One of the funniest things I read during my college years was the Deteriorata, a spoof of the Desiderata. It appeared in the National Lampoon, and was written by the great Tony Hendra. As my life slips out of my control, and I have to recite the Serentity Prayer over and over in my head, I thought the time had come to revisit something that is a little more relevant to me, and little more to my way of thinking.
Deteriorata

Go placidly amid the noise and the waste and remember what comfort there may be in owning a piece thereof.

Avoid quiet & passive persons unless you are in need of sleep. Rotate your tires. Speak glowingly of those greater than yourself & heed well their advice, even though they be turkeys; know what to kiss & when.

Consider that two wrongs never make a right, but that three do. Wherever possible, put people on hold. Be comforted that in the face of all aridity & disillusionment & despite the changing fortunes of time, there is always a big future in computer maintenance. Remember the Pueblo. Strive at all times to bend, fold, spindle & mutilate.

Know yourself; if you need help, call the FBI. Exercise caution in your daily affairs, especially with those persons closest to you -- that lemon on your left, for instance. Be assured that a walk through the ocean of most souls would scarcely get your feet wet. Fall not in love therefore; it will stick to your face.

Gracefully surrender the things of youth, birds, clean air, tuna, Taiwan; & let not the sands of time get in your lunch. Hire people with hooks. For a good time, call 555-4311; ask for Ken. Take heart amid the deepening gloom that your dog is finally getting enough cheese; & reflect that whatever misfortune may be your lot, it could only be worse in Milwaukee.

You are a fluke of the universe; you have no right to be here, & whether you can hear it or not, the universe is laughing behind your back.

Therefore make peace with your God whatever you conceive Him to be -- Hairy Thunderer or Cosmic Muffin.

With all its hopes, dreams, promises, & urban renewal, the world continues to deteriorate. Give up.

Copyright © National Lampoon. Written by Tony Hendra.


Desiderata

Go placidly amid the noise and haste, and remember what peace there may be in silence.

As far as possible, without surrender, be on good terms with all persons.

Speak your truth quietly and clearly; and listen to others, even the dull and ignorant; they too have their story.

Avoid loud and aggressive persons, they are vexations to the spirit.

If you compare yourself with others, you may become vain and bitter, for always there will be greater and lesser persons than yourself.

Enjoy your achievements as well as your plans.

Keep interested in your own career, however humble, it is a real possession in the changing fortunes of time.

Exercise caution in your business affairs, for the world is full of trickery.

But let this not blind you to what virtue there is; Many persons strive for high ideals, and everywhere life is full of heroism.

Be yourself.

Especially, do not feign affection.

Neither be cynical about love; for in the face of all aridity and disenchantment, it is perennial as the grass.

Take kindly the council of the years, gracefully surrendering the things of youth.

Nurture strength of spirit to shield you in sudden misfortune.

But do not distress yourself with imaginings.

Many fears are born of fatigue and loneliness. Beyond a wholesome discipline, be gentle with yourself.

You are a child of the universe, no less than the trees and the stars, you have a right to be here.
And whether or not it is clear to you, no doubt the universe is unfolding as it should.

Therefore be at peace with God, whatever you conceive Him to be, and whatever your labors and aspirations, in the noisy confusion of life keep peace with your soul.

With all its sham, drudgery and broken dreams, it is still a beautiful world.

Be cheerful - Strive to be happy.

'The Desiderata of Happiness' by Max Erhmann, Copyright © 1948 by Bertha K. Erhmann

Lots of new photos over in the photo blog. Check them out. Or not.

I'm off to watch Eureka, on the Sci-Fi channel. It's no Firefly, but it'll do.

I can't afford to buy out my brother's share of the parental units' home.

The insurance company no longer wants to insure it.

If I put the insurance in my name, I lose the homestead exemption on the house, and the only policy I can get would be state pool insurance, which would also mean that I couldn't afford it anyway.

