The Unbelievables: Image Tweakers

Remember a couple years back when Miley Cyrus twerked her behind into the crotch of creepy perv Robin Thicke on live TV? Remember the fallout from that in the ensuing weeks, when every day brought with it a new photo of Miley doing something outrageous and either nearly naked and/or sticking out her tongue in a bizarre way?

The papers loved it. The E! Channel thrived on it. The internet was alive with swirling rumours of Miley's latest outrageous act. And then she went and did something that sent every pap and hack and Harvey Levin wannabe into meltdown. 

She showed up to last year's VMA's with a homeless guy as her date. No, don't worry, not an old dirt-encrusted geezer, but a young man she had met through her work with a homeless shelter.

She had brought him along to accept the Video Of The Year Award in her stead, to draw attention to the problems faced by homeless youth and LBGTQ persons. Pretty durn cool.

However, the media chose to focus on the "Weeeell, lookit here! Her's datin' a homeless dude!" angle rather than the noble cause she was trying to highlight. Everyone was up in arms and most had an opinion they wanted to share. Shock! Horror! the very thought! Does he have his own cardboard box and massive bag of empty pop cans? etc.

That's when the Milester (as we call her) gave us a tinkle on the old dog and bone. How to convince the world that despite dressing slightly inappropriately and grinding butt-to-crotch with a 36-year-old leering ripoff merchant in a stripey suit whose dad used to play Mr. Seaver on the telly, she was genuinely trying to do good?

We invited her over to the Unbelievabase and, in order to make sure she was on the level and prepared to go the extra mile, we put her through her paces with a hefty dose of Unbelievinars™, covering all manner of topics from "Macrame 101" to "Wearing jumpsuits for fun and profit" and everything in between. Not only that, but a few rudimentary UnbelievaFu™ classes too. She was ready to become one of our network of moles, snitches and ass-kicking informants.

So now came the task of trying to help El Mileena* with her image problems.

So we and The Milereeno* put our heads together. We spitballed, tossed ideas around and even played word association. Finally one day, while lounging in the jacuzzi with Venus de Miley* after a particularly gruelling session of Greco-Roman MahJongg, Michael shouted excitedly.
"Eureka!!" he exclaimed. "By Jingo!! Great Scott! etc., etc."

We asked Michael for his idea, and by golly, it was good. A little rough around the edges (like Michael himself) but with a few tweaks here and there, we knew it was gonna work.

With our help, she set up the Happy Hippie Foundation, a charity which helps rally young people to fight injustice facing homeless youth, LGBTQ youth and other vulnerable populations. It's a pretty sweet deal.
You can read more about it right here - happyhippies.org

And of course, because it was so markedly different from what had gone before, the world sat up and took notice.

And hey, guess what? Miley-Molly-Mandy* is hosting this year's VMA's. We like to think that we have more than a little to do with that.

You see, we knew that underneath all that outrageous behaviour and tongue-displaying, Miley is a caring person. But she had no direction. She had good intentions, but no idea of where to push and pull. It was your very own Unbelievables that, ahem, licked her into shape.

Keep up the good work, Miley O'Shea.* Oh, and by the way, anytime you want to drop in for another game of Fless**, we're ready. 

*Yet another nickname we gave her.
** An interesting game, sort of a cross between Chess and The Highland Fling.