It’s taken me about 9 months to get halfway through Modelland. I’m hoping to wrap this up before the 1-year mark. As I just passed the middle, I wanted to put up a consolidated, log-ass review just in case anyone needed to get caught up and really enjoy the ride. I’d advise you crack a couple beers.
Pt 1: Introduction
Modelland. Here begins the chronicle of my second run at Modelland.
I just want to start off with something here. A problem I’ve found in talking about bad books or movies or games or whatever. Sometimes I find that, when you’re getting into something that’s bizarre, it tends to sound awesome.
I’ll give you an example. I was talking about the movie The Escape Plan just this morning, and described it like this: “Well, Stallone and Schwazenegger have to excape (that’s what I think the movie should have been, the excape plan) from the same prison that I’m pretty sure was in Face/Off, and they blow up the Jesus guy with a missile and 50-cent is their tech guy.”
If someone described that movie to me, I would want to see it. That sounds like the perfect movie, really.
But what happens when you describe something terrible by kind of explaining how terrible it is, well, there’s fun to be had. And there was fun in the movie. And when you describe it, you have to think , “Why didn’t I enjoy that more…oh yeah, because it was like 2 minutes of fun in 2 hours of movie.” That’s the problem. Not the absence of fun, but the ratio of fun to not fun. 50-cent being the tech guy occupies 10% of my review, but he was in like 2% of the movie. The Jesus guy is the Jesus guy to me, but it’s not like anyone in the movie acknowledges how funny it is to blow up Jesus with a missile.
Which kind of brings us to the other problem. When I talk about Stallone being a prison escape artist, I know that’s stupid. I’m not so sure that The Escape Plan knows it. If a movie kind of knows it’s stupid, things tend to work out a little better. For example, Stallone/Kurt Russel vehicle Tango Cash. I’m pretty convinced that at least some of the people involved with that had a pretty good idea that it was pretty stupid. With Escape Plan, I’m not convinced. Maybe a couple people had an idea, but I don’t think most of the cast and crew realized they were making a hilarious movie, and therefore it doesn’t feel like a hilarious movie. It’s mostly kind of boring.
Modelland is 569 pages long. It’s jammed with crazy. Packed to the gills? Balls to the wall? Is that the same? It’s filled to the balls with crazy.
I have a suspicion that, in some ways, it’s going to sound fun to read this. When I describe just how tortured the whole thing is, I think it’s going to sound pretty fun.
Let me reassure you. Although it’s fun to discuss, it’s not fun to read. Based on my previous experience, it’s painful. Even at a few pages per day, it’s a slog.
Let me reassure you, at this time I am NOT recommending that others read this book, and it’s my goal to have this review series be a hell of a lot more fun than the book itself. By the time I’m through, you’ll know everything you need to know about Modelland, and then some.
Without further ado, let’s start with the introduction.
The intro is a few pages of italicized type that makes no sense. One of my least favorite ways to start a narrative, just throw me in with a bunch of crazy words that mean nothing. Throw me into the body of someone I’ve never met, who is mid-conversation with someone else I’ve never met, and don’t worry about bringing me up to speed. No time. We only have 569 pages here. Let’s get clipping along!
Rather than parse the text, which I don’t think is comprehensible until you’ve read the book, I want to include my favorite portion from the introduction.
The Land you thirst for has loomed at the top of the mountain in Metopia for as long as you can remember. But for most of the year, it’s covered in fog, its color changing with each passing day as if it’s a gargantuan mood ring. You begin your mornings staring at the fog, longing for the fateful evening when it will turn a golden yellow and then, finally, like a push-up brassiere, lift.
Okay. Let’s just…okay.
It’ll never work for me to stay this picky through the entire book. But this little paragraph is so horrific.
I mean, I have to say, 250 pages into reading this, ANY editor would probably say, “Fuck this shit. Just let her say whatever. Who cares? I only work here because they pretend not to notice I smoke at my desk.”
I picture ALL editors as J. Jonah Jameson, by the way.
What I mean is, if this happened 250 pages in, I would think it was dumb, but I’d let it go. Because by then I know what to expect. But in paragraph two there are some pretty good reasons this cannot stand.
This little line at the end, the one about how fog lifts like a brassiere?
Here’s a good tip if you’re using a simile. Reword the sentence with a different verb to test whether what you’re saying makes sense.
Example
The fog lifts.
The bra lifts.
Now, replace the verb with a synonym.
The fog disappears.
The bra disappears.
Oh, shit. Right?
I might have a fundamental misunderstanding of the way a bra works. I might. It is not my understanding that, like fog, a bra dissipates in the presence sunshine, wind, or, as I understand it here, ill-defined magic. With the exception of that Scott Baio movie where he had some sort of magic power and mostly used it to make bras disappear. You know, that one. The one that really seemed like a Charles in Charge prequel movie, but they were like, “Hmm…being in charge isn’t enough. Let’s give him a superpower or something, or like a sassy parrot.”
When the word “lift” is used with fog, it means “dissipate”. Right? The fog dissipated.
When the word “lift” is used with a bra, it means “elevate.”
If this sounds right to you, then Tyra’s little comparison here means that she thinks either
A) Fog goes away by ascending into the sky, where it remains always.
or
B) Bras have a tendency to disappear.
Now, maybe I’m wrong. Maybe Tyra’s right. Maybe there’s a fog/bra connection I’m not aware of, and this is San Francisco’s big secret. Not only is it foggy, but the fog somehow replaces your standard bra. Which is why so many San Francisco hippie ladies burned their bras back in the day. They didn’t need that shit. They had the gentle caress of simple humidity to hold things steady.
But I kind of doubt it. I kind of think what happened here is Tyra picked what she thought was a good comparison because both phrases have the word “lift”, and no one told her No.
I think that’s one of my big questions with this book. Who was involved that could have told Tyra No? And did they? And if they didn’t, why? Where are the true villains in this story, the editors?
Because, like I said, after 250 pages of this craziness, I’ll be sick of it too. But to have that kind of weird fuck-up on PAGE ONE!? Page one. The first page. The part that every person who opens this book is likely to read.
To have a simile that just doesn’t work is a strange and prophetic start for what we’re headed for here.
Chapter 2
Chapter 1:
In chapter one of Modelland we’re introduced to a whole lot of mess. A whole mess of stuff.
First mess, Tooke De La Creme. Our heroine.
Let’s not beat around the bush. Tookie is teenage Tyra. No doubt about it.
And yes, we all go through our awkward phases. Tyra, like a lot of beautiful people, is quick to point out that she was an “ugly duckling” of sorts until she blossomed into adulthood. This is like the most common thing that beautiful people love to say. How they know what it’s like to be an uggo because they were once unattractive too. They identify with our struggle. They weren’t always one of the most beautiful people on an entire planet.
Let me tell you something, and this comes from the uggos.
First of all, nobody is hot when they’re 11, the age at which Tyra apparently lost 30 lbs. and grew 3 inches in as many months. So to identify with my people because you weren’t hot until you were ELEVEN is just goddamn nuts.
Secondly, it’s not being ugly for a time that’s difficult. It’s accepting that you are and will remain not hot. While I totally get that you look back on that period and shudder, might I advise that you don’t try to bring us uggos onto your side by explaining that you were ugly too…before you got hot? As an uggo, you have to accept that you are not and never will be hot. So saying that you know the feels, it’s like telling a paraplegic that you understand because your leg fell asleep once.
And third, the ugly duckling is the stupidest story ever. We ALL learn a great lesson because this duck is really ugly and has low self-esteem, and then he gets hot. So I guess the lesson is wait and then you’ll get hot, so don’t worry about it? Because every adult goes through a hot phase?
I always wondered about, what if you could know the hottest point of your whole life. Like if a genie could say on this date, at this time, you will be the hottest you’ll ever be. Would that be good or bad? I guess you could take a picture.
Back to the book, Tookie de la Creme is Tyra, no doubt. She describes herself physically to a T(yra) except that Tookie has one yellow eye and one…I don’t know, probably an eye made of fire or something? Purple? Who gives a shit.
And what’s weird about it is that Tookie calls herself a Forgetta-Girl. As in a forgettable girl, someone nobody really remembers even after they meet her.
This is Tyra Banks. A woman who moved to Milan to model when she was 16. First African-American woman on Sports Illustrated Swimsuit’s cover and Victoria’s Secret’s cover. These might or might not align with your definition of success, but I don’t know if there are a lot more ways a person can be told they are attractive.
And so, in describing Tookie, Tyra describes her flaws. Tall forehead. Wild hair. Aaaand that’s pretty much it.
Reading this, it just made me feel like I must be uglier than I thought. Because my flaws at fifteen? Holy shit. I don’t need to get down on myself, but there was acne on a level of medical intervention.
You know, a good test of how hot you are might be the Tyra-Milan test. Tyra’s looks took her to Milan. That’s how far she could leverage looks. Looks per mile, if you will. My looks? I mean, I rode the bus. And I paid for the bus. I couldn’t even get a bus driver, a public figure we’ve all acknowledged to be creepy, to notice me and let me ride free. What does that tell you?
So Tookie is basically hot but doesn’t know it. Instead of doing what hot people do in school, like…I don’t know, wearing letter jackets and stuff, Tookie skips class and lays around in the hallway, shooting whip cream in her mouth straight from the can.
And already I start getting the idea that Tyra was so busy modeling at 15 that she doesn’t even really know how school works. Because Tookie is the bestest school-skipper of all time, and she skips class to lay around in the hallway. She doesn’t even leave the school. Just hangs out there so we can be introduced to some more characters.
More characters? Well, surely we don’t need any more characters, you must be saying. But Modelland, like whatever dumb TV station, has a “characters welcome” philosophy.
We meet Myrracle. Myrracle is Tookie’s sister, and just in case you weren’t sure which child was the golden child, one of them is named Myrracle. Our introduction to her is pretty brief. Myrracle sings some song about how she and Tookie don’t share DNA as she passes in the hallway. Which is really dumb. I mean, if there was one thing that’s not going to hurt your sister, it’s a completely made-up non-fact. They do share DNA. I think. Maybe it’s a by-marriage thing? Maybe that’s how we’re supposed to figure it out.
Anyway, all we need to know about Myrracle is that she’s the bratty bitch favorite.
Then we meet Zarpressa. She is the bratty bitch favorite too. But favorite of the love interest as opposed to Tookie’s parents.
Which brings us to Theophilus Lovelaces. The love interest.
Who is Theo? Well, he’s the handsome, if short, class president awesome cool guy who is kind and does everything right except for dating one of the worst humans on the planet.
Did this…did this happen in real life? Okay, I feel like there were a lot of jerks in school who dated people. And there were times I was maybe jealous of that on some level(?) I don’t know if jealous is the right word. Curious?
I felt like it was real at the time, but when I look at it now, as an adult, I just feel like most of the people I thought were jerks really weren’t that bad, and the ones who were jerks maybe dated people, but the people they dated were pretty much jerks too. There was a lot more jerk on jerk action than I thought because…well, boobs. And butts. People who had those things seemed nice to me and people who didn’t, didn’t. Because I was dumb. It’s a logic that only applies for about three years of youth, when a person says, “Well, this person is attractive, so they CAN’T be bad.”
And yet, perpetually in movies you’ve got a really attractive woman (usually) dating a total asshead guy. This perfect, kind, sweet, hot lady, and she’s with the most reprehensible human in the entire movie. And when she transitions away from this jerk, it’s to our hero, who is the polar opposite. None of it makes sense.
However, all of that is really more a critique of a common narrative. It’s not nearly the worst of Modelland’s sins. Really, at least it’s a plot I’m familiar with, so I feel like I SORT OF know what’s happening there. The use of a cliched plot device, the aligning of the love interest with the enemy, is one of the better parts of the book so far because at least it’s something I understand.
Let’s talk about the main action in this chapter.
Theo is wearing a button. It’s printed with his campaign slogan for his bid for class president, and his campaign slogan is “VOTE FOR LOVE.” Which, I guess, refers to his ridiculous name, which means “Lover of God.” I don’t know. I don’t know that Tyra picked these names with a lot of purpose, except for Myrracle. Oh, and Creamy. Creamy de la Creme. I don’t know whether she looked into the names or sort of picked them from the world’s worst hat.
What I do know is that the button falls from Theo’s jacket, gets kicked all around the halls of the school, stepped on, all this stuff. I’ll let Tyra explain what Tookie sees when she retrieves the button:
The poor thing was badly damaged, dented and slimy from its voyage. In fact, it no longer said VOTE FOR LOVE. Instead, the V and O and E of the first word were gone, the F and R of the second were totally erased, and of the last word, the L was knocked into nonexistence and the V was scratched so badly it resembled a K, but the E remained intact. Tookie almost threw the button back into the trash before her eyes focused again and she saw that it now spelled its own version of…her.
T O OKE
Okay. Let’s hold the phone.
What Tyra did here was to create this sort of fate-based incident. A button is mangled and kicked around, and the text changes from VOTE FOR LOVE to T O OKE.
The problem I have isn’t with a fate-based coincidence here, even though it’s kind of stupid because the only thing that makes coincidence interesting is when it’s real. Or possibly prophecised way ahead of time the way it is in a book like A Prayer for Owen Meany.
The problem I have is that this is a set up coincidence, so why not make it so that it, I don’t know, MAKES FUCKING SENSE!?
Tyra can put in whatever fucking words she wants. Why not something that could actually wind up looking like “Tooke” or for that matter, THE ACTUAL SPELLING OF THE NAME TOOKIE!?!!?!??! Tyra gets to make it up, and she makes it up unfinished. What the fuck? Guys, what the fuck?
Is that her threshold of believability? If she added the one extra letter, it’d be too wild? I shouldn’t just assume that she’s throwing CRAZY SHIT out there willy-nilly?
But I wish she would have THOUGHT about it. Because god knows I have. Here are just a few things that could result in Tookie and still be campaign slogans on the level of VOTE FOR LOVE:
Theo: The Look, The Brains, The Prez
Vote for Theo, Keep It Real
Time To Rock The Presidency
I mean, they aren’t awesome, but this is 5 minutes of thinking here. I didn’t even use the word TOOK which is pretty low-hanging fruit. Or TOO. Really, there are so many good options it’s ridiculous.
While I have you here, let’s just wrap up the chapter with the weird shit Tyra throws into the book and pretty much abandons in just a little bit.
T-Mail Jail: What Tookie calls her notebook. She uses it to write letters to her friends that no one will read. It’s also adorned with scribbles begging people to look inside, the reverse of the old KEEP OUT and TOP SECRET. At first I thought this was a really dumb version of reverse psychology, but the chapter made me think that Tookie is actually SO DESPERATE to be noticed that she wants people to read her secret diary. She really is pathetic. She keeps lamenting how nobody notices her, but maybe they’re turned off by the way she lays on the floor in the hallway and writes words like PLEASE READ ME on the cover of her notebook.
TDOD: The Day of Discovery. This is the day when girls are whisked away to Modelland. It is coming right up, believe it or not. Something Tyra really likes is making sort-of acronyms. Something Tyra is not very good at is making sort-of acronyms. For example, did it not occur to her to leave out THE and OF and call it DD or Double-D? Which also has a second meaning in the world of clothing and fashion?
B3: The stupid name for the school Tookie attends, which is called B3 because it used to be a factory that made Buttons…Baubles and Bullshit? I don’t know. It made three things and they all started with B, and then it was converted from a factory into a school for no fuckin reason. And the vents belch weird gases from time to time and no one seems interested in that.
As part of this review, I did also want to talk a little Tyra, explain a little of how this book came to be. While I was looking into this, I kept seeing that Tyra was a Harvard grad. Which blew my fucking mind. Not because I think all beautiful people are dumb, but because I think Tyra is kind of dumb.
