Today’s late recap is brought to you by the letter I, as in Tropical Storm Isaac. This week we had the client/non-industry person challenge. As usual, one designer fell apart over the concept of having to dress a “real” woman, not a clothes hanger

model. As is not usual, this caused Heidi and the rest of the judges to say “what the fuck are you on about? Who do you think buys and wears clothing?”

Miss Gunnar Raging DramaQueen and Natasha the psycho bitch both got a little redemption arc this week, as their shrieking was toned down and they both were, well, I was going to say “charming”, but will have to go with merely “nice” to their clients.  Miss Gunnar used Mini Mico’s technique of applying bits of chiffon onto other fabric to create new fabric. It was an uninspiring mini-shift with a sorta-kinda bibby thing, but his client loved it and worked that catwalk like the rent was due and the man was banging on the front door with the eviction notice in his other hand. Miss Gunnar got lucky with her. Mini MiCo was largely invisible, as were Crunchy Granola and April Junior.

Ven Diagram, on the other hand, was a big presence on the show: abusive, insensitive and incapable of dressing his client, who was large. Ven had to point her enormousness out to her, to the room, to the confessionals, to the other designers, to her friend, and to the judges. He was horrified that she might have been all of a size 14. MizShoes was a size 14 herself, not so many years ago, and thinks that maybe his client was more of a size 18, but either way, it wasn’t necessary for him to have palpitations over this. (Edited to add, according to Terri herself, she was a whopping size 10 at the time of the shoot.)

Further, MizShoes would like to point out that Ven Diagram seems not to notice that his own profile is portly. Large. Fatty fatty two by four, can’t get through the kitchen door. And yet, there he was, going on in his moon-faced monotone, getting completely unhinged by the thought of having to dress a big girl. Dude. I’m just sayin, somebody somewhere had to cut pants with a 42 inch waist for you, but they didn’t throw themselves on the ground and bang their fists and feet in a snit over it.

Boris made another sheath dress with barely enough interest to lift it beyond being just another sheath dress, and he was once more a bridesmaid, and not the winner.

FlavioFlav got the loser edit (i.e.: was shown Skyping with his lover and their pet cat) but actually won, and deservedly so, by listening to his client. She was a film student who said she dressed to be invisible, and who would wear a dress, but only if it didn’t sexualize her. He had her get an asymmetrical hair cut, and created a dress in multiple shades of grey that was a classic New Look silhouette. Feminine, but not sexualized, she loved it: it was youthful, clean and a thoroughly re-imagined look specifically for her.

Nathan, the invisible dude who never had a minute of air time before Heidi pulled his name out of the button bag last week had as a client an “R&B Wannabe” who was channeling Snooki as her style icon. He did his best to give her a less hootchie-momma look than she wanted, but to no avail. It was too short and too shiny and looked so cheap that even Heidi found it ugly. Nathan we hardly knew ye.

Then the judges all beat up Fatty Ven Diagram for being mean and tasteless and making his client cry. If Little Harajuku Girl hadn’t left early, leaving the producers one piece of cannon fodder short, he would have been sent home, methinks. Next week? Maybe we can write a real recap, if the storm clouds stay away and the power stays on.

So last week on Project Runway, Bob’s Big Boy came back and continued to pretty much suck. Andrea and Little Harajuku Gurl had enough of this and left with varying degrees of dignity and being called quitters. MizShoes instituted a new drinking game: take a shot every time someone says “aesthetic.”  Buffi got sent home for making layers of ill-fitting, badly-tailored schmatas because we already had a winner who did that AND sported a Mohawk AND had an unplaceable British accent. 

Morning in the Atlas where, Ommigawd, now it’s getting serious and we need to keep our heads

in the game. Miss Gunnar RagingDramaQueen is whining in his nails on a black board way about something or someone, and MizShoes fast forwards past. 

Heidi comes onto the runway with The Button Bag of Doom (TM) and the designers let out a collective groan. Next, Heidi calls for NinaGarcia to help explain the challeng in a voice so shrill that the Siamese cat looked at the tv with an expression that said “really?” NinaGarcia explains the challenge: its the Marie Claire sponsorship product placement episode. The designers will have to create a “capsule collection” that is editorial and designed for a working woman fashionista. And you have no time and no money AND you’ll have to art direct and style a photo shoot of said collection, AND those photos will be judged AND will factor into the winning score. Oh joy, a group challenge. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! There will be blood. As last week’s winner, Sanjay gets to pick her first team mate, and she opts for Natasha. Rilly? Because she is wound a little tight, you know? And then begins a round of Trash Talk Confessionals as each designer claims they’d rather die than work in a team, especially a team with another contestant, because at this point in the season each of them heartily loathes all the others.

