Reality Bites

America's Next Top Model hosts its New York City open casting call right next to my apartment. The first time this happened in early September, there was literally a line of girls 5 or 6 wide stretching completely around a midtown Manhattan block from 9 am (I wasn't awake at 9 am, but Jackie was) until 4 pm. At 4, they closed the doors, and a bunch of girls didn't get in, leaving a scattered mess of plain-looking girls weeping and wailing all over their layers of makeup. Justin Timberlake and Usher could have shown up singing duets to raise money to save cute puppies while giving out Pinkberry and new cell phones and not gotten the kind of teenage girl interest I saw that day.

Whenever I tell this story, some people react as though some awesome fortune was gifted to me - models are swarming my apartment building! I will state this clearly - No. I used to watch ridiculously awful singers on American Idol, and assume that they only wanted to get on TV, and were just kidding around - after all, no one that bad would think they had a shot, right? Well, I'm not so sure anymore. I realize America's Next Top Model probably isn't prestigious in the modelling world, but come on, people. If you spend hours getting ready, doing your hair and makeup, choosing an outfit - and you STILL aren't attractive - maybe you should save yourself the 9 hours in line in those lovely shoes you have on. Not everyone was meant to be a model. Some people are meant to be good at Scrabble, or inorganic chemistry. Let's all try to find the niche that works best for us, okay?

I later learned that there was a minimum height requirement of 5 feet 7 inches. At least 65% of the girls in line failed that already. I guess models don't have to be hot, they can just be skinny and interesting looking - but I couldn't really find anyone hot or anyone interesting looking. Even ugly-interesting - I couldn't even find ugly people who were compellingly ugly.

I bring this up because a couple weekends ago, they had another open casting call, only this time, girls started camping out at midnight. The huddled masses in the dark were confusing to Dan, who said "Oh they're trying out to be models? I thought that was just a line of bums, and I was like, why are all these bums congregating here?" For whatever reason, there were fewer girls at this casting call, and the potential for "models" in this group was even correspondingly worse. They left McDonald's and Baskin Robbins and Wendy's bags and wrappers all over the street. Evidently they did not get the memo: models should only be selecting from four food groups: caffeine, alcohol, cocaine and attention.

Anyways, if you're a girl taller than 5'7", and you've always wanted to audition for America's Next Top Model but didn't because you assumed the competition was too tough, trust me, you should audition. And if you must eat a bunch of Chicken Nuggets while you wait, please throw away the boxes. Models don't litter.