Project Runway

SPOILER ALERT!

So this morning I was at the Project Runway finale and because no one asked us to sign a confidentiality agreement, I’m spilling the beans!


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Final five! All remaining designers had lines today (do they edit out a few or something so that jerks like me don’t tell everyone what happened?—I think they must). Sweet P, Chris, Rami, Jillian and Christian all showed.

Highlights: Sweet P’s pink striped suiting (way better than it sounds), Chris’s models (America’s Next Top Models Bianca and Danielle) Rami’s blue draping on a short dress followed by a skirt suit, Jillian’s unbelievable coat (and America’s Next Top Model Jaslene aka Cha Cha being less caliente and more haute in a silver-trimmed dress), Christian’s choice of music.

Lowlights: Sweet P’s color scheme (mauve and yellow? Blech!), Chris’s everything else (red and black velvet—I shudder even writing this—the man suffers from the same curse as Kane, who was also in the audience—very talented, no taste), Rami’s military-olive tone overload and Christian’s over-the-top high fashion—was beautifully done, but mostly beige and black and somehow ended up boring.

Midlights: Posh Spice as the guest judge (meh), all the old cast members in the audience (Jay, Laura, Daniel), Heidi Klum’s shiny hair and teeth (note to self: eat more avocado), Tyson Beckford, Nikki Taylor, Padma from Top Chef and the rest of the Bravo crew.

Absence of lights: D-list sightings: Julia Allison of Gawker fame (they love to hate her, shall we say?) was in the lobby, gesticulating wildly, in an unsightly candy pink prom dress which Nina Garcia would not approve of, a Blair Underwood lookalike in the front row, a bunch of models who didn't make the cut for the shows looking pouty and sleepy stumbling to their seats.

I say Jillian should win, but they might just give it to Christian because of “potential”. Lame.

Fashion Week

I’m running around like a chicken with her head (couture?) cut off. Because of my innate (insane?) need to involve myself in as many projects as possible, I am an on-camera reporter and writer for Fashion Week. It started this morning, but I’ve been working since Monday.

First assignment: interview a Japanese designer with no direction whatsoever. Camera on? Okay, don’t screw up, because fifteen people are watching you. Oh and did we mention this designer doesn’t speak English? No? Oh, well now that we’re rolling, I mean, you should know that. So nod like you know what she’s saying and then reach really awkwardly and far over to the translator to nod again while she talks. Also stand so that you’re blocking some of the designs because they don’t debut for another five days and if they leak, it’s your fault. Go!

Excuse me cameraman? Can I have a do-over?

Next up, high design on the west side, where celebrities flit by and I’m on my second cocktail by the time we’re told the cameraman isn’t coming. So, hey how ‘bout you do the interview while the photographer takes pictures and you transcribe it? Didn’t bring your notebook because you thought you would be on-camera? Here’s one sheet of paper. Write down everything you both say but stay pretty for the photographer. Smile! And, hey, do it standing. Yeah, write everything down on one piece of paper on a floppy folder that keeps collapsing while you’re asking your questions (standing so said floppy folder keeps a-floppin’) during the show. Ignore the dozens of photographers who are also taking your picture (because you are the only one who is with the designer), most likely with your eyes looking closed because at this point you have to keep looking down not to scrawl entirely off of the page and into thin air. Hey isn’t that that chick from ‘Fraiser’? Over there! No, don’t look at her! What were you asking again?

Today’s mission: think that the show is under the tents when it’s really been moved to Gramercy for some reason no one on this Godforsaken earth knows. And wear your most expensive dress in a monsoon on the way there. Then, as soon as you arrive, looking like a drenched rat, have a PR girl tell you your interview starts NOW. Sure, you have time to change into your Jimmy Choos, but not to look into a mirror. And…go! Then later interview a male model who, even though you told him three different times your questions (one was—what is your name?) and what his answers should be, still purses his lips together and looks confused before your prodding, which finally leads him to answer.

Complain, complain, is it really so hard to see fantastic fashion shows, have up close access to the designers, score goodie bags of NARS blush and expensive face serums, free drinks, great clips for your resume? No, not it is not so hard at all. Now if only I weren’t such an over-gesturer on camera…

Blowing By

Every weekend after is like an explosion hangover, a detox needed from so much more than the general overconsumption I usually succumb to, but lately it’s been like I can’t catch a moment. On paper it all sounds great, in application, it’s sort of upsetting. There is too much to do. Far too much. And when any of it is done, a handful of other items of equal importance or more fall by the wayside.

