Dispatches from the Department of “That Explains a Lot”

From Stella Zotis’ MySpace page:






















Oh, so that’s what that morning potion was for….Does it also contain formaldehyde? Because, possum, you don’t look a day over 101.

















“I see dead people. In leatha.”

Pink Navy Photoessay: Hair-Band Production of “Macbeth” Missing a Weird Sister

Oh the Hughmanity! Week 2: “Ribbed for No One’s Pleasure”

Possums, it was the Roman playwright Terence who wrote, “I am a man. Nothing human is alien to me.” However, had he survived into the modern age, and were he a viewer of Bravo and a reader of blogs, there is no doubt in our mind that he would have written, “I am a gay man. Nothing Hughman is alien to me.” And it is in that spirit that the redoubtable Hughman brings you his take on the second episode of Project Runway:

Jeezy creezy.

I so want to believe everything Tim Gunn says. Honestly. “Pencil skirts are in.” Hell yeah! “Glamour is the new black.” Hot-cha! “The Eighties are back!” Um, ok I guess. They weren’t that inspiring the first time but whatever.

So it seems particularly telling that in his first rooftop appearance, instead of telling us, as he usually does, that “this season has the best designers we’ve ever seen,” Tim says that this is the most “diverse” group of designers in the show’s history. “Diverse”?! Really?! That’s really damning with faint, meaningless praise. The thing is, though, I think his scrupulousness is showing through; the man is trying to tell us something, and not for nothing has he been bitchier than on any season past.

Maybe it’s just me but this season of PR already seems like the Presidential Primaries, no end in sight. And it’s ONLY THE SECOND SHOW!! Maybe I need to drink more but I feel like I’m sitting through a long boring movie (cough*The English Patient*cough) and desperately need to pee.

Why? Maybe it’s the lack of the “Speech in Berlin” moment thus far. There’s been no Gay Gasp like when we first laid eyes on Laura Bennett (who in my movie is played by Rosalind Russell). No jovial Chris March. No annoying yet strangely magnetic Christian Siriano. Not even a Wendy Pepper hovering around the edges like a soccer mom on a meth binge. We barely know anything about this season’s contestants, so when they’re booted, the best we can manage is “meh.” No thanks to Bravo, who’ve been as tightlipped about this season as Condi Rice at the Dinah Shore Classic.

The one thing the designers do most creatively on Season 5 is be Reality Show Contestants. Fortified by years of Real World, America’s Next Top Model and I Love New York, they eagerly jump into roles as Stereotypes. Talent be damned, this is about what the camera loves or what some people have decided the camera loves. The rest of us know the camera adds ten pounds to your ego and usually not where you need them.

So we get second-rate, crazy hippie, an overcaffeinated small gay, and a misplaced straight guy. All they need are “Hi, My Name is That One” nametags and we’re all set.

Even the clothes are meh. On this episode they could have all come from Forever 21 and we’d never know the difference. Short, nondescript little numbers from the wardrobe of The Hills. Twenty or so outfits thus far and frankly, I don’t think I could pick one of them out of a lineup.

Bravo tried to shake it up. First, all material had to be “eco friendly,” a vague enough term slapped onto everything these days to try and assuage our TV-addicted guilt. I still don’t really know what it means and I doubt any of these kids do either. In a perfect world, we’d get bamboo leaves and recycled glass. As if.

Second, we were treated to the Models being forced to buy the fabric at Mood. It was like watching the Valet Parker being made to buy your car. Just let them do their job, get a check and go back to smoking and drinking bottled water. I can tell you firsthand, models really don’t usually give a shit about what they’re paid to wear. It’s a JOB, not a stint volunteering to stop world hunger.

The results spoke volumes about what Models think of designers. Apparently designers are like crows with bad taste, attracted to shiny things in dull colors. Brown satin was the main draw. Perhaps the Models thought it was made of recycled camel dung and the remnants of lip gloss. (Eco Friendly!)

