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Bread and Project Runway
Jul. 14th, 2006 08:25 amHey, I'm shallow, I live in a bubble.
July 12, 2006 will be remembered by future historians – a ragtaggle crew living in the last palm tree oasis standing on Antarctica – as the Day World War III started.
But for me, it was the day the third season of Project Runway finally hit the airwaves!!!
I must say my life is so rich and full I would have forgotten all about it had my pal Lucius not left me repeated messages on every phone line remotely connected with me reminding. Lucius, who writes gritty novels with titles like Life After Wartime and whose idea of haute mode is a pair of painter overalls with a grinning gorilla logo, is a total Project Runway ho and it is our custom to sit in our respective dens (five hundred miles apart), poisons of choice at hand – mine being Trader Joe's cayenne-pepper-covered mangoes and cigarettes – maintaining phone contact and a constant stream of snide commentary while watching the show.
Nor did the first episode disappoint.
Though Heidi, perhaps, is a little too perky this season. She is best as Hitler's dream woman, the icy Aryan goddess with the strange, barking accent and the air kiss – auf wiedersehen – more lethal than any Mafia Don's embrace. When she jokes and mugs and pouts adorably, it breaks the spell.
Also I'm fairly certain that Michael Kors must hire someone to write his put-downs. No one whose own designs are so hideous could achieve that level of effortless insult without hired help.
Standout contestants this season include
• Malan, the disturbing Malaysian guy
• Michael, Mr. Hip-Hop
• The gorgeous blonde Alison who looks like a hybrid of Carroll Baker and Jessica Lange at their youngest and most dewy
• Mrs. Architect with the strange orange hair
• Goofy Vincent who's straight out of a Robert Crumb comic and who you just know is gonna have the most entertaining breakdown ever! (will he grab a pair of shears and disembowel himself right in front of your eyes?)
• Keith, who looks just like Lawrence Harvey in the original Manchurian Candidate except Lawrence Harvey was warmer and fuzzier
• Robert, this year's Mr. Barbie
Parenthetically (except that I'm not using parentheses) I must note that every season Project Runway anoints one designer from the House of Mattel and this is the designer who shows great early promise but eventually melts down because a designer's relationship with his human model – alas! – is so much more tenuous than his relationship with the eternal Barbie. Last season we were on pins and needles – one of Heidi's bad scriptwriters' jokes – as Nick's abandonment issues led to crash and burn. This season the dramatic tension will play out differently but it will play out! Robert cannot possibly win.
My money is on Mr. Hip-Hop who I thought had the best audition strategy: he'd done the second season challenges and brought them in with his portfolio. He also did the best dress for the first challenge – a gown made entirely out of muslin coffee filters. Loved it!
Barbie Robert did the second best dress – a little baby doll number with a back that looked completely different from the front. Stunning aesthetic. Perfect for a two-faced minor celebrity gliding down the red carpet.
The winning dress by Mr. Manchurian Candidate left me eh. It was a dress. Sure, if I was thirty years younger and thirty pounds lighter, I would have worn it. But it showed absolutely no creativity in terms of the materials available. It was a bed sheet. Anybody can sew a dress from a bed sheet.
I can't even remember what Malan's dress looked like; I was too creeped out by hearing his laugh. NPR recently aired a story on the psychoacoustics of chilling sounds, why certain noises – fingernails on a blackboard is the classic – make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Turns out that they resonate at the same frequency as some kind of threatening noise gorillas make. There's only one human being on the face of the planet who can make that noise – and that's Malan when he laughs! I'm telling you, he's a Secret Weapon. Record that laugh, blast it at a high decibel level throughout Beirut, Gaza, Damascus, Baghdad and whimpering insurgents will emerge from their hidey-holes begging for a vacation on Guatanamo Bay.
Future historians will still hole up in Antarctica. That's because in the end global warming is a bigger issue than World War III.
July 12, 2006 will be remembered by future historians – a ragtaggle crew living in the last palm tree oasis standing on Antarctica – as the Day World War III started.
But for me, it was the day the third season of Project Runway finally hit the airwaves!!!
I must say my life is so rich and full I would have forgotten all about it had my pal Lucius not left me repeated messages on every phone line remotely connected with me reminding. Lucius, who writes gritty novels with titles like Life After Wartime and whose idea of haute mode is a pair of painter overalls with a grinning gorilla logo, is a total Project Runway ho and it is our custom to sit in our respective dens (five hundred miles apart), poisons of choice at hand – mine being Trader Joe's cayenne-pepper-covered mangoes and cigarettes – maintaining phone contact and a constant stream of snide commentary while watching the show.
Nor did the first episode disappoint.
Though Heidi, perhaps, is a little too perky this season. She is best as Hitler's dream woman, the icy Aryan goddess with the strange, barking accent and the air kiss – auf wiedersehen – more lethal than any Mafia Don's embrace. When she jokes and mugs and pouts adorably, it breaks the spell.
Also I'm fairly certain that Michael Kors must hire someone to write his put-downs. No one whose own designs are so hideous could achieve that level of effortless insult without hired help.
Standout contestants this season include
• Malan, the disturbing Malaysian guy
• Michael, Mr. Hip-Hop
• The gorgeous blonde Alison who looks like a hybrid of Carroll Baker and Jessica Lange at their youngest and most dewy
• Mrs. Architect with the strange orange hair
• Goofy Vincent who's straight out of a Robert Crumb comic and who you just know is gonna have the most entertaining breakdown ever! (will he grab a pair of shears and disembowel himself right in front of your eyes?)
• Keith, who looks just like Lawrence Harvey in the original Manchurian Candidate except Lawrence Harvey was warmer and fuzzier
• Robert, this year's Mr. Barbie
Parenthetically (except that I'm not using parentheses) I must note that every season Project Runway anoints one designer from the House of Mattel and this is the designer who shows great early promise but eventually melts down because a designer's relationship with his human model – alas! – is so much more tenuous than his relationship with the eternal Barbie. Last season we were on pins and needles – one of Heidi's bad scriptwriters' jokes – as Nick's abandonment issues led to crash and burn. This season the dramatic tension will play out differently but it will play out! Robert cannot possibly win.
My money is on Mr. Hip-Hop who I thought had the best audition strategy: he'd done the second season challenges and brought them in with his portfolio. He also did the best dress for the first challenge – a gown made entirely out of muslin coffee filters. Loved it!
Barbie Robert did the second best dress – a little baby doll number with a back that looked completely different from the front. Stunning aesthetic. Perfect for a two-faced minor celebrity gliding down the red carpet.
The winning dress by Mr. Manchurian Candidate left me eh. It was a dress. Sure, if I was thirty years younger and thirty pounds lighter, I would have worn it. But it showed absolutely no creativity in terms of the materials available. It was a bed sheet. Anybody can sew a dress from a bed sheet.
I can't even remember what Malan's dress looked like; I was too creeped out by hearing his laugh. NPR recently aired a story on the psychoacoustics of chilling sounds, why certain noises – fingernails on a blackboard is the classic – make the hairs on the back of your neck stand up. Turns out that they resonate at the same frequency as some kind of threatening noise gorillas make. There's only one human being on the face of the planet who can make that noise – and that's Malan when he laughs! I'm telling you, he's a Secret Weapon. Record that laugh, blast it at a high decibel level throughout Beirut, Gaza, Damascus, Baghdad and whimpering insurgents will emerge from their hidey-holes begging for a vacation on Guatanamo Bay.
Future historians will still hole up in Antarctica. That's because in the end global warming is a bigger issue than World War III.
