Recaps

Well, last night was the BIG FINALE.

There were few surprises, I guess. Santino had kind of shown he was creative and driven but also crazy and yet he came out with a nice collection of dresses, which prompted judges to say he went "safe" and dismissed him.

Now between Daniel and Chloe, the contest was about young, inexperienced but versitile versus business-savvy but "one note".

I was pretty happy that Chloe won. Her dresses on the runway looked better than the preview we got last week, which seemed like she had weird poufy dresses that would be totally unflattering. In reality, her dresses had nice lines and forms. Daniel's outfits were casual and supposed to be modern and cute but I was left a little wanting, especially since he had wowed the judges before with very creative styles like his flower-inspired dress or the actual dress made from flowers.

I was dissappointed by Santino. He did go safe. I guess he knew he needed to show the judges he could rein it in but he ended up reining it in far too much. I liked his clothes, though. Last year, I liked third-place winner Wendy's clothes too. I knew they were not special enough to be winners but they were pretty and wearable. Santino has shown he can succeed in fashion so I guess we don't have to worry too much about him.

Last night, a new cycle of America's Next Top Model began. There was controversy in the form of self-described "uber-conservative" Dani, who at the tender age of 20 was already spewing enough racially-insensitive and downright derogatory remarks to make any white supremacist proud. Unfortunately, she threw in the whole, "I'm a Christian and I follow the Bible" banner up before declaring she didn't like gay people. Which of course prompted the question, "why work in the gayest industry in the world, then?" The panel (Jay Manuel, "Miss Jay", and Tyra) asked the same question. She said in her private interview, "They acted like I had never been around gay people. I'm in cheerleading!" which I'm not sure what that meant but it was kind of funny.

Well, Miss Jay wanted to give her a chance because he liked her body but upon viewing their first picture she was declared "a PTA mom" and given the heave-ho. Good! I couldn't stand another annoying supposed Christian on this show giving us all a bad name.

The show actually seems to be wavering between wanting to springboard women of color like the many black beauties and the Latina (and Asian) but also wanting to show its support for good-old-fashioned blondeness. There are quite a few of them in the top 12. I'm sort of rooting for one but I love Nnena, a Nigerian woman of exquisite beauty. We'll see!

Stay tuned. Also, stay tuned for random crap about my life...