Wow. What a rotten episode last night was, and only partly because my boy Vinny-the-Loon got sent home. Not that he didn't deserve it, of course. I mean, if couture means hand made, I don't think they mean hand-glued. And why, oh why, oh why did he listen to the voice that told him to put a beige hopsack flower in the middle of the back?

There was plenty in the margins, as it were, to keep me amused: Laura's hand-printed sign that warned "Fleur Champs [sic] making session in progress", the scene of Vincent, buried under a pile of blankets, calling Jeffrey a fuck (high point of the night, IMO), any of the footage of Paris, although why the editors felt the need to use the same bilious green and yellow filters that they use for New York City on the City of Light, I will never know, and the mystery woman on the barge who had a huge tribal tat on her forearm.

But the challenge, to make a couture dress in two days, was patently ridiculous. The footage of Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo cackling wildly about being allowed, nay ordered to make a couture dress was unnecessary and insane. Equally unnecessary was all the footage of Jeffrey trash talking all the other designers and their work.

May I interupt myself at this juncture to say how much I loathe that hack, that creature, that monstrosity? And the fact that he's being given a winner's redemption arc is making me toss my Tangerine Martinis. He doesn't deserve it!

Anyway. They get the challenge and they go shopping in a Parisian fabric store. Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo buys two variations of Ronald McDonald yellow and orange and black plaid. In cotton. Uli buys a dove grey/lavender solid. Kayne buys golden brown ombre, gold foil mesh, brown velvet ribbons, gold lace. Laura buys a black wool knit and a lot of white organdy. Vinny buys gold/ivory brocade and ivory satin. Michael buys blue something, I couldn't tell what kind of fabric exactly. Silk, probably, but not a charmeuse and not anything as nubbly and stiff as a dupioni.

Another aside here: color response and psychology. Yellow is cheap. Orange is cheap. The more pure the color, the simpler it is to describe, the more it appeals to the unintellectual, lower-income masses. Think about it. McDonald's and Burger King use a lot of yellow and orange and bright, pure blue. Simple colors for the kinds of things that you buy with pocket change. Kayne and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo used yellow or variations thereof.

The more complex the color, the more words it takes to describe it, the more educated and wealthy the person that color appeals to. Ralph Lauren? Deep, blood reds, dark wine-bottle greens. The only fabric that came close to that kind of complexity was Uli's greyish-lavenderish chiffon.

Black and navy blue are power colors. Authority colors. Judges wear black robes. Police wear navy blue uniforms. Laura's maid's uniform YSL... was it YSL?? It was some old respected designer or another... rip-off was black and white. Very dramatic, I thought. I also thought it looked like couture, and was striking in its simplicity. Elegant, even. Unfortunately for all concerned, it traveled back to New York about as well as Angela's outfit traveled to Paris, which is to say, not at all well.

Blue is the most popular color in the spectrum. More people list blue as their favorite color than any other. Blue is the color of the sky, it is the color of water and it is the color of the Virgin Mary. It is calming and peaceful and nobody doesn't like it. It's the color that Michael used.

And then there is the non-color of sand and nothingness that Vincent used. Let's face it. I love(d) Vincent. I GOT Vincent. I respected Vincent... don't ask me why. But this week? He deserved to go. We got some footage of him, and some interviews from the other designers revealing that Vincent did the Daniel Franco shuffle. Bad. Very, very bad. We saw him being snarky. Not so bad, considering the jerky shit Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo says or said: specifically the shit about who cares if Kayne gets sent home or hurt.

Vincent glued his dress together. 'Nuff said about that. He also had to be the smarmiest ass-kisser ever, even more so than Satan-ino licking the toes of Nicky Hilton, when he was sucking up (and is there a stronger description that I can use?) to Catherine Malandrino... and what's up with that bitch, too? I mean, she savaged Angela last week, told her she was just from another planet, and then hires her to work her (Catherine's) New York Fashion Week show? (Makes derisive French noise.) I don't get it.

So. They all make pretty unimpressive dresses. They're nice, but not great. They get their French models and they head off to a barge on the Seine for their runway/party. Somebody throws eggs at them while they are walking, and Michael's dress gets spattered. This whole thing is left unresolved. Who threw them? Why? (Oh, well, let's see: cameras, Americans, beautiful people hoofing it along the Rue? Can't imagine) Were there any repercussions?