Stella ain’t having it. She declares in her best Penny Marshall voice that she’s Urban and all about leather. No shit. If Squeaky Fromme were a dominatrix, Stella would pretty much be her Doppelgänger. Oddly her final design didn’t exhibit any of these two qualities, unless Urban means we’re about a half inch from seeing the model’s “Lower East Side.” One-armed hookers everywhere are drooling over her product.

In what may go down in the records as Most Ironic Statement Ever on PR, Blayne calls her “leatherface.” I was hoping Stella would slap that kumquat he calls a head right off his shoulders (which Korto could snatch off the floor, splice in half and call a brooch.) Instead, the Gay Gollum takes the one-sided dress idea and applies it to his “Licious,” making yet another “I’m a little teapot” concoction. The result was also very Pretty in Pink/Flashdance, complete with a side ponytail in case you weren’t yet convinced it was retro enough.

Finally we got our requisite shockers.

Suede wins! Bisexual Kewpie dolls everywhere are crying with glee. I didn’t personally think it was the Best (I favored Kenley’s shift with the dramatic neckline which I could see Pat Buckley wearing to a cocktail party) but if you were a milkmaid going to a milkmaid prom, you could do worse.

Poor Wesley. I’m not into Conspiracy Theories but I’m just gonna go on a limb and hope (to his credit) that he was overwhelmed with Puppy Love. This is always the way it works. First the sultry looks, next the stolen kisses then suddenly you find yourself forcing your model into a brown satin condom while you whiteknuckle through frustration. The dress was too tight, too short and ribbed in a way that brought no one pleasure. Here’s hoping he can release some of that tension by the reunion and it’ll all be doe-eyed moonlit walks on the beach once again.

“If Squeaky Fromme were a dominatrix, Stella would pretty much be her Doppelgänger”

“Top Design” Breaking News: See You Later, “See You Later, Decorator”

Hallelujah, Praise the Lady Bunny, and any other religious ejaculation you can think of. In the above clip, Raggaydy Andy Cohen announces that on the upcoming season of Top Design, we will no longer be hearing Jonathan Adler say, “See you later, decorator.” What the new send-off will be remains to be seen. We’re counting on you, Simon Doonan, to save the day.

Miss XaXa Cries (Gay) Uncle

Our Miss XaXa tipples with fairy godfathers Ted Allen of Top Chef and Nick Verreos of Project Runway at last night's Gender Public Advocacy Coalition event at the Chopping Block in Chicago.

*Both* of These Men Have Sex with Women; Pink Navy Suddenly Sympathizes with the Plight of the Modern Heterosexual Woman

“Project Runway” Shocker!!: Two 20-Something New York Gay Men Get It On! Can the Apocalypse Be Far Behind?

We know, possums, we know. What are the odds of this happening, right?

At any rate, the rumors that Wesley Nault, he of the Paul Rudd visage and the Hitlerjugend-meets-80s-Mexican-boyband shorts, and Daniel Feld, he of the greasy hair and the upholstery blazer, are in a relationship have now been confirmed.

We love it when the sodomythical becomes the sodomitical.

Is Colombia’s Fourth Most Famous Export Using Its Most Famous?

What else would explain her saying, “I like this dress,” and then having it win?

And, in case you were wondering, possums….

Colombia’s Most Famous Exports:

1. cocaine
2. Shakira
3. Gabriel García Márquez
4. Ninotchka “Nina” García de Castellanos
5. emeralds

“Project Runway” Shocker! Suede Turns Out to be a Double-Sided Fabric

Yes, possums, it happened to us too. Drinks were spilled, pictures fell off walls, and cracks appeared in the ceiling—not, mind you, because we happened to be in California….

“The earth slipped off its axis,” interjected a visibly shaken Miss XaXa.

Oh, possums, it did more than that. The earth convulsed as though getting rid of a hairball.

For, you see, Suede is…oh we’ll let him say it:

“Suede is a bisexual Sagittarius….”

Miss XaXa, recovering from her stupor, asked, “Isn’t that half man, half horse?”

“Or horse’s ass. And I’m not even sure about the half man part.”

