“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?

Pink Navy Girl in Every Port: Kay Kendall

As far as we know, possums, this week's Pink Navy Girl in Every Port was not a bitch, and didn't have a drug habit, but by God, she was fabulous. And funny. And tall.

As David Thomson puts it, "Kay Kendall grew up tall. Indifferent to the unhelpful state of being an outcast, not just a great beauty, but one of the most sophisticated looking women you had ever seen. She seemed made in Belgravia."

She came from a theatrical family, and by the age of 13, she was tall enough to appear in the chorus line at the Palladium in London. Unfortunately, her stage and film career didn't go anywhere until, in 1953, she landed a role in the British comedy Genevieve, a film about two classic-car enthusiasts in the annual London-Brighton race.

As Thomson points out, one of the two competing drivers "was Kenneth More, who turned up with this tall, languid and gloriously daffy girlfriend, as if he had found her in screwball comedy. Kay Kendall was the joker in the film, not least in the dance-hall scene where she joins the band and plays a very hot trumpet...." Pauline Kael agrees: "Kay Kendall had perhaps her happiest (and most irresistible) role as the trumpet-playing model....Everything about this movie seems to go right, and it looks relaxed and effortless." And Kay Kendall was quite something, as you can see for yourselves, possums.



Genevieve made her a star at the age of 27, and after appearing with Rex Harrison (yes, as in My Fair Lady) in the ironically titled The Constant Husband, she began an affair with Harrison, who was inconstantly married to the fabulous-in-her-own-right Lilli Palmer.

According to Wikipedia, "when Rex Harrison learned from Kendall's doctor that she had been diagnosed with myeloid leukemia, he and Lilli Palmer agreed to divorce so he could marry Kendall and provide for her care. Kendall was never told of her illness and ended up believing she merely had an iron deficiency. As for the divorce, Palmer said she was not upset because she had a lover, too. She and Harrison planned to remarry after Kendall's death, but Palmer ended up falling in love with her companion, Carlos Thompson, and married him instead."

Before her death at the age of 32, Kay Kendall was also the best thing about Les Girls, a George Cukor-directed version of a Cole Porter musical designed by George Hoyningen-Huené, and if your fingertips went all tingly from reading that, you're definitely gay. As Pauline Kael put it, "the tall, blithe, and beautiful comedienne Kay Kendall...does a funny, drunk 'La Habanera' and has a number with [Gene] Kelly in which she seems to be outdancing him and having an easy, amused time of it." In the trailer below, she's the tall, funny, fabulous knockout.



David Thomson offers the best tribute of all: "Her last film was Once More With Feeling, where she steals the picture from Yul Brynner, who plays her conductor husband. That was the saddest thing about Kay Kendall - she was left to steal pictures in a world where talented and fond men might have made entire movies for her and her comic timing. She was very sexy but she made fun of sex. She was upper-class, yet itching to be a tramp. If only she had known Preston Sturges - they might have saved each other and kept the flame of screwball burning for another 10 years." Amen to that possums.

"I'll get you, my pretty! And your little afghan, too!"

We kid, Jonathan, possum. There's no place like homo, there's no place like homo!

Update: We never thought this would be necessary, but perhaps it's simply a testament to how few people are watching the show and/or reading the Bravo blogs. So, anyway, possums, let us explain the joke.

On his blog this week, Jonathan Adler wrote: "Bonjour. No new episode this week, so no proper blog. But, I'm answering some of the questions that y'all have posed in response to previous blogs. I have chosen to answer the fabulous people who asked interesting questions. I have chosen to completely ignore the naughty person who said that I look just like Margaret Hamilton, the wicked witch from the Wizard of Oz."

Since it so happened that it was a commenter on Pink Navy who made the original Margaret Hamilton observation, and given how little material this show gives us to work with, we thought it might be mildly amusing to put up a little quick PhotoShop job of Jonathan Adler as Margaret Hamilton in The Wizard of Oz. It's as simple as that. We hope that will clear things up.

How You Like Them Apples (and Bananas and Grapes)?

Just in time for the weekend, possums, we bring you the original lady in the tutti-frutti hat, Carmen Miranda herself. This clip from The Gang's All Here ought to give you an idea of what our dreams are like. Be sure to watch for the giant, phallic bananas at about 3:45 in.

