a statue of Christopher Columbus from a park during the George Floyd protests, and then banning it from appearing “for 20 minutes” in a parade last fall. What’s more, in a Zoom call over said statue, according to the complaint, she allegedly said the following to some government lawyers:

You dicks, what the fuck were you thinking? You make some kind of secret agreement with Italians, what are you doing, you are out there measuring your dicks with the Italians seeing whose [sic] got the biggest dick, you are out there stroking your dicks over the Columbus statue, I am trying to keep Chicago Police officers from being shot and you are trying to get them shot. My dick is bigger than yours and the Italians, I have the biggest dick in Chicago.

Lala Kent’s ex cheated on her with a 23-year-old after the birth of their daughter

Randall Emmett — what is the vibe you get from him, would you say? The 50-year-old “Hollywood producer” descended upon our lives like an unfortunate little curse, as Lala Kent’s Range Rover-providing “man” on Vanderpump Rules. It was soon apparent that his relationship with Lala, 31, began on the side of his relationship with his now ex-wife and the mother of two of his children. After that divorce was finalized, he and Lala got engaged, and have since had a child together (and broken up).

And now we’ve gotten another bit of information about Randall which may influence our reading of his vibe. (This is on top of the fact that he was the model for the Entourage character Turtle; and the fact that he at one point owed 50 Cent a large sum of money, and called him “fofty” by accident during their public Instagram battle; and the fact that he seems to play a large role in the pickleball propaganda machine.) According to Lala, Randall began a relationship with a 23-year-old during the month she gave birth to their daughter, Ocean.

Oh no … not our perfect gentleman!

“Let’s talk about it,” Lala wrote in a comment under an Instagram post about Randall on the account @onemomsbattle (okay). “I was alone during most of my pregnancy and for the first 7 months of her life, until the mask fell and I saw who he really was,” she wrote. “He started a relationship with a 23 year old in march of 2021- the month I gave birth.”