“How on earth would he ever get a woman to sleep with him?”

“Uh, catch her in a web of bias-cut satin strips?”

Fortunately, though, the female panic button seems to work. The very thought that that might be interested in women activated Miss XaXa’s alarm, and her ladypart-panic room clanged shut with the finality of a Swiss bank vault. Jodie Foster is not getting out, and Suede is not getting in, anytime soon.

“Yeah, we’d only pay 49 cents for that, too.”

Miss XaXa’s reaction: “That’s what happens when you’re from Sacramento.”

“It’s a young Quentin Crisp! No, no, it’s the ghost of JonBenet Ramsey! No, it’s Austintacious!”

To which Miss XaXa replied, “If Blayne is not allowed to say ‘girlicious,’ you can’t say ‘austintacious,’ ok?”

What we are allowed to say, though, is that success definitely agrees with Miss Scarlett. Never have the golden locks or the opera pumps possessed such luster and sheen.

Oh the Hughmanity! Week 1: “A Brazil Wax for a Smurf”

Possums, we have never been able to resist a cri de cœur, and a cri de cœur is exactly what we heard after the first episode of the final season of Project Runway. (As Shakespeare might have written, we come to bury PR, not to praise it, and we will chime in presently.)

Indeed, it was a veritable chorus of cris de cœur, and our favorite baritone voice crying out in the fashion desert belonged to the inimitable Hughman. When we asked him to give us (and Bravo) a piece of his mind—à la mode, as it were—he was gracious enough to cut us a generous slice. Spoons at the ready, then, possums, as Hughman dishes it out:


Project Runway has been for many years now a constant in our lives. Indeed, it has been with me longer than many of my relationships. I can point to when Heidi Klum first appeared in my life, when Tim Gunn gazed lovingly at me and the first Lover’s Spat I had with Nina Garcia. Like you, I looked forward to the return of our beloved show before it was shot along with Bruce Willis into deep space (aka Lifetime), where no one can hear you scream—unless you’re Valerie Bertinelli or Tori Spelling.

Well, fuck me, is all I have to say thus far. Judging from the premiere, this time around the relationship is going to be a bumpy ride.

First things first.

Let’s all place one gloved hand on the September issue of Vogue and swear to Coco Chanel we will never ever, ever—EVER—mouth the “word” girlicious again. EVER. If I could invent a time machine, possibly the first thing I’d do is go back and slap the concept right out of Blayne’s orange, red-hatted teeny head. It’s not a pun, it’s not funny, it’s not clever and Blayne is certainly no Christian Siriano. Also, if you hear a friend say it, you are authorized to just dump them on the spot. No good can come of this utterance and you are certainly, by your mere presence on this blog, far too glamorous to have people like that surrounding you.

It says in his Bravo bio that Blayne was voted the Most Stylish Man in Seattle. So to all the men in Seattle and the blind nuns who voted for him, I say, “Poor you”. As for the outfit he created, I’m sure it will make a dramatic conclusion to The Vagina Monologues : The Musical.

Then we come to “Suede”...eh... Pleather. He has managed to take the standard fauxhawk of Bravo contestants to the next level. Here it’s like a Brazil wax for a Smurf. Thankfully he talks of himself in the third person, which I can only hope is a stilted attempt to distance himself from whoever BeDazzled his jean vest with his nom de douche. Supposedly he’s monied or somesuch and owns a dairy in Pennsylvania or somewhere. Perhaps all the milkmaids there are wearing dull gingham frocks and giggling about all the cute fabric nicknames they’ve given to the bulls. “Cashmere! Poly-blend! Uh... suede.”

Speaking of trash, we shan’t forget the Bag-a-lencia stylings of Stella, the Patron Saint of Bad Choice of Drug Use in the 70s. If Donatella were barefoot and pregnant and living in a trailer, this dress would have been what J-Lo would have worn to the Oscars. Would it have killed her to make a bra out of some of the other crap she threw away? Also, word to the wise : do not wear your circus costume in the supermarket. No one wants to worry that a circus hippy in pigtails is going to rip a box of Glad Wrap out of their hands in Aisle 3.