If we put the house on the market, it is a dead market and we'll be looking at who knows how long until we see a sale.

If we put the house on the market, it would need to be completely emptied, a job which would take a couple of very hard weeks of labor. I don't have any more vacation time, and I can't ask my brother to do it, because it would be very, very bad.

So. What the fuck do I do now?

I'm going around in circles like Conan on the wheel of pain. I can't see any way out of this, except to sell the house (unwillingly) and take two weeks (at least) of unpaid leave to get the house ready.

This is not the scenario my parents planned for. There must be another option. What it is, I have no idea.

On the upside, however, this seems to finally be the stress level at which I stop eating. I should be down to a size 4 by the end of the year. A suicidal, anorexic, miserable and probably chain-smoking, two-fisted drinking size 4, but a size 4 nonetheless.

Wish me luck.

I'm sort of at a loss for what to say about last night. Do none of these people know the meaning of the word 'hubris"?

The challenge was to design a pageant dress for Miss America, who was there to tell the designers what she wanted, and then to judge how well they did. The guest judge last night was the inimitable and formidable Grande Dame of Evening Wear, Miss Vera Wang.

First the ground rules. They will each design a dress based on her requirements, and then pitch their designs to Miss A. She will pick seven designers who will then pick an assistant from the remaining seven designers to help them construct the dress.

So the designers as a group heard what she wanted "monochrome, earth tones - stay away from white, play down the bust, show off the back, make me look taller" and then had half an hour to sketch. Angela didn't sketch anything, though, because she was too busy trying to convince Kayne-the-pageant-designer to make her his assistant. I'm amazed that he could draw anything with that harpie over his shoulder. Wahwahwah. Much eye rolling from the other designers who saw exactly what she was up to. As usual in these sorts of shows, that nagging and ragging came back to bite her on the ass.

Sketches. Pitches. A few creepy Daniel Franco/Heidi Klum lingerie episode echoes are heard to reverberate. Laura is a pro. Kayne is Mr. Pageant and lets Miss A know it. Mooooolan's design looks great, despite my hopes to the contrary. Jeffrey's doesn't suck either, damn it, and Miss A likes his pitch of her being an empowered goddess-woman.

Back in the workroom, Miss A announces her choices for team leaders and the magic button bag is brought out so that random selection determines the order of picking assistants. Pageant boy picks Barbie boy in a great syncronicity of talent and style sense. Laura picks Michael (coffee filter dress) which also produces a powerhouse of a team. Keith snatches up Bradley; Shmoo goes for Alison. Uli gets Bonnie (one of the two women who look alike to me, and who have sportswear experience) and Mooooooolan takes Katherine (the other one). That leaves poor, poor, put-upon Vincent, who gets the last kitten in the box, the interesting Angela. This would be the part where all that nagging came back to bite her.

Vincent is gracious about it, although he gets her name wrong. But, hey, if I didn't work in an office where everyone wore name tags, I'd still be saying "You There", so once again, I have to cut Vinnie major slack.

And they're off to Mood to buy fabric. Kayne goes for a beautiful golden something or other and decides to layer it under what looks to be a sheer mulberry chiffon. The combination is stunning, but somebody (JEFFREY) feels the need to snark about "sherbert is NOT an earth tone". There is lots of charmeuse and chiffon and drapey stuff, and then we see Angela ragging on Vincent. She's whining about lack of time, and we're gonna have to leave before you pick fabric and wahwahwahwah. Finally Vincent asks her, very politely, to put a cork in it, because she's making him nervous and she made her point about 10 iterations ago. Me? I would have just bitch-slapped her until she shut up.

Back to the workroom again, and we see everybody working nicely together. Some more together than others. Katherine keeps trying to get Moooooolan to tone down his corset top. He's doing some very interesting and complicated work with ruching, and really, it only needs to be simple ruching. She explains that all that bulk in the bodice and hips is going to frighten away a woman, who will rightly think that it just makes her look bulky.

