Project Runway: "Run for Cover" recap-ish

So, okay, this started out as a recap and quickly devolved into me making notes and comments. I'll divide my thoughts and unrequited crushes from actual commentary on the show...you're welcome.

Episode-specific commentary
I get that Project runway has to show off its sponsors and affiliates and all, but come on-- it's the fifth challenge and you're doing two back-to-back? Campbell's was more egregious, but the editor of Marie Claire (who looks a bit like Tilda Swinton, don't you think?) is a bit much as well.

Other shows might do well to show off their also-rans, given that they are sometimes more popular than the actual winners (I'm looking at you, American Idol). On the other hand, does it diminish the win...? Oh, also, it seems sort of needless to have not-Tilda explain that magazine covers are cropped. None of the designers looks that blown away by this opposite-of-earth-shattering news, which is reassuring (good thing Jesus went home last week, otherwise we'd end up with a sick Tiger Beat look).

What's the twist? Is Heidi pregnant right now?

Let's review the things that we know Heidi likes, as evidenced by her judging over the years:

1. shiny things (season 2 floral challenge)
2. expensive-looking things ("It looks cheap, no?" Budget for this challenge is $150, which isn't terrible by PR standards.)
   
3. things that make her boobs look good (She always seems very concerned that the models' breasts look ok. I think this must be because of Victoria's Secret.)
   

I wonder how the fittings will work-- will Heidi just be traipsing from designer to designer? Oh...so the models are showing the clothes, and Heidi just picks what she thinks will look good on her? This seems less interesting than Heidi actually working as their model, but doesn't necessitate an extra judge.

Oh, also-- do these designers never have to deal with time pressure? I know that 24 hours to complete a piece is extreme, but they must have at least had to work with timelines before.

From the clips of judging before commercials: Janean cries (again!), Michael says they've never done something before (what could it be? Kicking off two people at once? I feel like that's happened before...).

Now for the runway show, pictures from which can be found here (and judging, in italics)...

• Amy: I'm glad I didn't have to watch you construct this monstrosity. Heidi can be boho at times, sure, but that print! Jebus. Also, the rosette? Yikes. She does appear to have stuck to the aesthetic she has going on, though, as this looks a bit like her piece for the farm challenge.
• Seth Aaron: A suit? With what appear to be mutton-chop cleeves? You can't "guarantee" shit, buddy.
• Jesse: The new Jesus? I can see that model's vajay. I do like the basketweave on the bodice.
• Anna: Maybe you will be one of those girls who is great at making clothes for yourself and for others with your same look (cute and hip and a little Anthro-like, but pretty straight-up-and-down rather than curvy), but I can't see you being a mass-market designer. Nina thinks it's shapeless, not-Tilda uses the phrase "slightly nauseous," Michael thinks it looks too young for Marie Claire, Heidi thinks it's well-made but doesn't push the envelope.
  
• Anthony: I don't love it, but it might look pretty cool on a magazine cover. The color really pops, but we'll see what the judges say. Heidi grins at him and says it makes the model's body look beautiful, Michael declares the costume drama over (yay, Anthony!), Nina likes it and Anthony is proud to have won some praise from her, not-Tilda loves the color.
  
• Janeane: At least you don't suffer from the hubris that some of the other designers seem to. The skirt looks a little stiff, and the little cap sleeves/sleeveless bolero thing? Not a fan. Michael is not impressed by the "sea" inspiration, Heidi thinks it's not fashion-forward, not-Tilda calls it a "polluted sea" (damn, girl), and Nina comments that it looks bridal. (After Janeane voiced the same concern as she was sewing! Follow your instincts, designers!)
  
• Mila: Of course you love your dress. Those colors are going to wash Heidi the frick out, though. Michael tells Mila her "peach" looks a little more like "Ace bandage," Nina notes that the "arrows" are pointing right at the model's crotch (like in Naked Gun?), not-Tilda harps on the color again.
  
• Emilio: Good color choice...but it looks a little like a nightie. I am not convinced by those straps. Michael appreciates that Emilio made the silk jersey look structured, not-Tilda says that it would make for a very strong cover, Nina loves the color but says it feels a little "junior" to her, and Emilio cuts the straps off and makes it all grown-up-looking. Apparently that's what's never been done before. Yawn.
  
• Jay: WHOA. That, sir, is volume. Crazy, monochromatic volume. This moves well, and I like the one-shoulder, but I feel like it's the wrong kind of Too Much for a magazine cover.
• Jonathan: Um. Is that a shirt? And...tap pants? Oh, a romper. Not a fan.
• Maya: Eh. That front seam looks wonky. Not crazy about the colors.
• Ben: Loves it! I'm happy he replaced the belt, and the colors are cool. Maybe not for an April issue (it just hit me why there are so many pastels), but this might be my favorite look of the episode. Michael thinks it's a good choice, Nina thinks it looks very modern and likes the color combo, Heidi likes the back, not-Tilda says it's a contender. (YAY!)
  

