“Top Design” Preview (Yes, Possums, We’re Going Back to Our Roots and Covering This Season)

First Reaction: The Cook, the Editor-in-Chief, the Hollywood Regency Wife, and Their Potter

Self-indulgent, self-important apologies, possums, for our silence during the past week, and thank you to those of you who wrote in to inquire whether our bodies were to be found at the L.A. morgue with the heel of Alexis Arquette’s Nine West peau de soie pump lodged in our skulls.

Alas, it wasn’t anything that John Waters, merely the wren-brown call of duty and work obligations.

So we’re late to the party this week, and will consequently have to make this quick and dirty and a little disjointed, but bear with us. (Also, our apologies to Peter Greenaway, but with Eric3000 claiming the best recap title of the week, we had to stretch.)

We took our first drink, completely unrelated to the Matt Lorenz Drinking Game, when we realized that this episode meant one week less of having to hear that blasted opening theme. The episode began with a voice-over from Matt himself, saying, “Jan Brady” (in mocking reference to Goil’s meltdown on the last episode), and the drinking game was on. “Jesus,” said Miss XaXa. “I think Liberace sounded more butch.”

Goil tells us that he’s “just desperately hanging on to the competition,” which we take to mean that he’s desperately hanging on to his sanity, and it shows, as he has another meltdown later in the episode.

Matt proclaims himself Marcia, and Michael says he himself is more like Cousin Oliver. We were about to drink during Matt’s speech, but Miss XaXa wouldn’t let us. “Please,” said Miss XaXa. “No self-respecting gay man would be caught dead in those socks.” We reluctantly put the bottle down.

Given the state of epistolary culture in our society (where, as Eric3000 intimates, Tyra Banks is our Madame de Sévigné, the U.S. Postal Service is in financial straits, and TyraMail is as close as most people get to an actual letter), it is no surprise that the designers are terrified when a “letter from Todd” appears on the kitchen table.

(And while we’re ranting about the state of our society, we’ve been wondering of late whether we ought to bemoan the fact that we live in a country that cancelled Arrested Development or celebrate that we live in a country that produced Arrested Development in the first place. Given that we’re “glass half empty” people, the answer should come as no surprise. Then Miss XaXa reminds us that, given our drinking habits and the Matt Lorenz Drinking Game, we’re really more “glass fully empty” people.)

Indeed, the designers’ terror is palpable, and is emphasized by the camera work—ominous, Hitchcock-worthy close-ups where the letter threatens to take up the whole screen. Perhaps 1950s horror films would be a better comparison, with the letter growing in menace as if it were the Blob. You’d think it was an audit notice from the IRS, or that Todd is sending the designers anthrax. We were shocked when Goil managed to pick up the letter from the table. “You mean it’s actually normal-sized?” asked Miss XaXa.

The letter, allegedly from Todd, displays excellent penmanship, as well as perfect grammar and punctuation (commas inside quotation marks and everything!). The text contains some cliché about how people in Hollywood say, “Let’s do lunch,” and tells the designers that a car will be by to pick them up for lunch. Goil is as baffled as if he had to interpret the Book of Revelations—“What does it mean?” However, Michael comes through with a feat of near-Talmudic scholarship—“It means that there’s a car coming, and that we’re going to lunch,” or words to that effect.

And lunch it is. (Though with some of the glassy-eyed, vaguely beatific stares, you might think it was luncheon on the grass, but since Padma Lakshmi is not around, this is simply scurrilous and unfounded speculation.) Andrea puts on tight capris and geisha sandals, and they meet Todd for lunch at Norman’s on Sunset Boulevard, which Todd shillingly and laughably dubs “one of L.A.’s premier eateries.”

(Jonathan Gold, of LA Weekly and Gourmet praised the restaurant’s “Floribbean” cooking—e.g., French toast piled with seared foie gras—but, unsurprisingly, the restaurant is now closed. Really, who wants, or expects, luxury food from a place called Norman’s? It sounds too much like a diner. But we digress.)

Goil treats us to a little syllogism: from his understanding, Sunset Boulevard is fabulous, and Norman’s is on Sunset Boulevard, so Norman’s is fabulous. Goil, possum, we think that, in terms of fabulousness, you may be confusing Norman’s on Sunset Boulevard with Norma (Desmond) of Sunset Boulevard.

(Jonathan Adler offered the winner of the week’s challenge a $2,500 gift certificate to the Jonathan Adler stores (poor Ryan is probably kicking himself; here was his chance to win some vases), but we hereby offer Goil a gift certificate good for two months in the Pink Navy Gay Finishing School, which is located—where else?—in Mary-land, just like Annapolis. By God and Glinda, Goil, possum, when we’re done with you, you’ll know what a cabana is, and you won’t just be able to quote from My Fair Lady, you’ll be Eliza Doolittle. On her blog, Margaret Russell wrote that someone ought to take you out to restaurants, and by George, we’ll do just that.)

Todd, wearing a blue-striped sweater, informs the designers of their new challenge—to design a chef’s dining room for an unnamed, internationally renowned chef. The challenge is up Andrea’s alley, since she teaches restaurant design at Otis College of Art and Design, and Michael tries to narrow down the field of potential chefs: “Julia Child is dead; we know it’s not her.”

Goil again declares himself “a bowl-of-noodle kind of guy,” and gives us yet another opportunity to promote the Pink Navy Gay Finishing School. Speaking of which, watching Matt at the chef’s table while they lunch makes us consider nicknaming him Toothy Tile (for those of you who ever read Ted Casablanca’s gossip column), but it was his eyebrows that made us drink and ponder, “Good God, is Jonathan Adler’s eyebrow twitch contagious? And is Kelly immune because of the Botox?”

The designers are informed that the mystery chef likes the Arts & Crafts aesthetic (which should have been a big hint, as the chef turned out to be Tom Colicchio of Craft, Crafsteak, and ‘wichcraft), but it is Carisa who really puts things in perspective, telling us that Arts & Crafts was “this whole, you know, thing that happened in the 20th Century.” We start applying this formulation, and are delighted with the results: World War II / Watergate / Vanilla Ice’s career was this whole, you know, thing that happened in the 20th Century.

The designers are given $40,000 to shop in the PDC, and are allowed to use Yahoo.com for their “tableware needs.” But of course! That’s what we use Yahoo.com for. No wonder those crap Top Design features have been appearing on the Yahoo! front page.

A montage of shopping, the best part of which is Matt asking a shop assistant, “Are those tops reversible?” Miss XaXa squealed in delight. “Make it a double, baby,” she said to us, as we filled her glass. And Matt, possum, if you’d attended the Pink Navy Gay Finishing School, you’d know that the correct term is not “reversible” but “versatile.”

Miss XaXa was cutting limes for the tequila when she heard Matt talking about installing a leather floor, and how it would look “really hawt.” Caught unawares by the subject and the Paris Hilton inflections, she had no choice but to drink straight from the bottle.

The designers did a little unintentional shooting of their own feet, with Michael describing his own project as “simplistic,” and Carisa describing herself as “plastic, colorful, and artificial.”

Todd, meanwhile, channels Judy Garland while worrying about the “clang, clang, clang of these pots.” Unfortunately, we can’t get the song out of our head: “‘Clang, clang, clang,’ went the trolley….”

Then Matt tells us that he’s “trying to think outside the box.” Miss XaXa laughed so hard while trying to drink that she dropped her glass, and we couldn’t look her in the eye as she muttered, “Isn’t he better off adopting the Taco Bell slogan?” She had to get another glass when, later on, she heard Matt say, “Well, you wanted to lay tile,” “I was going to take all of this off and cover it with plastic,” and “drapery treatment.” We hate to expose her like this, but she passed out from the final bout of drinking when Matt kept talking about how his room was inspired by a “dark, wooded area.” Her last words were, “Where are the ‘rest stop’ signs, the state troopers, and Jim McGreevey?”

She thus missed Matt talking about his wife and daughter, during which we refrained from drinking. And she missed guest judge Tom Colicchio and his bare ankles, and his admission that he loved leather, and his praise of how Matt “worked the leather in.” All of which is just as well, as it might have led to alcohol poisoning.

She also missed Jonathan Adler’s weekly groaner (“This week’s challenge was delicious”) and the call and response between Jonathan’s eyebrows and Goil’s (it’s contagious, we tell you). She missed Kelly turned out as a Gibson Girl cum Restoration fop. And she missed Margaret’s laugh line about Carisa: “I love banquettes, but hers is a little bit big.” It made the judges laugh uproariously, and we think we know why. There’s nothing inherently funny about the line, so why the laugh? Well, because it sounds like Margaret is talking about Carisa and her derrièrre. Now let’s be clear. Of course, Margaret wasn’t actually talking about Carisa or calling her fat or J.Lo-butted. It just sounded that way.

Miss XaXa also missed Andrea winning the challenge, and Michael being sent home, but by passing out, she missed the most important story of all. Granted, given Bravo’s shenanigans during Top Chef and Clippergate, we may be a little prone to donning the tinfoil hat, but we think we’re on to something. We’ve read that Michael has a twin brother, and we suspect that, as with Folger’s Crystals, he was substituted for Michael somewhere in the middle of this episode.