Okay, there’s this whole idea that anyone who is successful must be SORT OF smart. The kind of, “If she’s so dumb, why is she more successful than you?” kind of thinking. Or this idea that so and so knows how to market himself. He’s not only a successful board shorts model, but he’s actually a really savvy business man.
My personal theory, we created these narratives because we don’t want to believe that some people just get things. That sometimes luck is a factor, and that sometimes a fool gets lucky. It’s a comforting narrative because it gives us a reason not to try for shit. Sure, Tyra is a novelist, but she’s a Harvard grad. I’m not a Harvard grad, therefore it’s cool not to hold myself to her standard.
So let’s just toss out this Harvard grad business out the door.
Tyra did attend Harvard. But she didn’t get a degree. She got a certificate for completing course work in the Owner/President Management Program, which does not grant degrees or academic titles. The classes do not even count towards any degree programs. Jezebel wrote a long article about it, and I’ll sum up what they seemed to be getting at: The application to the OPMP asks about your current income, and as of 3 years ago the cost for a single course was $33,000. Sounds to me like Harvard has set aside a few courses for rich people who want to say they went to Harvard.
To say Tyra went to Harvard, that’s like me saying “I played basketball at Duke” when what I did was play a game of basketball on the Duke campus with other people who were just around.
There you go. Get back to work on your novel or whatever.
As for me, I’ll get back to work on Tyra’s novel. See you next time for chapter 2.
Chapter 3
First things first. My titles for these got all fucked up. Moving forward, we’ll have the chapter number being reviewed in the name.
Done and done. And now that we’re done with business, we can move forward with all the parts that don’t make any sense whatsoever.
Chapter 3 of Modelland.
This is where the book takes a total trip to teen book town, big time, for real. Every element in this chapter is straight out of a book with a title like “Teen Scene: Write It So They’ll Read It” or “GRL, U NEED 2 WRITE CAN HAZ BOOKS” or something. Basically, it’s every element used to beef up a teen novel, and they’re all jammed into the same chapter.
This isn’t me bashing on teen lit right now. There’s great teen lit, and even great teen lit that uses the tropes I’m about to scream about. But let’s play fair. If teen lit is a legitimate and deserving genre, which it is, then we have to acknowledge that there’s some garbage in there too and that it’s not above criticism.
What makes it so awful in Modelland, what makes these teen-itizing attempts so horrible, is that they seem like such naked grabs at story that isn’t there. We’ve got three big ones in this chapter alone, so let’s take a look.
First, we have Tookie, our main stah, lamenting how there’s no way in hell she’ll be picked to go to Modelland. The place, not the title. She’s already in the BOOK called Modelland, now she wants to go to the place WITHIN the book that also has the same name. You know, like how most books are named after the place where the people go, like how the book Battle Royale was originally called Asian Kid Death Island, and how The Shining was called The Hauntedest Room In The Whole Stanley Hotel.
Modelland’s premise is a Willy Wonka kind of thing. Some people are selected somehow, and those selected people are whisked away to Modelland. And Tookie is moping around, always saying things like, “Sigh. I know I’ll never get picked for Modelland. Might as well not even try.”
Now, I’m reading a book called Modelland in which a young woman is talking an awful lot about Modelland. If Tookie didn’t actually end up being selected to go to Modelland, I’d be pretty shocked and disappointed. It’s obvious she’s going, right? Is there any way the plot in this could twist to the point that Tookie doesn’t go to Modelland?
And this is trope the first. We have some sort of role to fill, and we have a character that doubts his or her place, his or her ability to step into a big pair of shoes. Take Hunger Games (original title: Vaguely Medieval Kid Death Park). Will Katniss go or won’t she? The first book has a very brief misdirect that makes it seem like Katniss won’t be headed to stab teens in the eye with arrows, but then, of course, she goes. It’s a used idea, and it’s there, but Hunger Games keeps it pretty brief. We don’t spend a lot of time wondering will she / won’t she, and that’s probably because the author figured the story really happens when we get to the HUNGER GAMES, so let’s get the characters to the HUNGER GAMES already.
We get some of the same medicine in Harry Potter (original title: Platform 9 ¾, Followed By A Train Ride, Ending at Castle School). Oh man, will Harry be able to get back to Hogwart’s, even though those bastard Dursley’s are always fucking with him?
By the way, one of the worst things about that series. Jesus Christ, why in the holy hell would they send Harry back there? That’s madness. Second question, why would he go? Couldn’t he just work at Target, or Wizard Target or whatever? Don’t wizards need hand towels? Harry could sell hand towels over the break, live in…I don’t know, one of the a billion rooms in Hogwart’s. There are secret ghost rooms and shit all over that school. There was a troll in a bathroom and nobody noticed. The least they could do is clear out a closet under a staircase. I don’t think that’s asking a lot for the kid who basically saves the Magicaverse or whatever.
Maze Runner. Again, same thing. “Gee, I hope I become a maze runner instead of, whatever, a farmer or some shit. I hope in this book called MAZE RUNNER I get the chance to be a MAZE RUNNER.”
So that’s trope the first. That aspirational bit. The problem in Modelland is the constant “Golly, there’s no way a loser like me is going to Modelland” when we, as readers, know there’s no goddamn way we’re NOT going to Modelland. We all know we’re going there, so let’s just go there already.
Oh, and the timeline is a real bastard too.
In Modelland, the characters arrive in Modelland on page 149. One hundred and fifty pages to get through before we open the doors to Modelland. What the fuck? I have to wait that goddamn long to get to the place I’m told about IN THE TITLE? Holy shit.
150 pages, even these pages that aren’t dense, that’s going to take a while. Let’s call it a minute for every 2 pages, let’s be generous, it’s still going to take me 75 minutes to get to Modelland. Do you know how long the ENTIRE Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie lasts? 100 minutes. In the time it’s going to take me to get TO Modelland, I could have seen a fatso drown in chocolate, watched the scariest goddamn boat ride ever, pondered the plight of little people actors, remembered that Mike TV seemed like an okay kid whose mom just never pushed back when he pushed the boundaries, and be pretty much ready to wrap it all up.
This is taking forever.
But to be fair, there’s some world-building to be done here. Let’s move on to trope 2.
Trope 2 is a society that is divided very sharply into different sectors, sometimes geographically, sometimes by job or position. But there’s always a division, and it’s always super-important where you land within that division. You know, which wizard house you’re in, whether you’re a pretty or an ugly, ninja turtle or battletoad.
The world of Modelland is divided into quadrants. We don’t know a lot about the quadrants, but what we do know is Tookie is in the shitty one. It’s hot as hell, windy as hell, if hell is windy, and mostly made up of factories that make jewelry and crap.
What bugs me about this shit, it doesn’t seem like there’s anything in particular preventing Tookie from leaving Shitsville and moving right over to Awesomeburg. Some teen books handle this stuff through technology that prevents movement, or they toss in other magic or genetic ways that lock people in. In Modelland, Tookie was just unfortunate enough to be born on the wrong side of the tracks, and apparently doesn’t have the…will? The will to jump over to the other side?
It’s another trope that kind of sucks. If you have these different castes or whatever, you gotta explain to me why people can’t move between them. Gattaca was a movie based entirely on explaining the ways in which someone could move between stupid lines drawn by a stupid society. Ethan Hawke had a fridge full of piss! That’s a barrier, right there. Tookie’s main barrier? I don’t know. She’s too busy…I have no idea.
I know, I know. It’s not that easy in real life. I’d like to move myself and haven’t managed it. But I know a big part of my problem. I’m comfy. I think there’s potential to be happier, but I’m happy enough. I’m sure as hell not living in a land of intense, crazy heat, working in a toe ring factory and living with my shithead parents. Meanwhile, Awesomeburg is about 5 miles away. It’s a long walk, but holy shit, get a backpack.
Not to get all lit professor here, but I think this whole thing speaks to a desire most teens have to get out of their one-horse town and see the world. It’s weird when you’re a teen because you probably have access to a car. You could just drive off and leave wherever and go wherever. But there’s this other stuff that keeps you where you are, at least for a little while. It’s not so much physical or tangible, but there’s life stuff that lets teens ride it out, part of which is the knowledge that high school will end and then they can pick a path.
With Tookie, we’ve got a loser who is headed for a life of loserdom, and there’s no getting out of it. Except simply getting out of it. AND we all know that she’s destined to get out of it, as seen in trope one. Which means that seeing how crappy her town is doesn’t mean a whole lot, and we’re just dicking around like a bunch of fools, waiting to be swept away to stupid Modelland. We’re really just killing time here pondering whether a quest will happen when we know it’s ABSOLUTELY going to happen, hoping to get out of a town when we know that is ABSOLUTELY going to happen as well.
Which brings us to trope number three, real world problems.
A lot of teen lit deals with real world shit, and like any medium it has varying levels of success. Some are successful in realistically portraying something, others are more heightened and use real world shit to bring some drama to a relationship or situation. And then some just seem to throw it in there because why the hell not?
Right in that last category, why the hell not, let’s introduce Tookie’s friend, the Cutter.
The Cutter is a crazy girl who is Tookie’s only friend. She’s homeless, sort of. She lives in a treehouse that’s described as being filled with jugs of water and pastries and also has a twin mattress in it. The narrator points out that she doesn’t know how a mattress got up there, and points out that there’s no explaining how a young girl carried a twin mattress into a treehouse. I wasn’t exactly dying for an explanation on that one. It would have been fine to go ahead and not highlight a mattress brought high up into a tree, especially in a world where we’ve already seen an insane, Rube-Goldberg-ian action sequence to alter the spelling on a button and we’ve got characters with names like Theopholous Lovelaces. A mattress in a tree house, something accomplishable with a little know-how, isn’t the first thing in this book that made me say, “Now hold on. I’m up for believing a lot, but this is a bridge too far.” Yet, someone decided we needed to highlight the inexplicable nature of a mattress in a tree. Go figure.
Anyway, Tookie’s friend is in and out of some kind of insane asylum, and she’s also a cutter. Tookie sees the girl pick up a sharp rock(?) to cut herself with, and the chapter ends with Cutter skittering away, bending down to pick up another sharp rock.
This cutting business is taken seriously. Inasmuch as it’s not a joke in the book. But, hoo boy, does it feel tossed in for no particular reason.
I’m kinda on board with a madcap romp through insanity with Tyra at the wheel. I’m kinda on board with the overdramatic nature of some teen lit. What I’m not so on board with is the combination of the two. The introduction of a cutter into this story feels pretty unearned. It’s the perfect example of what’s wrong with this book. This book doesn’t know itself. It’s filled with these moments, these moments when Tyra writes herself right out of the few things that make the book enjoyable.
It’s like this. I just watched Demolition Man. It’s awesome. It’s fun. It’s stupid, and it knows that it’s pretty goddamn stupid. There’s a little message in there about society being weak and namby-pamby, but it’s pretty light on message, heavy on people diving while firing a gun with each hand.
If Tyra wrote Demolition Man, we’d have a scene in here where the Sandra Bullock character smokes cigarettes as part of her love of the 20th century lifestyle. And Stallone would have to talk her out of it. Now, I ask you, in a fun movie, is that fun? And if it’s not fun, does it at least accomplish the goal of making cigarettes less cool? No, and no. It’s off-tone, and it’s a waste of film.
Modelland’s introduction of a character with an actual problem just doesn’t work. It doesn’t add to the fun, and it doesn’t have anything serious to say about cutting other than this made-up girl does it. And I don’t want to infer too much, but the two least-explained aspects of this character are her cutting and the fact that she managed to get a mattress into a treehouse. Connection? Almost definitely. I guess next time I move, I’ll poke myself with a toothpick and see there’s a marked difference in upper-body strength.
There’s a really weird moment in this, Modelland’s third chapter, that encapsulates the whole issue. Tookie is walking down the street in her crap town, and she’s thinking about the plight of all these poor factory workers. And while she’s thinking about that, while her heart is beating for all these factory people, she catches a glimpse of herself in a reflective surface, and she reminds all of us that her forehead is a bit on the tall side.
If’n the reader is going to learn, along with Tookie, a ham-fisted lesson about what real problems are, I can dig it. But my memory of this book doesn’t make me think we’re headed that way. My memory of this book has me thinking that Tookie’s beauty doubts continue to be forefront, and we as readers are supposed to identify with the curse of being a 9.7 out of 10 as opposed to that of an oppressed working class.
If it’s a ridiculous world where beauty is all that matters, cool. But then we get class struggle, cutters, and a brief glimpse of the rich girl in school dumpster diving?
I’m all for mixing genres and ideas. Don’t make a mistake and think I’m not interested in that shit. But it’s just done so badly here. It’s like, imagine reading a book that’s light and fun, and at the end of each chapter you get a little text box with a message in it like “Don’t forget, world hunger is a thing and someone will die while you read this book.” Or “Hey, 9/11. Nothing to do with the contents of this book, but imagine the choice to jump out the window of a burning building. Like, whoa.”
There was something, a glimmer of something almost smart about Modelland. Tyra is uniquely equipped to tell the story of being a young model, of how strange that world is, and of what it might be like to be a model who doesn’t necessarily believe in her own beauty.
What I don’t think Tyra is equipped to do, based on what I’ve read so far in Modelland, is tell the story of teens who cut themselves. Or of what it’s like to grow up in a crap town with a crap life being the only future. I don’t know if Tyra ever engaged in self-harm. I do know that she went to an all girls’ school with a $12,925 plus fees tuition as of 2013, which kind of rules out the toe ring factory future. But that doesn’t really matter either. It’s possible for people who haven’t experienced something directly to write about it with authenticity. For PEOPLE it’s possible. For Tyra, I’m saying no. She doesn’t have the particular skills to pay those particular bills, and her book was smart to stick to the craziness and quirkiness, and when it just threw in a cutter for no reason besides throwing in a cutter, it lost the thread.
Because here’s the reality.
As a reader, I’m having an experience with this book. And that experience is a crazy-ass pile of crazy, and the best thing I can do is hang on. That’s kind of what’s to be expected, and if I was pissed off that the book was crazy, I’d be in the wrong. As a reader, with my outside knowledge of Tyra and who she is and what she does, I’m expecting a Demolition-Man-esque ride of a book, perhaps with more eyeliner.
What I’m getting in this chapter is a pile of different stories, NONE OF WHICH are any fun. Is the story of Tookie’s doubt interesting or fun? No. Let’s get to fucking Modelland already. Is the story of the divisions in society interesting or purposeful or fun? No. Let’s leave them behind and get to Modelland already. Is the insertion of real-life problems fun or purposeful or handled so deftly that they cannot be denied? Again, no, and couldn’t we deal with this stuff IN Modelland? Wouldn’t that make more sense? Wouldn’t that speak to Tyra’s real experiences, her story to tell, the one that only she could really tell if she could just get over Tookie being such an individual that she has a dumbwaiter instead of a locker and a whipped cream canister she keeps in a cooler at school? We get it. Tookie is weird in her world, and uber-normal in ours. WHO ARE THE REAL WEIRDOS HERE, TOOKIE? AREN’T THE NORMAL ONES THE TRUE WEIRDOS?
Fuck, enough. Just…can we just go to goddamn Modelland already? Is that so much to ask?
Chapter 4
Let’s talk about writing technique.
Okay, first, for those following, let’s cover the characters and concepts introduced in this chapter. There’s so much going on in every chapter that it has to be done. See, one of the problems here is that you can’t possibly know which pieces of this story are relevant and which are just crazy garbage tossed in for no fucking reason. It’s like, you know how there’s that playwright who talks about hiding the gun? In the first act of the play, someone hides a gun, and then you kind of build tension because you know it’s there the whole time, and you’re thinking, “Well, they hid a gun, so I guess it’s going to come into play eventually. It would be pretty weird if that gun never showed up again.”
