The new Sports Illustrated 2009 swimsuit edition is on the stands. It costs $ 5. But you don’t have to part with your sawbuck. As lucky loyal readers of Silliman on Sports, you can save your money… because we’re going to tell you, as we do yearly, what’s in it. I knooow!  Not only are we saving you money but also the 30 minutes to an hour it would have taken you to read it. You’re welcome!

    Okay! Here’s the issue in a nutshell: Lots of models are in bikinis (or less) in exotic locations lying on beaches with sand on them. Of course, I mean the sand is on the models, not the beaches. No! There is still sand on the beach. That would be ridiculous, a beach without sand. The automobile ads also have sleek sporty cars on the beach, also with sand on them. The Nissan Z is a thing of beauty. The quarterfold playing in the mud, looking sassy and gritty, is an F-150. The centerfold making your heart race is a Dodge Challenger. And you’re going to whistle at the GMC Sierra Hybrid. I didn’t know GMC made a hybrid truck. 
    Okay! To answer your questions: Yes, there are some rookie swimsuit models and, yes, they did answer a series of profile questions. The rookies are Hilary Rhoda, from Maryland, Cintia Dicker from Brazil, Ariel Meredith from Shreveport, Jessica Hart from Sydney, Lucia Dvorska from Slovakia, Kim Clouthier from Montreal, Damaris Lewis from Brooklyn and Esti Ginsberg from Tel Aviv.
   
Attractively, these girls range from knockout to knockout… 1st round knockout, uppercut knockout, knee-buckling knockout, brain-damaging knockout, children-born-dizzy knockout. They all answer that real guys have a shot with them AND that modeling is really, really, really hard. Especially the answering questions part. Some were asked who they’d hook up if they could play matchmaker for a day.  Lucia Dvorska offered up Madonna and Michael Jackson. Jessica Hart had the idea of hooking up power women Ellen DeGeneres and Oprah. Here’s her quote: “That’d be a nice couple or maybe Portia de Rossi and Jennifer Aniston.” Jessica Hart looks nothing like a home wrecker, but, er, she may have done a little de-linking in her matchmaking.  
     
    Three tennis players, with legs stretching into the next county, model suits. Two are Russians, one a French lady. One of the Russians is married to basketball player Andrei Kirilenko. Their swimsuits ran between $ 140 and $ 178. If you’re keeping score, that’s $ 5 per square inch of coverage. S.I. calls this section “Volley of the Dolls.” Get it? You can say these tennis gals serve up nice aces… and their deuces aren’t bad, either. If you are a tennis fan you may have spent 20-30 minutes looking at this section. Look at the time I saved you. You’re welcome… again!

    S.I. went to the Spice Islands to produce their painted body suit sections (pages 112-119) and the locale was appropriately named, we guess. We never found out what kind of spices they grow on the Spice Islands! We looked everywhere… in the magazine. Possibly paprika, we’re thinking? Oregano? We even looked at the painted body suits, thinking there might be clues. We scoured the suit painted in Mayan language, which by the way, for blind fans is available in braille. Still we were looking for the spices but could not find the clues… even with a huge magnifying glass. Marjoram? Cumin? One of the models had the Caribbean ocean painted on her and even when we, with an even bigger magnifier, honed in on Jamaica we couldn’t find any clues on the spices. I knew you wanted to know. You don’t know how hard we tried. Sorry.
    The back page has a really cute ad featuring the scintillating M & M, Ms. Green. Hopefully you can catch it by going to www.si.com/swimvideo or youtube.com/siswimsuit. Happier, now?