Modelland by Tyra Banks
My rating: 1 of 5 stars
12/10/2015 Update: Chapters 16 and 17
This book is a clown car.
Just when you think we’ve got enough characters with the kinds of crazy names Stan Lee would balk at, we get another dozen or so. Out of nowhere, and it’s just like the clown car at the circus where you’re saying, “Surely there aren’t any more people in that car. There’s just no need!” Then we get Somebody de Something from the land of Ice and Fog. Jerkoff Jerktopolis from Annihilia, the land where everything was annihilated by a swarm of ladybugs that were not just red, but dashing yellow, orange of fire, and all colors of the rainbow!
Yes, this is made-up shit, but this is also my audition to ghostwrite Modelland 2: Eclectic Boogaloo. Tyra, I might not be enjoying Modelland, but damn it, who knows it better?
Who else is so dazzled by your made-up craziness that has nothing to do with anything?
When the girls have their lips waxed in this chapter, they’re waxed with a dark black kind of wax, and “The label on the wax jar said ‘LP Wax: Recycled from vinyl albums of yesteryear.'”
But WHY! Vinyl? Music? None of this has ANYTHING to do with ANYTHING that’s happened in this book. And it doesn’t make sense. Scientifically OR thematically.
Records are actually made of PVC, people. You would not want to melt a goddamn PVC pipe and stick it on your face.
And this book doesn’t have themes about melting down the past to pave the road to the future or some such horseshit.
What is the message? What’s going on? Where am I?
It’s what’s so baffling about this book. You’re humming along, and then there’s something in there that YOU KNOW won’t ever come up again, for any reason, ever, and it makes no sense and sticks in your craw. It’s like a Nicholas Cage movie where you just know he’s going to do some weird shit like eat-drinking red and yellow jelly beans out of a martini glass. Because, you know. He’s a stuntman who turns into the spirit of vengeance. Seems like a thing he’d just really enjoy.
Swear to god, this is a movie where Nicholas Cage pees fire and eats bullets and then shoots them out of his face. But this jelly bean nonsense will haunt my life forever.
As for plot in these chapters, we have now entered THBC: Thigh-High Boot Camp. Which, don’t be mistaken by the name, does not involve boots of any kind, any sort of thigh-high anything, and is less a boot camp, more a haunted house that the ladies of Modelland have to sit through. But please, just ignore the fact that the name doesn’t describe anything that’s happening, and mostly just rhymes.
So the ladies all sit in chairs. And then 4 tests are administered by Gunnero Narzz, the man who is 3/4 man, 1/4 woman, and has Z’s to spare. At any point, the Modelland candidates can run through a door marked HOME and be taken away from THBC and Modelland.
Test the First: Measurements
The ladies are measured. That’s pretty much it. Humiliating, I know. I got measured for a suit once. It didn’t fit, and an elderly woman spent quite a bit of time sliding her hands around my groin and asking me to which side I dress. This is the polite way of asking which pant leg your penis points down. She asked more than once, like I wasn’t sure. Believe me, I know. I hadn’t really thought about it much before that day, but when asked, I knew right away which way my penis was pointed.
Test the Second: Ogres
The ladies are all made up. And they look beautiful! And then they start to transform into hideous ogres. It’s kinda crazy. Bursting eyeballs and shit. A bunch run through the HOME door and leave, but Tookie has a feeling that this is a trick. She’s the only one who suspects this, even though, from my accounting, every thing that’s happened so far in the book is a trick. Which it is, and the lesson we learn here is that it’s a bad idea to share make-up. Doy.
This introduces a segment I’d like to call Pete’s Rules for Surviving Modelland.
Rule 1: Yes, it’s a trick. If you suspect it’s a trick, it’s definitely a trick. If you don’t suspect something is a trick, it’s definitely also a trick. Everything is a fucking trick. From the name Thigh-High Boot Camp to the portals disguised as bushes somehow, it’s all a trick.
Okay, back to the tests.
Test the Third: Deadly Accessories
Oh, we get lovely jewelry, purses. Hobo bags. By the way, world of fashion, I don’t know what you THINK a hobo bag is, but I’m telling you right now, a hobo bag is a Walgreen’s white plastic bag with a receipt in it for Pyramid cigarettes.
The accessories turn on their wearers, strangling them and such. And the lesson we learn here is that it’s wrong to accessorize with knockoffs. Some designer out there worked really hard to make that ugly-ass purse. And in a bout of very confused politics, we also learn that knockoffs are made in Asian sweatshops, and if we stopped wearing knockoffs, then the lives of those sweatshoppers would be PERFECT.
And finally, Test the Fourth: Get Stabbed In The Head By The Needle From A Giant Sewing Machine
I shit you not.
The other tests all caused candidates to go running for the HOME door, which means they leave Modelland FOREVER. But Tookie and her friends have held on, and they face the last test, which is described by Tyra as a giant sewing machine moving towards them slowly, and one at a time the machine stabs the girls in the head and they sort of disappear.
Is this the end of Tookie de La Creme?
Or is it Modelland, and when in Modelland, should we always follow Pete’s Rules for Surviving Modelland, specifically Rule 1: It’s a trick.
Tookie gets stabbed in the head. But she’s fine. And then she’s just her face in a floating orb. And her friends are all faces in floating orbs. And then the orbs all float towards a door that says HOME. Oh shit! Tookie tries to backpedal her orb, but it floats through the door!
That’s the cliffhanger. Has Tookie left Modelland forever?
For some reason, Tyra has gotten real RL Stine in the last few chapters. By which I mean, cliffhanger chapter endings that aren’t cliffhangers.
Chapter 16 Ending: Will Tookie and her buddies be stuck as ogres forever?
Chapter 17 Beginning: No. For like almost one more sentence, though.
Chapter 17 Ending: Have Tookie and her compadres flown HOME on accident?
Chapter 18 Beginning: No. It’s not really explained, but by this point they were faces floating in orbs, and they’d just been stabbed in the head with a giant needle, so how much explanation is required?
And we’ve almost crested page 200, people. The mid-point is in sight.