The models walk, and walk like real models, something that Kayne proceeds to gush to the models about in another piece of footage that should have been left on the cutting room floor. Can you say obsequious?

Catherine scores the dresses, they continue their par-tay, they fly home to NYC, they re-fit the dresses for the New York models and they walk again. Richard Fucking Tyler is the guest judge, and although he is a FAB-ulous designer and all, boyfriend needs to learn how to shampoo-rinse-repeat. GAH! His hair was as greasy and stringy and nasty as the Great Satan-ino's. And how awful was this episode that I have had to invoke his name twice? Once more and he'll show up, Beetlejuice-like.

And before I do the dress-by-dress, let me say that I thought they ALL were pretty uninspired and unattractive.

Kayne's corset top has one very interesting detail: the back lacing is asymetrical. The gold mesh, with the gold lace with the beading and the brown velvet ribbon over the boning: it's all just too much. Nina Garcia invokes the dreaded "The taste level just is not there." Michael Kors loves the ombre skirt and notes that you don't even see it with all the other crap heaped on top.

You all know that I love me some excess. In fact, I think I used to have a t-shirt that said "Wretched Excess is Just About Enough". But in all honesty, Kors is right. It IS just too much of everything, except taste and restraint. There isn't a hint of either of those two things in sight.

Uli has made the Same Fucking Dress. Again. Except in one color and with beaded lace on the halter top. For some reason, this has the judges just pissing themselves over it. The oohs, the aaahs. "I don't see her wearing flip-flops with this!" coos Michael? Nina? Heidi? One of them, I don't have TIVO, and it doesn't really matter. One of them.

Vincent's dress is awful and I don't want to talk about it. Nina points out that it would have looked better backwards, and what more is there to say than that, really?

Laura's dress gets slammed for being derivative, stark, somber and looking like a French maid. The judges attacked her collar saying that it could have been more alive, and it was... in Paris. Maybe if she'd stuffed some tissue between the layers of organdy?

Michael's dress is a serious piece of architecture, and he is decidedly unhappy with the workmanship. He has (for the very first time, he confides to the camera) done ruching. A lot of ruching. An entire top worth of it, and he is not at all pleased with his own handwork. The judges point out that the sculptural lines of the top do not need the roundy parts on the top (one of them refers to these as "the bunny ears") and, in fact, when the bunny ears are folded down, the dress comes alive and probably could have won.

But it didn't. No. Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo takes back to back wins and becomes (he says) the first contestant in PR history (all both seasons of it) to win a challenge when already in possession of immunity. Thankfully, there will be no further immunity. His dress is yellow plaid on plaid. He claims that his inspiration was the Statue of Liberty. I suppose I should throw Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo a bone here, and acknowledge that he knows that France gave the Statue of Liberty to America, and that makes her a French inspiration... I suppose.

I see no relationship to the SOL at all, except that she is wearing a floor-length toga, and Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo has made a floor length gown... with a slit that goes so high we know what the models had for lunch. Say it with me, fans "Entirely too much tootie!" Maybe a pair of matching knickers would have been in order? There is some sort of folderol going on in the back. There are straps and strings and things hanging off. There is the slit that goes on forever. There is not much else, except the gloating and gloating and gloating of Jeffrey-the-Pinheaded-Shmoo.

And, oh yeah, Vincent and Laura are the bottom two, and my martini glass is at the ready for throwing at the TV if it's Laura getting the auf. But it isn't. Vinny the Loon goes away, too soon for me, and not soon enough for everyone else out in TV land.

There is also the One Big Tease. A preview which shows 1) the announcement that there will be not one, but twospecial guests next week, and 2) Laura having a nervous (pregnant, hormonal) breakdown and telling Tim that she just can't design for the Olsen twins??? WTF?

The OLSEN twins? OK, so the blonde one is a "fashion icon" (bwahahahahahah) but the dark, very very anorexic one? Puh-leeze. Since when has dumpster-diving homeless person layering been chic?

Till next week, sweetiedarlings, keep your scissors sharp.

Actually, I have a new drug. It's called a Cosmopolitan, made with Stirrings mixer, and Absolut Ruby Red Vodka.

I'm thinking about it right now, because I'm in my count down to Project Runway mode. Watching PR is a ritual, and that ritual begins with me not paying attention to what I'm doing because I'm thinking about how in just a few short hours I'll be getting my PR/Tim Gunn fix.

