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Those jugs look familiar

There’s a news item that’s linked off of Drudge about a woman who is having her gigantic breast implants removed.

Sheyla Hershey’s fight to save her M cup breast implants came to an end Thursday, as she underwent surgery in Richmond, Tex., to have them removed…

We noticed the story was from the Fox affiliate in Houston. A red flag went up. Why did this woman seem familiar?

Sheyla Hershey? Hmmm… more like Sheyla Almeida. That’s what her name was in May of 2008 when we mentioned her in the pages of this magazine.

From our coverage of Last Comic Standing, Season 6, Episode 1, on May 30, 2008:

They spent forty minutes in Houston. And they wasted about 8 per cent of that on Sheyla Almeida, this year’s Triana Gamaza. (We only mention her here because we know that folks will be searching for her. Or they’ll be searching for “big tits houston.” Either way, they’ll end up here.) We recall seeing a video package on Almeida about three weeks ago on Fox News. (We assume it was carried on a number of newscasts throughout the land.) Her publicist managed to get her plenty of coverage when she announced that she was going to enlarge her already large breasts even further. That same publicist managed to get her on NBC in prime time.

Welcome Google searchers far and wide!

“I don’t think I’m ready for comedy, because I’m a real actress,” she said at what we hope was the very last 8 seconds of her standup career.

For those of you who think that Season 7 of Last Comic Standing wasn’t a significant improvement over previous seasons of the show, we present Sheyla Almeida/Hershey as a reminder of just how far off track the show had wandered. A woman “who was trying to achieve fame for having the largest breasts in the world” was somehow able to “charm” the producers of the show into wasting valuable time on her instead of showcasing up and coming Houston comedians.

Notice that nowhere in today’s coverage of Hershey/Almeida’s plight is it mentioned that she is a standup comic. That’s because she never was. (And, of course, the folks at LCS back in 2008 probably knew this.)