The proof? In the second half of the episode, “Michael” looked more put together than usual, in a flattering shirt and tie. When Carisa complained to him about her carpenter, she was wearing leggings or stretch pants, and not a single nasty comment passed his lips. He simply didn’t take the bait. That’s not Michael. During the judging, he refused to answer the judges’ question as to which contestant’s dining room he wouldn’t eat in. He simply refused to be catty. Again, that’s not Michael. And after he was “latered,” during his final interview, he was conciliatory and mature, and talked about what he had learned, and about “living happily ever after” in a “bubble of splendor.” WTF? This is either splendor on the grass or it’s not Michael. We’re convinced it was the Good Twin. J’accuse! (Or should that be, “Nous accusons!” ?) Well, either way, you get the point. We demand answers. What say the Minions?

Margaret's Milkshake Brings All the Boys to the Yard

Well, possums, leave it to on-ship photographer Ensign Laz to come up with the goods, or, rather, goodies. And we're, like, they're better than yours.

As promised, we took a closer look, and Margaret Russell is indeed wearing jeans. And though they're not ripped, she is. Boy, is she ever. Frankly, we're even more scared than before.

Especially since, when we look at this picture, we still feel that unaccustomed tingle, and find ourselves thinking of Diane de Poitiers and Henri II, of Deborah Kerr in Tea and Sympathy. Years from now, when we speak of this....

First Reaction: Et in Acadia Ego

Possums, we love the fact that the show's editors waste no time and get us going on the Matt Lorenz Drinking Game toot sweet. (Dear God, are we turning into Jonathan Adler with the Franglais?)

At any rate, as soon as we heard Matt say, within the opening 30 seconds, "being in the top two did make me feel much better," we had our first tequila shot of the night. We had barely downed the tequila when Matt added, "Even though Miss Carisa beat my ass." It doesn't take Miss Cleo, possums, to tell you that that was worth two additional shots.

One minute in, and three shots down. This might turn out to be quite a buzzy little episode after all.

The castaways are once again gathered on the beach while the cute polar bear tells them that this was all a social experiment. Oh wait, wrong show. It's not a beach; it's the South Lawn of the Pacific Design Center, and while cute, Todd Oldham is no bear. The social experiment part still applies, though, and the show is still lost.

Todd tells the designers that their next challenge will be "a family affair in more ways than one." We're expecting Sly and the Family Stone on the soundtrack, but, as usual, Bravo is too cheap. The designers, quite understandably alarmed by Todd's grinning emphasis on "family affair," ask, "What does that mean? Family room? 70s disco groups? Incest?"

The answer is even worse. A new! 2007! GMC Acadia! pulls up and disgorges the Bells—Isaac and Patty, their dog Mac, and their children, Dora, Bea, and Avery. Immediately we sense a problem.

Names are very important, possums, and frankly, the dog's name is a tad unoriginal, quite unworthy of a J.D. Salinger family. And animals with boring names turn into boring animals. Dora, Bea, and even the goyish-y Avery are a bit more J.D. Salinger, but nonetheless problematic. Of course we are not blaming the children, as they are the victims, but Patty "Ma" Bell (two puns for the price of one!) ought to realize that names can have far-reaching consequences. Naming your children Bea, Dora, and Avery more or less condemns them to, respectively, lesbianism, marriage to a dentist from Sherman Oaks, and USC.

Todd (you see what we mean?) breaks up our rumination on names as destiny with another peculiar metaphor: "Often the most successful design comes when aesthetics holds hands with functionality." Not only is this a little jarring, but it seems inaccurate and unduly chaste. As far as we're concerned, successful design comes when aesthetics gets to third base with functionality.

The Bells have a new! 2007! GMC Acadia! and the challenge is to design a garage around it. So, apparently, you can't design around a cat, but around Acadia is just fine.

Miss XaXa considered taking a drink every time the word "Acadia" was uttered, but knowing Bravo's shamelessness and tirelessness in matters of product placement, we feared for her liver and dissuaded her. She also noted a further problem with the Bells and their Acadia. "As if!" Miss XaXa harrumphed. "People on the Westside, especially people like the Bells, would never buy a GMC Acadia. It would have to be a Range Rover or a Mercedes M class, or at the very least a BMW X5. Who does Bravo think they're kidding?"

And, indeed, there is something a little suspicious, a little too-good-to-be-true about the Bells. What are the odds of finding a telegenic, affluent, demographically correct family who just happens to own the very car that will be awarded as the prize on your reality show? Exactly. As the Assistant points out on his blog:

[O]riginally, Episode 5 was intended to be an individual challenge. The plan was to find seven identical garage spaces for the contestants. As the date got closer, however, it became clear that finding the perfect space wasn’t that easy. It was a Goldilocks dilemma: either one space was smaller than the others, didn’t have as much light, etc ... all of which raised serious fairness concerns. With two days left and no location locked down, we had to reconfigure the challenge to make it a group effort. Now we just needed to find a garage. After countless phone calls and heartfelt pleas, we were finally rescued by the Bells at the eleventh hour. Needless to say, it was a REAL close one.

Curiouser and curiouser.

Anyhoo, the designers are dismayed by the photographs of all the excrescence of American consumerism jammed into the Bells' garage. Matt tells us, "Get me a match, and, like, that's the solution to the problem right there." Try as we might, we couldn't find anything gay about the statement; even the Fiddler on the Roof joke ("Get me a matchmaker, get me a match") fell flat. Accordingly, no drink on this one.

As the Bells are describing their wants and needs to the designer, Bell père slips and calls the Acadia a "new car." Tsk tsk. How did Bravo's normally eagle-eyed product-placement Stasi let this one slip past?

When Carisa asks the Bells what their favorite colors are, little Avery enthusiastically answers, "Pink and blue!" We turned to look at Miss XaXa. "I think we have a live one," said Miss XaXa. Carisa didn't help matters by saying that the garage was going to be a "rainbow room."

Dora tells the designers that she wants a theater, perhaps unaware that it's likely to be Bea (as in "Bea Arthur"), or, for that matter, Avery, who ends up in the theater. It is Ryan's considered opinion that the Bells simply want too much stuff in this garage, and that, indeed, the Bells have "a bunch of stuff they should throw out." Matt agrees that the Bells and whistles have to be brought under control: "Someone has to take charge." Take a drink.

Todd informs the designers that the winner of the design challenge will also win immunity. The designers are to make models (or maquettes) of their proposed design to present to the Bells, who will choose the winner. Sadly for us, Todd neglects to channel Tim Gunn and therefore does not say, "Maquette work!" Fortunately, Carisa self-consciously quotes the Gunn of Never-wrong directly: "Make it work!" Matt says, "I haven't made a model for years. I'm not into making models." Take a drink.

The designers present their models and designs to the Bells. Andrea's design appears to be an amalgam of Ryan and Goil, in that it incorporates a catwalk and a swing, as well as a stage for the Bell belles' amateur theatricals (a production of "The Lonely Goatherd" directed by Gay Uncle Todd?). Carisa seems to have a two-word imperative on her mental Post-It: "Slay Bells." "Is it cool?" she cheesily prompts the baby Bells, and then tells the camera later, "The girls were like, 'Whoa!'" Um, Carisa, no disrespect to Joey Lawrence, but the girls were probably like, "Whoa! Stop feeding us lines."

During his presentation, Ryan mentions something called "neeches." And then he does it: "I suggest getting rid of a lot of stuff." As he tells the camera, "I told the family straight up; they need to de-accession. They need to get rid of some things."

The Bells are not happy. In fact, they're horrified. Or, as Edgar Allen Poe puts it,

Hear the loud alarum bells –
Brazen bells!
What a tale of terror, now, their turbulency tells!
In the startled ear of night
How they scream out their affright!
Too much horrified to speak,
They can only shriek, shriek….

Well, maybe not that bad, but not far off. By the look on their faces, you would think Ryan had escaped from Bell-vue, or suggested selling the children into white slavery or, worse still, had announced the closure of Starbucks.

During Michael's presentation, little Avery kept stealing glances at him, as though looking at the Ghost of Chrismukkah Yet to Come, as though thinking, "So this is me in 15 years?"

So who won? Ask not for whom the Bells tolled; they tolled for Andrea.

Then it was the carpenter cattle call, though, alas, not shirtless. As the winner of the last challenge, Carisa had the first pick, and she chose Carl. We salivated and held a glass of tequila while waiting for Matt's choice. Would he choose Jared, or the one with the dime-sized nipples but whose name we can't remember? Alas, it was a case of reverse psychology, as if he knew we wanted him to pick one of those two, and he went with Ed instead. So, no drinky for us.

Finally, it's Erik's turn, and, as he tells us, "I was at the bottom of the choosing pool, and ended up choosing Jared." Two drinks for us. Oh, wait. Never mind. There's no "Erik is Gay" Drinking Game, is there?

There's a lot of blah-blah as Andrea Helvetically and competently organizes her team and uses the word "mauve-y." We seem to remember Goil's t-shirt as having some sort of Jackson Pollock-y appliqué at the neck, though perhaps he just cut himself shaving. Come to think of it, though, it looks an awful lot like Erik's serial-killer artwork on the last challenge. And there's footage of Ryan being helpful and subdued, promising, "Whatever needs to be done, I'll be doing."