Modelland is hiding guns all over the place. In terms of hiding guns, it’s like an 80’s action movie where every time Kurt Russell taps on a dresser or something a hidden drawer with a gun pops out. He’s taking a shit and a gun falls out from behind the toilet paper. He goes into the pantry to get a can of beans, and next to the other cans you’ve got a can that is suspiciously shaped exactly like a gun, as though it may not be a can of beans at all, but rather, a gun.
This is what Modelland is doing to me right now, and I’m almost positive most of these guns will remain hidden. But in the interest of not going back to say, “Oh, I forgot, in chapter 4…” I’ll just outline what I see happening.
Creamy de la Creme: Mom. Basically, evil stepmom from fairy tales. Image-obsessed. Crazed. Spends the family’s money on things they don’t need, like a brand new tea kettle when they already own several.
Dad: Dad. Lost eye in a circus accident, not yet covered. Also still wears circus outfit just as clothes, apparently. Calls his wife “woman”. Dad seems like a jerk, and he mostly just ignores Tookie somehow.
Ci~L: Not actually present, but discussed, and I think she comes back up later. She was a girl selected to go to Modelland, and now she’s missing. That’s her arc so far. And yes, that’s a tilde in her name. Which is not something that can be pronounced in speech. You could spell this name Ci]L or Ci%L and it would be, basically, the same.
Smize: In our world, it’s a short way of saying smile with your eyes, and Tyra is credited with inventing this term. In Modelland, it’s…I don’t know what the fuck it is. It comes out of the water taps, it’s like a bubble, then morphs into a film that I picture being like a Listerine strip, then it has a flag that pops out and displays scrolling text. It’s described about 8,000 different, contradictory ways. The point is, it’s an object that doesn’t make any sort of sense, and what you need to know is its purpose. It serves similarly to Willy Wonka’s golden ticket, except instead of a guaranteed passage it gives the finder a 91% chance of being selected to go to Modelland.
Of course, Tookie found a smize. She was filling a tea pot for her mother, and she saw some weird object fall from the tap, but she ignored it at first until all the characters sat around and talked about nothing, and also Tookie’s sister Myrracle busted in the front door and did a dance number for no apparent reason, a number which was well-received by the parents, although Creamy did point out that Myrracle should be focused on things that are more likely to help her provide for the family, namely hoping to get picked for Modelland.
This part where Tookie ignores the smize falling out of the tap is pretty damn stupid. The book can’t stop reminding us that EVERY PERSON is running the water constantly, fighting over sewer outlets, and waiting for a Smize to pop out of a tap. This is what every character is obsessed with. Tookie sees a weird amorphous object come out of the tap amidst all this craziness, and she goes ahead and ignores it for no reason. Until she decides to not ignore it, which is when we find out it’s a smize. Goddamn is this book dumb.
Also, her parents force Tookie to give the Smize to her sister, Myrracle, for no reason other than to prove that they are total dicks. Seriously, it doesn’t matter which daughter goes to Modelland, it’s somehow going to make them rich(?)
A thinking parent who strongly preferred Myrracle would say, “Hey, Myrracle has a great shot. Now Tookie has a 91% chance. I think we should go with two 91% chances over adding the 91% to a child that I think hung the moon and has a 91% already.” Basically, we’re turning in two 91% chances for a single 99%. But whatever. The point of this move wasn’t to be smart or realistically money-grubbing, the point was to remind us that everyone thinks Tookie sucks. Which she kind of does. How stupid can you be, you know? Everyone’s looking for a thing in the tap, you see a thing in the tap, you grab that shit. If her behavior so far is any indicator, I kind of don’t blame her parents. Tookie is so desperate to be noticed, but expresses her desperation by laying around in the hall at school, hoping to be noticed. She doesn’t have enough ambition to run away from Helltown to a Paradiseton about 2 miles away. And a smize falls in her lap, and she just ignores it because…again, no fucking reason.
Tookie kinda sucks.
Alright, that’s all the content you need to know. Let’s talk about the technique in this chapter.
This chapter feels like Tyra went to one writing workshop and someone said the famous phrase, “Show, don’t tell.”
People take this as a face-value, gospel rule in writing. And it’s fucking stupid.
For one, that’s not possible. In a book, it just doens’t work that way. If you write a full-length novel, there will be things you tell, or things characters tell each other. This is how it works.
Second, people take that rule, and they think they can sort of get by on a technicality. As long as you go the route of showing instead of telling, you’re writing something good, and they think any way to convert information into SHOWN information is better than telling.
I’ll give you an example. You know how in a lot of horror movies, somoene’s being haunted by a ghost because that’s the best way the ghost can figure how to ask for something? I want to be put to rest and have my body taken out of a well, so I’ll communicate that by…making a tree turn into an evil monster. That should get the message across.
Okay, that happens, and then what the character does is go to the library, look through some microfiche, and find a story that says, “Here’s exactly what the fuck happened.” Or, in a more modern movie, they type “ghost” into some site called something like “Doogle” and then a video pops up and starts in with, “Ghosts often terrorize people because they want something specific, usually water-well-related.”
That’s showing by technicality. Yes, we’re seeing it. But we’re seeing something TELL that story. Also, that doesn’t happen.
Let’s take this to a logical limit for a second.
If the person goes to the library and reads the newspaper about the ghost, if that’s showing, then it’s also showing to have the newspaper blow around in some wind and hit the person in the face. Or to have the character turn on the TV and the news segment is “Tonight, in our series where we just pick some shit out of an old newspaper, a story about a grisly murder where a girl was thrown down a well.”
This is what happens in Modelland, by the way. Ci~L is missing, and it’s in the newspaper, and Creamy reads the story out loud for no reason other than the reader needing to know that this is important. The newspaper text reads an awful lot like the book’s narration, by the way, but we don’t need to get into voice differentiation. Not yet.
Technically, you’re showing me something. But it’s just not good writing. It’s not good storytelling. Having Tookie write in her journal, excuse me, in her T-Mail Jail, is showing, sort of, but still a very stupid version of it. It still doesn’t really work. Having dialog in the kitchen where the mom says, “I hate when anyone reads the newspaper before me. I’m very particular about things. You know that. We’ve discussed it a hundred times” is showing. But…wouldn’t it be better to have the mom say some shit that sounds real?
It’s also a really common trap with dialogue. Dialogue, in a story, isn’t going to be your best expository tool, the reason being you have to have someone who is basically Encino Man so you can explain absolutely everything. “Now we are at the school, where we attend the 11th grade, or junior year, and we are currently occupying one of the lower social strata, but with you, caveman friend, we have aspirations to rise up to higher levels and create a new peer circle within this, our school place!”
And sure, you could show us all that shit separately. Show the bullies picking on the other kids, show someone being made fun of by the popular girl. But goddamn, that takes forever, and it’s not how to tell a story.
Think about it. I’m sitting across from you. I’m telling you a story about the time in high school when I found a caveman buried in ice, and I revived him and that rocketed me to popularity somehow. The exciting parts of that story are the caveman and the rocketing. Establish you weren’t popular, but hurry it the hell up already. Just tell me, “Look, you have to understand, I was not popular in school. To the level that girls would ask me out as a joke. To where my mom had to tell me that I didn’t fit in the kind of undewear with characters on it anymore and that’s why she got me the plain kind at the beginning of the school year, and that was kind of a big deal.”
Here’s the deal, aspiring writers. Show me when there’s something to show me. When you can show me something instead of telling me something, do it. But don’t become so married to that rule that you have ridiculous dialogue, unrealistic situations that only make sense when I realize that you’re being expository, and for fuck’s sake, stop using the newspaper as a cheat to showing me shit.
That’s chapter 4 of Modelland. Tune in next time. We’ve got one hell of a great chapter coming up.
As a side note, the plan, as of right now, is to get a few chapters under the ol’ belt, then do a massive post of the entire review so far for your readthrough pleasure. We’ll also do a podcast of the chapters when we get there as well. I THINK the book is divided into book 1, book 2, and so on, so when we hit one of those, we’ll get to that, and when we get to the end of each book we’ll do another massive post.
For those of you who backed the Kickstarter, we’ll be doing your perks very soon. Well, relatively soon. I kinda wanted to wait until we at least got to goddamn Modelland, but that’s taking a long-ass time.
Thanks for reading. And for whoever was in charge of editing and greenlighting Modelland, you suck.
More In-Depth Modelland Action
Okay, I don’t know how this happened. But we didn’t quite finish up Chapter 4 last time. So we’re going to wrap up chapter 4 and chapter 5 here.
Chapter 4’s entire purpose is to remind us that Myrracle, the sister of our main character, Tookie, is awesome, and secondarily it reminds us that Tookie sucks.
To that end, we make sure to let you know that Myrracle has won some pageant eight times in a row, and nobody else even enters anymore because Myrracle is such a pageant badass. Myrracle also takes lessons on walking, posing, facial expressions, pouting, and phonics. Phonics. Because our pageants and models are well-known for their knowledge of phonics.
Although, when you get down to it, Myrracle is a complete idiot when it comes to words, but at least she’s doing something about it. Sure, she calls a “period” a “periodical”, but you know what? Enrolling in phonics classes is an acknowledgement that she’s got a (hilarious) problem.
Which is why I’m starting to prefer Myrracle to the whiny Tookie. I don’t think I’m supposed to as a reader, but I really do. Myrracle is gifted, but jesus, at least she’s taking some classes and shit. She and Tookie both want to go to Modelland, and I can’t help but notice that one of them is doing SOME work towards that goal while the other is…
Hey, wait a second. We’re up to about chapter 5, and so far Tookie hasn’t DONE anything. She’s been in places, like school and with her friend. But holy shit, so far she hasn’t actually done anything. She hasn’t even gotten her period! Which, I gather, is a sore spot between Tookie and Myrracle because Myrracle has blossomed into the ripe fruit of her womanhood (the blood orange of womanhood, if you will) while Tookie hasn’t. Or, to put it simply, Myrracle has a period, Tookie doesn’t. Which Tookie feels is very cosmically unfair as she’s two years older.
Reading this as a dude, I’m trying to wrap my head around the fact that this is meaningful. I get that it probably is. Maybe it’s just weird because there’s no real male equivalent. What’s the equivalent? First boner? You have your first boner young as hell. I know babies have boners. But when does the first actual boner happen? In the womb? I bet babies have boners in utero.
Yep. Confirmed. I took a quick trip to the Google, and babies in utero have boners. Enjoy, expecting mothers! Remind me again about the glorious miracle of life sometime, and don’t forget to include all the boners when you do so.
By the way, one article with info on unborn boners was “7 Amazing Things Babies Do In The Womb.” I tried to look at the other 6 things amazing enough to share article space with unborners, but it was one of those stupid-ass articles designed as a slideshow where you had to load a whole page for every item, something to which I’m morally opposed. Besides, what’s going to be better than unborn boners? I would love to see one of those anti-abortion billboards with that on it. “I had a heartbeat when I was two seconds old. And we all know what follows a heartbeat. That’s right, a ragin’ dick! So please, don’t mash me up before I get the chance to put this boner to use.”
Anyway, Tookie, like a Judy Blume character, is really looking forward to her period, I guess. Will she get it? Golly, I hope not. Nothing against Tookie, but reading Tyra’s descriptions of periods…I don’t think there’s a cotton wad absorbent enough to suck up all the feels. And the last thing I need is to just get confused on the topic. I can’t imagine Tyra writing about a period in this book without, I don’t know, some kind of rhyming, cotton-y gadget that’s used in lieu of a tampon, or maybe a party of sorts that doesn’t make sense and just makes it take longer for us to get to Modelland.
Let it be known, I’m not at all opposed to reading stuff about periods or discussing them, and it’s not something that grosses me out. What I’m opposed to is reading TYRA’S take on it, which is mainly due to me being opposed to reading her take on just about anything at this point.
And with the topic of periods thoroughly flushed out, on to chapter 5 and Chris-Creme-Crobat.
Yeah. Chris-Creme-Crobat, Tookie’s father. Or at least that’s how he was known his circus glory days.
Yes, we finally get the story of Chris’ eye-gouging. Finally, the part I’ve been waiting for.
Here’s how it went down.
Chris was a famous tightrope walker. You know all those famous, rich tightrope walkers who were deeply respected by society? The sort of thing people get really excited about in the age of television? He was one of those.
The De-La-Cremes were at the circus. Tookie and her mother in the crowd. Chris, the dad, was doing some kind of highwire act(?) It’s hard to say what exactly he was doing, but he was definitely screwing around on a thin wire of some kind? Listen, the important thing is that Chris is 7 stories up and doing something dangerous, and down below the entire circus ring is lined with swords pointed straight up.
I googled quite a bit to find out whether a 7-story fall is fatal on its own, without swords. But, of course, the internet is no help. You can fall from a chair and die, or you could fall out of a goddamn airplane and survive somehow.
This is the sort of thing where I feel like science has failed me. Shouldn’t there be a height after which we can say a person is most certainly doomed? And a height where, most times, a person will survive?
There was one discussion board where someone happened to be writing a novel and wanted someone to fall and die. Which I bring up because another poster said “Just have the person fall, get up for a second, then blood comes out of his ear and he falls over dead. I’d believe it.”
I just hope that novel gets written and turned into a Nicholas Cage movie. I hope that more than I hope for the health of my firstborn child. I wanna see that shit.
Okay, back to Modelland.
While Chris is wow-ing the crowd, Creamy, Tookie’s mom, decides to apply some makeup to her face. When she’s got her mirror out, she accidentally reflects a stray beam of light into Chris’ eye.
As would be the case with any trained performer, the light causes Chris to fall immediately. The guy can walk on a highwire, but a beam of light? What is he, God or something? No man can overcome the sheer force of something that’s fairly bright or brighter. I know that whenever the sun reflects off something when I’m in the car, I just spin the wheel like crazy and hope for the best. Because what other options are there?
Chris falls seven stories.
A lesser performer would have died on impact. But Chris ain’t no lesser performer. He lands “on his upper back” and then somehow tumbles to his feet, totally fine.
It’s an interesting take on the art of tumbling. I kind of thought, generally, landing on your back wouldn’t be preferred. But then again, I’m only the world’s eighth best circus performer, so you should just ignore what I say. I would probably be killed by that fall, so I KNOW NOTHING.
Chris is fine. Sigh of relief. And ever the showman, he takes a bow, and then another, and on one of his many bows, he bows his eye right into one of the swords that line the circus ring.
Let me just reiterate what happened here. A man fell seven stories and survived due to sheer athleticism, and while he was taking kudos for that inhuman act of incredibleness, he then leaned his own eye into a stationary sword.
Meanwhile, Creamy knows that she shined a light in Chris’ eyes, and she tells Tookie to keep her mouth shut about it. So somehow Creamy knows that her weird act of vanity caused her husband to lose his eye. I mean, sort of.
It’s this super-clumsy thing. I think I know what Tyra’s trying to do here. To show us how selfish and shitty Creamy is, and to kind of have Tookie keeping this secret with her mom. But it’s a stupid secret, and it’s the clumsiest way ever to do it. I mean, come on. Even if we were prepared to believe that a light in the eyes was the downfall of Ol’ Chris, it wasn’t until he was on the ground that he bowed and lost his own stupid eye. And also, if you’re a circus performer and a light in the eyes makes you fall, is that really someone else’s fault or are you kinda shitty at your job?
Think about it. What if Tookie told her dad?
Tookie: Dad, it was mom’s mirror that shined that light in your eyes and made you fall?
Dad: WHAT!? When I lost my eye? Why I oughta…oh, wait. The fall was fine. I just bent over and put my eye on a sword. Haha, boy, what a maroon, huh?
It’s like a very retarded O. Henry story or something.
Anyway, the guy loses an eye, and that means he can’t walk a tightrope anymore, and it means Tookie’s mom isn’t attracted to her husband anymore, and he turns into a worthless drunk in that way you see worthless drunks portrayed, which is there is a bottle in his hands sometimes, and sometimes he drinks from it.
End of chapter 5.