The ritual continues when I get home and toss together my shaker of drinkies, and a dinner to cushion the blow of them. Feed the RLA, the fish, the cat, the dogs and myself. Sip the first of many Cosmos.

Then it's on to the bedroom to take off my school clothes and put on the fuzzy bathrobe. (OOOOOH. Fuzzy Bathrobe.) Wash face. Consider doing a mud or peel-off mask. Consider accessorizing the the Fuzzy Bathrobe with the Bunny Slippers.

Hey! It's a FASHION SHOW, people.

We are into the home stretch, hurricane-seasonwise. September is the month of heaviest storm activity. So far this month, no actual storms here in Miami, just unrelenting rain. Which is actually kind of nice. Everything gets very green, and all the shrubbery gets extra-thick and the grass grows so fast you can almost watch it get taller. If it weren't raining too hard to see across the yard.

There is a newly named storm out east in the ocean. Florence. Tropical Storm Florence. There is a very dark part of me that considers this a bad omen. Florence is my mother's name. I have this uncomfortable feeling that that Florence, should it change course and become a hurricane, could take my Florence away.

I went to visit my mummy this weekend. She can usually make one coherent sentence per visit. It's sometimes a sad thing, like when she announced "I don't know where that is. I'll have to ask Max where he put it." Sometimes its a wonderful thing, like the day she looked around and said "Life is beautiful."

This weekend, though, it was a mean thing, and it made me cry. She wasn't opening her eyes. She didn't seem to know I was there. I held her hand and talked to her. Then I petted her head and she pulled away from me and snapped "Don't do that with my hair."

Great.

I'm going to make myself a cup of hot tea and consider the piles on paper on my desk and what options I have for dealing with them.

NOTE: I wrote this, and brilliantly, if I say so myownself, first thing this morning, and then closed the wrong window, erasing it all. Hopefully, version 2 will be just as pithy, scathing and entertaining.

We begin with the usual: Jeffrey complaining and being ugly. Then we move on to Parson's and the new challenge. This week the designers will be making an ensemble for a jet-setter. The twist is that they must each make something for themselves, as they will be the jet-setter.

This causes much twittering, as Vincent allows as he has never, ever made menswear, and Angela allows as she has no clue who or what a jet-setter is. Angela lives, she reminds us for about the same number of times that Jeffrey has announced that he is the most brilliant and talented designer in the litter, on an organic, totally off-the-grid farm in the middle of West Bumfuck, Ohio, where she apparently has never had access to an issue of People, Harper's Bazaar or Elle Magazine.

This is stupidity on a par with Bradley, the theoretically gay fashion designer having no clue about the ubiquitous Cher. People, people, people... just keep your mouths shut. It's better to be quiet and thought an idiot than to open your mouth and remove all doubt. Or something like that.

The designers are given a day and all the spare change Heidi, Michael and Nina can shake out of the couch cushions. Really. Seventy-five dollars? Come on. They are also given about five minutes to design, just long enough to bring the car around to transport them to Mood.

Back at the work room, Jeffrey begins to ride Angela like a wild stallion, going on and on and on and on about how the dress he made for her mother was the ugliest piece of crap he'd ever run through a sewing machine. How it was the worst thing to walk the Project Runway catwalk in three seasons, and yet, he, the brilliant and under-appreciated Jeffrey was still here, still flapping his frito and dew hole, and still being the most odious creature ever to waste the electronic pixels on my tv.

Oh. Maybe he didn't say the last part: the part after the flapping his pie-hole. Maybe that was just me. When Angela points out that he's talking about her mother, here, he cops to only "talking about the challenge." Yeah, right. My Aunt Ethel. You're trash talking her momma, and you well know it. And Jeffrey just won't let it go, either. He's digging it in, and digging and digging and digging. He's working the needle just like a true junkie, and denying it every step of the way.

Jeez, I depise, loathe, hate, abhor, detest, that repellent little Shmoo.

Vincent wears boxers. This is a relief, because he is working in them, trying to cut a pattern from the Dockers he had on. I love Vinny, but if I had to see him standing around in tighty-whities, I would have had to kill myself right there on the sofa.

So, they finish and send themselves down to hair and make-up and Angela takes the opportunity to get her hair ironed. It does not help. Michael skips that, to concentrate on his work, which, true to form, he has changed completely from his first design after listening to Tim Gunn and reflecting upon his own ideas. Reflecting is perhaps too strong a word, because the guy has lightening-like fashion reflexes. Tim throws out a question, and Michael has reworked the design in his head before the question mark fades from the air.

