The fact that the Victoria’s Secret Fashion Show would be taped in Los Angeles for the first time was a big deal, because local TV-news directors generally have a hard time justifying featuring semi-nude women in their newscasts (they have a hard time justifying it; I’m not saying they don't find reasons for doing it anyway). But this event provided them a positive boon of angles, not the least of which was this press release:

VICTORIA’S SECRET MODELS WILL ARRIVE ON PRIVATE JET FROM NEW YORK AT BURBANK’S BOB HOPE AIRPORT

Featuring this tantalizing detail:

“The jet will be stocked with custom pillows and blankets as well as a luxurious travel kit from Victoria’s Secret Beauty that will include a Supermodel Spotlight Lip Gloss, Sexy Little Mints, and a Sexy Little Things Wake Me With a Kiss Sleep Mask.�

Your Mayor does not go to airports unless he’s actually traveling or his bomb-sniffing dog Horace is recruited by the Department of Homeland Security. So I missed the tarmac event, though I was entreated to participate in Thursday’s backstage “hair and makeup� session involving the models at Hollywood’s appropriately named Renaissance Hotel. Amongst the models’ names participating: Oluchi, Doutzen, Jeisa, Flavia, Selita, Ajuma, Agronomy and Calumny. From their names alone, one can tell that these women were clearly no American Apparel trollops; a visual inspection confirmed this: They had all clearly been recently washed.

Turns out it was a busy day for the Renaissance. On the left side of the hall of the hotel’s mezzanine, there was a ballroom in which a bunch of Victoria’s Secret models were having their hair and makeup done while prancing about in silk fuchsia robes. On the right side of the hall, conventioneers assembled from the National Association of Episcopal Schools.

So while Victoria’s Secret’s minions were selling their talking points – that their new products were touting “a ‘sexy baby doll’ vibe – sweet with a hint of naughty, characterized by pink and purple makeup shades and voluptuous, flowing hair,� clothing that was “very sexy yet wearable … for this season’s many holiday parties� and bore “sexy, provocative shade names (like Yes! Wet and Sultry)� the Episcopalians across the way could only sell their religious textbooks without use of the word "sexy," on the basis of a tagline both sturdy and poetic: “Wisdom’s Branches are Glorious and Graceful.�

On Thursday morning, I wandered, ill-advisedly, into a backstage makeup-and-hair event, essentially a cattle-call for lechery created mainly for photographers and TV lite-news cameras, and decidedly not for print journalists. TV reporters asked such probing questions as how the models prepared to walk up and down a catwalk while the women were being primped to within an inch of their lives; every millimeter of their faces were being spackled, every errant eyebrow hair was being tweezed, every tattooed ankle was being lovingly massaged. (One read a volume of Voltaire, but one suspects she did so only to elicit the attention of photographers.)

Since security was tight – everyone in sight had to bear a computer-coded ID card and just before the taping, bomb- or something-sniffing dogs rooted through the backpacks of camera crews; Hollywood and Highland was the second-most secure place in America on Thursday after the White House (if women couldn’t parade about semi-nude, then the terrorists had won). Soon, I was grateful merely that I wasn’t being treated like a UCLA student without his ID.

Posters in the ballroom touting the industry’s new product boasted the following words: “Pleasure me … Wet … Tease … Slow Burn .. Don’t Stop … G … Tempt … Minx … Between the Sheets … Frisky Urgency …� and so on.

Before the “Victoria’s Secret� show began at the Kodak Theatre, Pamela Anderson – whose breasts are the equivalent of all the Victoria’s Secret models put together – appeared at the Virgin Megastore next door touting “Baywatch� DVDs while store employees grimly bullied tourists with cell phone cameras. If she was trying to steal the fashion show’s fire, she failed.

At the Kodak, a 50-foot-tall light bank spells out the word “SEXY.� The word “SEXY� appears on event tickets no fewer than 70 times. Light bulbs also united to form, as if something in their DNA had made their behavior ancient and manifest, the words “VERY SEXY,� and the mirrors into which the models gazed included the legend “VERY SEXY MAKEUP.� At a certain point, one almost feels they’re protesting too much.

The Thursday-night taping (attended, inevitably, by Paris Hilton and Nicole Richie) opened with a performance by Justin Timberlake, whose tireless, selfless and unrelenting efforts in “bringing sexy back� has put him in the frontrunner status for next year’s Nobel Peace Prize. (Though “Access Hollywood� might argue, “‘Sexy’s never been gone,� their factual sourcing will be found to be direly wanting.)

So: The fashion show proceeds. Large, swooping wings with all manner of feathers and finery are a curious part of many of the outfits on display (one set looks like the model has a Christmas tree strapped to her back), but if the models find this as silly as I do, they don’t let on. The models have a most assertive way of striding on the catwalk, kicking their legs out and smacking their stilettos on the runway like they’re stomping on cockroaches.

One model is clad in a “Chrome-plated metal waste cincher with bolt detail� and “matching panty.� And she’s wearing something around her shoulders that looks like an inflatable kids’ swimming pool. And this outfit is not part of the collection decreed “Coquettish Fetish.�

Other wares featured: “Chrome-plated Very Sexy embroidered push-up without padding balconet with Swarovski Crystal embellishment� (basically, it looked like the model was wearing mirrors on her abs). “Angels Secret Embrace push-up with Chantal Thomass playing card cushion appliqué� (several pieces featured hearts/spades/diamonds/clubs, which, really, only a Gamblers Anonymous habitué would find “sexy�). “Angel Air flotation shrug� (honest – one woman had a yellow flotation device provided by jetliners in the event of a crash, only here transformed into a piece of wardrobe; as Laurie Anderson once said, “We are all going down�). “Grograin and tulle popcorn bustier with popcorn and Swarovski Crystal detail,� “Gingham taffeta Homecoming Queen ‘gown’� and “Graduation cap and gown� (these were from the collection simply and no doubt innocently named “Pink;� which mainly included outfits that would appeal only to those most likely to turn up on an episode of NBC’s “Dateline’s� “To Catch a Predator�).

As if in atonement, a choir performs for the presentation of the final collection, “Glacial Goddess,� which finds one model bedecked in an “Intimissimi mesh demi with rhinestone embellishment, Matching panty, Ostrich, marabou and mylar star cape� and “Manik Mercian body pieces.� As confetti snow descends upon the audience, the choir insists that one day “We’ll live in harmony� but then, per Mr. Timberlake, implores us to “Put your sexy on� before the models stomp offstage one last time and into the night.