This is one of my favorite sequences in the book. It’s just, there are just so many things happening. Oftentimes you’ll find a book where not much happens. In this chapter, a bunch of shit happens. Granted, it’s all backstory that amounts to “This is why Tookie’s dad is worthless,” but there’s about five times as much story here as their needs to be. This has to be the most overwritten, overexplained book in the history of anything, ever.
This is Modelland, people. Answering all the questions nobody asked.
Modelland: Chapter 6
When we last left Tookie de la Creme, she was not in Modelland and hated her family and a bunch of other bullshit. Which brings us to Chapter 6.
In Chapter 6 is that we meet the 7Seven.
And already, goddamn it.
How do you pronounce 7Seven? How does a person say this? “seven-seven”? “Suh-seven”? “Guh-fuch-yah-selv”?
This is one of the many reasons I wanted a Modelland audiobook, and also it makes me wonder if it’s part of the reason one does not exist. In any form. People would ask questions like, “Tyra, how would you like someone to pronounce this unpronounceable thing?” Or maybe someone was set to read it and said, “Here’s something I know how to say: fuuuuuuuuck this shit.”
I shouldn’t be so hard on Tyra. We all remember the classic film the Seven7 Samurai. And who could forget Twe12lve Angry Men? And who could forget The Taking of Pelham One1Two2Thr33?
Rather than bashing on Tyra’s naming convention, let’s talk about what the 7Seven are.
Um, X-men? Models who are X-Men?
The basic thing, every year girls get selected to Modelland, and the super-special-est girls become Intoxibellas. Which are synonymous with the 7Seven? I think? There are seven Intoxibellas? Let’s go with that for now. I’m sorry this isn’t something that I researched better, but there are NO other sources that describe this book in detail, and the book itself isn’t exactly helpful. I’m relying on my own notes, and I get so angry that some of the finer details escape me.
So the 7Seven are the bestest models selected last year on The Day of Discovery, and now they all wear these golden belts that unleash their inherent, latent powers. In this world, everyone has powers, but only wearing a magic golden belt from Modelland unleashes them. I think. That seems to be the implication. Guys, I don’t fuckin’ know. Just, go with me here. Let’s just introduce the Intoxibellas and their powers.
Evanjalinda, with the power Chameeleone. There’s supposed to be an accent on that last letter, but I’m not going to dignify this ridiculousness with that many extra pixels. Chameeleone lets Evanjalinda change every aspect of her appearance. Like, you know, the Chameleon. That lizard everyone was obsessed with in 4th grade because it could change colors. This is really cool because she can be tall or less tall. She could have a big butt or a bigger butt. Other stuff too, I’m sure.
Simone, with the power of Multiplicity. She has a screen in her stomach that shows the Michael Keaton movie Multiplicity on constant loop. Okay, fine. She can clone herself, like the Multiple Man. They don’t get into the questions that naturally come along with your multiple men, such as whether their strength is divided amongst the clones, whether they have a hive mind or individual mind, that stuff. She just does it and then undoes it and we all move on.
Bev Jo. We’ll get to her powers in a second, but I just want everyone to appreciate the name Bev Jo. Because what the fuck.
Bev Jo, with the power of ThirtyNever. She’ll age to 29, then revert to looking 17, then she’ll age to 29, then back to 17, and on and on until she dies. Bev Jo kinda lost the cool powers lottery. And also the names lottery. Seriously, Bev Jo sounds like a third lead on Reba’s sitcom. Also, sort of a cool power except when you’re 70 and you like 17 again. That’s going to be rough. Sex-wise, decrepit-ness wise. All the wises, this power makes them horrible.
Leemora. With the power of Excite-to-Buy, which makes people around her want to buy shit. Not anything in particular, it seems. Just stuff they were already thinking about buying. Tookie thinks about a hair product, her mom about wrinkle cream. So I guess if you needed like, I don’t know, a mop head, you’d go “Holy shit, better buy that mop head right now!”
Already, just a few girls in, already I fear there is too much RAW POWER to go unchecked. Hopefully they get a moon base constructed soon. And some sort of oath. Possibly rings they can put in a circle or something.
Moving on, Sinndeesi. With the power of Seduksheeon. Which isn’t explained other than the men who see her being awed, and one of them saying “I’m ready to sin with Sinndeesi right here, right now!” Which I have to assume means he’s telling us that he has an erection. Maybe he means morally ready? Emotionally? But no. Let’s assume boner. It’s kind of a policy of mine to assume boner unless otherwise informed. By that same token, the power of Seduksheeon isn’t explained either, so let’s just assume it’s really big jugs, really big jugs being what I assume in a lady case.
Next we have Katoocha, whose power is to know which fashions will be popular a short time in the future. That’s right, she’s wearing what you’ll be wearing next year.
I put this power in the category of powers that are sort of useful, but fuck man, pretty boring. You could get a good gig at a fashion…place. A place where they do clothes, A DESIGNER! You could work with a designer. See, I know from fashion.
Lastly, Exodus. Teleporter. Which seems to be amazing to the people of this book because I guess they don’t have comics with characters such as Nightcrawler, Supergirl, Misfit, Jenny Quantum, Darkseid, Gog, Blink, Cloak, Doorman, Spiral, Spot, Gatecrasher, U-Go Girl, Lockjaw, Venus Dee Milo, and…wait a second. EXODUS! Created by Scott Lobdell and Joe Quesada, Exodus was a teleporting, 12th century mutant who was eventually freed by Magneto.
So not only is this a boring power, but motherfucker, the NAME has already been used with that power. That’s some lazy shit.
Now, unfortunately, a Triple7 was not produced this year, which is a model who possess ALL 7 of these powers.
Which is extra confusing. I kinda thought these powers were new and unexpected. The reactions of people were not like, “Oh, I guess that’s the teleport chick, so that must be little miss seduction over there.” They were oo-ing and ahh-ing all over the place, boners a-swingin’.
Do the Intoxibellas always have the same powers? Does the Triple7 always have all of those powers, or does she have whichever seven powers the other girls have? Or…I don’t know. I don’t know what the fuck any of this is talking about.
Why superpowers are a part of this book, I do not know. I do not know why this is a needed addition to the narrative here. Or whether this goes anywhere. Because, like I said, we’re still only about HALF WAY to actually entering Modelland. If Tookie ever gets powers, holy fuck, it’s not even gonna happen until the last 10% of the book. At which point, what, 2 of the powers will be totally worthless to readers? She’ll age at the same rate regardless, and we won’t really know how good her fashion future-casting is until the following year. Those two do nothing for the story.
But hey. Just be thankful your name isn’t Bev Jo.
Chapter 7
When we left you last time, still, almost nothing had happened. Still. Tookie is Tyra in disguise, her parents are jerks, and Myrracle is her sister, who is destined to be selected to go to Modelland, the magic place on the mountain where people are turned into models and also superheroes, somehow, for some reason.
In chapter 8 we get a heated, overheard discussion between Tookie’s parents regarding her parentage.
Duhn-duhn-duhn!
Tookie’s father claims that Tookie isn’t her daughter. The basis for his claim seems to be that he did not actually SEE baby Tookie exit her mother’s vagina during the birth. He was off earning the big bucks as a circus performer, supporting the family. His secondary, B-level evidence is basically that Tookie sucks.
I’ve never heard of this before, someone disclaiming his child as being from his seed because, well, she sucks. “This kid sucks. The only explanation for such a thing is that she isn’t mine!”
To drive the point home, he’s holding Tookie’s toothbrush, and he’s sort of threatening his wife, saying he’s headed to the DNA lab just as soon as T-DOD (The Day of Discovery, when models are selected for Modelland) is over.
If Tookie is NOT his offspring, he wants to sell her off to work in a factory, which is a thing that happens in this book but hasn’t happened to Tookie yet for basically no reason. They all hate her, they have no use for her, and yet they don’t just sell her off to make a few bucks. Why not?
This whole thing is a Cinderella story, and at least with Cinderella, even if it never made sense that she didn’t just say fuck it and run away or at least be drunk all the time, at least Cinderella was doing all the housework. You could totally see why they’d keep her around because it’s like, “I hate that Cinderella for being so hot, but goddamn, what I hate even more is doing one ounce of housework.”
Would I be annoyed if Chris Hemsworth was my brother and did shirtless housework all around my house? Sure. Would I be so annoyed as to be a dick to him and kick him out? I might politely ask if he could wear a shirt sometimes, but if I came home every day and the place was spotless, what do I care? So all my neighbors want to bang the guy who cleans my house before they want to bang me. Duh. No shit. As long as cleaning the cum off the linens is part of his duties, he can do whatever he wants, far as I’m concerned.
Disney movies have the craziest relationship with attractiveness. Like Maleficent. She has to be the NUMBER ONE hottest woman in the world? When the mirror tells her she’s the second-hottest person on Earth, she gets pissed?
My partner told me I was more attractive than a billion people. Which made me happy until I realized there’s like 6 billion people in the world, which means I’m still in the bottom 20%. But still, being hotter than a billion, that’s not too bad. That’s a big ass number. I can live with that.
Anyway, Modelland makes no sense because you’re just thinking, why wouldn’t the parents just ship Tookie off, or why wouldn’t she just run away?
Glad you asked that!
Tookie writes some kind of cryptic symbol on her door, which makes no sense as a reader, but let’s just go with it, it SOMEHOW signals her insane cutter friend that they should run away together first thing in the morning. I guess the door graffiti is sort of like the passover thing. Except not at all and instead of marking a whole door, she could just leave a Post-It or something. I could see why you wouldn’t want to do that on passover. I’d hate for a slight breeze or a light rain to damage the Post-It and then mean the death of my first-born. That’s worth tracking down some goat’s blood and ruining a door for. It makes me wonder how none of the Egyptians picked up on everyone in town painting goat’s blood on the outside of their homes, but from what I’ve seen of pyramids the Egyptians made some pretty strange architectural choices, so who are they to wonder?
I guess we’re to assume that Tookie’s nutto friend is checking Tookie’s front door every day on the chance that she’ll be ready to run away sometime in the next 12 hours.
And I guess she doesn’t just run away right now and go get her friend because…I don’t know. Isn’t that how running away is done? Do people really feel like, A good night’s sleep, then I’ll be ready?
If I was Tookie’s friend, her crazy friend who lives in a tree and cuts herself with found objects that aren’t even sharp, I’d probably say, “Listen, Tooks. I’m not exactly sharp in the brain, so if you could just come and get me when you’re ready to make a run for it, that’d probably work a lot better. I hear voices. Daily checkups on your property aren’t my strong suit.”
Of course, the runaway plan doesn’t work. What foils it all? What could possibly stop this juggernaut of a genius plan which consisted of wake up a little early and walk out the front door? Tookie’s parents are awake and they don’t want her to leave. Curses. It’s like a goddamn Ocean’s 11 movie, everything was in place just so, and one little oversight ruined it all. Who could have predicted that Tookie’s parents would be up slightly earlier than normal? How could we have expected Tookie to prepare for such a WILD twist of fate!?
Tookie can’t just leave when her parents are awake, which makes me EVEN MORE CONFUSED. Her parents wish she would fuck off, she wants to fuck off, all she has to do is say, “I’m getting the fuck out of here. Peace!” and walk out the door. Her parents high-five, Myrracle goes to Modelland, and that’s pretty much it and how I feel like 40% of people end up moving out of their parents’ house anyway.
It doesn’t happen. Tookie has to go along to assist Myrracle at T-DOD somehow, and as the De La Cremes drive away they see Tookie’s friend in the driveway, howling. Of course, Tookie’s parents comment on this urchin weirdo being in their driveway because they have to get in a couple jabs, just in case we as readers weren’t totally sold on the idea that these people are monstrous asshole dickfaces already. Although when you take a step away from the story, they’ve seen someone who is an acknowledged escapee from multiple insane asylums who has more voices in her head than she knows what to do with. Sooooo maybe they aren’t totally wrong to comment on that person being in the driveway? Just maybe?
And that’s Chapter 8.
The good news, Chapter 9 begins with us headed to The Day of Discovery! So maybe we’ll be on our way to Modelland (although we’re still about 70 pages from entering the gates, goddamn it).
I wanted to add a little meat to this chapter, to this review, because it’s so light. And what I wanted to talk about is negativity in reviews.
Famously, in 2013, Buzzfeed hired a new books editor who declared the site would no longer traffic in negative reviews.
From an interview:
“Why waste breath talking smack about something?” he said. “You see it in so many old media-type places, the scathing takedown rip.” Fitzgerald said people in the online books community “understand that about books, that it is something that people have worked incredibly hard on, and they respect that. The overwhelming online books community is a positive place.”
There’s a lot of debate about this. Should people review books negatively or should they go by that old thing about having nothing good to say and shutting their weeping shitholes (something like that, I can’t remember how my grandma put it, exactly).
And I do think there are a lot of times when negative books review are kinda bullshit. I do feel like there are many, many times when a negative review is kind of written by someone who expected to dislike the book, read it looking for flaws, and then feels the need to tear down something that’s pretty serviceable. This is probably most common in the literary fiction world, to be honest.
But let’s talk about what negative reviews are, at the core. Because I think there are two types, really.
One type is the type that may result in a low rating, but acknowledges that the book isn’t inherently bad. I gave A Tree Grows In Brooklyn a low star rating, I was pretty clear about what I disliked about it, and I was also clear about the “not for me, but maybe great for someone else” factors. Which is important in this type of review. It’s negative, but defensible. People are allowed to have opinions on things.
The second type is trashing a book up and down. Saying that not only is it not for you, but it’s a badly written book, and a bad experience. This is harder to defend, but it’s what I’m doing to Modelland. So I have to mount some kind of defense here.
If this book were written by a teenager, even a very young and inexperienced writer, I would feel differently. It’s the difference between trashing a low-budget homemade movie created by a few teenagers and talking shit about Transformers.
Critiquing a home movie would be pretty unfair. Especially to go negative on it. But critiquing Transformers is fine. And I think it’s fine because a big studio with a big cast and a big budget had every opportunity to succeed, and they failed miserably.
To me, it’s sometimes about looking at how close something was to its maximum potential. If the home movie was about as good as you can expect for what it was on paper, then it’s assholery to go negative. If Transformers was a 6/10, it wouldn’t warrant shit-talking. But all it needed to be was a 6, and all it really needed was giant robots fighting, and we didn’t get it.
Let’s talk about the potential of Modelland.
It was put out by a big publisher. It had a BIG marketing push, including a lot of talk on Top Model and in other outlets.
Within about 250 miles of there are 840 libraries that have the title, and I couldn’t tell you for sure HOW MANY copies they have. And I don’t live in a dense part of the country.
And while I can’t be sure what Tyra made for the book, she signed a 3-book deal with Delacorte, a sub-pub of Random House. She’s got people to handle contracts, and she’s no stranger to this shit, so I’m sure she came out A-Okay.
I’m not trashing this book because I’m jealous or think that what Tyra got should have gone to someone else. I understand the publishing world has to publish garbage sometimes because, hey, garbage sells. Why do you think Tori Spelling has FOUR memoirs in five years? Because that shit makes money.
I don’t blame the publishing world for this. Although I do feel like there must be a whole lotta people working in that world who have to wonder how far they’ve strayed from their original reasons for getting into publishing.
The reason I’m cool negging on this book is because, like a big-budget movie, there was POTENTIAL for it to be decent, at least inoffensively bad, and that potential was not realized. This book is under-edited on a very basic, story level. Nobody went back through and checked the continuity of this. Nobody went back through and explained to Tyra how to write a book that wasn’t flat, that emphasized certain important aspects and let the unimportant parts wither away so that a reader isn’t trying to hold so much in mind the entire time.
The money was there to hire editors who could have brought out the good in this story. Which, dare I say, is there.
