Random Notes

There are hundreds of pics online for the 2011 swimsuit issue. I’ve only scratched the surface. I downloaded all the painted rookies first, then I moved on to Kenza, to confirm that I was in fact obsessed with her.

Like last year, I am saving Jessica Gomes for dessert.Okay, one little taste.• • •It will take me a while for me to get to her, though. Sometime on Thursday, SI.com changed the way the photos are labeled, from clearly named and numbered titles to random codes. For example, Thursday morning, this luscious picture of Kate Upton was labeled “11_kate-upton-body-paint_23.jpg”:…and you could find it at http://i.cdn.turner.com/si/pr/subs/swimsuit/images/11_kate-upton-body-paint_23.jpg.

But by Thursday evening, that URL led you to this graphic:…and the photo of Kate is labeled “qRk8iOaz3NH2EA.jpg.”

My guess is that there are two reasons: 1) To disrupt all the hotlinking that must have sprouted up in the hours after the site launch, and 2) to make it a bit harder to skip along through the files and download all the pics (without being exposed to the ads). No longer can you just change the URL from “11_kate-upton-body-paint_23.jpg” to “11_kate-upton-body-paint_24.jpg.”

Well, by “you” I mean “I.” There’s probably some easy way of downloading all the pics en masse. I’m not very savvy.• • •Paulina Porizkova has a column up at HuffPo in which she casually dispels the personalities (e.g. the “sexpot,” the “surfer girl,” the “elegant beauty”) we are liable to project onto the paper dolls in the magazines:

The sexpot may be as sweet and bland as baby cereal, the sporty sunny girl is a heavy smoker and the lady swears like a truck driver.

So maybe Daniella is not the sweet and cheerful gal pal I see in her photos. Maybe Kenza is not the brainy coffeehouse wallflower. And maybe Paulina does not control the sun.• • •SI has a contest where you can vote for a model to appear in 2012. And a site called Super Booyah offers some suggestions for 2012’s cover girl. (I don’t want to link directly to it, as it opens up a popup ad I don’t like the look of. But SI links to it here.) It makes sense to start planning now, since according to the Mayans it will be the last swimsuit issue. (Maybe they’ll shoot at the Yucatán Peninsula!)• • •It recently occurred to me that, barring the end of the world, I’ll see the 100th anniversary swimsuit issue if I live to 90. It will probably arrive in the form of digital contact lenses, and it will feature clones harvested from the DNA of favorite models from the magazine's history. Cheryl and Elle and Tyra and Brooklyn, frolicking on the same beach, each of them a perfect 23 years old!

That’s the utopian version anyway. Then there’s the dystopian version.• • •Obama may be the first sitting president to appear in a swimsuit issue.If you can pull your eyes past Kenza, he’s there, holding a flag and a … fried pickle? No idea.• • •Happy 45th, Cindy.