...I was just speaking to one of my friends about Tyra's next top model and he predicted that the Nigerian girl would win. She seems to be the front runner on everybody's list and she’s as cool as a cucumber, yet I wonder. I wonder because of what happened two seasons ago. Yaya was also everybody’s number one for the title. She won the vote every week, but she still ended up in second place.

This season has a strong batch of girls and I also like the tallest blond full-lipped beauty. But enough about the finalists for a moment, we could find such beauty on any street in our fair city. Let’s talk about the show itself. There's going to be a whole lot of drama this season with race as one of the favorite topics again. Hey, what else keeps our little television world going around besides these controversial topics? This is America, remember? Besides, no one has surfaced yet as an obvious lesbian to take the spotlight and make the issue become one of sexuality.

Anyway, the verdict’s in, so here’s my analysis of the first episode: interesting. It is the one word that I could use to sum it up. We’ve already had the bait and jerk bit of nudity that is required to make good TV in America. We’ve had the skin and bikinis on primetime TV and I love the part with the hundred-and-one girls naked in the swimming pool. But hey, I digress.

Let’s gossip about of the girls. First up, the Asian chick who clip-clopped her way in front of the judges in all her glory and soon became a world of paradoxes. She made me slide a little lower in my chair in embarrassment as I watch the show with my ‘Caucasian’ friends after her fifteen-minutes-of-fame performance. One was reminded that black people are not the only ones with fucked-up issues about race in this country. Indeed our definition of ‘race’ itself is challenged in this article. Anyway, I’m getting ahead of myself.

I loved it when Miss Korea declared that her reason for joining the competition was that ' didn't think there were enough Asian noodles (sp) out there and so she wanted to represent'. Yeah, I applaud you sis! Go for it! Go for it! Knock em dead! Two seconds later all that enthusiasm came to a screeching halt as she asserted that she didn't like Asian men because of their size. She claimed that they were generally much smaller than she. We should have had a drum roll or some sort of sound effect here as my bottom jaw hit the floor. She certainly blew my bubbles. Did she redeem herself enough at the end when she frantically yelled, 'I love Asian men! I love Asian men'? Bruce Lee must be turning in his bloody grave.

But enough said. Enter miss bi-racial (from NY?) with her spin on the race issue. She boasted that she was the only gal on her block when she was growing up with 'good hair'. Her mother, or some s!@#$ like that was 'white'. I found it absolutely hilarious that she opened with this statement in light of the fact that two of the three judges were of the 'unfortunate' nappy-headed extraction. I don’t mean the white/biracial-ness, but the hair issue. When Miss J asked her to explain the 'good-hair/nappy hair' thingy, she fumbled all over the place. She got bent out of shape trying to explain her foolhardiness. I would pay a million bucks if Reese Wither…er, the gal who won best actress at the Academy awards this year, could capture that stupid 'you-know-what-I-mean’ expression that Miss Good-hair wore on her face: priceless. Now we get to the struggle and the parting blow. Tyra and ‘J’, Miss J that is, just stared right back at her after this piece of insubordination, their blank expressions speaking volumes. Their eyes seem to say in the largest capitals - ‘NO WE DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU'RE TALKING ABOUT MISS GHET-HOE – alarmed that anyone dared to air our dirty linen in public. Those two twin saucers reflected the awes and terrors of our great ancestors who built the pyramids as fancy took their descendants back to the not-so-distant past of the beauty salon where moments before they’d spent literally hours with the madam as she applied the scorching relaxer or the knitting needle to their scalps while she tried to straighten out the kinks. Nefertari and Nefertiti now got the opportunity to unleash all their pent up passions. All the difficulty in processing their dread-ful locks came to the fore as this mixed-raced child from downtown Brooklyn made a mockery of their efforts. Of course she got the ax. Well, well, enough about Miss ‘not-so-kinky-hair who was afforded the opportunity to display her ignorance on public TV and took it like a thirst perishing man who knows the well from which he drinks is poisoned yet sips its sweet draughts anyway. Was it Bronte who’d made a statement like this? Anyway, some people were either never potty trained or they just never learned to keep their s!@#$ at home.

We now present to you Miss Latina! She of the Alien race, who claimed that she could be a lizard - well, not in those exact words – she said something to the effect that she could be white one day, Asian the next, and black the next; in other words - a chameleon. Shouldn’t she be advertising for Gaico? La de da man, my nieces and nephews, Derek Jeter and all the other yellow-skinned black people could go crashing through the glass ceiling whenever they want to just for pure mischief. They could get up one morning, decide what color they wanted to wear, daub on some make-up, then stroll right out into the street - a new man, so to speak. How nice. I’ll try that on October 31st and see how it works. Am I being too cynical here? Lemme just wish her a good luck and er...a good luck.

Last, but by no means least, I present to you, Miss Tex-azz – The republican-white-gal-from-down-yonder-who-thinks-that-blacks-should-be-allowed-but-only-in-the-smallest-doses. One would think she was talking about some sort of treatment. She's been watching too many sitcoms on American TV. She’s a bombshell, alright, just waiting to explode. Let’s not give her any power please. Remember the story of Adolph H. Everybody blames his f!@#$%-up upbringing on his poor papa alone while his mom’s reputation goes completely unscathed. Well, er…this blue-eyed, blue blooded ring-a-ling of the South is not going to ruin my playboy fantasy; not if I can help it.

So there you have it, a nice cross section of America's finest.

I ask myself why we aren’t the ones celebrating our black- or yellowness? Where's Yaya when you need her, damn it! Yaya!! Yaya? Where's Yaya?

On a serious note though, who am I to criticize? I await the next episode with baited breadth.