I think there’s a good book, or the core of a good book, hidden in the whirlwind of shit that is Modelland. There’s a value to the messages Tyra is trying to send to young women, the messages about redefining beauty, about how the life of a beautiful person is not a life that is without struggle, and about the ways in which Tyra’s own experience was bizarre and unusual, and how that could be related to a young person.
That’s all IN here, but it’s the single pickle slice on the shitburger.
Here’s the other reason why I think negative reviews are important.
It’s 20-fuckin-15. Any idiot can type out a book and throw it on the Kindle store. I’ve done it. Which means anyone can. Technological advances mean that I have a worldwide distribution method available to me, same as a huge author.
And make no mistake, many, many people have taken advantage of this system, and many, many people write lots and lots of garbage.
I’ve recently come to feel like the tearing down of artistic barriers isn’t the best thing in the world. Photography was an early example. Now, anyone on the planet can take a picture, scroll through filtering options, and post it online. In seconds. While I don’t feel like this has de-valued or ruined photography, it does mean that you have a lot more to sort through before you can find what you’re looking for.
Movies. CG has gotten so inexpensive that it’s easier to put out a hundred garbage movies than it is to put out a dozen decent movies.
Look at something like Bandcamp. It’s a great spot for artists to post music, but it’s not an awesome way to find new music or artists. There’s just TOO MUCH STUFF, and too much of it is sub-par.
Imagine if there was no filtering process for Saturday Night Live. You tuned in every Saturday night to a crowd-sourced collection of sketches. How many episodes of that would be tolerable?
Books. Although the publishing world isn’t perfect and there are dozens of stories about things that were rejected and later went on to become classics, we still need SOME kind of filter. We do. I don’t want someone telling me what to read and what not to read, but I’m pretty cool with someone outlining the reasons that a book is a poor version of its own vision. Although I might be missing out on some hilarious SNL sketches because they don’t fit the SNL aesthetic, I also know that I’m being spared a whole lotta garbage too. If every movie had the ability to look like Avengers and if every movie had the same distribution, I’d waste a lot of time and money watching things I didn’t like.
The filter that was once in place by publishing houses is fading fast. They gotta make a buck. And other outlets are figuring out that, hey, if we charge people a certain amount to put up files, if we charge bands to put up files or take a cut of every sale, we can make money even if they barely sell a song. In those cases, there’s no incentive to filter whatsoever. The more the merrier.
Let’s make this all very simple.
When someone says that an artist spent a lot of time on something and therefore it can’t be criticized, I take issue. Writing is tough, and you have to BE tough. Commercially-viable art isn’t just about dumping the contents of your head into or onto a medium. It’s about pouring yourself onto something in such a way that others can understand your words, understand the emotion of what you’re painting, and so that the message of your photography is reachable.
This is why you’d be an asshole to walk into a garage where someone was painting and start critiquing their work. And it’s why if someone wanted to sell those same paintings in your gallery, you have every right to criticize them.
Yes, I’m taking a stance that adults, who are operating within their own faculties, open their art up to criticism when they put a price tag on it and sell it to you. I do think that putting your money, time, or effort into experiencing someone else’s piece of art affords you the opportunity to then discuss how you felt about your expenditure.
With Modelland, Tyra put a book into an enormous number of bookstores and libraries. She signed a 3-book deal having not written all the material yet, which means she knew this was a commercial endeavor, not just an artistic expression of inner feelings. If I can be so bold as to think of my mind as a gallery, or to think of my mind as an indie movie house, when Tyra put out this book, she was asking that people hang her work in their mental galleries. And that means people are allowed to explain why they would not do so, or why they might hang it for a time and then be allowed to explain why they took it down, why they regretted the decision to give her work that space.
I can see why Buzzfeed made the choice they made. They’re mostly about fun, no? And what’s not fun is to watch a huge media empire beat up on a single person. For Buzzfeed to rag on Jonathan Franzen, it’s stupid, it’s silly, and it’s pretty easy to ignore their opinion based on the fact that they’re a web site that lets you take a quiz that determines what kind of cupcake you are. There are so many great books out there, I could see the appeal of only steering people to good books rather than steering them away from the bad ones.
I’m a dude. Just this one dude. I don’t represent a media empire. I don’t make a decision that sets the tone for shit.
I’m reading Modelland, I think it sucks hard, and I think its level of suck is kind of astonishing considering the available resources and options that could have improved it.
As a final note, I say offensive shit on my web site, my podcast, and all over the place. Not horribly offensive, but things that I’m sure people get pissed off about.
The thing is, it’s not my goal to offend people. But I’ve also decided it’s not a goal, not an important aspect of what I do, to make sure that no one is offended. I don’t consider part of my work to police what I do and make sure nobody would be offended. In other words, if someone is offended, I don’t wear it as a badge of honor and say “I’m doing my job.” But someone telling me they found something offensive doesn’t necessarily make me think I’ve done something wrong.
Which is why I’m pretty comfortable in my position: Fuck this book.
Chapters 8 and 9
We finally made it to The Day of Discovery, or T-DoD if you prefer the obnoxious shortening.
It’s not totally clear how the Day of Discovery works. But that’s to be expected in this book, so buckle up.
From what I can tell, the way this works is that any aspiring models who want to participate and possibly be discovered go to a capital city of sorts, dress up, and for 15 minutes or so, walk around. The hope is that a scout will see them, pick them from the crowd, and then whisk them off to Modelland.
The mayor, Mayor Rump as he’s properly named, initiates things by saying the classic pump-up phrase “Begin”, and the girls start walking around.
What happens is about 15 minutes of girls all walking around in heels and dresses, and it would seem a lot of these girls attended the Moe Howard School of Perambulation.
We have a girl trip and fall, and not only does she fall to the ground, on the way down she hits her head on an old man’s mobility scooter. We have no less than three girls fall down the same open manhole. Which, by the way, is a big public works fuckup. You can’t just have an open manhole, let alone if there’s a goddamn parade coming through.
The girls walk back and forth, in model format I guess, and then they collide and they fight and roll around on the ground and tussle. They break shoes, they tear dresses, and they have people shouting “Go! You can do it!” and shit like that, even though all they’re doing is walking around, far as I can tell and far as it was described by Tyra.
Tookie, our hero, runs into Theophilus Lovelaces, the love interest, who asks Tookie her name. This is a big moment for Tookie, although it seems pretty goddamn tacked on if you don’t mind me saying. We have this huge hubbub going on, and meanwhile he’s asking her name? Who gives a shit?
Tookie tries to get above the crowd by standing on a solid gold car with spinners, and once atop the car she sees the Modelland scouts begin to appear. A light post magically transforms into a scout who picks a girl. A hole opens in the ground, and another girl is chosen. And then, get this, you are not going to fucking believe this, a scout comes out of the roof of the car and selects…MYRRACLE! Tookie’s sister! Bet you didn’t see that one coming. Probably because it’s not what happens, and instead the scout reaches out to Tookie.
Guys, beleive it or not, it looks like Tookie is going to Modelland. She didn’t believe in herself, but fuck it, she’s on her way!
That’s two entire chapters of this book, what I just summarized right there.
Here’s the big problem with this whole fucking thing right here.
We hear about T-DoD over and over and over. Oh, this is when the models are chosen. This is when girls have to parade around. Myrracle’s in walking lessons for years and they get the perfect dress and this is the big day. And then the scout just picks Tookie. Who isn’t dressed, who isn’t walking around. I get that we’re probably building to a point about inside beauty, but if she gets picked for doing nothing, what the hell, why would anyone do any of this model shit anymore? If you can just stand around and watch, what the hell is everyone parading around for?
This last weekend I went and Saw Mad Max: Fury Road. Which I’m really happy about because it was fucking awesome, but also because it is really helpful in explaining what I like about bonkers things and why Modelland is bonkers and still terrible.
I’m not going to say a whole lot about Fury Road because you need to see that shit, and the less you know ahead of time the better. If you like movies, films, if you have ever enjoyed a movie, then you’re the ideal audience for Fury Road.
Here’s what I do want to say about it. It’s a good movie in all the ways movies need to be good, and it’s also fucking bonkers. Like really crazy. And it’s great. Crazy shit happens, the characters are insane and gross, and it’s as close to a non-stop car chase that a movie can be and still be watchable. And I’m not a huge car chase guy. I fell asleep during Ronin. But this movie, it adds things to the car chase lexicon that we’re going to be seeing forever. It’s way more than squealing tires and shit. This is the movie that I think Fast and Furious aspired to be and never reached because it’s just too damn stupid and there’s too much silly plot that gets in the way of the Fastness and Furiousness. Fury Road is crazy, it’s fast, it’s fun.
Modelland is also crazy. But for whatever reason, Tyra kind of screwed herself out of the ability to write about crazy stuff and have it be entertaining.
The big sin, she over-explains EVERYTHING. Every little piece of the world, the narrator shares the backstory. Why this is this way, why that is that way. Not only do I not need to know as much as she tells me, but the backstory of this world is uniformly a lot less interesting than the world itself. Than being dropped into this bizarre world. And when you explain everything, it makes it feel like the world is less novel and weird. When I know the history of everything, and when that history is kind of trying to justify the existence of something more than it’s trying to tell a good story, it really removes the magic from the world.
Tyra’s world in Modelland doesn’t believe in itself enough to tell you that some things are a certain way, and they’re that way because this is a world that’s different from our own. Everything is in the context of being explained to us, the readers, and that method just normalizes everything or makes it dumb.
Fury Road hits it right. It explains very little because you don’t need to know a lot. You know the people are people, some apocalyptic shit happened, and now we’re in a crappy situation. The rest plays out in the movie. We don’t have to stop and get a backstory about every vehicle and every type of person. Nobody asks the bad guy like, “Hey, what’s up with the scary breathing mask thing?” We don’t have to hear what the different territories are and their history and who lives there. We keep fucking moving forward.
And what’s really weird about it, the page Tyra could have taken for her book, the ONE page that could have replaced a couple hundred, is that everything in Fury Road DOES have a backstory. All these characters have backstories created for the sake of making a real, filled-in world. What they don’t do is subject us to every backstory of every thing within the actual movie narrative. The backstories are out there, on the internet, and you’re welcome to check them out. But you sure as hell don’t need to. And they sure as hell didn’t stop the movie every five minutes to explain something that doesn’t matter. Why do they call it guzzoline instead of gasoline? WHO GIVES A SHIT!? I know what it is, it makes sense in the context of the movie, let’s move on.
This movie has a guy on bungee cords who shreds on a flamethrower guitar as he rides a giant war vehicle that’s blasting through the desert. How is that improved by an explanation? I don’t want to know who that guy is. I don’t want to know how he learned to play guitar. I want to see him shredding on a giant war vehicle that’s blasting through the desert.
It’s a narrative problem that kills the mood in Modelland. And when everything is explained to me in this, “Wow, isn’t this a strange world?” tone, then it brings me into that world in a way that feels disingenuous. Just show it to me. Believe me, if it’s anything like a bungee guitar road thrasher, I’ll understand that it’s weird. I’ll get it. But instead of handling the uncanny that way, Modelland goes out of its way to explain why something weird and cool isn’t that weird and, by proxy, isn’t that cool either.
It’s weird how these two things are similar in my mind, Modelland and Fury Road. I think both are very crazy and strange. Both have characters that have ridiculous names like Rictus Erectus. In fact, a Modelland versus Fury Road name game would be pretty sweet. And difficult. Slit? Which one does that come from? Who even knows anymore?
Yet, one is great, the other is dogshit. And the reasoning is pretty simple. Modelland feels the need to explain absolutely everything, and absolutely every explanation is absolutely stupid. Fury Road is crazy too, and it recognizes that not only is there no need to explain a guitar bungee flamethrower guy, but that any explanation of that would just make it stupider and less fun.
Which is maybe the key to the whole thing. Fun. Fury Road is crazy and fun. It doesn’t lose sight of the fact that, although a lot of the movie deals with death and apocalypse, you have fun watching the movie. Modelland is not fun. It’s very serious-minded, or very oriented towards making a point. Or about a hundred points, really. Most of which seem to be quelling Tyra’s private, inner voice of self-doubt that must be a holdover from her younger days.
That all adds up to making it really difficult to actually enjoy Modelland.
And also adds up to me telling you to go see fucking Fury Road. It’s a good movie. I don’t see a lot of movies because I kind of tend to hate so many of them, and this is one of the few that never left me wanting anything else.
Let me sum it all up here.
Fury Road is crazy. The events are crazy, the people in it are crazy. But it’s not stupid. It’s purposeful, and everyone knows what they’re doing.
Modelland is crazy. But the main character is very normal, and the side characters are crazy in very predictable, fairy tale ways that don’t offer me a whole lot to be interested in. And Modelland is stupid. The book, the story, it’s very stupid.
Another two weeks, another chapter of Modelland.
This thing, it’s taking me so long to get through a chapter. I pick it up, I mean to read like a hundred pages, and then I can’t go three pages without saying, “Okay, that’s just fucking stupid.” And then I have to put the book down and eat an entire Freschetta pizza by myself and use the diarrhea time to think about my life and what it’s become.
Anyway, this chapter sees the reappearance of one of my favorite characters, Wingtip.
Yes, Wingtip is a character who is a magical black man bum. At least, I’m pretty sure he’s black, but if he’s not, then he’s a white magical black man.
You all know about the magical black man, right?
Originally called the Magical Negro, this is a character who has a lower social status of some kind, shows up, helps a white character, and has some kind of magical power and dispenses a whole lotta homespun wisdom. Your Baggers Vance, if you will.
I suppose the one way in which Wingtip falls short is that he’s advising Tookie, who I assume is black because I assume that Tyra is too out of it to create this whole different world and then make different races and stuff.
This is always something that bothers me in fictions about other worlds. Like Gears of War. Your best friend is Dom, who is clearly Hispanic. And yet this game takes place on an Earth with countries that are not analogous to our own. Am I to understand that this totally other world developed a Mexico of sorts, from which Mexican people came, and those Mexican people developed almost exactly parallel to those we know? How does that make any sense? I mean, sure, the sombrero makes sense because you have to keep the near-equatorial sun off your body. But the language? The name “Maria”? How does that work?
Modelland is supposed to be this crazy-ass world, but it seems like black and white people are pretty much black and white people. Am I to understand this an Earth of the far future where technology has gone backwards and isn’t even up to its current level? Where is Modelland, time-and-space-wise?
ANYWAY, Wingtip. Wingtip is a homeless dude that gives Tookie some advice. And she calls him Wingtip because he wears wingtip shoes.
Remember, Tookie’s a creative type.
Wingtip had some VERY wise words for Tookie earlier: Dream big. Even you.
Wow. Bravo. It’s baffling that you’re homeless with a wit like that. What size would you advise people to dream, in general? Small? Moderate? Ah, big. Brilliant. I am learning much of things from your wise words, Wingtip.
That’s Wingtip. I suspect we haven’t seen the last of Wingtip.
Hopefully we’ve seen the last of Tookie’s parents, however, as the scout takes Tookie away to Modelland. Yes, the scout scoops up Tookie in what I can only describe as a cross between Santa’s bag and an enormous, gossamer scrotum. Destination: Modelland.
Or at least, Destination: Modelland: Eventually.
Because first we have to stop and pick up some other girls.
Which brings us to Bou-Big-Tique Nation.
Seriously, stop reading this and just type that name. Everything in this book, the hardest shit to type.
BBT Nation is a place where it appears the country is a giant store. Like a huge mall. Like my dreams as a 14 year-old, a mall you could live in instead of just sleazing around a few hours every weekend, playing Captain America & The Avengers when you had enough quarters to maybe finish it.
BBT Nation is a giant store, and some tossed-off dialogue makes it sound like the babies are raised on wombat milk because why the hell not. Just spin a wheel that has animals on it and that’s the kind of milk the babies will be raised on. Because it’s a giant mall, so it only makes sense that wombat milk plays a part. Jesus fucking christ.