Erik and Michael go shopping for purple fabric, and Carisa and Matt go to The Container Store. Andrea goes to visit the site while wearing her boots, which we love but also hate because they remind us of a character from children's literature that we've spent weeks trying to remember but can't. It's not Pippi Longstocking. It's not one of the Five Little Peppers. It's not Harriet the Spy. We can practically see the illustration in our mind's eye, right next to Wordsworth's daffodils, but the name will not come to us. Maybe it's from Charlotte's Web. Any ideas, possums?

The Bells pull a surprise on Andrea. In addition to the garage, the designers can also use the toolshed as part of their design. Andrea calls Matt at The Container Store. "Hello?" he answers uncontainedly. We take a deep drink. Trust us; you have to see it.

The work begins, and the garage is full of crap. We feel, in our near-drunken haze, as if we have switched the channel and stumbled on TLC's Clean Sweep.

Michael helps Matt to fold up an inflatable swimming pool to put in a storage container, but not before cracking, "It's like trying to put Carisa in stretch pants."

"No, he di' in't!" cried Miss XaXa. "I will beat him down with my shoe," she added, channeling Vivica A. Fox. "Hell, I'll take his ugly boat shoes and beat him down with those. Why is it that the gay boys always go after a person's weight? It's like the first insult. It makes no sense. Dammit, zaftig girls are always the first, and sometimes the only people, to befriend the little faygellahs in high school, and this is the thanks they get?" (As the first person in her suburb to own a black Malibu Barbie, Miss XaXa has experience in being an outcast.)

It should be noted that after the broadcast, on "Watch What Happens," Michael apologized, saying there was no justification and that it was rude, and that he came from "a family of full-figured women." Nevertheless, ouch.

It should also be noted that the gangly, stretched-out Matt laughed uproariously at the original crack. It was an unexpected sound coming from him, worthy of being catalogued in Amélie--one part hyena, one part drag queen, one part Chicken Lady from Kids in the Hall, and frankly, the gayest thing we've ever heard. We finished off the bottle on the strength of that laugh.

Then the judges arrived to do their inspection. Kelly was looking shockingly tasteful; always trying to keep you on your toes, that one. It hardly seemed possible, and we'll have to look at footage more closely, but it rather appears that Margaret... was... wearing... jeans! She also wore rather a fetching top whose provenance "stylist" Paris Libby failed to identify for us. And then, when Margaret was inspecting Goil's dog bed on wheels, we got a cleavage shot. The back of our neck prickled, and we felt ourselves flushing, and thinking stammeringly of Diane de Poitiers and goblets. Were we Gallic, we should have mopped our brow with our mouchoir and let out a low and throaty whistle. Ah notre p'tite Marguerite! Ah the damnation of Faust indeed.

When we recovered from the éblouissement of Margaret's poitrine, we found that everyone was back in the White Room. We heard Jonathan Adler talking about function and dysfunction, revealing himself to be a good Structuralist. Appropriately enough, he was attired in a Lévi-Strauss product along with a jacket and heirloom tie. The judges interrogated Andrea by herself, and all we could do was admire her strappy, surprisingly girly shoes. Well done, Andrea.

Kelly, again looking surprisingly tasteful (we don't get thrown off the scent so easily, Kelly; don't you worry), asked about the Bells' reaction to the renovated garage. The Bells were ringing for Andrea and her Goil. We watched footage of Jonathan, Patty, and the carillon (Bea, Dora and Avery) clapping as Isaac successfully parked the GMC Acadia in the garage, though not before the camera lingered soft-core style over the Acadia logo on the vehicle's gleaming grey curves. We must say, though, that we can imagine few things more emasculating than being patronizingly applauded by one's family and a homosexual potter for one's parking ability.

When discussing Carisa's work, Kelly asks Andrea, "Did you raise your voice? Did you hit her?" This, of course, raises the near-certainty that Kelly is itching to yell at Carisa and slap her, which is rather delicious when you think about it. Miss XaXa has an even more delicious theory, which is more fantasy than theory: Kelly is displacing her desire to yell at and hit Margaret.

Meanwhile, in what Margaret Elle-même dubs “The Stew Room,” a catfight is in progress. Michael basically tells Carisa that she hasn’t done any work, while Matt was picking up “stuffed animals drenched in squirrel urine.” Carisa denies it, takes off her glasses, and looks ready to stab him in the jugular with them, à la Bourne Identity.

Instead, she replies that there were too many cooks. His comeback? “Don’t be a cook, be a sous chef.” Sorry, Michael. Wrong Bravo show. We can see why Raggaydy Andy paired you with Top Chef hostess Padma Lakshmi on “Watch What Happens.” (Also, a sous chef is higher up than a cook.)

We hate to sound like a 17-year-old girl, but all we remember about guest judge Mark Rios is—kinda cute, big schnoz, nice shoes (oh, and where the hell did a guy like him get that surname?).

It’s Ryan’s turn before Grand Inquisitor Jonathan “Perkymada” Adler and the Holy Shes. A surprisingly contrite and docile Ryan apologizes for his “socio-political” rants and for being unfair to the design profession. Not that this does him much good. After all, it is customary to say an act of contrition before one’s execution. He did, as it happens, commit the unforgivable sin—telling the Bells that they ought to get rid of some of their possessions. (Of course, when Matt threatens to do it with a match, it's somehow more palatable.)

Margaret’s hair in this and other episodes has looked to us a little ancien régime--a touch of Madame Du Barry, a soupçon of Madame de Pompadour--and in her reaction to Ryan’s Jacobite crime, it instantly made sense. You might have thought la foule was standing outside the gates of Versailles with torches and pitchforks. We do know this, though. If ever the tumbrels come rolling, we definitely want Margaret on our side. Had Margaret been present at the Bastille that fateful Quatorze Juillet, the French Revolution might well not have happened. She would have calmed the mob with her icy stare and sent them home, asking, as she did on this week’s episode, “Where was the big idea?” And it is this quality that we love about her.

Left alone in the White Room, the judges don't mince words. Of Matt, Jonathan says, “He totally took on the maid role very, very enthusiastically.” We would have taken a drink, but it was a comment about Matt rather than by Matt, and besides, the bottle was empty by now. Of Goil's dog bed, Kelly says, “What dog likes to be on wheels?” We would have made a crack about a bitch on wheels, but Dennis Hensley of Outzonetv.com beat us to it.

Then the judges discuss Ryan, the original apple of discord. The word “socio-political” causes Jonathan to cough up a fur ball and seems to induce a mini-stroke that had us quite worried. There, there, possum; stay away from the polysyllabic words.

And then it's Hera versus Aphrodite. It's a measure of Margaret's alabaster anger that she even uses the word "hell," as in, "Where the hell was the art?" Relishing every word, as if popping individual beads of caviar, Margaret says to Kelly about Ryan, “Where was the big idea, Kelly? He always has a big idea. And you've been charmed by them. And he didn't have anything.”

Our favorite part of this indictment was the notion of Kelly's being charmed by Ryan. We couldn't figure out whether Margaret meant this à la Saturday Night Live (“Kelly, you ignorant slut”) or à la Rita Moreno in West Side Story (“A boy like that...”). Either way, it was delicious. We'd try to describe how delicious it was, but we'd end up sounding like those yogurt commercials starring the chick who plays Alice on The L Word.

Ryan is sent to the guillotine (did we see Jonathan knitting?), and his wry parting words are, “Alright, kids, fight the power.” We found this rather droll. He didn't seem terribly upset to go. It's a wonder the body politic of Top Design took so long to expel him like a kidney stone.

We'll leave the last dangerous, heretical, radical words to Ryan himself:

“I feel like interior design should be an event. I don't feel like it should look like everything else -- standardized, homogenized, catalogued. It's tough for me to find any sort of transcendental anything in [pointing to the Jonathan Adler merch behind him] a vase.”

Et in Acadia ego indeed.

Pink Navy Update: Fauxhawked, "Fauxpawed" Stylist Paris Libby Survives Attempted "Hachette Job"

Possums, you may not remember, but recently we were quite worried for the safety and well-being of one Paris Libby, the Bravo "stylist" and "wardrobe designer" for Top Design. After the improbably named "stylist" imprudently revealed on his blog that he and Margaret Russell engaged in a dieting competition, we were certain that La Russell would have him offed for his faux pas. We all know what happens to a Libby who leaks classified information.

But lo and behold, there he is again on Bravotv.com, telling us about the clothes on this week's episode. So he appears to be alive and well--well, as well as anyone can be who is sporting a fauxhawk. There may be an explanation, though.

According to IMDB, Paris was a costume designer for the following films, the titles of which explain a lot: Sunset Heat (aka Midnight Heat), Naked Obsession, Inner Sanctum, Evil Toons, Teenage Exorcist, Cyber Bandits, and Exit in Red. Most intriguingly of all, he was the assistant to Mickey fuckin' Rourke on the oh-so-perfectly-titled-that-we-wonder-if-this-isn't-where-he-got-his-nom-de-fag Love in Paris aka Another 9 1/2 Weeks, which, together with his career as a "costume designer," no doubt explains his affinity for Kelly Wearstler. It also explains his apparent hardiness. If the man can survive working with walking 'roid rage/crack-cocaine rock Mickey Rourke, he certainly has enough smarts to outwit even the trained Hachette Men (as Margaret Russell's squad of personal assassins is known).