Robert and Kayne are kind of like Satan-ino and Nick, if Satan-ino WERE Nick. They are too much fun together. Jeffery is seen to be an egomaniacal asshat. What a shock. We only glimpse Laura and Michael (and I would have liked to have seen more: what an interesting pairing that would have been.) Mostly we get to see Vincent (and his olive green satin) getting ragged on by Angela. "I don't like your design. I made something like that in college. Let ME do the draping so that it looks better. I don't want any part of your crap. I don't like it. I'm going to go off in the other room and eat worms." And she does, so that when Vincent DOES want her help, she's nowhere to be found.

Finally, and after more stuff that I don't feel like reviewing, we get to the good part: the runway. Most of the dresses are forgettable. Jeffrey's vision of empowered goddesshood looks like crap. The pieces don't flow together right, the fit is awful, the draping is off. Moooooolan's dress is unfinished at the hem, because his model was taller or longer waisted or some such thing. Sure enough, all that dark brown fabric across the bust and hips makes his poor model look thick. More drapey stuff, more floating stuff. Uli's dress is better than I expected. Laura & Michael's dress comes out and it is, of course, stunning. It is sleeveless, with a deep scoop neck and a plunging back. The skirt is full. The interest comes in the beading or crystals which, very New Look Dior-style, are clustered more densely at the waist and then spread out above and below, to emphasize the wearer's shape. It is absolutely magnificent. It is also white. Oops. Kayne and Robert send out an absolute confection. The colors are stunning. The halter slash be-jeweled necklace is gorgeous. The cloud of silk organdy at the hemline and reaching up to the knees is sheer glamour. The model overworks it, frankly.

Vincent trots out his vision and it is the only dress with any real color. There is a plunging v-neck, with a little open rhinestone heart at the end of the plunge, between the breasts. Though sleeveless, there is a futuristic (and very couture) sort of cap sleevelet that almost looks like a Jetson's epaulet. The back is low-cut, but the straps of the dress come down in another deep vee to the small of the back, emphasizing the width of the shoulders, and the narrowness of the waist. The seams look like they are princess-style, which also emphasizes the contours of the wearer's body. I would wear this in a New York minute.

Vera Wang is the guest judge, taking Michael Kors' place. Is this not wonderful? Vera fucking Wang? judging evening gowns? I swoon a little.

There is the usual designer explain yourself, you're in, you're on the line. The bottom two were Mooooolan and Vincent. Moooolan, taking a cue from Daniel Franco, accepted that it was his vision, his styling, his choices and that if one team member had to go, it should be him. Angela immediately jumped in to tell the judges that she hated the dress, had no input in the dress, TOLD Vincent that the dress sucked, and as she paused to draw breath to continue, Miss Vera Wang said something to the effect that it was a gorgeous dress, in her opinion, and that except for the epaulets, something that would be a show stopper in a pageant. So. There, Miss Smartypants, Monday morning quarterback.

Miss America finally made her choice, and it was the delectable sherbert and bronze delight from Kayne the pageant guy. He's thrilled. She's thrilled. Vera Wang is thrilled. Robert and Heidi and Nina are thrilled.

Mooooolan is out, and Angela is told that she can stay, but to suck it up, ho, and quit being such a backstabbing whiner. Told you that stuff will come back to bite you. Vincent survives to design another day, and I could not be happier.

This is wrong. On so many levels.

I do not want to be subjected to this first thing in the morning. Once and for all, if you need makeup to appear in public, you should have it on BEFORE you appear in public.

This, my dear, glaring girl, is why. That is just disgusting. That's why I was staring at you, watching you put your face on. Why you felt that you had the right to be giving me the stink eye for watching a public display of crassness, I do not know.

Here's the whole thing.

OK. Thank the tv gods of programming that it's back. Finally.

First of all, Mr. Tim Gunn is right (as always, and about everything, DUH) when he says that this year's crop of designers is more diverse and more talented than ever. But, really, people. Do we need another Santino? Mr. Jeffrey Sebilia needs to go away, and soon.