We meet Dylan. Dylan’s notable features are a big ass and the sass to match (by which I mean “a lot of it.” My apologies to mousy people who have big asses). Her other distinguishing feature is that she has an accent that goes in and out worse than Heather Graham’s in O’ Pioneers. One minute Dylan sounds like maybe a southern belle(?), the next a sassy aunt from a UPN sitcom(?), and the next there appears to be no accent at all.
Oh, and Dylan DOES have a catch phrase she uses twice in the first two pages we see her: Cuh-ray-zee.
Good one. That’s right up there with Joey Lawrence’s “Whoa” in terms of craft. I’ll never forget Dylan’s cuh-ray-zie and the way she said it her in SouthernBelle/SassyAunt/None accent.
Dylan is like Tookie in one significant way, which is that she seemingly does not give a fuck about Modelland. She’s not actually parading around for The Day of Discovery, just stopping a fight between some other girls. I strongly suspect we’re going to be subjected to a message of some kind here. About what’s REALLY important being inside. Or more accurately, that what’s really important is inside, but it’s also very helpful if what it’s inside of is a curvaceous butt.
Which ends this next section, thank fuck.
It didn’t really hit me before, but there’s something fundamentally stupid about Modelland that we haven’t discussed.
It seems that we’re learning a lesson about inner, non-traditional beauty. There are many ways in which this could be discussed and elaborated upon, especially considering that we’ve got an entire fictional world. And the way we’re learning about inner, non-traditional beauty in this book is through the lens of outer, traditional beauty.
I guess I don’t get it. I don’t get why girls who don’t aspire to model are going to learn the value of their inner beauty through the medium of modeling, an industry that’s 100% about outer beauty. I don’t understand the value of having a stuck-up, overall shitty industry accept your looks as being something valuable.
It’s sort of this thing about how beauty comes in all shapes and sizes. Which it totally does, and I don’t know why we’re looking to the fashion industry to validate that fact.
The fashion industry brings us shit like this, Scorpion From Mortal Kombat:
Or this, First Orthodontic Appointment Where I Can See Your Wang Chic:
Or this, Accordion To Jim’s Pants:
When you look up a plus-size model, you see this:
I mean, she’s not a waif, but she’s a pretty goddamn long way from CHUD status.
Hell, she’s not even John Goodman in CHUD.
The point is, the fashion industry is based on insane, bizarre, and unrealistic beauty standards. And I’m kind of the opinion that we let the crazies have it. Let those weirdos do their dumb shit, and those of us who spend less than $1000 on a pair of jeans will find our own fashion icons, thanks.
I mean, look at this fucker! Is this who I’m supposed to take advice from when it comes to looking good? Techno Dracula?
Look, if you enter a chili cookoff, it’s like a fashion show. But with farts. Actually, I bet fashion shows have farts too, so just kidding.
Enter a chili cookoff, and there’s plenty of room for different taste, but in the end there’s a chili that’s selected as being the best. And we pick it and move on, and it does’t matter if the lady who brought Chili X is a good person inside. If her chili isn’t great, it’s not great, and she’s also not a bad person. Sure, she could have spent more time on the name instead of calling it Chili X. That was pretty lazy. But when you’re not first place in an unimportant ranking, who gives a shit?
Let me try and more succintly summarize what’s going on in Modelland and how chili farts relate.
Tookie is learning that she is beautiful too even though she doesn’t conform to traditional beauty standards, which, I guess, are shared between the world of this book and our own. But the thing is, she’s ACTUALLY, OBJECTIVELY beautiful. So rather than conveying the message that beauty can look different or that inner beauty is important, what we’re getting from this book is the message that hopefully you’re beautiful and you just weren’t really aware of it. Which is not something I’m sure exists. I don’t know how many super-attractive people out there are unaware of their attractiveness. Yes, sometimes they don’t FEEL attractive, but for the most part, I think they notice that OTHERS find them attractive.
So I guess the secondary message for uggos out there is…sorry you’re not hot? I mean, check and make sure you’re not secretly hot, but you probably aren’t? If you’re wearing overalls and a ponytail and weird glasses, maybe have a mean-spirited boy make a bet with his friends as to whether he can make you prom queen, and then he’ll transform you as much as possible, and then when you go to the prom you’ll know whether or not you’re hot based on whether someone dumps gallons of pig’s blood on you?
And who knows, maybe it’ll turn out you were hot all along and just needed to be convinced. Maybe you’ll be whisked away to a far-off land in a gossamer ballsack, at which point you’ll figure out just how hot you are.
You may have noticed this is chapter 11. Which is also like bankruptcy. Which is not a coincidence as Modelland is bankrupting my soul.
That may be taking it a bit far. But maybe not.
Tangential memory, I remember as a kid when Marvel Comics filed chapter 11. It’s probably hard to believe now, what with all the filmographic success and all, but I swear, it’s true. Mighty Marvel was Mighty Broke.
I was terrified. Was this the end of Spidery’s Web-Swingin’? Was Clobberin’ Time up? Was Black Widow going to trade in her leather bodysuit for sensible business attire and become, oh I don’t know, a social media expert?
Luckily, it didn’t happen. And we still have all of our heroic friends and their commitments to various revealing outfits.
Anyway, Modelland, Chapter 11.
All that happens in this entire chapter is that Tookie and two other girls are still being transported to Modelland in the gossamer ballsack. Which DOES fill up with “white goo” in these pages. Oh yeah. Just in case.
They are joined by another girl, who’s basically a dick and also not traditionally attractive. She points out that none of them are all that hot, to which Tookie’s friend has a brilliant retort like, “Ex-cuh-use me!?” That seems to be her gimmick. Or maybe it was Tyra’s attempt to get a catchphrase in. Although someone should let her know that shit died with Uncle Joey and Urkel.
Something did occur to me reading this part. For a book about modeling and beauty, this is probably one of the least sexy books of all time. Not that sexiness is something I always look for in a book. In fact, more often than not, it’s just uncomfortable.
But how do you do a book about beauty without having anything remotely sexy happen? I don’t know. But Tyra does. She’s cracked the code to a safe nobody wanted to see inside of.
The only love in this book is so chaste it’d make Stephanie Meyer be all like, “Oh, come on! At least throw a digit in a lady! Handys are fine! Even my asinine moral-highground upbringing says so!”
I’m hopeful we’ll get a sex scene because I can only imagine what that is like through the eyes of Tyra banks. Through the eyes, I said. Let’s leave it there. No need to be crude.
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.
Update:
A couple more chapters? Why not?
Let’s get the plot out of the way first. Because this won’t take long.
In this section, our heroes have entered Modelland.
This is it! What we’ve been waiting for. What the whole world has been waiting for. This is the moment where we enter the world of pure imagination. Where all the hard work pays off.
Aaaand we see a couple weird buildings, a bush seems to be a portal to other spots, and that’s about the extent of it.
Okay, the buildings are kinda strange. A cube building that stands on one of its corners. A building that’s actually a boat. Which I’m pretty sure we have a name for already, and it’s called a “boat”. Or “building”. Either, really. It doesn’t seem to be at all significant that one is a boat and one is a cube. Just know that they aren’t like those shitty, portable buildings you had in elementary school.
There’s this weird thing going on where Tookie is starting to wonder if Modelland isn’t what it seems. Tookie wonders this after seeing an obstacle course where girls on their final year of Modelland training compete within rings of fire or some such shit. And it’s like we, as readers, are supposed to be suspicious that Modelland is doing something shady, but this is after the guide openly admits that the rings of fire place is where models compete in their final year.
It’s like Tookie thinks there’s more going on than meets the eye, except also maybe it’s exactly what meets the eye? I dunno. I can’t even tell. The way this is written is just so godawful that I can’t tell whether Tyra is laying in a secret or telling the readers to keep their eyes open or if we’re seeing the truth or what. This is impossible to parse.
There is a brief moment where we’re trapped in a room that’s made of zippers. I wish I could tell you more, but that’s the extent of the description.
I’ll say this. Tyra respects her audience in their intelligence. She isn’t handfeeding me shit. I don’t even know what this fucking place looks like. MODELLAND. THE PLACE THAT THE BOOK IS NAMED FOR. There’s some weird buildings, a bush teleporter, and a zipper land. From there, go nuts.
And this thing just gets lazier as the chapter wears on.
Page 168, description of the young men. Who are sort of models, but not the stars. Oh, and they come from a place called Bestosterone:
“A group of young men marched in, doing a highly powerful staccato dance. Each was more handsome than the next.”
And page 169, one page later, describing board members. Sorry, Bored members. That’s intentional. A character reminds us just how intentional that is. Anyway:
“Tookie counted six members of the Bored, one stranger than the next.”
Oh, rad. So the description is “Here’s a pretty poorly defined quality, and each subsequent person exhibits that quality more than the last. This is all relative bullshit, but who cares? Modelland!” And if that’s not lazy enough, then we get that same thing on the facing page.
And what the fuck is a powerful staccato dance? Tap dancing? Some shit from Stomp? You made me wait forever for this shit, and now it’s just blowing by! I had to read all about a land where they make candles and have a candle-based economy, and now we finally get to Modelland and you’re like “I don’t know, who’s got the time? They danced, there was fire, the end.”
Ah, there was, however, an interesting little tidbit about the Bored, provided by your friend and mine, Tyra.
Here are the Bored members:
Guru Applaussez: Man with a hand for a head.
An old man with moving tattoos all over his body that change shape and content.
A lizard with yellow eye and a forked tongue who can change colors.
And a “stunning figure that looked like it was three-quarters man, one-quarter woman…He-or she-was muscular, yet thin, with blond hair slicked back in a tight ballerina bun.”
I’ll just point out that THIS character elicits a stronger negative reaction from the crowd of girls than a lizard person, an old man who must be mostly naked if we can see he’s covered with tattoos, and a man who has a hand for a face. I’m not going to get all social justice here. There’s no need because I can talk about this from a storytelling angle.
I just have a hard time believing that this parade of weirdos being ended by someone who’s gender ambiguous is a big fucking deal. Seems like kind of a letdown, to be honest. That’s like having a sideshow with The World’s Fattest Man, The World’s Tiniest Woman, The World’s Ugliest Baby, and then A Guy Who Has Pretty Long Eyebrow Hairs Here And There. Because I’ve seen some people who are gender ambiguous, but I have never, in my life, seen someone with a hand for a fucking head. Or a lizard man. Or a man with living tattoos who mounts a stage mostly naked, slaps at one of his tattoos and the words within the tattoo are altered.
Oh, but this person might have an abnormally large clitoris. Wow. Call the papers.
And seriously, what kind of description is that? One-quarter woman? Believe me, with my thighs, I’m a Schick disposable and a couple bottles of shave gel away from being one-quarter woman. Nay, one-quarter babe.
There is one other thing here. At the top of page 168 we get a little piece that felt, to me, like stream of consciousness. What Tyra was fucking thinking when she wrote this.
Tookie’s new Modelland classmates have just expressed friendship:
“A rush of warmth settled over Tookie. They cared about her well-being. Maybe they were even her new…friends. She let this moment sink in for a second. For the first time in her life, she actually used the word friend in the plural. She made a mental note to herself to start spelling friends with four S’s, friendssss, in her T-Mail Jail. One s for each of the four friends she now had: Dylan, Shiraz, Piper…and, of course, Lizzie.”
If you’re confused about T-Mail Jail, that’s what Tookie calls her diary. I understand the desire to find a word other than diary. But c’mon. I don’t call my fucking diary LL P-Money-Papers or some shit. I call it a diary and I move on.
That section, though, that just felt like the running thing in Tyra’s head. Okay, I’ll call them friends, but I’ll do it like friendssss because there’s four, and each one gets an S. Why the S? Doesn’t matter. Or I could dot the I with four vertical dots maybe. Let me call Microsoft and see if that’s possible.
Friendssss? Jesus, let’s hope she doesn’t make any more friends. Maybe that’s why this book is so goddamn long. Maybe she gets up to a couple hundred friends, and we just have to gut it out every time that word shows up.
Fuck, I’m not even popular, and if I did that based on Facebook, I would have to write friendssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. Every time.
Hey, LL P-Money-Papers,
Well, I made one new friend on FB today. That means I’ve got 207 friendssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss. Sometimes I wonder if I should pare down my friendssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss list, but it’s not like you have a limit to how many friendssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss you can have online, and besides, the more, the merrier. It’s like that one episode of Friendssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssssss where Chandler…
Hell. This book has taken me to hell.
11/20/2015 Update:
You know what’s amazing about this book? Tyra is so prescient about doing all the things I dislike in books. It’s uncanny.
At the end of this last chapter, we’re treated to a song. Yes, a song, expressed in only text, without any indication of tempo or melody or musical style, a fucking song.
Songs in books are a pet peeve of mine since the old days of Lord of the Rings. God did I hate those songs.
It just doesn’t make sense. Text is the worst medium of musical expression, if you ask me.
Let’s start at the top of the music medium hierarchy.
1. Recorded Audio.
2. Live performance. Some would probably swap these two, and I get that.
3. Live performance as experienced by a deaf person.
4. Sheet music. A certain subset of people can certainly appreciate this and “hear” the music on the page.
5. The sound that just barely comes out of my headphones when I forget to turn off my iPod and hear it hours later, just barely, and I’m not even sure if it’s music at first.
6. The awful polka music played from an across-the-street neighbor’s truck that rattles the windows in my apartment.
7. Songs played via farts.
8. Farts. Just the regular kind.
9. Lyrics written out on a page.
Seriously, there’s no indication of tone or tempo. It’s just words, some of which rhyme, written on down the page.
I tried so fucking hard to find the text to copy and paste. But here we go. Transcribed because I fucking love you.
Mr dear Modelland is a heavenly queendom,
Its walls rich with memories of yesteryear.
Our laws, antiquated, but must be respected,
Or I’ll discard you like moth-eaten cashmere.
Listen to me now, my spanking new No-Sees,
You’re infants, you’re rascals, and oh-so-askew.
You’ve entered a world that most would slay for,
But amongst them all, I have chosen you.
Modelland is your new HOME.
Welcome to this superDOME.
For you XX-chromoSOMED.
Modelland is your new HOME.
Regard your dear neighbor, the Bella to your near left,
Ambassador to Modelland, and you are now, too.
She’ll excite the world to buy wares of design and splendor.
Here’s a list of Modelland’s career menu.
From footwear to freeze sprays, foundation, face powders
To corsets and camisoles and culottes and trousers,
Moccasins and miniskirts, mesh tops and bronzers,
Sandals, suspenders and sunblock with powers.
You’ll wear waistcoats, wedding dresses, wet suits, and lingerie,
Leotards and yellow belts, deodorants every day,
Hosiery and houndstooth and rougy lips to chalets,
Bandeays and bodices and LBDs at soirees.
You’ll exfoliate, emulsify, depilate and moisturize,
Sell glycerins, jojoba oils, fragrances and flourides.
Cocktail dresses, cardigans, concealers for tired eyes,
And practice all your posing tricks from sunset till sunrise.
Perform in petticoat-themed, much-attended fashion-elite expos,
Safari-wear, tuxedos, tunics, tops, all types of clothes.
Kilts and cloaks and swinging coats and crocheted kimonos
With audiences making bets on who will fall upon their nose.
Okay, that’s not the whole thing, but that all I can stands. Seriously, that’s like half of this fucking thing.
Friends don’t let friends make fake songs in fiction.
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.
01/10/2016 Update:
“Admiring the D, are you?”
The first piece of dialogue in this chapter, spoken aloud by a giant face made out of vines and flowers.
Let me bring everyone back up to speed.
We just went through Thigh High Boot Camp, THBC, which was a bunch of weird tests of the model candidates. As Dylan puts it, in her in and out accent of sorts: “Honey chile, I just been invaded by bacteria, sliced and diced by earrings, stabbed by a monster needle, and had my head imprisoned in a bubble.”