The winner (does not get immunity): Anthony, who yelps and asks if the judges "are for real." I want to hug him. Instead, he hugs Emilio on his way off the runway, and everyone seems very excited for his win,
The loser: Anna. Which makes Janeane bawl. Get it together, lady! Anna, who is sweet, appreciates the opportunity and gives a nice little goodbye.
Next week: New models-- little girls! I DIE. Also, oh my god, Jesse is going to snap and kill one of them.

Contestant notes
Mila, stop complaining that people didn't congratulate you on getting second place last time. I know you're a special snowflake, but come on. You are too old for that shit. Ooh, are you speculating about copying now? Don't be such a hall monitor. Turns out everyone hates you, and I can't say that I find anything that compelling to argue against them.

Jay, you are adorable, and appear to have some skillz. You know, apart from the insect-thorax you put your heart disease survivor in last week. Your hair looks fine, trust me. Also, I love your little towel turban! I must confess that Jay and Amy are two of my favorites because they are awesome and are representin' the Bay Area. Also, chances are slim that there will ever be a contestant from San Jose, so I've got to root for whoever is even remotely near.

"Icy color pallette...silver, light blue, and charcoal gray." Oh, Anna. You are so sweet. But those colors are going to make Heidi look like shit. Also, now is not the time to try to make a crazy amount of pieces. Seventeen minutes in, you are getting the loser's edit. I'm going to miss you.

"Short but not slutty." Good idea, Anthony. We do not want any "tootie" showing. I love you for saying that you "wish [Seth Aaron] would stop..." and not being a bitch about it. If only people on reality shows were more like grownups! "Did you smoke anything besides a cigarette when you went outside?" Anthony, can we have lunch sometime? I'll even buy. Oh, honey-- that sketch looks like something that Hollywood Montrose would like. (Can we have a Mannequin reunion, please?)

I like Ben. He could very well sneak into the top 5... "The magenta is looking fuchsia." Heaven forbid!! "Madame Butterfly on acid" is fine, but I hope that Carefree bubblegum pink doesn't make it into the final look.

Janeane: figure out your color story before you go shopping! Dude. Also, this "spewing out factor" (thanks, Tim) is going to look sort of strange on Heidi. What is Janeane going to do when Anna is gone? It seems that Anna functions as a sort of touchstone for her, at least in terms of seeing her as a kindred spirit. We need to get Janeane something to smoke outside "other than a cigarette" (thanks, Anthony!)...maybe it'd calm her down.

Jesse seems to be containing his murderous rage pretty well...so far. (We are nine minutes in.)

Seth Aaron is (thankfully) not this season's Jeffrey Sebelia, but should stop his singing in the workroom before I change my tune. (See what I did there? Yeah, I'm sorry.)

Jonathan, you may actually be a jerk, but at least you are funny about it. (Witness the exchange between him and Anna: "Are you making a dress?" "No, I'm making a spacesuit.")

Emilio, you are pretty badass-- and fairly awesome at following not-Tilda's advice about putting extra detain above the waist. I hope this works out for you.

Where is Amy? She's participating in this challenge, right?

Um, does anyone else think that Maya's look this week is really reminiscent of the look from her partner challenge (with Jay)?

T, to the A, to the S-T-Y

(Yeah, I refuse to misspell "tasty," even if that means breaking with some genius Black-Eyed Peas lyrics.)

Internets, I have to tell you something: I started a food blog. With friends! There is relatively little mention of Not My New Mommy, and there are only two recipes posted so far...but they are delicious! So go on, get over there.

P.S. Fear not! T&CT isn't going anywhere. I need a place to vent about all of The Crazy, and hope that there will be more than one person to send treats to when I do my 200th post!

Every party has a...

See, I draw the line at including the word "pooper" in the title of this post. The body, apparently, is fair game. But please, let me elaborate...

We had a Super Bowl party yesterday, just as we've done the two previous years. Though the Evite response was a little more lukewarm than I hoped it would be, we still had plenty of friends over-- enough to fill our living room and eat most of the (crazy amount of) food I made. And, of course, we invited my dad. He can always be counted on to bring the beer, and generally gets along with our friends, plus he always gets crazy excited about gatherings. He called about a week ago, asking if he could bring "a friend." Thinking that it would be one of his work friends that I'd already met, I asked who, and was told that his guest would be "a female." He confessed that he felt really awkward asking me in the first place, so I didn't press him for more information...though maybe I should have.

