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?

Pink Navy Product Watch: Ke-Ke-Ke-Kelly

Courtesy of Ensign Laz.

Kelly Wearstler Née Gallagher Shows You How It’s Done in St. Tropez, Takes Roof Off Her NSFW Cabana

Oh, possums, and here you thought we were going to write a headline about a designer matching carpets and drapes, or about Gallagher’s watermelons.

Frankly, possums, we’re hurt that you would think us capable of that. Just how do you see us?

All we want is equality. Seeing as how this week's episode of Top Design has such a large soft-core component to it, what with the plethora of rippling, muscled, hairless carpenters with dime-sized nipples, why should our straight brothers and lesbian sisters be deprived of similar delights?

And it is on behalf of our straight brothers and lesbian sisters that we were disappointed in this episode. As should have become apparent to any sentient Bravo viewer, judge Kelly Wearstler is running in the Fug Cup against Top Chef’s Padma Lakshmi, though it appears that, even this early in the race, she is leaving Padma in the Jo Malone-scented dust. Now, when Top Chef had a beach challenge, Padma dutifully put on a bikini and some truly god-awful accoutrements, and we were looking forward to the same from Kelly.

There has been some debate in the servants’ quarter at Withering Depths as to whether Kelly actually wore Balenciaga to the beach, which would be fabulous in its own way. But whether it was Balenciaga (the parlor maid’s theory), or Donna Karan (the cook’s theory), or Michael Kors (the footman’s theory), it was still a dress and not a bikini. We were very disappointed indeed.

Then a little bird, a cormorant nicknamed Coleridge after The Rime of the Ancient Mariner, whispered in our ear that our Kelly had once, when she still used her nom de jeune fille Gallagher, been Playboy’s Playmate of the Month. We were thrilled, though not surprised. It should be clear to anyone that Kelly is a woman who is used to being looked at. And with good reason.

On-ship photographer Laz, braver and hardier than we, pored through the Playboy archives, and--wouldn’t you know it?--there she was, our Kelly, as roofless as if she were on the beach in St. Tropez (Ryan did say that St. Tropez was about topless women).

And we were right about the drawl; she hails from Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Furthermore, according to Wikipedia, her September 1994 centerfold “appears very briefly in the 1995 film Welcome to the Dollhouse, affixed to the inside of a school locker.”

These are Kelly’s stats from the Playboy website:

BIRTHPLACE: Myrtle Beach, South Carolina
BUST: 34" C
WAIST: 24"
HIPS: 35"
HEIGHT: 5' 6"
WEIGHT: 105 lbs
AMBITIONS:
To own my own marvelous design and furnishings business.
TURN-ONS:
Fabulous, intense minds, honesty, huge smiles and a man with a colossal heart.
TURNOFFS:
Lack of communication, cruelty to animals, slackers, and bad design.
ROMANCING MY MAN:
Breakfast in the boudoir, a bit of physical activity, trip to the museum for some mental and visual stimulation, a nibble for two to satisfy the palate and a trip to the beach to see the sun set and the moon rise.
I CAN'T GET ENOUGH OF:
Swap meets, blended coffees, Nicholson Baker novels & good loving.

Our favorite part of this? That she gives a shout-out to literary perv Nicholson Baker. We have memories of reading the punningly titled phone-sex novel Vox in our university library, behind the covers of a linguistics textbook. We were subsequently delighted when the novel came up in the Clinton-Lewinsky scandal because Monica bought it as a gift for Bill. And then there’s also The Fermata, about a man who likes to stop time and take women’s clothes off.

Sly comedienne, interior designer, fashionista, mother, Playboy Playmate, museum-goer, animal-lover, Nicholson Baker reader—could she be any more fabulous? Kelly, we don’t know how it’s possible to love you more, but we think we do. Welcome to the dollhouse indeed.

Of Trannies, Prince and Leggings

Our pals at Fishbowl LA offer a peppery account of the first edition of a weekly Top Design viewing party, hosted by contestant Andrea Keller and attended by "latered" contestant Heather Ashton.

Go have a look and acquaint yourself with tidbits of behind-the-scenes information, including the fact that contestant Elizabeth Moore used to be a stylist for Prince, the hope-inducing news (now that we no longer have Padma Lakshmi's outfits to use as a scratching post) that judge Kelly Wearstler's outfits only get worse, and the shocking possibility that adults working in the media and design industries in Los Angeles may never have encountered a real trannie in what is, after all, practically the species' native environment.

Unmanned and Unmuzzled, Alexis Finally Hits the Solar Plexus

Alexis Arquette may be famous for a lot of things, but being demure is not one of them. None of this warm-and-fuzzy-Felicity-Huffman-tranny act for her.

Consequently, we were a little disappointed that last night's premiere episode had almost nothing of her trademark forked tongue. She looked becalmed, almost drugged, as did Todd Oldham and most of the judges (Miss XaXa is beginning to suspect that Bravo has its own hydroponic plantation to supply its hosts and guests judges; can Top Hydroponic Gardener be far behind?)

However, on her Bravo blog, Alexis has burst from her box, her straight jacket, as it were, and spoken what was on her mind:

During the judging, now I look back and think I could have been a little more candid, but I didn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings. Overall, I was a little surprised with the lack of ingenuity I saw....There was another room, the first one I saw, I think, where I probably wasn’t mean enough about it. It was like an inner sanctum, but only if you’re into a sort of “Pottery Barn” mausoleum. I’ve been in warmer cemeteries.

Meow! Now that's the Alexis we know and love.