Other dribbles that caught in my eye:

Man shorts like the ones Wesley wears are fine. On the Von Trapps. Yes, they’re supposedly fabulous fashionable now and all that but really... c’mon. They make a reasonable adult look like Pinocchio, and do we really need to compare ourselves to wooden toys that live with old mustached men? I thought they looked silly on the runway and now that I see them on an actual person and not a model, I realize I was right. Just assume we believe you when you state you shave your legs.

Finally, all the brouhaha about Jerry’s Morton Salt Girl outfit is grossly exaggerated. American Psycho?? Please. Patrick Bateman wore Armani, fer Christ’s sake! I actually went and looked at Jerry’s fashion line “Form”. And it was NOTHING like what he did on PR! They were, uh, t-shirts. See, if Gristedes sold t-shirts, this would have been a no-brainer. Oh well. Sigh. Better luck in the reunion show!

Pink Navy Hair-oine of the Day: Wendy Williams

Ladies, this is how it's done. Watch starting at the 3:49 mark.

A Packet of “Crisps”: Marlene Dietrich

Possums, while going through our library recently, we re-read with great pleasure a collection of essays by Quentin Crisp, gnashing our teeth all the while over how neglected he has become of late.

In an effort to remind ourselves of just how perceptive a writer he could be (in addition to being endlessly entertaining and peerlessly bitchy), we will bring you a few of his best tidbits about the subject he knew best: as Countess DeLave might have put it in The Women, "Oh glamour, glamour."

To start, let Mr. Crisp tell you, possums, about Miss Dietrich:

“Miss Dietrich’s early Hollywood movies were the most immoral ever generally released. She did not reveal any more of her body than other screen sirens of her day, nor was she seen behaving in an any more explicitly sexual way, but the plots of nearly all these pictures showed her living a life of total degradation. In Shanghai Express, for instance, she forever plied her trade back and forth from Shanghai to Peking until, after a great deal of mileage, to say nothing of footage, she re-met her former fiancé quite by chance but without, one must add, the slightest sign of embarrassment. Here as elsewhere, her costar was chosen from among the most boring actors that the casting office could supply. This was done to make it clear that matrimony was inevitable.

Though on one occasion she sank so low as to wear a hat—the brim of which was weighed down with artificial cherries—Miss Dietrich never seemed to pay the smallest price for her sins, but perhaps I have read the message wrongly. It may be that the ultimate punishment for a lifetime of unremitting fornication is that you become too weak to defend yourself from marriage.”

Operatic Carmen Webber Undone by Baller, the Tiki Barber of Seville

Scarbo Speaks! Pink Navy Listens, Becomes Convinced of the Wisdom of “Pistol”-Whipping

Don’t worry, possums. We took plenty of notes and will be toiling madly on our addled recap tout de suite. However, we couldn’t let the morning pass without giving some kind of award to the best, choicest, lowest-hanging-fruit speech of the night.

We were treated to the spectacle of Miss Kit “Pistol” Scarbo do-declaring, “‘Kit Pistol’ is kind of like my Mark Twain.”

Our eyebrow twitched. Where could this possibly be going? Sure, we were impressed by the literary reference, but our minds raced to complete her thought—was a Huck Finn reference forthcoming? Folksy wisdom? Scathing wit?

Nah.

“It’s my alias.”

Oh. Well, we knew she didn’t exactly look two fathoms deep.

“Or sharp as a pistol,” agreed Miss XaXa.

(Oh, and Kit, possum, Mark Twain is really more of a pen name or pseudonym, but don’t let that stop you.)

Really, though, we spoke too soon, for there was, indeed, folksy wisdom to come.

Wearing a little number from the Courtney Love for Blowup Dolls Collection—



















“Oh, come on,” said Miss XaXa, “it looks more like a costume from a tv sitcom, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?: The Early Years.”

—Be that as it may, Miss Scarbo proclaimed, “I believe that the clothing that you wear represents who you are and life is too short to have on a bad outfit.”