On the other hand, Paris could have filmed all his video blogs before the news of his indiscretion got out. We demand that in his next video blog he hold up that day's issue of The New York Times. We've watched Mel Gibson movies; we know how this works.

Tinker Tailor: Can This Marriage Be Saved?

Possums, we never thought of Miss Margaret Russell and Perez Hilton as having anything in common, but it seems they might.

First, a little background.

On last night's webisode of "Watch What Happens," which featured the unlikely duo of Padma Lakshmi and Michael Adams, little 24-year-old Michael revealed not only that he knows (and thinks it's important to know) the difference between "French Empire and American Federal," which rather endeared him to us, but also that he has been seeing a nice Jewish boy for the past four years.

Knowing, as we do, a thing or two about nice Jewish boys and fidelity, this also endeared him to us. Four years is not only the temporal equivalent of 25 years in straight-person years, it's the equivalent of 100 years when you consider that Michael is in his twenties. And for this we congratulate him.

However, this is also why we were all the more shocked when Margaret pulled a Perez on her blog and revealed that: "It was rumored that Michael was flirting with one of the tailors, which is perhaps why he took such great interest in creating the perfect curtains for Dora and Bea." And Margaret used the above photograph as an illustration (though no naughty names were scrawled in white a la Perez).

Say it ain't so. Like all dyed-in-the-wool cynics, we long to believe.

And so our inquiring minds want to know:

a) Is Michael's marriage in trouble?

b) A tailor?!? (If you're going to go with the rhyme, why not a soldier, a sailor, or heck, a rich man?)

c) Is the chappie in the red shirt and the garish tie the tinkering tailor?

d) Is this at all related to an item included on the Assistant's February 21 blog about a crush between a cast member and a behind-the-scenes person? ("Now that we were four episodes in, I also picked up a few pieces of gossip about the contestants. Wanna know a dirty secret? During this episode, one of them developed like, a MAJOR crush on one of our camera op guys. That’s right. I’d say this camerman’s closest celebrity look alike would probably be Matthew Fox (with a light beard). It was sort of like The Bodyguard except...well, it’s an interior design show for Bravo.")

e) Why is the show so dull that we are forced to focus on potential liaisons that break the fourth wall?

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

Possums, crushed as we are this Wednesday by the death of French philosopher Jean Baudrillard, the only real thing in our lives remains the work of Diana Vreeland. And so, without further ado, Why Don't You...

* Bring back from Central Europe a huge white baroque porcelain stove to stand in your front hall, reflected in the parquet?

* If you have a large studio room, put an enormous deep sofa at one end? Over this, drape high on the wall a tremendous canopy of yards and yards of material—copying your whole effect from the theatrical tapestries of Venice.

* Have your own intimate garden connected by an outside staircase to your bedroom, surrounded by pink brick walks so you can sunburn and read, be out of view, earshot, and the wind?

* Have a row of white pots on your window-sill with orange and brown nasturtiums trained into pyramids around the little cone-shaped trellis?

"Top Design" Judges' Shocker!! Margaret Russell Denies Dieting, Jonathan Adler Denies Loving Kitsch, Todd Oldham to Deny Being Gay

Though there was no episode of Top Design last night, the judges, keen on keeping us faithful viewers satisfied, revved up their Instablogger 3000s and gave us fresh content. And, possums, it's a veritable treasure trove of aw shucks and awe.

Jonathan Adler-Doonan starts off by telling us that his uncharitable self thinks Michael Adams is crazy, and then hits us with the ultimate crazy talk:

Re: kitsch, I've often been accused of being a kitsch-enthusiast, which is totally untrue -- I actually hate kitsch. Pink flamingoes on the front lawn? No, merci. But, in the hands of some creative mavericks, traditional kitsch iconography transcends its kitschiness and becomes fantastic.

For instance, I have a giant poodle lamp in my bedroom that's so big and well-crafted that I couldn't say no. I have series of clown pictures that are intricately crafted in wood marquetry and they are so brilliantly designed and made that you really can't argue with them.

Uh, Jonathan, possum, you are a poodle lamp. There ain't nuthin' wrong with a dash of kitsch cleverly deployed, nuthin' to be ashamed of, and your website seems to indicate you have no shame at all. For example, that "Extended! Sale!" illustration from your website--totally kitsch! And let's not even mention the "novelty needlepoint" and "pop yarmulkes" offered for sale on http://www.jonathanadler.com/.

Jonathan also takes Michael Adams to task for the birds he used as part of his design in last week's episode, saying

Them birds are one of the great mysteries of our time, up there with crop circles and the popularity of Dane Cook. I found the birds so mystifying that I've spent an inappropriate amount of time pondering what Michael might have been thinking.

So we were a little mystified ourselves (almost as mystified as we are by Dane Cook's popularity) when we happened upon this little bird in Jonathan's pottery collection (in fact, there's a whole flock of them). It looks an awful lot like the partridges from Michael's walls, just transformed into pottery. What gives?


The divinely divine Margaret Russell also gave us quite a shock with this assertion:

Paris Libbey is an amazingly talented stylist...but I wore all my own clothes on the show. (Although his blog about having a dieting competition with me is pure fantasy: I’m petite, and I weighed 100 pounds when I arrived in LA and 100 pounds the day I left. Some people have commented that I look skinny -- even starved -- but I don’t diet, I eat. A lot.)

Well, as soon as we heard poor Paris chattering about his dieting competition with Margaret, we knew there'd be trouble. Poor faggy bastard spoke out of turn, tsk tsk. We fully expect his fauxhawked head to be mounted on the grille of Margaret's chauffeured car, warning every gay within spitting distance of Hachette Filipacchi and Condé Nast headquarters about the fate of those who tell tales out of dressing rooms.

Notice the delicate footwork in Margaret's denial. The diet/starvation denial is standard-issue stuff in the fashion industry, but pay attention to the exquisite backslap. You can almost hear Margaret's thoughts (or at least, this is what they sound like to us):

Paris (as if I would ever take advice from someone named Paris!) is amazingly talented (yeah, right! he helps to dress Kelly Wearstler, for God's sake, and don't you know that "amazingly talented" is the euphemism of choice for "talentless hack I'm about to do an Apocalypto on"?), but I would never be caught dead in anything he would give me to wear. And, in fact, I don't have to be caught dead in the stuff, since all my things are Prada, and Derek Lam, and Narciso Rodriguez, and not borrowed finery procured by some queen who wears a fauxhawk over a year after the style fell out of fashion.

I work my exquisitely small butt off raising money for AIDS charities, and for what? So that some queen in a cardigan can suggest to the world that I am not naturally a sylph-cum-wire hanger (if wire hangers were actually acceptable), always at a perfect weight, able to fit into any goddamned Narciso Rodriguez dress I choose? This is the thanks I get? And when I say that his blog is pure fantasy, I mean that he's a tweaker, and that his little fauxhawk is actually a wig made of spun crystal meth.

That's why we love posh, imperious women. They can say so much with so little.

Faster, Russellcat! Kill! Kill!

Delicious reader "AnonymouSe," though not in the least mousy, is nonetheless as taken as we with Margaret Russell's feline charms. AnonymouSe sent us this tribute, which made our spines tingle. Just like our Margaret, Catwoman looks like she starved herself into her catsuit. Note to Paris, the Bravo "stylist": think about giving Margaret a whip, and a little black patent leather. You would make a lot of men (and not a few women) very, very happy.

Pink Navy Correction

We ought to have known better, of course, but even we (yes, it's true) make mistakes on occasion. Last week, trying to demonstrate that Margaret Russell holds her own when it comes to magazine-posing audacity, we brought you the results of Ensign Laz's archival research into her photo shoot with Horst's last studio assistant. We declared the shoot had been for Cat Fancy Magazine. Of course, we were wrong. As you can see from the cover Ensign Laz sent us, it was actually Fancy Cat Magazine. But of course, or, as Miss XaXa put it, "Like, duh, right?" Pink Navy regrets the error and extends its apologies to Ms. Russell for the confusion.

First Reaction: Swatch What Happens

Possums, we like to start our viewing with a drinking game.

Every time Matt Lorenz says or does something that could be considered gay, we down a shot of tequila.

Oh, come now, possums. We know he says he’s straight, and is married, and has a child. Blah blah blah; spare us the disclaimers. It’s not our fault that we need a drinking game to make the show entertaining.

So, the show begins with Matt saying, “It was a little scary to be in the bottom three. It’s not a place I like to be.” Drink one shot of tequila. “I was there because I did not take an active role….” Um, Matt, possum, that’s kind of the definition of…never mind. Drink another shot of tequila. “I’m going to have to be a little more vocal.” Drink a third shot of tequila. Then, as the designers make their way into the PDC, we see Matt swinging a tote bag. Drink a fourth shot.

So, it’s two minutes into the show, and already we’re sloshed.