Some dude named Nathan who has never seen a minute of airtime before his button was drawn gets up and chooses Ven Diagram, who modestly tells Nathan Dude that he made the right choice. Natasha picks April Junior, Ven grabs Mini MiCo, April tags Boris, Mini MiCo names Flavio Flav, much to Bob’s Big Boy’s chagrin and prissiness. Mini MiCo explains that it isn’t personal, but Bob’s Big Boy doesn’t get along with Ven, and since Ven is the team member with taste, tailoring skills and a win, keeping Ven happy is more important than whether the guy who already got sent home once is happy. Boris grabs Crunchy Granola, and that leaves Miss Gunnar and Bob’s Big Boy. Miss Gunnar is already winding herself up into a major snit at being left on the playground until the last choice, but gets picked by Flavio because, let’s face it, nobody wants that pariah, Bob’s Big Boy, anywhere near their work table. Boy’s Big Boy takes being the last kitten in the box very poorly.

There is a 6-person team and a 5-person team. Two hundred dollars per person at Mood. One look per person per team, but the work can be split up. The 5-guys proceed logically and work as a team, except for Miss Gunnar, who is seen as the weak link in terms of skill and taste. He knows it and seethes and flounces and hisses for the remainder of the episode. He determines to do his own thing, regardless. 

Sniping. Product placement. Chaos in Team 6. Winner’s edit on Team 5. AESTHETIC! Take a shot!  Chaos at Mood. Natasha loses some fabric, and nobody goes back for it, as in seasons past, so there’s more DRAMA. More bad behavior by Miss Gunnar and  Bobs Big Boy. In the 6-man bobsled team, Natasha goes off the rails in a hail of f-bombs and behavior that prompts Boris to say that she acts like she just came in from the woods, by which MizShoes takes it that Natasha has just been called a feral child. MizShoes is just saying that she’d never want to be in a lifeboat with her.

 

AESTHETIC! AESTHETIC! Take two shots! Tim comes in for walkabout and has been hitting the judge’s crack pipe because he loves pretty much everything from both teams. Insert half an hour of smack talk, psychotic episodes, bullying and misrepresentational footage. Miss Gunnar, Natasha and Bobs Big Boy vie for the title of Fame Whore of the Week(TM). MizShoes fast forwards through to the fashion show. Joanna Coles, the Editor in Chief of Marie Claire and a woman who appreciates a bra is the guest judge.

First up is Ven’s one-shouldered, blouson top in a patterned silk chiffon and a pair of pants that MizShoes loves despite them having a sarong-type mock-wrap front/closure and despite the stated season for this collection being fall and them being resort white. And while there is no way that top would pass the corporate dress code, MizShoes is convinced she could rock those trousers, especially in a color other than white. Next is Mini MiCo doing another instance of his signature trick: bias-cutting narrow strips of a print and deploying them upon a firmer base, in this instance softening a pencil skirt and giving a little edge to a floral chiffon. Miss Gunnar sends out an atrocity of a dress that triggers a round of flopping boob jokes from Heidi and the other judges. MizShoes says the only place that could be worn to work would be if the office were under the third street light on the left at the corner of Biscayne and 79th Street, if you know what she means. 

Flavio Flav has made a cute enough color blocked dress, but there are zippers in each side seam, or the seams are too heavy, or the dress does not fit in some way because when that girl walks the runway, her be-turbanned head held high, the side seams are buckling in and out like saw teeth along her sides. Finally, Ven diagram walks a beautifully made black, sculptural top and a beautifully made white skirt that suffers from some very bad static cling. Snore. Seen this every challenge already. Boris thinks Ven is a one show monkey or, in correctly idiomatic slang, a one trick pony. 