As soon as the words were out of her mouth, we looked at Miss XaXa and promptly hit the ground. When the lightnin’s a-comin’, you don’t want to be the vertical one.

“Good God,” we said to Miss XaXa from our crouching position. “If life is too short to have on a bad outfit, this woman’s lifespan must be measured in minutes.”

“Out of the mouths of Baby Janes,” Miss XaXa gnomically replied.

Alas, lightning did not strike, and this is really a pity. No, possums, no; it’s not what you think. It’s just that we foresee we’re going to have trouble telling her and Sweet P apart—was it really wise, oh producers, to have two tow-haired punk chicks on the same season?—and we were just hoping lightning would take care of that little matter for us.

Oh well, perhaps next week. Lightning may not strike twice, but we can always hope it will strike once.

Mrs. Vreeland Declares

Possums, in the spirit of "Why Don't You?" Wednesdays, which will continue, and in honor of a very dear friend, we will also occasionally bring you bits of memos Diana Vreeland wrote to her Vogue staff, and which we think will put you in the right frame of mind. Without further ado:

August 16, 1967
Re: Hair

I think it is really essential that you all re-think these terrible looking curls next to the face...we agreed long ago they look dipped in salad oil...they also look like poor white trash people with hair all broken off and they can't get the front to the back...

I am all for the cut around the face as you know--that is to say down the side of the face to give a good clean guiche...

But, I really don't think we ought to carry on with these awful-looking curls--they do nothing for the clothes and nothing for the girl--it all gets depressing...

I assure you this association with people with broken hair, no hairdresser, no money, no vitality--and the will to live is gone...

Pinking Shears at the Ready, or Apocalypse and Anticipation

Possum (or, one hopes, possums), we will, indeed, be covering Project Runway 4.

There was never any doubt, of course, but perhaps we ought to explain the absence of posting. Due credit ought naturally to be given to the tedium and rigor of real life, including those pesky wildfires you may have read about.

But, really, possum, it isn't real life that you read us for, so let's cut to the chase.

Aside from simply needing time to let our claws grow back, we confess that all this while we just couldn't bear to go on the Bravo website and be faced with that damned countdown clock, ticking off the days, hours and minutes until the premiere of PR 4.

We were having none of it, for, as a matter of principle, we refuse to be browbeaten into enthusiasm, but this seemed somehow more egregious than that, as if it were nothing less than the Second Coming. Talk of the Second Coming inspires in us either a) jokes about the refractory period or b) a desire to wear our favorite tee shirt, the one that says, "Jesus Is Coming! Look Busy!" So you can see how this sort of apocalyptic vibe wouldn't really work for us.

And really, this does a disservice to Project Runway itself. How can it possibly live up to such hype? What if Tim were one of us, just a slob like one of us, just a stranger on the bus....

"Oh, honey," Miss XaXa interrupted, "if Tim Gunn isn't on the bus, no one is."

And that, possum, is the Gospel truth. Welcome to Project Runway, Season 4.

Pink Navy Recommends: Design Flaws in the Human Condition

Well, possums, if Bravo can engage in an orgy of promotion tonight, why shouldn’t we?

And so, we’d like to tell you about Paul Schmidtberger.

Paul is a droll writer friend of long standing, and our friendship has, at various times, involved Jean-Paul Gaultier’s hand, Lenny Kravitz’s favorite falafel, the Père Lachaise cemetery, and Edgar Allan Poe’s The Raven (though, bien sûr, not all at once).

And now the bitch has gone and gotten a comic novel published. And by Doubleday, no less.

And did we mention that Publisher’s Weekly described the novel as “a promising debut about love, friendship and anger-management” and “an assuredly entertaining romp”? Like we said: Bitch.

Paul, one of the funniest people we know, hails from deepest, darkest New Jersey. Schooley’s Mountain, to be precise. As Paul notes, that’s near Hackettstown, which “is famous because the remains of a wooly mammoth were discovered there,” transported to Harvard, and given the misnomer “Harvard Mastodon.” The mastodon, Paul assures us, was “the last candidate from Hackettstown to get into Harvard.”