I hate his tats, and that's not because I hate tats. I hate HIS tats. He has a little pea head, and his neck is wider than his ears, and all that writing going up and down his neck just makes him look "like a shmoo" according to RJ. According to me, it just makes him look like a pencil-necked asshole.
Also? His design, while not completely sucking, sucked. Again, just like Satan-ino, with the shredding and the distressing and the whickety whack.

(Hey! Bravo! Where's the whickety-whack t-shirt that Nick had on at the finale? We out here in tv-land want to buy those.)

Laura. Laura, I'm not sure if I'm going to love or hate. On the one hand, she has some major, major design chops. On the other hand, she had the cojones (as we say here in Miami) to ask someone from Ohio, to their face and seemingly in dead earnest, "what do people DO in Ohio?"

Then again, she has that whole Judy Davis
thing going on, and how can you hate anybody whose fashion sense involves ALWAYS wearing red lipstick?

Still, I feel I must make mention of the fact that she moved into the Atlas with matching Louis Vuiton luggage. Steamer cases. Please. The woman does not need the 100 thou prize. She's an architect who lives in Manhattan with five children. FIVE. That 100G must be chump change for her.

Vincent, I think, is this year's Daniel Franco. And I loved Daniel Franco. Don't ask me why, I can't say, except that he made beautiful garments and was the only person to get back up in Satan-ino's grill. Vincent openly admits that being in the rag trade in NYC almost killed him. Guessing by his age and look, I'd say it was the 80s (i.e.: drugs to excess, drink to excess, sex and drugs and rock and roll to excess) that almost killed him. But, since NYC nearly gave me a nervous breakdown in the 70s, I'm willing to cut him some slack.

And for all the wahwahwah about the basket hat, I didn't find it so repellent. I remember those hats in fur, and feathers and all sorts of materials, including straw. I found the sunglasses more distracting. I thought the whole thing looked like an interlunar stewardess from 2001. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

I also love, love, love Michael-the-hiphop-guy. That little dress made from coffee filters? Oh. My. God. Give that man a contract, stat. And, if he really is a street-cred sort of guy from Atlanta, maybe he'll just give that asshole Moo-lan the smack down.

Mooooolaaaaaan. I got him pegged as this year's snippy-ass blow hard. That accent, whether real or not-so-much has me gagging. I think he sounds more like Austin Powers than Austin Powers. I'm not expecting much from him except my-shit-don't-stink attitude and indifferent design. I wasn't impressed with the assymetrical shrug thing he produced for the first challenge.

Robert, The Mattel dude. Designing for Barbie hasn't made him loose his ability to design for real women. That little white dress, with the built-in bling and the big red bow in the back was to die for. I can't wait to see what he does next.

Keith Michael, the designated menswear-only designer, who took Tim Gunn's advice, added crap to his blue dress and then, after sleeping on it, turfed the advice and the add-ons and won the challenge is another designer I can't wait to see do more.

Not only did I love the dress, I loved his "Look. Just because I've never done women's wear before doesn't mean I can't do it, it only means I haven't done it." attitude. And, though I wouldn't suggest making a habit of it, he turfed Tim Gunn's advice and WON. the. challenge. If you haven't watched Project Runway before, let me tell you this. You do not turf Tim Gunn's advice and win. Ever. This may have been a first.

Except for my girl Laura (at least for today I love her) none of the other women have struck me as potentially very interesting designers. OK. I take that back. Girl from Ohio (Angela) seems like she might have something in her bag of tricks worth watching.

Wow. I just read her bio on that link. I KNOW she has stuff worth watching, now. She may just be my new favorite.

And last, but not least, I have to hand it to Michael Kors this year. He's come out of the gate with a bang. While "pink parts" is no "entirely too much tootie", the way he delivered it was golden. And the eye-roll while he dismissed the "granny panties" under the sheer curtains, well, it was brilliant.