Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
Alright. I’m back to reading this muhfucker.
That’s right. After a long hiatus, it’s on again. Chapters 11, 12, and 13.
You may not remember where we left off. And that’s okay because, and I promise this is true, it does not matter. At all.
Here’s what you need to know:
Tookie de la Creme is our hero. She’s been selected to go to Modelland, where the most beautiful-est girls go to become models.
When we left off, the loose threads were that Tookie was feeling inadequate, and she’d entered a Scout’s gossamer ballsack to be whisked off to Modelland. But first, we have to pick up a few friends.
Such as Dylan. Dylan has big thighs, a big butt, and the attitude to match. Uh, big attitude. I guess people with big butts don’t always have attitude? See, THIS is the kind of shit I want science doing. Studies on how butt size and behavior correlate. I think we’d see an interesting, butt-shaped bell curve.
Anyway, Dylan is probably most known for her verbal tic. Her catchphrase is “cuh-ray-ze”, but that doesn’t stop her from saying, “Ex-cuh-yuse me” and others.
At the beginning of this section, we’ve got Dylan in the ballsack, and I was SO glad to get back to this because, well, I’ll let Tyra take the wheel here.
“The pouch swept through the green portal again. After a few minutes, a vanilla-scented breeze tickled Tooki’s nose. In seconds, the pouch began to fill with white goo.”
And there you have it. Definitely a ballsack. Do I think Tyra was representing a sexual thing here, that the ascendancy to Modelland involves the loss of virginity, a baptism in semen? No. I WISH that was what happened, but it turns out that the ballsack isn’t filling with cum, it’s filling with candle wax. See this ballsack teleports and ends up in weird spots, like inside a streetlight or coming out of an old man’s ear or some shit. And in this case, we are inside a candle. Why? Because we’re in the land of Canne Del Abra. That name immediately made me regret restarting this book, by the way. Fuckin A’. Canne Del Abra.
Canne Del Abra is a land where all of the economy, nay, all life revolves around candle production. I can’t help but wonder if the dystopia in this book couldn’t have been avoided by a little bit of diversification. I mean, a whole country devoted to making candles? We don’t even need our disparate weird aunts doing this in their garages, let alone an entire country of it. But, whatever. We pick up Shiraz, who thinks she’s perfect, but she’s 4’7″. I don’t know conversions, but she’s like, 10 vertical furstones or something in metric.
Then we roll over to the land of Sanscolor where everyone is albino.
Tookie does say that she knows the people have albinism, but isn’t sure whether it’s proper to call someone an albino.
Turns out, this is a hotly debated topic amongst albinos.
Some hate the word because, basically, it’s been used as an insult. Others feel like it’s the term. To paraphrase one albino forum poster: “If you have diabetes, you’re diabetic. If you have dyslexia, you’re diabetic. If you have albinism, you’re albino.”
Frankly, it doesn’t matter. Because Tyra is making up all this bullshit anyway, so she could make up a different form of albinism or a completely different thing or whatever because all the rest of this shit is insane anyway. And if you choose to call your land SansColor, give me a break.
Let’s get back to the story. And for the record, you can call me an asshole OR person with assholism. But other assholes might feel differently, so be aware. And hey, you could call me an asshole or someone with assholism, but I prefer “Pete” #NotAllAssholes
Okay, then we arrive at the gates of Modelland. Yes, fucking finally.
We meet a tailor who has a hand for a face. This isn’t explained much beyond Dylan’s amazing one-liner “This thang gives new meaning to the phrase ‘Talk to the hand'”. Ah, yes. One of the finer wits of our time. Jesus Christ. I’m not sure whether the character was created specifically FOR this joke or if the joke was applied to the character. Because that’s how this book is insane. You can’t tell. Why are they meeting a tailor outside Modelland? Who the fuck knows? Why does he have a handface? Why does he choose to clap by headhandbutting his regular hands instead of clapping normal style?
In short: The. Fuck?
Okay, then we find out that the scout is none other than Ci~L.
Yes, that’s a tilde.
And yes, we’re told how to pronounce this name, and the tilde has NO effect. “See-ell.” Good. Good thing that happened. I guess that shit’s not getting much use on the keyboard. Frankly, it beats that Beyonce accent bullshit. That’s hard as hell to type. I’ve got the tilde. It’s right here. ~~~~~~~~ I’ve got tildes all day long, so why not?
Do I think Tyra just looks at a keyboard and says, “Hey, THIS thing!”? Yes. Yes I do.
Ci~L is all of the following: A scout, an Intoxibella, a “7seven-7” and a slam poet.
I.
Okay, I don’t know which of these things I hate more. On the one hand, the 7seven-7 means she’s one of the 7 selected models, and a rare one who exhibits all 7 potential model powers at once. I wanted to list these, but they’re very stupid and unimportant. Nothing cool like opening a door to a pocket dimension of all lasers with your eyelids so it appears that lasers shoot out of your eyes. Nothing cool like that.
But the slam poet thing, that’s just albino as hell. Aw, shit. Busted. Busted using albino as a slur, as we do.
The slam poet thing is so dumb. Why in the fuck does she need to be a slam poet? Why does that matter at all? Reading about Ci~L, it’s like old Superman comics where he exhibits a new power every issue because it’s like “Well, he’s super at EVERYTHING, right?” Which is how Superman once re-assembled a broken machine he saw briefly because of his Super Photographic Memory. Or when Superman used his Super Broadcasting to turn his voice into radio waves. Super Kissing. And, regrettably, the power to create Super Midgets. Tiny Superman that shot out of his hands. Because you know what would be a lot more useful than Superman? TINY Supermen! With the same powers!
Okay, two last important things.
1. We are about to enter Modelland. Now, there’s some kind of statue face thing that verifies you’re supposed to enter Modelland, and there’s speculation in the book that Ci~L is somehow sneaking her ballsack full of freaks and geeks past the face. This is not hinted at lightly, but bashed over the head of anyone dumb enough to read this, so be aware that something shady is happening.
2. Zarpressa shows up! Tookie’s nemesis! Who is also broke and dug in the garbage and Tookie saw it one time.
I just want to reiterate, one more time, that we’re on page 149. And we are, just now, entering Modelland.
Up to this point, it’s been this huge question. “Will Tookie MAKE IT?” Ah, the tension. You could cut it with a knife.
Look, can I put on my editor hat for a second? Say what I would have said to Tyra here?
Tyra,
First off, this shit is bananas. But I think it’s the on purpose kind of bananas, so keep going.
One thing. Can we get to fucking Modelland already? Kurt Vonnegut once said that the way to write a story is to start as close to the end as possible. And many a good story has been written by breaking that rule, but I feel like you’ve broken that rule, exhumed Vonnegut’s corpse and crammed it up his skeleton urethra. Because goddamn, there is a whole lot of nothing that happens before we get to Modelland, which is where we want to go.
It’s like this.
Pretend this book is a road trip we’re taking together. I’m driving, you’re the passenger.
And it’s like two years later, and you’re telling someone about this road trip.
You don’t need to start with “I woke up before Pete picked me up. I took a shit, and I wiped 17 times. I call that a smearster. Then, I got in the car, and three hours later, and this is where things get interesting.”
Okay, no. Just start when the first thing happens. I don’t need to know about the shit you took and what kind it was unless that has some bearing on the story later.
In this first 150 pages, you’re taking shits left and right and telling me about each one. And you’re not wiping, Tyra! You’re not wiping! You’re making a mess and dragging these poo threads along behind you, unresolved.
This metaphor is getting all out of hand, so let me put it like this: You can probably cut the first 150 and be better off.