When he and The Guest arrived, only one of our other friends (one I've known since 6th grade, so knows the sad tale of my parents' divorce and my dad's lack of love life for the last, oh...decade) was there. They got out of the car, and when I let them in it was immediately clear that she was a good bit younger than he is. Now, my dad isn't the oldest of parents (next to GP's, my parents are children) at 53, but the fact is that both of his children are in their 20s. The Guest appeared to be, at the oldest, in her early 30s. We found out later that she was 28, which (and sorry for the all-caps) IS HOW OLD GP IS. Let me repeat this: SHE IS AS OLD AS MY HUSBAND. AND APPEARS TO BE DATING MY FATHER. I love my dad and everything, but here is the thing: he isn't wealthy (by any stretch of the imagination), he doesn't really have any "game," and he's not that good-looking. Any attraction that she might have to him is a complete mystery to me. And she is cute! What on earth is going on?

But I was determined to be a good hostess. We welcomed The Guest into our home, introduced her to all the friends in attendance (including two who are, like her, from the Seattle area). And then, at some point, it became clear that she was aiming pretty pointed comments at one of our friends...one who she had previously seemed to be getting along with just fine.

Let's have a pause to talk about the sense of humor that exists between me and GP, between us and our friends, and between us and my dad: we give each other a hard time. It is good-natured, and clearly so, and it is rare (nearly unprecedented) that someone actually takes us seriously. It seems practically impossible to me that anyone would think that they were being personally attacked by the jokes (jokes y'all!!) that we're making.

Back to the story. It's the third, maybe fourth quarter, of the game. There is shouting, cheering, heckling, what have you. The Guest is insisting that Peyton Manning is "her boyfriend," (take a number, bitch) which means that, upon every Colts snap, she begins baby-talking. "Come on, honey! You can do it, baby!" Shit that's funny the first, second, maybe the third time. But not, my friends, in the last ten minutes of the game. Our friend, J, says something to the effect of, "We get it, dude," and is met with scattered comments from The Guest that J is "so negative." Any comment that J makes is met with some little remark: "Of course you would say that." (Which, what the fuck. You just met.) And then, finally, the huffiest of huffs: "You know, J, not everyone is a FEMINIST!"

Hold the phone. This thing came out of nowhere. Seriously. Also, you came here with my dad, who I have marched alongside in Washington, D.C. chanting, "This is what a feminist looks like." Clearly someone's signals have been crossed. Oh, also...my dad was out of the room at the time.

J, not being one to shy away from confrontation, turns and says that there is clearly an issue that The Guest has with her, and can they please just have it out and be done? And The Guest says-- you guys are going to love this-- "You couldn't handle it." Would it surprise you to know that, at this point, I wanted to drag her out of the room by her ear?

My dad and The Guest left about fifteen minutes later (shockingly, it felt like a fricking eternity), and that's when the discussion began. What was that? Well, let's give her the benefit of the doubt: it's her first time meeting all these people, maybe she was nervous, maybe she had too much to drink, clearly she took something personally, maybe she doesn't get out humor, etc. Allow me, however, to freak out a little. When you are meeting people for the first time-- especially the child of someone you're dating-- don't you want to make a good impression. If she is actually just a friend (though my dad described her to GP's mom as a "special friend"), there is just no excuse for that. As for the "too much to drink" excuse...I don't buy it. You're a fucking adult. Keep your shit together.

I'm waiting for my dad to call and solicit feedback-- it seems too terrible to call him and go, "Yeah, The Guest? We completely hated her." And of course, when he does ask, I will be honest and tactful. Because, though I am two years younger than The Guest, I know the value of adult communication. Short of a pretty intense apology (because you do not come in to my house and act incredibly rude to my friends), I have no desire to give The Guest a second chance.

Thanks for making it all the way through this rant, if you actually did. Now, tell me, am I being a total crazypants? Or do you think I'm right to want to slap The Guest right across her bony little face?

Today we lunch in the tub!

I've been feeling a bit under the weather, and took to bed immediately upon getting home from my half-day of interning (oh yes, my life is so hard...I had to work for four whole hours today!). The kitty, of course, was a fan of this idea, and I decided to capitalize on my illness and "let's just stay in bed" mood and make the queen-size ground zero for all my afternoon operations. Luckily, this only included a bit of reading, a rousing round of Plants vs. Zombies (hopelessly addicted, sorry), a lunch of Goldfish crackers, and a few hours of Rick Steves' Europe that had built up in the Tivo. Over IM, I had to let GP know that Sydney and I had decided to conduct all of our business henceforth from the bed. He, of course, pointed out difficulties like using the bathroom and going to work. Because he is a curmudgeon.

In potentially exciting news, we're coming up on T&CT's 200th post! I didn't do any celebrating for the 100th, but I was thinking of rewarding one (or a couple, who knows) of my faithful readers (you're still there, right?) with a giveaway of some sort. Ideas? I'm a lady of limited means but solid culinary skills-- maybe some salted caramels? How well would my gougeres ship?

(Did anyone else read this book when they were a kid? It's funny how some things stick in your mind. P.S. The New House doesn't even have a tub, which is sort of a bummer.)