I'm Too Sexy For My Pants

The designers come out, strut their stuff, and then answer the judges' questions. Questions like "Where do you think you're jetting off to in that outfit?"


Michael knows the answer to that. He is rolling to the Hamptons with Diddy. And he totally is. His ensemble is so cool, he's shedding frost all over the runway. He's made a crisp white architectural top with a pair of white on white seersucker trousers with a little bit of cargo styling. He has a touch of bling. He has Attitude. I think that Michael Kors is going to cry he's so in love with the look. As well he should be. Seersucker is the single most wonderful fabric in the world, and every man should have a summer suit made of it. But I digress.

Uli has made the same thing she's made every week except the last. A halter top with braiding. A tiered, hippy-hippy shake skirt descending from the empire waist. Color on color and pattern on pattern. I loved the colors she used this week, a deep, pure turquoise and a coppery brown. The judges all announce that the first five times they saw it, they liked it, but y'know? It IS getting stale. And unless you are jetting off to Rio, Miami, the south of France or LA, you really aren't going to look like you belong. So. There.

Vincent has made black trousers and a v-neck black heathered top. He's wearing flip flops. He's blown his hair out. The judges, in unison, say that he's too understated, too simple and too easy. Where's the pizzazz? Vincent says that HE is the pizzazz. I'm buying it, but the judges aren't. After seven weeks, they (the professionals) haven't figured out that Vincent's signature style is minimalist, sleek, pared down to the essentials? He's being true to his style, here, even if you think he looks like a stay-prest ninja.

Laura has listened to the judges and has made something completely new and different from her usual silhouette. It is drapey, and wrappy, and jersey, and in the most unfortunate color she could have chosen for herself: ivory pink, the exact same shade as her skin. She is wearing the most magnificent pair of chandellier earrings, ever. Talk about your Harry Winston's. I think that they are rubies and diamonds. As ever, the tailoring and fit are exquisite.

Kayne has made a NikNIk shirt by way of fat Elvis. He pairs it with bell bottoms and an iced-out belt buckle that says "KAYNE". In case any of us have forgotten who he is. He says that he envisions himself climbing out of his limo at the airport, only to be swarmed by the papparazzi. Michael Kors says that he can see that, and the subsequent feature photo under the headline "What WAS He Thinking?" Oh, God, I love you Michael Kors. So much that I don't care that you are the same color as the carrots in my vegetable bin.

Kayne, Kayne, Kayne. Sweetiedarling. Let me explain something to you before you go back to flyover country. White Trash is not good. It is not cool. Let's review. In "Breakfast At Tiffany's" the divine Miss Hepburn is precisely divine because Holly Golightly started out as white trash and has been transformed into something elegant and stylish. It doesn't matter what Brittney and K-Fed have been trying to convince America, White Trash is, well, ugly, cheap, tawdry, and ultimately, trashy. Don't aspire to it, aspire beyond it.

Who Let the Fleurchons Out

That would be Angela, who in the depths of her cluelessness has made a pair of copper brown linen/silk blend shnickers, an unholy marriage of knickers and shorts. She has made bad worse by quilting concentric ovals across the ass crack and cheeks, like some sort of built in bike-short padding. Just in case we forgot who SHE was, or how ugly THEY are, she has attached ginormous Signature Angela Fleurchons on the ass. There is a double-wide set of belt loops, holding up at least two different belts. The blouse is blowsy, and held up by straps of Signature Angela Fleurchons, which may or may not be attached to actual straps. The neckline is way too low, and way too loose, and exposes way too much black padded bra.

MK gently points out that linen is probably the worst fabric in the known universe for wrinkling, and so why would you make a travel outfit from it. I hear the crickets chirp.


And so I come, finally, to Jeffrey. The brilliant, talented (just ask him) Jeffrey, who reveals that, despite what he told Angela's mother in the last challenge: that one day is just not enough to even consider making a jacket, has made himself a dark purple (and wasn't that the color she wanted and he was unable to find anything suitable in?) faux leather jacket with a pinch back and Sergeant Pepper detailing (but in monochrome) on the sleeves. He's also made a stunningly original black t-shirt with a glitterized or bead-dazzled skull. He's finished his three pieces with a pair of black cigarette pants sporting an 8-inch crotch opening of large chrome hooks. The entire look can be summed up thusly: Gay Bondage Meets Hot Topix. The judges just oooh and ahhh and admire his very rock-star look. I puke. I also spend way too long pondering the issues Jeffrey must have about the size of his package to make an 8-inch chrome hook and eye crotch. (Where is MK's frightened exclamation now? The crotch in those pants is insane!)