Thanks, Dylan! It’s almost like this book was written with the knowledge that a person can only take about one chapter at a time, after which a month-long hiatus is necessary.
Which brings us here. “The D.”
The D is not as exciting as I hoped. It’s basically a sorority house. Or what I imagine a sorority house is. It’s like a sorority house for lame teacher students or something. Why do I say that?
“This is the UnCommon Room, where you’ll all hang out!”
I see what you did there. This room is ANYTHING but common. What with its couches, tables, AND pillows. Haha, whoa! Watch out! Lock up your…I don’t know, antique library card catalogues that could be turned into a jewelry box or some shit?
Don’t tell me, this UnCommon Room is where you get crazy and play Cards Against Humanity. And one time you binged like a whole season of Sherlock in here. And the cat walked across the piano in the middle of the night and freaked everyone out because they thought it was a ghost. Ah, the UnCommon Room. These are the memories that will bolster me for another day of teaching long division, these times where my wild oats were sown allow me to settle down and slowly build up my scrapbook of things discontinued by Restoration Hardware.
That’s really bitter. I hated school, not teachers. Sometimes the bitter spills over. Sorry. You’re mostly good people, teachers. Just stop wearing sweaters with embroidered chalkboards that say A+ on them. Can we agree on this one thing?
Once we’re in the UnCommon room, the remaining 50-some girls receive their Senturas. Special scarf things that are worn around the hips and make a person’s powers even more powerful. Think of these like Charles Xavier’s science helmet, Cerebro, which enhances his already existing power. Think about it like that, except these are color-coordinated scarves instead of cool science helmets, and remember that the powers we’ve seen so far include bullshit like the ability to make people want to buy stuff. Wolverine these folks ain’t. Hell, they’re not even Jubilee. At least Jubilee could fuck up the TV in a bar that shouldn’t have a TV. At least Jubilee could totally make your phone go wacky if you were hanging out together and on instagram nonstop, and she was like, “I’m a real person. Pay attention to me, not your stupid phone!” Then the sparks happen, then the anger about who owes how much money to who.
Tookie gets a Sentura too, and this is yet ANOTHER thing she can’t believe. She just can’t fucking believe it.
Swear to fuck, every minute of Tookie’s life is like that part in the Blind Side:
I never had one of these before.
What, your own room?
A bed.
It’s like that, except not touching and not interesting, and holy fuck when is Tookie going to accept that some weird shit is going on and she’s part of it?
It’s like that weird thing in Zelda. Every time you find a new thing in Zelda, you hear that Duh-nuh-nuh-nuh! music, Link holds it up in the air so we know what the fuck it is, and then we move on. Modelland is like that because it doesn’t seem to matter what Link gets, he’s fucking pumped. Empty jar, jar with a live bee in it. Oh, that bee. That little fucker was like my mutually-assured destruction in that game. What I wouldn’t have given to be able to tell bad guys “Listen, if you don’t leave me alone, I’m opening this bee jar, and NONE of us are going to be happy about it. I might get stung more than you, I probably will, but I’ll do it. Don’t push me.”
This book is like, imagine playing The Legend of Zelda, and every time you found a new item, all that normal stuff happens, then there’s a dialog box where Link says, “Gosh, I’m just a boy of questionable lineage (elf? part elf?) who started off swordless on an adventure, and now look at me, owning my very own EMPTY JAR! I never dreamed this would happen. I’m so pure of heart that everything is a gift from the universe, and every mouthful of bread is the heavens smiling down on me, and holy shit it’s kinda hard to get anything done because I’m always thanking no one in particular for every small fortune, but so be it. #LovinLife.”
But let’s not dwell on this. Let’s go to the second floor. Up the staircase constructed of only flat, suspended boards that are supported seemingly by nothing. No rail, no risers, just the flat steps. Let’s not dwell on that either because A) This is exactly the kind of thing that in a good narrative, would come back later and B) we’re going up to the second floor to get bedrooms assigned and C) it’s time to get Harry Potter up in this beyotch.
We’ve done Willy Wonka, we’ve done Hunger Games [check date], we’ve done R.L. Stine cliffhangers. But so far, we’re missing a little Harry Potter.
That is, until we go up the magical stairs, find bedrooms, and bump into invisible beds, which then become visible, after which a pencil scratching sound happens in the room and each girl’s face is drawn onto her comforter.
But that’s not all.
What Harry Potter story would be complete without some kind of magic gizmo?
Enter the Headbangor.
The Headbangor.
Basically a headband iPod. That’s waterproof. Because one of Tookie’s friends has a terrible music addiction. Her professor/inventor father made it for her, and she wears it all the time, and the songs piped in are sung by her actor/director/singe mother.
And wait a second, what Harry Potter story would be complete without a bully?
Which is why our nemesis, Zarpessa , is roomies with Tookie. Of course.
I have a Harry Potter question. Actually, I have a lot, but one of my questions is about Crabbe and Goyle.
Why have a sorting hat if you’re just letting dopes like that in the school? Seriously, those numb nuts were totally worthless, and you’d think that a school run completely by magic nerds would develop a system that weeded out kids whose primary joy came from picking on magic nerds.
Moving on, what Harry Potter story would be complete without weird, arbitrary rules? Such as the rule introduced here that the candidates can only keep two of the things they brought with them.
For Tookie, it’s easy.
T-Mail Jail. Also known as her diary. Which I didn’t even know she brought with her, but was apparently stashed in her cargo pants, which I didn’t know she was wearing when she left but would have been a nice detail because everyone looks bad in cargo pants EXCEPT what’s her face from Freaks & Geeks who pulled off that 90’s grunge military jacket thing like a champ.
What’s item number 2? Of course, the button. The magic button that got smooshed in the early chapters to kind of (not really) spell out her name: T O OKE. That beloved object that came about when her crush, Theopholus, accidentally squished it and it shot all around the room in crazy fashion, and Tookie dug it out of the garbage, after which she kept and cherished the item lo these last 48 hours or so.
This. Fuckin’. Button.
As if the origin of the button wasn’t insane enough, Tookie busts it out, then realizes she can’t be seen with it in front of Zarpessa, who is Theopholus’ real girlfriend and will somehow identify it as an object of her boyfriend’s.
What happens next is hard to explain. So I’m going to just say what the book says.
Tookie busts out this button, someone asks what it is, Tookie panics, looks around the room, runs into the hallway, picks a flower from the WALL, attaches it to the button, and then comes back in the room, a cool customer, and is all like “Oh, this is a corsage and shit. Probably not even button-based.”
The perfect crime. The perfect nonsensical crime motivated by nothing.
And then Tookie puts on a nightie with AN ATTACHED MOTHERFUCKING CAPE, and the Harry Potter cloning is complete.
What’s next? A laser sword duel? A bunch of boys crash land on an island and beat up a fattie? A cancer-based romance? What bases do we have left to cover.
If you said Requiem for a Dream, and if you figured Tookie would sleepwalk into a room where Ci~L was beating herself bloody with a paddle and wailing, you were totally right. And I really question the way your brain works and wonder if you’re interested in participating in a really crazy study.
Anyway, I’ll leave you with this line, from Tookie’s sleepwalking adventure:
“This definitely isn’t the D.”
Indeed. If there’s one thing you know on sight, it’s The D.
01/12/2016 Update:
“Every new Bella started menstruating at exactly the same time.”
Mic drop.
A couple days ago I was saying that this book has ape-ed Harry Potter, Hunger Games, and all kinds of other stuff, but I forgot Judy Blume. I should have known we’d get to Blume.
The chapter begins with Tookie having stomach pains, and then another Bella said, well, the line quoted above.
I should be fair to Tyra and say that it’s explained THREE times that this is not what normally happens, that cohabitation can cause a synch-up where everyone’s Aunt Flo visits on the same day, but it normally takes months. Or longer than 24 hours. Tyra is so good about explaining that this usually happens on a longer timeline that I’m like, “Okay, I get it. I get that you don’t think this is how it happens in real life! Geez!” I mean, THREE times in one chapter.
Also, I’m not happy with that Aunt Flo thing. How is that a euphemism for period? That’s like me taking a dump and saying “Oh, just gave birth to a baby named Duke. 7 lbs, 8 ounces. Healthy boy. VERY healthy boy.”
We’ve come a long way in this book. Young Tookie has gone from girl to woman in these pages. Or from girl without a period to girl with a period. Or woman without a period to woman with a period. I’m not really sure what the defining thing is between a girl and a woman, and I’m not totally convinced it’s period-based. If so, then what’s the defining thing that separates boys from men? I’d say it’s the first time you perceive that the world is a horrible and crushing place and it’s best just to stay inside, so for me somewhere around 2nd grade, I became a man. Boyz II Man. If women would like to use that same standard, I think that’d be cool, although I guess we’d have to start calling a lot of elementary school students men and women.
The period talk isn’t over, but I just want to put a short bit about the class we attend in Modelland during this chapter. This is kind of how the chapter is “structured” anyway, period, then class (period), then more period, so we’ll do the same thing here.
Let’s look at Tookie’s class schedule, copied here verbatim:
Uno: CaraCaraCara: Time Midnight-Blue, Sharp
Dos: Run-a-Way Intensive. Time: Kelly Green, Sharp
Tres: Mastication. Time: Goldenrod, Sharp
Alright. Am I expert enough a linguist to break this down? Can I channel my inner Tookie, who speaks EVERY language, and translate this from Fuckface to English?
Our first column is obviously Spanish. Got it. Why we need a time AND an order is a little confusing, and why the number is there in Spanish instead of as a numeral, especially if we’re dealing with girls who don’t all speak the same goddamn motherfucking language, I don’t know.
Excuse me. Especially if we’re dealing with WOMEN who don’t all speak the same goddamn motherfucking language. Apologies.
Next we have the class name. Instead of being a class that has a name that kind of says what the class it about, we have this crazy horseshit. Most classes are named by what you study. What do you study in this class? Chemistry? Okay, then let’s call it Chemistry, how ’bout?
Not in Modelland!
The Modelland version of that conversation: What’s this class about? Chemistry? Okay, hmm. Let’s call it…something about chemicals. Beakers. Pipettes. Fashion…
Camisoleistry. Done and done.
Finally, the time portion. Time is told by color in Modelland. Again, replacing the universality of numbers with something that no one understands. Good. Perfect. That makes all the sense in the world.
This is what I fucking hate about Modelland. This is the thing right now, anyway. There are lots of things, and they rotate through my brain like a carousel of hate. A Lazy Susan where all the spices are stupid Tarragon. A Hate-sy Susan of Hate Spice, if you will.
A good sci-fi-ish or fantasy thing to do is to take something in real life, twist it a little, and thereby make the world a stranger, more interesting place.
But the trick is, you have to actually IMPROVE something. Not make it shittier and weirder for the sake of making it weird, also with no explanation of how any of it works.
Let’s look at some weird clocks that do a better job than Modelland:
Crazy wires and tubes and shit. Still numbers.
Obnoxious, makes you do math, I’ll be mad if I ever see this in your home, but still uses numbers.
I guess if you want to really feel time pressing down on you, ruining every fiber of your being, this is one way to go. My god, talk about a way of saying “Get back to work” with all the subtlety of the Hulk lifting a clock factory and smashing it over your face.
This is a RIDE. A fucking ride, and it’s still a better representation of the way time works that TIME in Modelland. It’s not a GOOD clock, nor is it a GOOD ride. I mean, I can remember being on something like this and hoping I only had to go around one time because by the time I hit the apex, I was bored as shit. But still, better clock than Modelland.
This one is racist as fuck, and it’s still a better method to tell time. Awful racist clockmakers were better at time than the whole of Modelland.
This one has what I can only assume is a Goombah swinging from Mario’s wiener. I know, it doesn’t look exactly like that, but graphics weren’t as good back in the day, you guys. You really had to fill in a lot with your imagination. A shitty turtle was a deadly beast, and a straight black line was a juicy wang. And even though this clearly pornographic clock is inappropriate in a lot of ways, one could still use it to tell time.
Okay, we do actually make it to class in this chapter, despite the schedule complications, and it turns out that CaraCaraCara goes like this: an instructor who sounds like Speedy Gonzalez tells the girls to make opposite faces of their emotions. The girls are shown various images, such as a rabbit with no ears and then a “photo of a dead cat giving birth to an octopus on an abandoned road.”
Judy Blume, David Lynch, all in one chapter.
Oh, and this whole class takes place in a giant ship that’s constructed out of a whale carcass.
I’m blowing through this because at the end of class, a statue constructed of an element that “doesn’t exist in the periodic table”* comes to life and tells the girls that from now on they will never have periods for the rest of their lives. They can still procreate, but gone are the cramps and whatever other crap goes along with a period.
*just a note, if a new element is discovered, it’s just added to the table, as happened earlier this year. That’s how science works.
Let me just recap something here.
At the beginning of this chapter, Tookie got her first period. A potentially interesting event in a young girl’s life, I’d imagine, especially if she were to be away from home in a strange place. This is potentially a powerful, grounding element for this story that could mix the humanity of the situation with the kooky Modelland whatever-ness.
And as a quick aside, it did not go unnoticed by this reader that Tookie got her first period, didn’t do anything about it, and then just went about her day. Maybe it was bloodless? I don’t know.
And yes, I’m AWARE that she could cramp BEFORE there was any bleeding. But, god help me, I wanted to know what kind of tampons they have in Modelland. I’m that deep in the rabbit hole. If you present me with something like this, goddamn it, I want to know. I want to know what crazy ass name they’d have. Crampons? Clampax? I want to know what sort of weird packaging they would come in. Our main characters just saw a roadkilled cat corpse give birth to a live octopus, so I ask you, WHO IS THE WEIRDO HERE?
But we didn’t address periods beyond their existence, really, and it didn’t matter one bit because no sooner does Tookie get a period than a magic statue makes it so none of the girls ever have to have periods again for the rest of their lives.
Okay, that’s even another route. You could go the route of saying that Modelland is stripping away these human things about the models.
But then again, you really can’t because Tookie has her period for all of an hour before it’s gone forever. How much is she going to miss it?
So it seems that we’ve got another situation in Modelland where the way something was executed was the LEAST powerful or interesting way. Almost purposefully so. Tyra wants the credit of bringing up periods and womanhood, but can’t be bothered to write about it for more than a chapter, so fuck it, we’ll just wipe the slate clean once again.
Gah!
As a quick P.S., I got a Kindle for Christmas, and so now I can A) read this book in public and not be embarrassed. I’m not a believer in book-shaming, but I DO think I should be book-shamed for reading Modelland, so there you go. B), I can tell exactly how far into the book I am, right at 41%. Almost half way. I don’t really know what bullets could possibly be left in the chamber with this book, but it’s still surprising me, so I guess we’ll see.
01/13/2016 Update:
Okay, there are a few storylines that I THINK are coming to actually mean something. Now, 44% into the book, I think I have a handle on a few developing pieces of action that we probably need to outline for the rest of this to kind of, sort of make sense.
Think of this book as a smoothie made out of a bunch of insane shit. You came home, Hannibal Lecter is there with an alien, a avant garde French chef, and a space alien. They’ve teamed up to create a smoothie in your kitchen. You see some ingredients laying around the kitchen, but you don’t know what all ended up in the final product. However, you look at the glass of beige (it’d probably be beige, right? Like hummus color? The weirdest color for food besides pitch black?) and you can see in there a piece of carrot, a human ear, and there’s a piece of celery sticking out of the whole thing as garnish. The celery has been placed in the exact center of the glass, and the thickness of the smoothie is holding it straight upright. But it’s definitely celery, carrot and ear in there amongst other ingredients.
This book is a smoothie full of a bunch of shit, but I think I’ve identified 3 ingredients that will probably come up later, so we need to get them out of the way here.