Team Dysfunctional throws down a mixed bag of looks, starting with April Junior’s cobalt blue sheath dress with a funnel neck that looks more like a funnel cloud neck and that has a zipper that curves from one side slit up and around the hip to the center, more or less, of the back of the neck, Crunchy Granola’s gorgeous tweedy pants and ends with Boris’ color-blocked dress with interesting shoulder details (where’s Hayden Pantywaist when you need her?) and a port hole in the back for easy tramp stamp viewing. And then there is the crap that Bob’s Big Boy insisted on doing. 

The judges can’t decide and have scored a tie. There is specious discussion among the judges, and then April Junior and her wind tunnel dress win, and Miss Gunnar RagingadramaQueen and Bob’s Big Boy are the only two left on the stage, just as they were the last two picked on the playground at the beginning of this challenge. 

Bob’s Big Boy gets the boot for the second time, and staying classy to the end, leaves on a high note by telling Natasha that he flat out hates her. Good times. 

Grudgingly, MizShoes returns to the Project Runway fold. It’s not that the show has redeemed itself after the Affair of the Moldy Granny Panties, it hasn’t. In fact, if anything, giving the win to Anya was worse. And MizShoes absolutely refused to watch a single minute of the All Stars. The truth of the matter is that in the end, she couldn’t quit Heidi, NinaGarcia and Michael Kors after all. So, to recap: a couple of red shirts went home. Some dude who was all bluster and no style and who looked like Bob’s Big Boy went home. Andrea, who has a line of patterns with Vogue and is/was a college teacher of design was in a team challenge with some dude who looks and acts like Michael Costello writ small and who shall be known henceforth as Mini MiCo. They had to design a pretty dress

red carpet look for a past PR Winner, who, in the event, turned out to be the aforementioned Anya. Judging from the subsequent behavior, Andrea found being asked to design for someone who couldn’t even insert a sleeve demeaning. This led to Mini MiCo throwing her under the trite bus on the runway. Andrea found trying to defend herself on the runway from a sniveling boy even more demeaning and left the show in the middle of the night. We are now caught up.

This season Mizshoes will attempt a drinking game. Depending on how this goes, she may need to go back to the Reality Show Bingo Cards.

Boys doing hair. Kumar doesn’t like Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen. Meet Tim on Madison Ave. This is the Michael Kors challenge. Lots of brown nosing. Tim says that We Need To Talk: Andrea left in the middle of the night. Cue trash talk confessionals from designers. Trash Talk Confessional may be the name of my next imaginary band. Mini MiCo thinks that this is a slap in his face. Buffi is not amused. She was a bad example, being a teacher and all. She was a lame ass. MichaelKors says fashion’s not for sissies, as he bounces on the balls of his feet. MK defines his “woman”. That’s a first, usually he refers to his clients as his “girl.” Blah blah blah. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! (Yes, that is the drinking game: a shot every time someone trots out the A word. Good luck trying to keep up at home.)Day to night look. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! 30 minutes to be inspired, then 1.5 days and $150 bucks. Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen dismisses and dispenses a slap down. Sanjay has romantic ideas about what it’s like to work in an ad agency. Are you hosing me? Boris is working in grey. High Fashion equals black and white. Another black dress. Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen has sketched a mosaic of pot holders in drab 70’s colors.

Mood. Mini MiCo sees Louboutin shoes in a dive bar. Boris says that In soviet union, fabrics find you. Harajuku Gurl is distant and drained, he is a little glazed. Sanjay shops till the last minute, providing what has to pass for deathless drama. Trash talk about Andrea, again. Mini MiCo regrets his part in her break with reality. Little Harajuku Gurl wants to walk away from the competition, too. It makes him too sad. Love you, gotta go. Someone is crying and saying that he wants to leave, too, but he isn’t going to. Tim gathers the troops. Andrea is fine, and she is terminating her contract. But Little Harajuku Gurl interrupts Tim and says, yeah, whatever, he has to leave too, because this is the stupidest game show in the history of the galaxy.

Tim takes Little Harajuku Gurl out and the remaining designers are all pissy that some people are gone who wanted to be here. Sulky designers. Tim comes in to give everyone a pep talk. Things happen for a reason. So we’re bringing back Raoul. Puke. Bob’s Big Boy is back and VenDiagram pouts. Crunchy Granola says too bad he got aufed, but his skills weren’t all that good. Blah blah blah, here to win, I’m back bitchez, lucky ho. (MizShoes predicts that montage means he’s either the ultimate winner or he’s out again tonight.)