The designers sit on the grass outside the PDC with Todd Oldham sitting in front of them wearing some piebald shirt that looks like it came from a garage sale. Hmmm, could that be yet another example of Bravo Foreshadowing™? Todd tells the designers that for their next challenge, they will get to meet their clients first. Forced, weirdly emphatic laughter from the designers. But, he says, they may be the most opinionated and difficult clients the designers have ever had. Forced, weirdly emphatic groans from the designers.

It was then that we realized just what this little scene reminded us of, one of our favorite films and guilty pleasures, The Sound of Music. A preternaturally cheerful and boyish novice sitting on the grass with his charges, wearing brown, and telling them about how they’re going to start at the very beginning, a very good place to start. It was all the same, down to the forced, weirdly emphatic reactions. We half expected Todd to bring out his guitar.

Instead, he brings out the “clients,” interior design students from schools around Los Angeles, including (in freaky Todd voiceover) students from Otis College of Art and Design. The clients, Todd said, would be randomly assigned to the designers. Immediately we saw a really hot guy who sat down in the back, and on whom the golden afternoon light seemed to pool, and we said to Miss XaXa, “Whaddya wanna bet the Bravo producers ‘randomly’ assigned him to Matt?” (Sorry, when we’re sloshed, our diction gets more colloquial.)

The challenge is to design a post-college living space for a design student. The designers meet with their clients, and, of course, Matt ends up with “Chad.” Drink a fifth shot of tequila. Matt and Chad, Matt and Chad, two pretty blond boy interior designers sitting together in the sun in West Hollywood. Nope, nothing remotely gay about that. (Jesus, Bravo, sometimes you really do go overboard.)

Goil’s client brings the proceedings to a halt with her shocking declaration that she is in possession of art books! Good luck, possum, trying out for Season 2 of Top Design (if, indeed, such a thing were to happen at all). Art books? As in reference points? As in cultural literacy? What planet are you from? (Sorry, when we’re sloshed, we pontificate even more than usual.)

Of her client, Felicia says, “Gosh, she’s a mini me.” We hear the cymbal clash of true Bravo Foreshadowing™ at work. Oh dear, hasn’t she heard of Freud and the anxiety of influence and the child killing the parent? Oh wait, she’s a Scientologist, so she probably doesn’t cotton to Freudian readings. Oh, well.

Tortured, WTO-hating artist Ryan is finally happy with a challenge that doesn’t require him to conform to what St. Tropez is. To demonstrate his glee, he gives a Bronx cheer and flips both birds to the camera. We got a little frisson. Oooh, how subversive, how punk, how épatez les bourgeois! And then, when they go shopping for fabric, he admits he has never bought fabric before. Outlaw!

It’s the next day, and at 6:25 a.m., Todd breaks into the women’s loft in a ski mask to carry out a panty raid. Oh wait, sorry. Wrong show. He’s come to wake the women up, and turns on all the lights. And he laughs a gleeful, boyish laugh that is the most natural, spontaneous and adorable thing we’ve seen about him the entire show. Carisa tells us, in perhaps the most unsurprising statement of the series, “I never in my life thought I would wake up to the sound of Todd Oldham’s voice.” No doubt you’re one of the few women who’s had the privilege; enjoy it, possum.

Then we go to the men’s loft, and Bravo treats us to many a lingering close-up of a shirtless, tousled, sleepy-eyed, angelic Matt lying on his stomach and looking Bel Ami-cably into the camera. Drink a sixth shot of tequila.

Once the designers are all gathered around the muffins Todd has brought as compensation (and don’t think we haven’t noticed Bravo’s penchant for these early-morning, host-comes-in-and-wakes-contestants-up-so-viewers-can-ogle-them-while-in-bed-and-in-their-sleepwear shenanigans; not that we’re complaining, mind you, and the boys get to look at Felicia’s splendid muffins), he tells them they’re going to go shop at garage sales. The closed captioning helpfully points out that “ominous music” is playing, and Andrea informs us that she has never been to a garage sale and that the prospect frightens her.

The garage sale montage is a sort of blur again, what with six tequila shots. Oh, make that seven, as we just heard Matt say, “My client wanted clean, straight lines.” We do remember Felicia’s cleavage being prominently displayed throughout, and Goil putting on a Catholic schoolgirl skirt and transforming it into a kilt by trying to do a "Lord of the Dance" routine. And for all the wonderful qualities attributed to the Silver Lake neighborhood of Los Angeles, we had yet to hear that it was chock full of garage sales featuring cool mid-century furniture for a song. Now we know why the hipster Munchkins are so happy there.

Back in the work room, Todd tells them that the carpenters are going to be randomly assigned. But! Of! Course! First! There’s! A Twist! A hook hand, and an accordion lick. Oh, wait, this isn’t a Judy Tenuta show. Felicia helpfully utters a loud “Uh-oh!” God, the editors are going to miss her. So, the twist: after this challenge, the carpenters will no longer be “randomly assigned.” Instead, the designers can pick whom they want after the carpenters parade around in black slips.

Carisa gets a make-up wearing, softly-butch female carpenter, Sarah. Not for nothing is The L Word set in L.A. Carisa then tells us that the Los Angeles water has caused her to fixate on the green & orange color combination. It’s like a gay dénouement to Chinatown: all that struggle to get water for L.A., and in the end all it leads to is hot colors.

Ryan, true to his rebel rocker self, is following the Rolling Stones’ injunction to paint it black, although we don’t recall the song saying anything about adding ground glass to the black paint. Meanwhile, Goil and his hot carpenter Jared talk about something being “9¾ inches, dude.” And we drink another shot of tequila. Oh, wait, there’s no "Goil Is Gay" Drinking Game. Never mind.

Carisa’s plan to build a rolling desk doesn’t work out, and she acts the abusive, bitchy femme of the couple with her carpenter. In the end, she declares, “I’ll never trust another carpenter again.” Then she marries a male lawyer, moves to Scarsdale, and falls in love with her son’s female art teacher when she’s 40.

It’s time for the judging. And the guest judge this week is Larry Kramer. Oh wait, it’s Joe Stewart, a set designer who, in addition to working on stylish series such as The Drew Carey Show, also is responsible for the White Room. Well, that explains a lot.

Margaret is wearing a stunning, but simple, red Narciso Rodriguez dress. Of course! Why didn’t we think of it before? Margaret is the Red Queen from Alice in Wonderland. Off with their heads! And on his video blog, Bravo’s “stylist,” Paris, explains that he and Margaret had a bet. By the end of the filming, he would lose ten pounds, and she would lose enough weight to fit into the Red Dress. But, naturally, she couldn't wait until the end. She surprised him by dropping the weight and appearing in the Red Dress on the fourth episode. Paris, for his part, gained ten pounds. We found this anecdote of competitive bitchery delicious, like a cross between Heathers and a Special K commercial.

We also found the anecdote illuminating. So, basically, Margaret’s been starving herself. That definitely explains a lot. If we so much as miss a meal, we are ready to reduce the upholstery to shreds. We can’t imagine what it’s like to starve ourselves into a Narciso Rodriguez.

Kelly, meanwhile, is in a dangerously sheer, vintage (Paul Poiret?) beaded potato sack. (We worry that with the Joe Stewart-designed shiny and reflective black floor, we may well see her, er, fabric swatch if she ever pulls a Britney on us; as we know, Kelly has a, well, casual relationship with underthings). She’s also wearing what we swear is a wig recycled from a Beyoncé video. Basically, the ensemble is a big fuck-you to Margaret and to good taste, a way of saying, “Ok, you starved yourself into a red Narciso Rodriguez and you’re looking good, but NO ONE WILL NOTICE, because I will show up looking like a flapper whore who had an unfortunate encounter with a threshing machine.”

We suppose this is as good a place as any to begin discussing the Margaret-Kelly dynamic. Now, we don’t fall into the usual misogynist trap that says two women who work together on television must automatically hate each other and want to claw each other’s eyes out. But this is a situation straight out of George Cukor’s 1939 classic bitchfest, and one of the Four Gay Gospels, The Women, with Kelly as the brassy, mocking, perfume-counter-girl-made-good Joan Crawford, and Margaret as the prim, tasteful, ladylike society-matron-who’s-grown-jungle-red-claws, Norma Shearer.

At the beginning we wondered, knowing Bravo’s notoriety for being cheapskates, why they had bothered to put Margaret up for a month at the Four Seasons, when she could just have stayed in Kelly’s guest house. Kelly, after all, lives in Beverly Hills with her hotelier husband. But after the first eye-roll in the first episode, we wondered no longer.

The judges do their walk-through. Goil demonstrates he went to Yale by describing his space as “sort of like a scene of domesticity, but it’s also broken.” Ryan tells us that he doesn’t care what the judges think: “If I lose, fuck ‘em.” We watch yet another commercial for The Real Housewives of Orange County, which we never quite believe is a Bravo show rather than a piece of propaganda broadcast by Al Jazeera to show the world why we are a decadent and evil empire.

Felicia’s room doesn’t fare too well. The afghan she purchased at the garage sale is her death knell. Her client, Mary, wearing one of Jane Fonda’s dresses from 9 to 5, declares that if she had to live in the room, she’d shoot herself. If we were looking for root causes for suicide, wearing ugly 80s dresses and calling oneself Mary might be good starting points, but that’s just us.