Cuánto Le Gusta, Le Gusta, Le Gusta: The Adler in the Tutti-Frutti Hat

By Pink Navy News (PNN)
March 2, 2007 12:30 PM PST

WEST HOLLYWOOD, California – Attending last night’s event for homosexualist employees of NBC/Universal (including the company’s Bravo subsidiary), held at brick-and-mortar-shell palais des poseurs The Abbey, cool-kitsch potter Jonathan Adler gave an exclusive interview to PNN reporter Lazarus West. Dressed to the nines (as well as to the five-servings-a-day), and quaffing one of the fruity cocktails that are the specialty of this boîte for boîte-munchers, Adler issued an apology for unqualified statements made during the fourth installment of Bravo’s latest “Top”-format reality show, Top Design.

The episode aired on February 21 and contained statements likening contestant Michael Adam’s choice of colors to those of “banana” and “grape.” Designer Adams, 23, is best known for being so gay that the amniotic fluid in which he lay suspended for nine months (as he decorated the walls of his mother’s womb with tiny-finger paintings of birds) is now classified as weapons-grade by the U.S. government. Scientists warn that a few drops in the water supply would be enough to turn the city of Des Moines into a homosexualist mecca of interior designers, stylists, and couch-jumping movie stars.

Adams and his cult following of “minions” disagreed with Adler’s comments. One senior minion official, who requested anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the discussions, was seen visibly shaken, pacing while muttering to himself, “Damn you, it’s plum and light canary!”

But following recent revelations that Elle Décor includes the Adler-banned “grape” and “banana” colors on its cover, and in the wake of incidents involving plastic grapes and bananas being thrown at him, Adler realized that he had made a mistake. He now declares himself “a friend to all fruits.”

"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.

“Why Don’t You?” Wednesday

No doubt you will be disappointed, possums, that this is a Wednesday without a new and disappointing episode of Top Design. However, we are committed to not disappointing you, and so, as ever, we bring you our weekly helping of Diana Vreeland’s tips for decorating your home and ornamenting your life. Without further ado, Why Don’t You…

In your home:

* Use those low bamboo Legomatic folding beach chairs in little pairs around your drawing-room? They are easy to move about and divinely comfortable. Cover the rubberized cushions in green satin with crimson buttons. [This one’s for Carisa Perez-Fuentes.]

* Consider using the yellow of a zinnia and the purple of a petunia in your decoration? [This one’s for Michael Adams and Jonathan Adler.]

* Keep your telephone wires from curling and driving you wild by using telephone coils? (At H. Morgan, 2 West 46th Street.)

* Do your closet shelves in immaculate white organdie, pleated, with Lubin’s scented pink flannels wrapped around your things? [This one’s for Matt Lorenz; drink a shot of tequila.]

And to make up for the fact that there’s no new episode tonight, we’ll throw in a few more, non-décor suggestions. So, Why Don’t You…

* Wear black breitschwanz† mules with red heels?

* Help litter the beaches with these three colors—capucine, pine green, and black?

* Give the wife of your favorite band leader an entire jazz-band made of tiny baguette diamonds and cabochon emeralds, in the form of a bracelet from Marcus?

* Own, as does one extremely smart woman, twelve diamond roses of all sizes? Wear one as a buttonhole on a tailor-made. Wear five for a necklace around the top of your dress. Wear them all at once one night, in the hair, on your bag, up and down your dress.

* Go serenely out in the snow in a court jester’s hood of cherry red cotton velvet?

† Breitschwanz, according to the International Fur Trade Federation, is “the pelt of a still-born Karakul lamb, where the mother has aborted naturally as a result of the harsh weather conditions, natural illness or pregnancy difficulties. Broadtail pelts are extremely rare and only account for a very small percentage of overall Karakul production. The broadtail pelt is flatter, softer and silkier than the traditional curly young lamb pelt.”

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.

She-Bangs: The Hollywood Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Oldham

As Ensign Laz pointed out, it's uncanny. Todd Oldham and Fräulein Maria have the same bangs.

Ryan, er, Marta, pink's OUR favorite color, too!