But this is not the end of the challenge, they are now told. Before the winner can be announced, the travel clothes must be travelled in and they have one hour to pack and get to JFK.

Ça Plane Pour Moi

They go to Paris. Unlike America's Next Top Model, we are not shown an adorable purple plane animating it's way across the ocean, while little animated faces look out the windows. We see actual plane travel, and the always unrumpled, elegant and well-shaven Tim Gunn is there with them.

Brief montage of them driving around Paris, with Angela and Kayne going "Gol-leee" and Laura talking about how one never gets used to the beauty of the city. They tool up to Parson's Paris, where they are taken into a fabulous, high-ceilinged and large-windowed work room. There they meet somebody or another who is a fabulous female French designer of some reknown. I've never heard of her, but Angela claims to, and that makes me feel really stupid.

She will be the final judge and her scores will be added to the others from New York, and that will determine the winners. The designers must walk for her, and she'll decide how well the clothes travelled.

Uli, still rumpled, but good. Vincent, exactly the same as when he got on the plane. Ditto for pretty much everyone but Angela, who looks worse than ever, as though she travelled, not in first class, but in an overhead storage bin. The French designer makes that Parisienne noise that I only wish I could make. It's sort of a pheeew. With the lower lip pushed out in that French way. And instead of aspirating through the mouth, the whole thing kind of goes through the nose. Disdain has never been more palpable.

She announces that Uli, Vincent, and Kayne (but you can tell she wanted to Auf him, too) all get to stay. The winner is a toss up between the deliciously hip-hop Michael and the aggressively banal Jeffrey. The winner is Jeffrey. But what can I expect from a nation that idolizes the questionable genius of Jerry Lewis. Of course, the French also loved Josephine Baker. Tonight they went with Jerry Lewis.

This is killing me. Keeping Kayne around means that not only does Jeffrey-the-Shmoo win, but he gets to gloat about Angela leaving. It's a win-win for Jeffrey, and just as I predicted a few recaps ago, he is utterly obnoxious in victory. What a contemptible little turdblossom.

Angela is punished by having to wear that ugly schmata home on the next flight out. The viewing public is punished by having to watch Jeffrey gloat and preen and interview that it was about time he won a challenge, since he himself knew that there was at least one other that he should have won.

So Ernesto slogged across the straights, ran aground down in the Florida City/End of the Line/Tippy Top of the Keys, and proceded to do not much.
And, just as I tried (and failed) not to make the obvious jokes about illegal immigrants, the Florida Straights and the name Ernesto, I am not going to be able to keep my fingers off the keyboard about this: Just like all the other latino men who float across from Cuba, Ernesto was full of sound and fury, and when push came to shove, did absolutely nothing.

Eso es muy típico.

The one thing that makes this storm suck more than the usual suckiness of hurricane/tropical storm watch and waits is that Ernesto is coming on shore on the one year anniversary of the cluster fuck that was Hurricane Katrina.

So instead of giving us the skinny on what's boiling up in the straights and making it's way toward South Florida, the all the weather, all the time station is showing us historical footage of that other national nightmare and all the memorials and "celebrations" of the date. Thanks, but I think we all still remember.

Anyway, even though the poobahs at the top of the corporate food chain decided that the head office should be open and operational today, I called my boss at about 6:20 AM and told him I'd be battening down the homestead, and to press on regardless and without me.

We finished the shuttering at about 11 this morning, and I am now cooking a turkey breast, just in case the power goes out later.

But, being a native of this fair state, I have certain things in place that others, more recently moved to the lower latitudes, may not have. To wit: I have only manual can, wine and bottle openers. I have a gas stove, somewhat rare in these parts. I have a French press coffee maker, which means I can boil water on the old gas stove, and pour it into a non-electric pot and have fresh, very rich coffee. I have a treadle sewing machine in good working order, for those boring hours when the power is out. I have a collection of jigsaw puzzles.

In short, I have the means to cook and entertain myself, even when there is nothing to do but listen to the wind outside.

Later, gentle readers.