Tim comes back for his walkabout. Boris is working on a dark, sculptural thing with one seam. Sanjay is also working in black. Maybe it’s brown. Flavio Fav is doing something in print, and he says that his working girl is on her day off. Cheater. Natasha critiques. Tim cautions proportions. Foreshadowing? Ven Diagram is working in cashmere with a curved zipper? TIm tells Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen to be aware of his materials. Natasha has proportion issues (same old same old). Buffi needs to edit. Pink and cheetah. Mini MiCo is doing a little Chanel jacket. Sanjay calls him derivative, which, duh. He weeps about being on the bottom. Mom on the go. Tim says sad. Grunchy Granola is working in plaid seersucker and making clam diggers. Bob’s Big Boy is doing a lot of pieces. Tim tells him to focus. Oh, he’s the ADHD one this season. Tim is excited and gives them another pep talk. Buffi has a headache. The models come in. Crunchy Granola disses Flavio Fave. April Junior is doing leggins, a tank, another top, a jacket, a dress, a purse, a skirt and a few other pieces. Buffi’s sewing skills are failing her, and all she wants is to finish. April Junior is stressed.

Buffi is freakin out. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! Fabio Flav wears a turban. Bob’s Big Boy.Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen puts on his bitch panties. Wahwahwah. Ven Diagram calls out Bob’s Big Boy for being all talk no action. Mini MiCo offers black chiffon to Buffi because he thinks her pink is gaudy, which, yes, it is. They can hear Buffi rant indignant over having her taste questioned by the likes of him from the next room over. What passes for drama ensues. Tim sends in the models for product placement. Bob’s Big Boy can’t sew pants. Everyone is shocked by that development.

Buffi is sewing with unfamiliar materials and fucking up. There’s one in every season. Bob’s Big Boy is filling the holes in his pants with leather. Stress. Bob’s Big Boy is grabbing shit randomly off the accessory rack. Heidi is in leopard print. In Out In joke. Heidi gets to tell everyone that the designers who walked off the show totally sucked for leaving, and were weak and soft and unworthy of their two minutes of fame whore fun. But enough about the weak, sucky losers. Let’s put on a show!

Sanjay. Nice knit. Crunchy Granola hideous clam diggers in a mens wear style and a man’s white shirt with sequined elbow patches. Woof. Layer, layer, layer. Buffi’s coral tunic over a zebra print sheath dress. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! Bolero over very short print sheath dress. Miss Gunnar RagingDragQueen’s layers of browns and beiges and looks like bad seventies with a cutout back. Plain ochre brown dress with a cape vest in mustard. Boris has that same cutout back that all the cool kids are doing and interesting folding.

Ven Diagram does something horrible to a zipper and a lot of peach colored fabric. Bob’s Big Boy has sent out hideous crap badly styled. Natasha is wearing a storm trooper hat and sends out a total look of Haute Cold War Soviet Secretary Couture. Gunnar. Ven. Nathan (which one is he???). Crunchy Granola. April Junior. Natasha. Safe.

Sanjay: Busy woman. Heidi loves (that’s the knit with interesting material twists.) Grey. Conservative but Sexy. Haydn Pantywaist (Thanks to The Fug Girls for coining that). Whoosywhatsit Ray? Roy? Somebody who’s a designer. Blah.

Flavio Flav. Michael Kors thinks he dresses better than he dresses his model. He needs to put that into his work. NinaGarcia says, comfortable but not glamorous. Mini MiCo gets LUV from Heidi and Hayden. They love his cropped blazer. They love his styling. NinaGarcia says glamorous. MK says glamorous. Buffi tries to sell her her thing. Hayden wanted to see something in the shoulder to narrow it. (MizShoes ponders how adding crap to the shoulder is going to narrow anything, and considers that may be why Miss Pantywaist is so often in the Fug column of Fug or Fab.)  Heidi calls it cheap and hates the color choice. MK says, A belt? That’s what you think is going to sell it? MK says it looks like a hairdresser’s smock. NinaGarcia hates Buffi, her skills and her taste level and rips her a new a-hole. B’obs Big Boy shows his creation. Everyone hates it. For all the right reasons. Boris sells it and MK says it was the best made dress in the show. Too bad it was black. Heidi loves it, but it isn’t sexy enough. Hadyn Pantywaist goes on about shoulders again. NinaGarcia calls it perfect. Taste level? High. Exquisite.