Pink Navy Girl in Every Port: Miss Tallulah Bankhead

Possums, we have a recollection of an episode of Absolutely Fabulous in which Edina dismisses the way her gay ex-husband has been smitten by Patsy’s fabulous sister thus: “Typical! A bitch with a drug habit, and you’re anybody’s, aren’t you?”

We’ll cop to that, but, as it turns out, this week’s bitch with a drug habit, er, Pink Navy Girl in Every Port, happens to be Miss XaXa’s selection, and our first American (so you don’t think we wander only in foreign ports)—the one, the only, the fiercest bitch the State of Alabama ever produced, Miss Tallulah Bankhead.

Endowed with a voice that one writer described as “steeped as deep in sex as the human voice can go without drowning,” Miss Tallulah came from Alabama aristocracy. Her uncle and her grandfather were U.S. Senators, and her father was the Speaker of the House of Representatives under Roosevelt.

Like every Southern belle, Miss Tallulah tried at every turn to get her own way, with some occasions more successful than others, and stated, “To deny me anything only inflames my desires.” Her tantrums were treated with a bucket of water by her no-nonsense grandmother.

At fifteen she moved to New York to be an actress, and checked into the Algonquin Hotel. Yes, the one with the round table. John Barrymore (Drew’s grandfather) put the moves on Miss Tallulah, exposing himself to her in his dressing room, after which she swore publicly that she would never bed a man who wasn’t “hung like Barrymore.” She later claimed to have kept her word.

Like many another ingénue, she tried lesbianism and cocaine. Her first experiment was with the great lady of the theater, Eva Le Gallienne; she took to introducing herself to strangers at parties with, “I’m a lesbian. What do you do?” She may also have had an affair with Billie Holiday. Not that she could exactly make up her mind, as she also declared, “I could never become a lesbian because they have no sense of humor.”

She eventually ended up in London, where she had a great success, until she was rejected by Somerset Maugham (the gay novelist married to famous decorator Sirie Maugham) to play Sadie Thompson, the floozy who tempts a minister in the tropics in his play, Rain. As a result, she tried to commit suicide by swallowing 20 aspirins and writing a suicide note that read, “It ain’t goin’ to rain no moh.” She awoke the next day in fine fettle to the news that she would star in a Noël Coward play.

She then made her way to Hollywood and a well-paid career in undistinguished movies. She had loads of fun, though, including a tryst with Tarzan himself, Olympic swimming medalist Johnny Weissmuller, in the swimming pool of the Garden of Allah, after which she declared herself “a very satisfied Jane.”

She eventually married John Emery, a good-looking man who was a second-rate actor, but whose charms were undeniable. According to a piece in The New Yorker:

One of Tallulah’s party tricks was to escort guests to the master bedroom, fling back the covers from the bed in which Emery was sleeping, and crow, “Did you ever see a prick as big as that before?”….Soon she was telling people, “Well, darling, the weapon may be of admirable proportions, but the shot is indescribably weak.” Within a few years, the marriage, such as it was, was over.

She contracted a severe case of gonorrhea from actor George Raft, which led to hospitalization, a hysterectomy and severe weight loss. She left the hospital weighing 70 pounds, but proclaimed to the doctor, “Don’t think this has taught me a lesson!”

Like some of today’s celebrities, she was given to flashing audiences. Because so many people in the audience complained during the run of a Thornton Wilder play, Actors’ Equity had to order her to wear knickers while onstage. The same problem came up, as it were, while she was filming Alfred Hitchcock’s Lifeboat, which, according to a biographer, led Hitchcock to respond “with his much-quoted deliberation about whether the matter needed to be referred to the makeup or the hairdressing department.” Sounds like Kelly Wearstler.

Unfortunately, her film career didn’t add up to much, and the stage work dried up as well. By the 1950s, she had a radio show, a rather saucy memoir on the bestseller list, and made appearances on I Love Lucy as herself. In 1968, she died from double pneumonia. A giver of great quote to the end, her final words were, “codeine—bourbon.”

Miss Tallulah, referred to as “Humphrey Bogart in silk panties” and as the “most thoroughgoing libertine and free-swinging flapper of the age,” left a trail of anecdotes and quips. Apparently, she was given to swimming in nothing but a string of pearls. Her reasoning? “I just wanted to prove I was a natural ash blonde.”