O HAI, oh-ten...

In the post-Christmas return from New York (where we spent Christmas with GP's family and my dad), things just sort of...took off. As in, after a leisurely two weeks off work (and still in the midst of my gargantuan winter break from school), we went to Tahoe for the weekend. (Where I was not mocked for wanting to stay at the cabin and read, then cook dinner for six people. Skiing and snowboarding do not work well for me on the effort-to-enjoyment ratio.) The following weekend, we went up to San Francisco to see Wicked. (The verdict: good, with some great songs, but the songs were mostly too thematic and not expository enough for me. That doesn't mean I'm not singing them around the house still, though.) And then the weekend after that? We went down to Disneyland for our annual pilgrimage-- no kidding, we hit a Disney park every year. (Seriously. Remember the Great Disney World Extravaganza of 2009? This particular trip included a delicious visit to the Napa Rose.) Oh, and in the midst of all these weekends? We moved. Out of our crappy, small apartment, and into a lovely, still-pretty-small-but-in-a-charming-way house. 2010 is shaping up to be a busy year so far, and I am thankful that, this weekend, we will have little else to do besides alternating sitting around and hanging things on the walls. Sigh.

Oh, and a bonus of having this cat, which I didn't realize until we moved into a century-old house with one central gas heating unit? He has so many warms. Thanks, kitty.

The "Oh, snap. Remember when we got back from our honeymoon A MONTH AGO?" post

Uh, yeah. I don't know how this happened, but somewhere in between flying home, unpacking, going back to work, attempting to catch up on schoolwork (sidebar: this semester? Not my best performance), getting through two-thirds of our thank-you notes, adopting a kitty, changing my name, getting back into the swing of cooking rather than eating out all the time, and gorging myself at Thanksgiving...I sure did not finish my Very Exciting Honeymoon Recap. Sorry. So what you get now? Is just a small explosion of my favorite pictures with a sentence or two thrown in for some extra tastiness.

Leaving Sydney, we headed up to tropical North Queensland-- Cairns and Palm Cove, specifically. While there, we hit the beach (which was about 50 yards from our hotel lobby-- pure bliss)...



trekked, took a gondola, and finally rode a train through the rainforest...







and, knowing that we had to take advantage of the fact that we were so close to such an insanely beautiful natural wonder, went out on the Great Barrier Reef. Our underwater pictures ended up sort of lamely, but! There was tea and cake time on the boat. I died.



and champagne! Or sparkling wine, at least. Whatever, there were bubbles.



And then it was on to Melbourne, complete with my fancy new sunburn (because it is some sort of law that no matter how much high-factor sunblock I slather on, I will be charred, while GP barely dabs it on and he is just fine). I really loved Melbourne because it's so neighborhood-y and really rewards you for just walking around-- there is a lot of cool stuff down some of those alleys! (Including a duty-free shop in Chinatown where I scored a ton of cheeeeeap Jurlique products. Sigh.)

We found our first dinner in Melbourne down one of the alleys-- delicious Chinese, complete with lots of wood paneling. Thanks, Fodors!


The next day, a walk down to the Yarra River that runs through the city.




Then a trip to the Old Melbourne Gaol, where Ned Kelly was hanged. (Note: the Ned Kelly movie with Heath Ledger is free on Hulu! Total win.)


And lo, the walk back to our hotel from the Gaol included a pass by the Victoria State Library! Another win.


We took in a performance of Chicago at a theater down the street from the hotel. I was worried about the accents, but the actors managed well-- is an American accent an easy one to imitate? I wonder...


Our last full day in Australia was occupied with a tour of the Yarra Valley, one of the country's wine-growing regions. (Like we were not going to go wine tasting on this trip. I mean, come on.)


GP tried kangaroo at lunch--turns out it is sort of a cross between beef and venison. (I had the vegetarian entree, a better-than-usual lasagna. You're welcome, animals.)


We ended the day at Chandon-- sort of funny, considering we haven't been to the one up in Napa yet.


Ok, that's the Official Honeymoon Wrap-Up! Now we can move on to more important things, like me complaining about the shipping of all the Christmas gifts I've ordered online, talking about my cat (I can't stop, I'm sorry), and being crazy-excited about the finale of Top Chef (Team Kevin, all the way. Or Jen, I love her, too. Really, anyone but the obnoxious Voltaggio brother.).

Oh, and my birthday is tomorrow. Yay!

I have a Big Fat Crush

...on Jason Segel. This clip isn't helping.



Apparently he's friends with Markéta Irglová and Glen Hansard (of Once fame) and did some guest-singing at a concert they did in LA recently. GP should be thanking his luck stars that we don't live in LA. I'm just sayin', is all.

P.S. That is allegedly his actual number. Say it with me, "Z-O-M-G."