Who do we love? Sanjay, Boris, Mini MiCo. AESTHETIC! Take a shot!   Effortless. Classic. Versatile. Everyone wants Sanjay to win but Heidi. NinaGarcia calls for Mini MiCo to win. Boris: NinaGarcia and MK and Whateverhernameis rant about his technical skills. He’s the one to watch. More powerful women would wear it. Purrrrrrfectly made.

Flavio Flav sends out boring dresses. They are over him. Buffi can’t dress herself, much less her model and neither can she sew. She uses her terrible color sense to cover up her inability to sew which makes her shit memorable, for all the wrong reasons. Bob’s Big Boy was too ambitious. He’s had editing problems since the beginning. He was already gone once, nudge nudge wink wink says MK.

Winners. Out. Mini MiCo, you were glamorous, you are in. Sanjay, you are the winner. Hayden Pantywaist wants to wear her dress to a red carpet event. She gets immunity. AESTHETIC! Take a shot! I just wanted to be in, and now I’m the winner. Boris can stay. Bob’s Big Boy gets to stay, but only because MK wants to be able to say I told you so when he gets sent home for the second time.

Buffi: nobody wants to wear what you put out. Flavio Flav, your stuff sucked really bad, too, but that turban you have on and the ropes around your neck give us hope tht there may be something marketable about your flavor of crazy, so you can stay. Aufsie Daisie, Buffi. Bummer. We liked Buffi. Tim tells her that she was true to herself, and yay to that, so go clean up your work space. Buffi promises to throw glitter in the air forever. Next week? Heidi HATES it.

Would someone please remind me what I did to reset the path to my image library, because I need to undo it.

The other morning, as Miz Shoes attempted to park in the station garage, she was forced to wait while the driver in front of her maneuvered a full-sized van into a space clearly marked “compact only”. A space, incidentally, which Miz Shoes considers to be her own spot, as it is bordered on the driver’s side by a wall, and the people who park on the passenger side spot always go over the line, making this a parking spot almost too narrow for even her Smart Car.

But there was the van, and the driver was adjusting his angle of approach by microns as he backed in and out wedging his behemoth into this tiny slice of asphalt. How he got out of his vehicle is a mystery, since there would not have been room to even crack the door open, much less allow for the passage of an adult human body.

Which brought us to the point of quantum physics, as Miz Shoes pondered the question: in which universe would a full-sized passenger van be considered a compact car? And how does that universe end up intersecting our own at the point of this particular tiny parking spot?

And while we are on the topic of parking spaces, why do motorcyclists insist on parking in car spots, while leaving those designated for motorcycles empty, and why are THEY not ticketed when leaving the Smart in a motorcycle space (into which it fits admirably) WILL generate a parking violation?

Well, having a company policy which states that while blogging is not, cannot be forbidden, it can be a fireable offense has certainly taken the bloom off of this particular rose. What else is there to write about except that which takes up two thirds of every one of my days? And since the RLA and I dropped cable tv to pay for the unlimited access on the i-pads, I can’t even discuss mainstream mass entertainment.

Well, I did get sucked into going to see The Hunger Games a couple of weeks ago. I’d never read the books, so didn’t have a preconceived idea of what I was in for. In the event, it was just another dystopia set in the not-too-distant future wherein the rich are exceedingly rich and the poor are exceedingly poor and the rich like to see the poor kill each other off in televised games. Donald Sutherland was convincingly evil. The secondary evil guy had an amazingly crafted beard. There were poison berries, sadistic teens and mutated wildlife. Pretty par for the course. It was visually appealing, enough. And I hated it.

I do not do well with dystopias, particularly in light of the current political situation in America, or PanEm, if you prefer. The right is circling the drain of outright fascism, the war against women is heating up to levels I have never before seen, and the majority of Americans still can’t get their heads out of Fox News’ ass long enough to notice the rather alarming shift in the gestalt. 12 Monkeys left me depressed for weeks, and I still break out in a cold sweat every time I even THINK about The Handmaid’s Tale.

Oh, I know, I can write about cats. And fashion. And food. I bet nobody’s doing any of that.