But that sounds boring. Just rehash of plot. How might we liven this up?
A few weeks back I signed up for the beta of something called Wordseye. This is a software that allows you to set a scene with text, write out a description of a scene, and the words are interpreted into images that appear on screen. Which could be pretty cool and useful for something like creating a scene in a novel. Or you could just do shit like, I don’t know, have a baby on a ping pong table with a sandwich.
It doesn’t work too well with verbs, and some of the stuff doesn’t translate well. Plus, I suck at using it so far. But interspersed throughout the things I’m typing here, I thought it’d be nice to include some images I made in Wordseye, using text from this chapter of Modelland.
Storyline 1: Zarpessa, Tookie’s Enemy, Is Secretly Poor
Earlier in the book Tookie somehow spied Zarpessa dumpster diving or something. It turns out that Zarpessa is poor, or we’re supposed to think that, but it’s a big secret. Not only is it a secret that she’s poor, but Zarpessa seems to insist on rubbing in everyone’s face the lie that she’s rich. Somehow, Zarpessa KNOWS that Tookie KNOWS this secret, and she threatens her with empty nonsense so that Tookie won’t tell, even though it doesn’t seem to matter one bit in Modelland if you have cash.
I’m not sure where this is going. Zarpessa is being a total, unmitigated dickhole so far, but maybe the pair will find friendship? Maybe a tearful, “I was only mean because I was afraid” kind of thing? Maybe Zarpessa will remain mean throughout, something I wouldn’t predict in a normal book because why then would we show her as poor? However, Modelland has surprised me in stupider ways. That should be a motto for this book. Just when you thought a surprise couldn’t be more stupider, it gets a whole lot much more stupider.
Storyline 2: Tookie and Some Candidates Aren’t Supposed to Be In Modelland
It has been suggested, with a hand heavy as Steve Avery’s father’s hand (take a look. Kielbasa fingers all day) that Tookie and the other candidates she arrived with are misfits who don’t actually belong in Modelland. This is confusing because, fuck, the whole structure of this thing is confusing, but it seems like this storyline is going to play a part somehow.
I don’t know when this is going to be revealed to be true or not true, or if this is another Wonka-ing, making Tookie THINK that she’s unfit to be a model when really, the true test of character is blahblahblah. I don’t know much about this other than to say it’s happening, so it’ll probably come up sooner or later.
Storyline 3: Ci~L (the 7Seven from the past who also was the scout that picked up Tookie & Co.) is A Bad Rebel
We’ve seen Ci~L (possibly the most annoying name I’ve ever typed as a tilde doesn’t have a fucking sound associated with it, is therefore rarely used, and is not meant to be used as a fancy dash. In fact, I looked into this a little more, and the only language where the tilde appears without being above, below, next to, or in place of a letter it’s modifying is Guarani. In which case it’s a velar nasal consonant, which is the -ng at the end of “sing.” Meaning this name is perhaps pronounce “See-ng-ell”) beating herself with a paddle, we’ve seen her dressed down by most of the Modelland staff, and it would seem that she disappeared for a time.
Ci~L is also the one who brought Tookie and her crew to Modelland, so it would follow that Ci~L is pulling some bullshit by bringing a bunch of losers to Modelland. Or that she’s so far ahead of the others that she knows this is a good move. I don’t know. It’s impossible to say with this book.
What we know, without being really told what happened, is that Ci~L is in deep shit for some reason. But what it means to be in deep shit in Modelland is pretty unclear. They basically abuse the hell out of everyone anyway, so I’m not sure how different it is. It’s like being in the POW camp from First Blood Part 2, but instead of hooking you up to a car battery, they use a MARINE battery, which we all know has more lasting power. We all know that, right? From watching those disaster prep shows?
These seem to be the main plotlines of the book at this point. That and “Modelland be crazy.” If that can be generously called a plot point, then there you go.
We are currently 44% through the book. So I have to say, I’m a little nervous. I don’t think, knowing what I know now, that the dramatic tension of these three points can be maintained by Tyra for another 56% of this brick. There could be twists and turns, but I have a feeling it’ll be more like twists and burns.
Look how clever my writing has gotten thanks to this book. You take a word, but then instead of the word, you write a DIFFERENT word that RHYMES with that word.
Suck, F. Scott Fitzlame-eld.
Take that, HemingWRONGway.
How do you like me now, James NoJoyce?
01/14/2016 Update:
Apparently we have an Australian instructor in Modelland.
Excuse me, not Australian. She’s from a land called Didgeridoo. Which sounds exactly like Australia, has koalas, and kangaroos, although they’re tiny and rat-like and can be eaten alive, which happens twice in this chapter.
This Aussie also has a special power, which is that she’s a tongue reader. This is not a make-out thing, which is not surprising because for being about modeling, this is THE MOST sexless book I’ve ever read, and that includes Cormac McCarthy joints that seem to be primarily about waiting for someone to have a hole blown in his head.
No, tongue reading is the ability to look at someone’s tongue and determine their favorite food. Which is kind of a worthless superpower because
A) You have to grab someone’s tongue, and
B) You could just ask.
The girls all go to the Aussie’s class, or maybe it’s a cafeteria. It’s hard to tell what’s going on, honestly, but after not eating for a day, they’re all hoisted up in harnesses, put in front of cauldrons full of their favorite foods, and suspended there for a while before being released to eat.
Tookie’s favorite food is whipped cream. So that’s what she eats a shitload of, including many varieties of whipped cream that don’t exist.
Zarpessa, the secret dumpster diver, is determined to have weird mixtures of old, tossed-out food as her favorites, which suggests that she is a dumpster diver who LIKES dumpster-dived food, not that she eats it as a matter of necessity. I suppose there’s possibly someone out there who prefers half-eaten meals from a dumpster. Actually, no. I don’t think so. I can’t believe that there’s anyone who, on a pure taste level, prefers thrown-out food to its not-thrown-out version. That’s fucking stupid. Tyra, that’s dumb.
The girls’ cauldrons then all transform into elevators, the girls step inside, and the elevators go sideways into another room. Why they needed elevators to go sideways, and why they needed elevators at all if they could just walk around is another Modelland mystery. In fact, I bet whoever built this fucking place had a LOT of questions. “You mean you want me to build food cauldrons, which aren’t a thing, and harnesses that allow girls to be hoisted into them, which is not a way anyone eats, and then you want the cauldrons to transformerize into elevators that move sideways rather than up? Would you be willing to settle for a table, some plates, and a hallway? Because boy would that be a lot easier.”
The non-elevator elevators drop the girls in a shower room where all the showerheads shoot out desserts. Chocolate, caramel. One is jammed because it’s full of pralines.
“Again, I got my plumber in here, and he says that there’s a lot you might not know about fluid dynamics, but you just can’t really make a praline shower. Nor would you want to. And if you did, you’d definitely have to make a shower head with big enough holes for the pralines to fall through. I’m not trying to tell you your business. I’m just wanting to make sure you know what I’m about to do in here.”
And once again, a bunch of models covered in chocolate sauce, whipped cream, and caramel, and not an ounce of anything sexy happens. Not even the slightest suggestion.
Oh, and Tookie drops a whipped cream can, and do you remember the corsage thing she made out of her pin to disguise it? That whole thing? Well, apparently that has somehow become a magic food receptacle. It somehow hides the whipped cream can inside of it, even though the object itself is smaller than the can. I don’t get it at all. The pin swallows the can, Tookie reaches into the center, and there’s a whipped cream can. I don’t know how, I don’t know why, I don’t know. I don’t fucking know. I’m getting so fatigued by things that don’t make any sense, but here you go. Sometimes you drop a thing and it falls into a magic thing that you made yourself without knowing it. We’ve all been there.
The girls finish eating, and then the Aussie labels them as one of three things: Jammers, Chowers, and Poachers. These are people who eat too much, too little, or just right. And the significance here seems to be that the Aussie tells those who starve themselves that when they’re ready for help, they should come to her. Which makes total sense. Come to me with your eating disorder. I harnessed you up and dropped you in a vat of bacon grease. I definitely have a healthy relationship with food.
And again, for no reason, the Aussie uses a heretofore unheard of magic power to renew the girls’ appetite, which she follows with this blessing: “You’re now so hungry, you could eat the ass out of a low-flying duck!”
See? You ask for sexual content, and this thing goes from zero to bestiality in one chapter.
01/15/2016 Update:
Officially announcing that I am over 50% of the way through this muhfucker!
I feel like a little celebration is in order:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1SUzc…
Yes, none of us thought it was possible. Mostly me. I have a whole new respect for the people who have finished this book and reviewed it here. My hat is off to you.
I also have a whole new suspicion. How did you do it? What pulled you through on those dark nights?
We visited a few new locations since we last spoke. So let me bring you up to speed.
First, the OoAh. Which is spelled OoAh, Oooo-ahhhh, and OOAH on the same page.
Let me place here the text Tyra uses to describe this place when she enters:
The fluttering light at the end of the hallway expanded into an immense glowing circle. A Mannecant stood at the reception desk shaped like the letters H, O, and A. The letters moved around in a disorganized jumble, probably making it hard to set anything on the surface. There was a great round room behind the desk, its walls covered in a furry-looking fabric and its ceiling gently pulsing up and down, as if breathing.”
This is the entrance to the OOAH, which is basically a spa.
Let me try. I’ll try my best.
A desk. Made of giant letters. Which move around on their own. “PROBABLY” making it hard to set anything down on the surface of the desk.
No. Fucking. Shit. A desk that’s made of three components that are all oddly-shaped and constantly moving. I might go so far to suggest that this is a worthless design for a desk.
I want to see someone take a shit in Modelland. I’m just coming out and saying it. I have a feeling that, at some point, a guru will remove the models’ need to shit. They’ve already had their periods removed, and a guru was able to remove and replace hunger at will, so shits doesn’t seem like a bridge too far. But I want to see how this is done. What in the FUCK is a Modelland toilet, I ask you. What is it made from? Does it function, at all, in its capacity as a waste receptacle and disposal unit? Because I see a desk here that does not seem to serve any purpose, even though the purpose of a desk must be amongst the simplest purposes in the wold: providing a flat surface on which things can be placed. It’s a table with an extra piece of wood on one side, and also more often a place dreams go to die, but goddamn is its purpose simple.
If no one takes a shit in this book, I’m putting it out there right now, I’ll be let down. Make me read this much nonsense and you don’t give me the one thing I want? I’ll be upset. I’m not much for entitlement, but I think I’m OWED a shit-taking in this book. Never something I thought I would say in words, but there you go. Tyra, you owe me the depiction of shit-taking in your novel.
The girls go to this spa. Nothing much happens until they come across these three ladies who can transport them into the past to relive memories. BUT THERE’S A CATCH! A VERY STUPID CATCH!
All three girls, Tookie, Dylan, and whatever must go in together, all experience each other’s memories, or not go at all. Why this is the case is inexplicable. I think if the girls had asked why, the future-seers would have broken down and said, “Look, there’s a lot of fucking dumb shit in this book that just better serves the narrative, okay? Grow up. That’s how this book works.”
They all decide to go, which seems like a mistake afterwards.
What does Dylan relive?
She’s at the park with her loving father. Who says he’s “going away for a while soon”, at which point you figure he’s dying, but I was still a little surprised when he promptly dropped fucking dead, right there in the park, seconds after telling Dylan he doesn’t have much time. Jesus, dad, how about you make this announcement when you’ve got like 6 months, not 45 seconds?
What does girl number 2 relive?
Long story short, she gets her entire extended family killed. Not really her fault, but kind of. Just enough her fault that she can blame herself, but not enough her fault that any reader can blame her. Oh, there is one survivor, a little girl, who has since disappeared.
What does Tookie relive?
A moment when she was a baby and her parents actually loved her. Which could be a good memory except she doesn’t actually remember it, and it mostly causes anguish because it’s like “What the fuck happened to make these people so bitter?”
I guess they don’t have stories about genies in this world, because aren’t we all aware that asking a genie character for something means you get a fucked-up version of what you asked for? Genies are such wise-asses. They know goddamn well that when you ask for a set of wheels, you don’t mean that you want your legs to turn into Bridgestones. They’re just so bored? Is that it?
And now the story leaves our hero for a moment. Not without a clumsy letter Tookie writes to her mother, which begins, “You probably can’t believe it, but I’ve been in Modelland for three whole months.”
You. Motherfuckers.
You made me go through 50% of this book to get through like 4 days, and now the FIRST THREE MONTHS of Modelland (minus day 1 and 2) are just tossed aside? The only detail we get is about a class called GustGape, which is a class about “how to keep [y]our eyes open even in extreme winds.”
Well, if I’ve ever disrespected models, let me take this moment to tell you, I get it now. The struggle is real. TOO real, if you ask me. Having to keep your eyes open in high wind. That’s definitely a feat, and something that probably requires instruction. It’s certainly not something you’d just like, do when the moment arose.
And is that really a class you’d take in your first quadmester at Modelland? They don’t want to teach you, I don’t know, how to avoid being sued when you throw your cell phone at someone, or assault like 11 different people, or your personal assistant, or a couple cops at the airport? How to blow rails off a Lana Del Ray album that you bought on vinyl because it seemed right and also because to blow rails off of? How to pretend you’re having fun on one of the stupid celebrity game night shows. Seriously, how low is that? We’ve now eschewed even the low-level of excitement provided by BOARD GAMES in favor of watching famous people play the very same board games. Finally, board games without all the hassle of playing and learning rules and not looking at Blake Shelton.
Anyway, post-letter (a letter Tookie writes to her mom, Creamy, who she hates and has no reason to contact) we’re transported to the Diabolical Divide, the chasm that separates Modelland from the rest of the world. Here we meet a man named Kamata, a guide who takes on the dangerous job of leading pilgrims across the divide and into Modelland. This is apparently a journey attempted by many who are not selected on TDOD (The Day of Discovery).
Everyone collected at the non-Modelland side of the divide hands over wads of cash, Kamata makes them swallow a big bag of pills and take a shot in the butt to protect from whatever awaits in the divide, and the group is about to leave when two travelers come running up…
Creamy de La Creme and Myrracle! Tookie’s mother and sister!
They’re going to make the dangerous trek to Modelland to…I don’t actually know. I’m not sure what happens when they get there. Maybe they’re going to remove Tookie? Try and get Myrracle in? I mean, that’s like me walking to Google headquarters, and then they’re like, “Well, we skipped over selecting you before in our interview process, but you walked here. That has nothing to do with the job, but we really have no choice but to make you a member of the team.”
Anyway, I read the first line of the next chapter, and it starts like this:
“Our most unusual tale picks up at the start of the next Modelland quadmester, three months at four days into the Bellas’ first year at the unusual, untouchable, and never uneventful fantastical land at the top of the mountain…”
I…
By my reckoning, we had something like 3 days in the regular world at the book’s outset. Then TDOD and the first day in Modelland seem to be one, as the girls don’t have beds until the end of that first night. Then we have day two in Modelland. Then we skip 3 months ahead, have this brief scene, then skip 4 more days ahead.
5 days of this book happen in approximately 50% of the text. Then we have 3 months that are not present AT ALL, we skip this crucial period, but whatever.
That doesn’t bother me as much as why the fuck we need to skip 3 months, then an additional FOUR DAYS? What the hell for? What’s the difference? Who gives a shit about four days? Why would that matter AT. ALL? “No, we go 90 days forward, then this tiny scene, then another…4 days sounds good.”
This whole fucking thing could have been accomplished with a “3 Months Later…”, but no, we had to add those four days. I’d still be mad about the three months later, I’d still be confused why the part we skip is probably the most interesting part of the book thus far, meanwhile I got an explanation of why a girl calls her diary FUCKINGBALLSSHITASS T-Mail Jail, but you can’t at least do me the human courtesy of skipping 90 days and then giving it a rest without going another 4?
Damn this book.