When reviewing one of the rooms, Kelly deploys the word “adjacencies,” which impresses us no end. (But we hate the way she pronounces “accessories” as “assessories.”) And Erik is so cute, so boyish, but obviously has been hanging around Jonathan Adler too long, for when he is criticized, the old Adler eyebrow move is deployed. Also, we long to apply that weed-killer spray to Erik’s chin.

Jonathan takes Michael to task for the use of grape and banana colors in his room. Kelly “Fusilli Head” Wearstler thinks it’s more macaroni-and-cheese colored.

And then comes the dialectical showdown of showdowns, between Ryan and Margaret. He actually says to her, “I think recycling’s important. I feel like a lot of people shop to satisfy some need, some keeping up with the Joneses.”

We half expected the world to stop spinning on its axis from the black hole about to be created in the White Room. We said to Miss XaXa, “Did he just call out Margaret--the woman who starved herself to get into a new Narciso Rodriguez dress, who’s staying at the Four Seasons, and who runs a magazine dedicated to making people shop--on her materialism?” We'd say he should consider this bourgeoise very much épatéed.

Instead of saying, “Off with his head!,” the Red Queen comes back with, “Actually, there’s nothing wrong with paint samples and fabric swatches.”

Gollum Adler gaily agrees, “I love a swatch. Love a swatch.”

Ryan says, “I can make a room pretty, but I don’t feel like that’s a hard thing to do.” Funny, that’s exactly what Kelly said on the first episode when discussing Goil & Elizabeth’s room. Hmmmm. And she loves recycling too, since she is wearing a vintage dress, and on the last episode wore vintage lingerie and a vintage Claude Montana belt. And, like Kelly, he’s clearly opposed to Margaret.

No wonder Miss Kelly defends him tooth and nail against Margaret during the judges’ colloquy, while Jonathan Adler tries to make a gang sign while saying the words “bad-ass” and “maverick.” In the end, Carisa wins the challenge, and the Red Queen is outvoted and does not get Ryan’s head. Instead, Felicia becomes a casualty of the afghan war. As the Red Queen notes on her blog, she was not happy to be outvoted. Democracy’s a bitch, n’est-ce pas?

And so we leave you with how Ensign Laz’s snapshot of how the Red Queen viewed this episode.

Pink Navy Exclusive! Margaret Russell's Shocking Betty Grable Past

Possums, if you thought Kelly Wearstler was the only Top Design judge whose past includes a stint in the Cheesecake Factory, you're in for a bit of a surprise.

As so many of you have seen for yourselves over the past week, Kelly has no compunction about unveiling her cabana and showing us that, regardless of where it's actually located, the one place it's not located is Brazil, if you catch our waxy drift.

The more patrician Margaret is another story entirely. But our indefatigable on-ship photographer and archivist Laz dove headlong into the archives of Cat Fancy to see if he could track down the early 90s Margaret Russell cheesecake shoot presided over by Horst's last studio assistant.

Laz emerged covered in enough cat hair to stuff a few verboten pillows, but also with a few photographs from the fabled shoot, which Pink Navy is publishing for the first time ever.

Given the testimony of flaming, fauxhawked Bravo "stylist" Paris about Margaret's Ra-like affinity for the sun's rays, it should come as no surprise that she sports an extraordinary tan that subtly goes against her entire brunette Lana Turner image.

The very Italian Miss XaXa whispers to us that a real WASP would never tan so well, and suspects that there might be...Italian blood in the family. We cross ourselves at the very notion. Come mai! Our Margaret Russell cannot be Margherita Rossellini. Cannot compute.

Instead, let us turn to the stats listed in the accompanying and unpublished Cat Fancy article:

BIRTHPLACE: Somewhere more fabulous than you can imagine, even more fabulous than St. Tropez. Something on the order of a Botticelli seashell inside Zeus' head.
BUST: A lady never discusses her bazooms. Only her dressmaker, Narciso Rodriguez, knows for sure.
WAIST: She's WASP-waisted.
HIPS: None visible.
HEIGHT: Larger than life.
WEIGHT: The weightiest thing about her is her opinion.
AMBITIONS: To rule the world. Sorry, Nina. You can be assistant World Ruler.
TURN-ONS: Pirates, theme rooms, gauzy curtains, country clubs, the color blue.
TURN-OFFS: Pillows, theme rooms, burger shacks, the color green, uppity artists, nudist neo-courtesans who try to upstage their betters.
ROMANCING MY MAN: As that Duchess in Proust says, "I never discuss love, but I make it often."
I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF: Being fabulous.

Further Proof That God Is Jewish AND Gay

From Margaret Russell's blog:

Would you like a behind-the-scenes look at Top Design’s fourth episode? First of all, the judging was taped on a Sunday evening at the same time as a boisterous bar mitzvah was going on one floor below at Wolfgang Puck’s WP restaurant at the Pacific Design Center. The music was pounding, we couldn’t hear ourselves think, and at one point production was shut down because the band’s rendition of "It’s Raining Men" was drowning out anything going on in the White Room.

Pink Navy Taps 48-Year-Old Elizabeth Moore on the Shoulder and Gives Her Some Figures That Are Sure to Be a Comfort to Her

From a September 29, 2005, press release from Elle Décor: “Published ten times a year, Elle Décor reaches more than 1,800,000 young, affluent, and style-conscious readers….” (emphasis added)

From Hachette Filippachi, publishers of Elle Décor: “ELLE DECOR readers are among the youngest and most affluent in the shelter category
Median Age: 47.5
Median HHI: $139,905.
Source: 2006 Mendelsohn Affluent Survey.”

Sorry, Elizabeth. You're all of six months over the median age of the magazine's young and affluent readers. Better luck next time.

First Reaction: Fairy Potter and the Prisoners of Azkabanas

Well, we were torn between a Bart Simpson shout-out (Ay, Cabana!) and a nod to Japanese flower-arranging (Eek! Cabana!), but we simply couldn’t pass up the chance to refer to Jonathan Adler as a fairy potter, so there it is, possums.

The Bravo Foreshadowing™ is deployed as soon as the episode opens, with Ryan telling us that he is an artist, that he feels he is being judged, and that he wants his work to become an icon. Um, we thought he wanted to convince America of the evils of consumerism?

Carisa demonstrates Bravo Hubris™ by confessing that, although she is a set designer (as, incidentally, was Kelly Wearstler) and not an interior designer per se, she has done very well thus far and is very pleased with herself.

Having thus foreshadowed that hubris will lead these two astray and into conflict, Bravo shuttles us to the PDC, where Gay Uncle Todd is handing out beach bags in preparation for the contestants’ next challenge, to build a beach cabana. They are divided into teams of three, based on which postcard was included in their beach bag—Team Tahiti (Andrea, Felicia, Michael), Team Miami (Matt, Elizabeth, Erik), and Team St. Tropez (Goil, Carisa, Ryan).

Goil and His Technicolor Dream Glasses confess that they don’t know what a cabana is, for which Goil received a scolding and a one-day suspension of his gay card from us, as well as clenched-teeth muttering and fist-shaking from us about the state of Gaydom and the cultural literacy of younger gays today.

But for Goil’s benefit, and for ours, too, since it will lend clarity to the final product, consider that Merriam-Webster defines a cabana as “a shelter resembling a cabin usually with an open side facing a beach or a swimming pool.”

And throughout the episode we suffer as a cheesy but lovable song from our youth, Modern English’s “Melt with You,” is repeatedly butchered by some pabulum-voiced singer on the same commercial for that idiotic car that the show's winner will get, roomy enough to fit the ego of anyone who has created "the top design."

Each designer on each team has a specified task—to get lumber, to get fabric, and to get furnishings. True to the foreshadowing, Ryan and Carisa get into it. Being a set designer, Carisa feels that she is better suited than a baby-faced sk8terboi with WTO-disrupting delusions to buy furniture for the space, but Ryan is dead set on shopping at Pier 1, because, naturally, shopping at Pier 1 is the way to teach America about the evils of consumerism.

She crabbily goes shopping for fabrics, Ryan comes back with tacky furniture, pillows and tchotchkes, and then the guy from Ashtabula, Ohio, calls the girl from New York “conservative,” and all dialectical hell breaks loose. He also makes one of his trademark left-handed cracks (e.g., John the “aging prize fighter”) about her weight, albeit not to her face, which avoids a bloodbath. Meanwhile, Goil pretends that none of this is happening and that he is somewhere else and working alone.

The following day, they’re off to Santa Monica Beach, and it’s time to assemble their cabanas. But there’s a catch! No electricity on the beach! Well, except the electricity generated by a small herd of shirtless carpenters. So what are the contestants to do? Use, er, hand tools, of course.

Frankly, possums, most of this construction section of the episode is a blur, as all we remember are the marmoreal, rippling, naked torsos of the carpenters, and the self-satisfied expression on their faces at the knowledge that they were being ogled, that it was entirely justified, and that it might just lead to a call from an understandably besotted casting director.