Paul himself went to Yale, then did the whole Lost in Translation thing in Japan before Sofia Coppola made winsome, quasi-comedic, Tokyo-based anomie fashionable. Then, of course, he cornered the market in anomie by going to work for an international law firm that was like the collective hallucination of Stanley Kubrick, the Marx Brothers, and the now-deceased Supreme Leader of Turkmenistan.

Paul’s travails at the law firm ended thus: “Typically, the decision to leave a law firm is one that’s undertaken after careful consideration and reflection. In my case, the firm made things easier by firing me, marching me downstairs, and throwing me out onto the street. Me and the apple I'd been planning to have for a snack that afternoon. Hey, thanks.”

And now, Doubleday has published Paul’s first novel, Design Flaws in the Human Condition. The back of the book tells you all:

Set in Manhattan - the conniption capital of the world - a riotously funny and fresh debut novel about anger, infidelity, and friendship.

Through a hilarious series of events, two strangers find themselves railroaded into an anger-management class, where they soon become fast friends. Iris is there because of an eminently justifiable meltdown on a crowded flight, whereas Ken got caught defacing library books with rude (but true!) messages about his former boyfriend - the boyfriend that he caught in bed with another man on the same night he got fired from his job proofreading in a law firm.

Needless to say, Iris and Ken were cosmically destined to be friends. What follows is a strikingly original comedy of (occasionally bad) manners as Ken enlists Iris to infiltrate his ex-boyfriend’s life in the hope of discovering that he’s miserable. And Iris reciprocates, dispatching Ken to work himself into the confidence of her own boyfriend who she suspects, is starting to stray. But what if Ken's ex isn’t crying himself to sleep? What if he’s not the amoral fiend Ken wants to believe he is? And what should Iris do when her worst suspicions start to come true? Exactly how perfect do we have the right to expect our fellow human beings to be?

Anger, betrayal, loyalty, and friendship - Design Flaws of the Human Condition explores these universal themes with wisdom, compassion, and a wickedly irreverent sense of humor.

And did we mention Paul is single?

The current issue of Out magazine had this to say:

“Debut novelist Schmidtberger’s take is very funny, and his hilarious observations about contemporary urban life, from its escapable therapy-speak to the damage done to the skyline by Donald Trump, play well alongside this ultimately sentimental story about the virtues of friendship. ... Schmidtberger’s wryly wrought characters lend authenticity to this confection of a summer novel.”

Doesn’t it sound like just the sort of thing to get you through the dog days of summer (or the rainy days of summer if you’re on the East Coast) and boring patches of Top Chef?

So get thee to Paul’s website, and to Amazon or Barnes & Noble or your local book emporium and get thee a copy. And write to Paul and let him know how much you liked it, and maybe, just maybe, he’ll explain about Jean-Paul Gaultier.

And now, as an amuse-bouche from Amuse-Biatch, to whet your appetite, here is the first page of the novel:

PROLOGUE. In Which the Peace and Tranquility of Manhattan Are Disturbed by an Unusual Meteorological Phenomenon.

Helvetica Carlyle, née Fahrtstaller, had never gotten a cab that quickly in her entire life, and Helvetica Carlyle, it has to be said, was an extremely demanding woman.

Was being the operative word.

At thirty-two feet per second, it took only about 3.8 seconds for her body to plunge from the seventeenth floor of her Park Avenue co-op down onto - or more precisely, through - the roof of the taxi that had just pulled up to the awning outside the building. The cab driver, one of three Bangladeshi brothers who shared a single studio apartment, a single driver’s license, and a single counterfeit green card, panicked and clawed his way out of the car, leaving the passengers, a well-dressed elderly couple, sitting face-to-face with the corpse. They exchanged a long look before the wife finally sighed, leaned forward, bent back what remained of one of Helvetica’s ears and peered behind it.

“Oh, that lying little such and such,” she said. “She did have work done.”