And Miss XaXa’s favorite quotes:

- I'll come and make love to you at five o'clock. If I'm late, start without me.

- It's the good girls who keep diaries; the bad girls never have the time.

- My father warned me about men and booze... but he never said anything about women and cocaine.

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.

Yes, We Have No Banana (and Grape), We Have No Banana (and Grape) Today

On Wednesday's episode, Jonathan Adler repeatedly took Michael Adams to task for the colors in his room, decrying the use of "banana" and "grape," apparently a serious crime in the interior design world.

But lo and behold, we had a look at the cover of the current issue of Elle Décor, and what do we see? Why, it's banana and grape. Hmmmm. We don't know what to make of it. Disagreement with Margaret Russell? Can it be? And how is it possible that kitschmeister Jonathan Adler, of all people, doesn't countenance the use of banana and grape? It's all too much to think about on a Friday.

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.

"Top Design" Shocker: Raggaydy Andy "Dogged" by New Mexican Foot Fetishist!! Lifetime/Logo to Co-Produce TV Movie for Their "Gaymen in Peril" Series

Possums, our thoughts and prayers go out this morning to Bravo VP, blogger, boy reporter, and online salonnière Raggaydy Andy Cohen.

Ever since the success of "quirky New Mexican" dramedy Little Miss Sunshine, the denizens of the Land of Enchantment have felt liberated, perhaps entitled, to bring their quirks out into the open. Unfortunately, our Raggaydy Andy has now become a victim of this revolution. Read this excerpt from today's edition of his blog as he describes the horrors he is enduring, and for which our hearts go out to him:

Oh hey, remember last week when someone called from New Mexico asking Jonathan Adler and I to remove our socks? I thought it was so quaint and hilarious that someone from across the country would be able to impact two people to take off their socks. Well, it turns out we got a ton more emails from our NM buddy last night and he was, from my estimation, a little desperate for me to free my feet from my boots and show my ankles. No, I mean he was desperate to see my bare naked feet and ankles.

Mommy, why is the man from New Mexico so interested in my feetsies?

I actually am pleased that someone is interested in my dogs because I pretty much am not too into them. So, keep them cards and letters comin'!

Andy, possum, you seem understandably shaken. Perhaps you should get Chris What's-'is-name from Dateline NBC on the case. You can't be too careful with these New Mexico quirky pervs. They start out NM and end up SNM.

Yet Another Bush(man) Brought Low by Afghans and the "Kellyban"

So it's goodbye to Felicia Bushman, the latest casualty in the afghan war. It strikes us as amusing that Kelly Wearstler, of all people, has no tolerance for kitsch, but Granny's afghan definitely did Felicia in.

Something else strikes us, though no doubt it is purely coincidental.

Ages of eliminated contestants:

Lisa: 48
Heather: 36
John: 40
Elizabeth: 48
Felicia: 38

We hate to go all Agatha Christie / And Then There Were None on you, but, Uh-oh, Andrea (36) and Ryan (35). Watch your backs.

We're actually sort of sorry to see Felicia go. Bad plastic surgery aside, she seems to have some taste, and the judges threw her a sop in their blogs by linking to her website. And judging by her rather sweet interaction with Gayest of the Gay, Michael, we believe she has a bright future ahead of her as what Defamer calls a "Scientology war bride." She would be the perfect beard for ["Up and Coming" Movie Star] because she not only has design talent, but her profession would provide perfect cover for ["Up and Coming" Movie Star]'s boys: "Oh, that hunky carpenter? And that flaming decorator? They're not [["Up and Coming" Movie Star]'s boyfriends. They work for me." Works for everyone, possum. Good luck, Felicia, and may Lord Xenu be with you.

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.

We've Heard of Idol "Worship," But This Is Ridiculous

Just the sort of talented doll every boy wants in his bedroom (and it has handles!). Is it any wonder, possums, why we get so many "Matt Lorenz gay" Google queries?

"No, YOU'RE wearing the strange gold outfit and the weird hairdo."

Well, it was either that or, "So that's what you look like with your clothes on!" Seeing as it's Ash Wednesday, we opted for the tasteful one.