Well, we do have a vague memory of snickering every time we saw Felicia wearing a t-shirt with the words “Sag Harbor” printed right over her bazooms. And then there was Carisa. It was as if a Bravo producer had taken her aside and said, “Psst! Carisa! You wanna know how to make yourself unsympathetic and thus set up the footage for your eventual elimination? You do? Ok, this is what you do. Wear all black to the beach in California’s famously hot autumn weather, and then whine about how you’re a New Yorker and you hate the sun and the sand.”

Of course, you can hate the sin and love the sinner, and this is what Carisa proceeded to do, putting sunscreen on at least one of the carpenters. For all the world, it looked like she was spraying him with melted butter, and frankly, who can blame her? We know our kernels were a-poppin’.

The judges, who must have been hanging out up the street in a cabana at the Viceroy Hotel designed by Kelly (and which looks like a Regency brothel as designed by the Wedgwood porcelain people, where a Georgette Heyer rake might seduce a production assistant or a D-girl), make their way onto the beach to sniff at the cabanas. As we’ve mentioned before, we were disappointed not to see Kelly in a bikini. Looking rather too much like Nicole Richie, she wore a brown sundress and oversized shades. Margaret, sporting a ladylike gray frock from a 50’s Douglas Sirk film, gave a good imitation of life as she inspected the shacks. Jonathan didn’t show any skin either.

Then it was time for the White Room. This would be a good time to trot out the definition of “cabana” again: “a shelter resembling a cabin usually with an open side facing a beach or a swimming pool.” Team Tahiti’s cabana was well-constructed and had gauzy curtains, but, lacking a roof, would seem not to be a shelter and thus not a cabana. Team St. Tropez featured Goil’s overturned beach chair-inspired roof, Ryan’s tacky furniture, and Carisa’s choice of russet and navy blue as colors, inspired by the French tricolore.

Jonathan hates Team Miami’s choice of fluorescent lime green and aubergine as not being Miami. Former Playboy Playmate Kelly, looking like a Marielito streetwalker in aqua knee-high stockings and high-heeled sandals, authoritatively says it’s more Vegas than Miami. Team St. Tropez doesn’t fare much better. Jonathan dislikes the furniture Ryan chose at Pier 1 while battling the evils of consumerism, and complains that—horrors!—it says, “Buffalo,” rather than “St. Tropez.” Meow, and shuffle off to Buffalo! Margaret tells them she knows St. Tropez, and this ain’t St. Tropez. We’ve been to St. Tropez, too, and we took copious notes on her technique for using our St. Tropez sojourn as a sort of fabulous cudgel with which to beat the unfabulous about the head. It was a master class in the master class, and we were, and are, in awe.

Now it’s time for the judges to deliberate in the giant K-hole that is the White Room, though in this instance the “k” stands for “Kafka” as much as for “ketamine,” for what we are witnessing in the White Room is the capricious, arbitrary nature of the Law. The judges are going on again about how purple and green are not Miami colors, well, cuz they say so. And Elizabeth must be punished for it. Of course, had Team Miami used pastel pink and Ladurée green, they would have been faulted as clichéd and trite. Only the Law, and the wielders of the Law, are always right. In a corner of the White Room, the ghost of a naked Michel Foucault smiles knowingly and pendulously from his sling. Mais oui, Michel, you were right; it is all about systems of power.

(Kelly even gets in a dig about Elizabeth being passive-aggressive. Kelly, darlin’, passive-aggressive is: not being the lead judge but wearing epically, deliciously, deplorably, toothsomely awful outfits to hog all attention and outshine the other judges. Jonathan attempts to combat the attention-hogging by rapidly raising his eyebrows at odd moments. It worked for Groucho Marx, but not for Jonathan, and we are constantly reminded of Pauline Kael’s quip about Greer Garson: “a viewer can get weary watching that eyebrow that goes up like the gold curtain at the old Met.”

And Margaret imperiously and world-wearily dismisses one of the cabanas as looking like “a hamburger shack at the country club,” which gave us quite a laugh, and not only because of the unapologetic and perhaps unconscious elitism of her frame of reference. It’s not any old hamburger shack, say on a boardwalk; no, it’s a hamburger shack at the country club, which would seem paradoxically to make it a compliment. Of course, for a hamburger shack at the country club to look as designed as, say, the Miami or Tahiti teams’ shacks, it would probably have to be a restricted country club. Unfortunately, this would mean Jonathan and his Groucho eyebrows would not be welcome (possums, this is where you insert Groucho’s own quip about not wanting to be a member of a club that would have him). But we are amused at the memory of Gregory Peck pretending to be Jewish in Gentlemen’s Agreement.

The Law speaks, and the shelterless Team Tahiti cabana wins the challenge, and Andrea, Felicia and Michael win a “girls’ weekend” at the Viceroy. Elizabeth is then dismissed on the Kafkaesque caprice that her color choice was so un-Miami and so tragic that she must not be allowed to remain a moment longer in their blissed-out midst, a vote that seems positively and suspiciously Floridian after all. Elizabeth, possum, we can’t blame you for dropping the F-bomb after that; we would have dropped the H-bomb (as in, “Ho! Bitch! Skank!”)

Our advice to the remaining contestants: If the judges become too harsh or intimidating, just imagine them naked; it’s easier than you think.

Bad Luck of the Ireland: Guest Judge Uses Foot in Mouth as Key Design Component

Now, possums, we want to make it clear that, having read guest judge Kathryn Ireland's blog on the Bravo website, we actually agree with what she had to say about the cabana designs.

However.

We couldn't keep quiet about a couple of things that gave us pause.

1. Ms. Ireland doesn't appear to be a particularly gracious loser. To wit:

"Last year, I had done my own reality show in England, “Design Wars,” so I really felt for the contestants under so much pressure...I was representing the UK against five different countries. The UK did not win; the Indians won. There are more Indians doing nothing at 5 o’clock in the afternoon than Italians or Scandinavians. I was neck and neck with them, but the Indians won. It was a telephone-voting thing...."

There are more Indians doing nothing at 5 o'clock in the afternoon than Italians or Scandinavians?!? Wow. Just, wow.

2. Sitting next to label queens Kelly Wearstler and Margaret Russell while clad in a brown tie-dyed tent is not good for anyone's self-confidence:

"Overall, for me, it was hard to come in and become a guest judge. The others had developed a huge camaraderie by this point, and they all had such nice clothes and I was like the poor relative. They could’ve brought me something! Look at Kelly -- she’s the kind of woman you love to hate, she’s so divine."

3. Ms. Ireland is prone to Freudian slips:

"If I could give the contestants any last advice it would be that I hope for them to be positive. I hate that whole Simon Callow bitchiness thing. It’s just so tired. I don’t believe in it. Comedy is when you laugh with someone, not at them. Good for Simon Callow for making his living but he’s so godawfully mean! I can’t believe he hasn’t destroyed his career. Let’s only say things that are constructive."

Um, Kathryn, possum, we're not being godawfully mean, but we think you meant to refer to Simon Cowell, he of American Idol and the UK Pop Star. Simon Callow is a British actor (remember his splendid turn as clergyman Mr. Beebe in A Room with A View, flopping willies with Julian Sands at the swimming hole while a not-yet-unhinged Helena Bonham-Carter giggled?) and the author of a comprehensive, prize-winning, multi-volume biography of Orson Welles. Simon Cowell is callow, perhaps even "callow" with a capital "C," but not Callow. It's not nice to go around confusing people's names. Imagine what would happen if people confused you and Kathy Ireland, who has also jumped into the design game. Wouldn't do at all.

First Reaction: “Pink Pink Pink Pink,” An Opera without a Libretti

Actually, our first reaction was an overwhelming desire to take the much-maligned “Home, Sweet Home” pillow from Michael’s design and put this granny of a show out of its misery. After all, the Bravo website has a snarky “Deathwatch” feature for television shows on other networks, and perhaps, in a “Physician heal thyself” gesture, it’s time to put Top Design on there.

And pardon our French, but while we’re at it, we’d like to call “bullshit” on that whole pillow incident. It’s not that we were fans of Michael’s design, but Todd Oldham and Jonathan Adler themselves are master purveyors of kitsch, and we can easily imagine either of them including the pillow, perhaps with a few modifications, as an “ironic” or “kitschy” or “campy” gesture.

(Although, let’s not forget that Margaret Russell seems to hate pillows on principle. Indeed, it’s rather striking that the Oldham aesthetic itself seems to be in conflict with what the show’s judges are preaching. Todd notes that, pace Margaret Russell, you can design a room around a pet, since he designed his apartment around his dog, and client Amy Sedaris’ apartment around her rabbit.)

It rather seemed that what the judges hated was that the pillow was from Target. Oh, pardon us, from a department store. We can’t imagine how many retakes that must have taken: “I got it at Target—” “Cut, cut, cut! You have to say ‘department store,’ since those cheap bastards wouldn’t pay the hefty ‘promotional consideration,’ and there’s no way they’re getting their name on the air.” Alas, they forgot to pixellate the Target logo on the shopping carts.

We’d like to note that our rant is due not to testosterone injections, but to the fact that the show is unforgivably boring. You may not be able to design a room around the cat, but you can certainly design a blog around the catty, especially when the subject thereof is this dull, and we are therefore forced to entertain ourselves by letting it rip.

The episode begins with the usual panting musical theme, which the closed captioning helpfully identifies as “dance music.” As the scene opens, our merry band of plucky designers is gathered like the Waltons in a living room of sorts. We hear Michael squeal, “Get those things out of my face!” but then realize it’s nothing to be alarmed about; it’s just Ryan showing, rather than telling, Michael that he is a foot fetishist.

Ryan’s diabolical instrument of infantilization, the skateboard, is at the moment under Goil’s feet, as Mr. “Small and Spicy” tries to caper and gambol on it. Alas, he is unsuccessful, and a real man, Carisa, has to show him how to do it right. But pay attention, possums. This isn’t there just for the sake of entertainment (apparently, not much is); it’s yet another small example of Bravo Foreshadowing™, for his time on the skateboard will serve as the inspiration for Goil’s design.

A mild-mannered John brings the party to a halt by introducing the specter of mortality as he calmly announces that he is HIV-positive, and that what Carisa terms his “fiery eruptions” (which makes us think of Mount John, though as a noun rather than as an imperative), are due to a high dose of testosterone administered by his doctor. He says he is not making excuses, and not apologizing for his feelings; he is just clarifying things.

Perhaps it’s just the Bravo editing, and we all know about that, but John’s announcement seems to be met with silence and discomfort. Michael adopts the patented Sam Talbot/Molly Shannon gesture of putting his hands in his armpits. Erik looks uncomfortably into space.

Elizabeth dispenses some appropriate, perfunctory pabulum about how John is suffering, and how she hopes he will be well. We concur with the sentiments, but possum, get thee some conditioner, pronto. And then Ryan pays tribute to John in a bitchy, left-handed compliment that almost makes us like him, comparing John to “an aging prize fighter.” Meow, Ashtabula boy; you can certainly design for the catty.

The show can’t wait to get away from the discomfort of John’s announcement and into the PDC, where Todd is handing out the new challenge. They will be designing a bedroom for “a mystery client.” We roll our eyes and think of Edina Monsoon, who, as soon as her accountant began speaking, dropped her head on the desk with a cry of, “Oh God, I’m bored!” We know how you feel, sweetie darling.

The contestants pick client files at random, and Todd tells them they will be provided with a mattress (ooh!), but they will have to design the headboard. Montage of the contestants planning their design, picking out flooring, and Felicia taking the floor sample John had planned to take, which prompts him to call her a bitch good-naturedly under his breath.

Todd makes the rounds, and stops at Goil’s work station, where Goil is playing with his small and spicy maquette. That’s a scale model, possums. Todd is thrilled. “You made a maquette? Dude, that’s so impressive.” But then, just as with the first episode’s challenge, Todd tips his hand again, asking loaded questions about the scale height of the person in the maquette. When Goil tells him it’s a six-footer, Todd nods, clearly bursting to say, “Ha! Gotcha! You don’t know that your clients are actually children, and there are no six-foot-tall children.”

More montage. Yawn. They “shop” in the PDC. Michael is imperious to a shop assistant. Faced with an unaffordable piece, John says, “You’re killing me, sunshine.” More shopping. Yawn. And then it’s time for the client reveal, but not before 20 minutes’ worth of commercials.

And then, oh ma gawd, the clients are…children! All the Tinky-Winkies clap, and Todd looks and sounds more than ever like a children’s-show host.

It should come as no surprise to you, possums, that children aren’t quite our thing. For us, Village of the Damned is a documentary. However, we’re not promoters of the Albigensian heresy; we understand the necessity for the propagation of the species. After all, someone has to staff the Starbucks. But not everyone should reproduce. (And we include ourselves in this rather large class. We can’t imagine what we would have done if we’d had to marry and breed; we would likely have closed our eyes and thought of England’s rugby team.)

And perhaps Project Runway is one of those entities that should not reproduce either. Each copy gets fainter and more dull, and you end up with something like Top Design, the cross-eyed, feeble-minded offspring of a morganatic marriage gone wrong.

No doubt Top Design sounded like a good idea. We can imagine the idea being born over Cosmopolitans and appletinis. “Ohmigod, we should have an interior design show! And wouldn’t it be neat to get Todd Oldham to be the host?! And maybe we could get Jonathan Adler as a judge? Oh, and somebody from the Elle stable; they breed their fillies bitchy down there. Oh, and maybe a judge who wears really awful outfits, to drive the bloggers crazy?”

And it sounds great in theory, which is why we were so excited about it. It had the air of a recipe for the gayest, funnest (if we may be permitted a malapropism) show ever. And yet the execution, the reality, is off.

It’s evident that Margaret Russell, she of the thin-lipped hauteur, could curdle milk with one look, but she’s still developing her talents. Someone send her the DVD of The Women and fire whoever styled her hair on this episode and next week’s show. And may the Lord and Simon Doonan strike us dead, but though we find Jonathan Adler cute, adorableness only takes you so far, and the winsomeness has itself curdled.

We read about off-camera conversations that include lines about how something looks like the product of the year 1987 mating with a drag queen in a back alley, and we think to ourselves, “Why aren’t we getting to see that? That’s what we tune in for.” Jonathan mentions in an interview how a professor at RISD did him a great service by telling him he wouldn’t succeed, because it made him want to prove the professor wrong, and we think, “Why aren’t you continuing the legacy? Pay it forward, Jonny.” We think an internship with Michael Kors is in order.

If there’s a reason to watch, it’s for Kelly Wearstler’s outfits, which look even more dizzyingly disastrous than Padma Lakshmi’s. We’re positively salivating about next week’s haute skank ensemble with the aqua knee-highs and strappy sandals. We also like her sly, good-natured humor, and do we detect a trace of a drawl? (As for the two children, we’re incredulous; she looks less like the kind of woman who delivers children than the kind who has them delivered.) We’re fickle, and we are officially switching our older-woman crush from Margaret to Kelly, at least for this week.

Oh, wait, we’re supposed to be writing a recap or something, right? Sorry about that. Right, so the kid clients come in to meet with the contestants, and Ryan dries his hand on his pants before shaking his client’s hand, which we found strangely endearing. John’s client is a little girl who is “50% tomboy and 50% girl,” and we drew blood by biting our tongue so hard. Ally Sheedy, er, Andrea, amusingly tells us, “I know nothing about girls, actually.” Possum, we know how you feel.

And poor Matt. It’s like the entire series is fraught with traps for him, in this case, working with a little girl who makes him visibly uncomfortable. She apparently also has the nicknames “Hollywood” and “Fabulous,” which means that poor Matt has to say those words like shibboleths, or like Eliza Doolittle trying not to drop her aitches (oh, and then of course he also has to say the word, “glam”; poor, poor Matt). And to top it all off, he gets assigned the hottest carpenter of the lot. Poor, poor Matt. And then John asks him, incredulously (accusingly?), “Who puts silk in a kid’s bedroom?” Poor, poor Matt.

The contestants go shopping at Target, er, a department store. There, Ryan shops for a variety of pink items, including a pink boa, telling us that everything is, “Pink, pink. Pink. (beat) Pink.” And then, as if to reassure us (himself?), he says, “I definitely have a boy aesthetic.” Yeah, honey, tell that to the pink flowered jacket you’re wearing.

They construct, and we file our nails, though we are tempted to poke our eye out with the nail file from sheer boredom. John’s in trouble. His space has no floor, and he is running a campaign to become, as Jonathan Adler later terms him, “mayor of Excuses Village.” Erik is building a pirate room.

And then it’s time for the time-consuming and pointless judges’ walk-through. Our favorite part of this is right before the judging starts, when it becomes overwhelmingly clear (as if the White Room itself weren’t sufficient evidence) that someone on this show is a huge fan of Bob Fosse as channeled by Rob Marshall. In addition to the Chicago-esque black floor in the White Room, the contestants are made to stand next to their rooms, some with legs akimbo, like Amsterdam hookers in their windows, as the lights are theatrically switched on one by one for the judges to inspect the wares. We half expect the contestants to break into “Big Spender” the minute Jonathan Adler walks in the door. And at the end, the poor soul cast out of the PDC paradise walks in between the rooms as the lights are turned off one by one.

In the White Room, the judges like Goil’s design, which (here comes the Bravo Foreshadowing™ pay-off) incorporates…skateboard wheels! Goil also reveals himself a philosopher, telling Margaret, whose “we are not amused” expression is priceless, “Space doesn’t go anywhere, right? So, it would just get displaced in another space.” The judges also like Erik’s pirate room, though Kelly feels that he went “a little overboard.” See, Margaret? That’s a pun. Nonetheless, Erik is declared the winner.

The judges dislike Ryan’s pink, kitty-centric room, the catalyst for Margaret’s “You just can’t design a room around the cat” remark. They hate Michael’s room, with the “Home, Sweet Home” pillow, describing it variously as very “granny,” “an assisted living facility,” and as being the work of “a state-appointed designer.”

In the end, though, John’s unfinished room proves the kiss of death, and he is subjected to the further indignity of Jonathan Adler’s “See you later, decorator,” before making his way toward the Top Design logo. Sniff sniff. And now that John is gone, Top Design is left an opera without a Libretti.