Case in point—This weekend I:

1. Went to the Black Kids, Kid Sister concert in the Planetariumand Kayne just showed up in the middle to play some songs. In a word: radical. He was within sweating distance. And sweat he did, as he was wearing some sort of monstrous fur coat. A kid in line offered me a Percocet because my friend was able to buy an extra ticket. The evening’s events capped with a Space Show where a bunch of argyle and neon-clad concertgoers cheered when the Earth did not get blown up by a chunk of burning sun. Robert Redford’s voice narrated and at the end told us that we were all “safe…for now” and the crowd went berserk.

2. Afterwards went to a club (insert grimace) where I was harassed by several men with accents from far and exotic places like Staten Island who wanted to pet my head because I had a really ridiculous fake-fur hunting hat with graffiti on it and for some reason thought I should wear it in a club where girls in bikinis were dancing.

3. Met up with some still-in-college kids and actually had a good time. You would have thought I learned my (cougar) lesson by now, but you know, they just keep coming up to me!* And then I have to be like shaking my head all world-weary and look into the distance like the Marlboro Man, weathered and smoky and say, “I’m fifty seven years old, kiddo, just keep on walkin’.” But for some reason it doesn’t detract anyone. Mrs. Robinson should be a reference on my resume.

4. Made a huge mess in my room and in my own head with piles and piles of dresses that I just can’t fit inside a closet.

5. Worked myself into a circle.

6. Had a revelation about how to structure the novel.

7. Did not write down any of said revelation. Then wished I was one of those really dramatic types who could fall down to their knees and shout, “Noooooooo!” instead of whimpering.

8. Overpromised.

9. Underdelivered.

10. Slept too little, ate too much sushi, vowed to keep Sundays sacred and after a misstep or two, kept that promise anyway.

*Incidentally, I was also at an unbelievable Upper East Side apartment (and I thought I had seen Upper East Side apartments, this one was at least 15 rooms not counting the bathrooms) where I ended up hanging out with a five year old the whole time (he gave me a circular “tour” that lasted almost two hours and kept going into the kitchen for chocolate ice cream). Babies and children love me for some reason. I think they think I’m one of them. They always giggle and run up to me. The same with nineteen-year-old students in New York. I can’t explain it, but it’s horribly amazing.

Spun

This morning I’m recovering from the 2008 Spin Year in Music Party in bright red Super Sunnies and friends, it is not pretty. Last time I went to this thing, The Spinto Band played as I ran away from a Vanity Fair contributor with a chillum who was a good two inches shorter than me in flats.

Yes, John Norris was there and almost as blonde as his very young Brooklynite companion. And it was my first foray into the Highline Ballroom, which I really liked.

We missed most of Brother Ali, but Ted Leo and the Pharmacists was one of the best live bands I’ve ever seen. Not only because they’re just an incredibly charismatic group; but also because they’re so inconsistently stylistically so as a whole. For instance, the frontman/namesake would be jumping around like he was on the Vans tour with these split-chicken-kicks (and they were, in a word, rawsome) while the heavily bearded drummer with day-glo teeth would be pounding away on the skins, looking blankly in the air as though he was solving an SAT math problem. I could almost hear his thoughts, “The train leaves at thirty miles per hour from DeButte, now let’s see here…carry the four…and…” while he was just drumming his arms out. And what’s more, their disconnect completely worked. I really have warmed up to their new album. It’s just as frenetic as their performance—oscillating between this 90s neo-pop-punkish high school rock and twangy little beachblast numbers.

But even the free-flowing alcohol and smashed green glass on the floor as rubberband hipsters slipped and fell because they wouldn’t take off their cardboard sunglasses could not prepare me for the Eagles of Deathmetal. These guys are throwbacks to the part of the seventies I always forget: swampmarsh ‘staches, mutton chops, Aviators, patriotic tats and knocked-kneed hambone dancing with really big round electric guitars. These guys brought the house down so much, it was the first genuine mosh pit I’ve seen since since eighth grade (when I moved away from another town in Connecticut, my friends threw a party and some punk bands played and my dad*—there because the venue would not let us be there without someone over eighteen—stood watching as my friends, my boyfriend and his idiot posse all accidentally stabbed each other with Hot Topic spiked wristbands.) It was like some backwater revival by the end, with everyone split between yelling “Freebird!” and squinting at the stage with a slow and horrible realization of, “Uncle Rick….is….is that you? Get the hell off the stage and stop being so cool!” Because if these guys weren’t the spitting image of my twice-removed cousins from Normal, Illinois, I owe some dude a drink.

Needless to say that after all this I’m crawling back into a hooded sweater. There cannot be play like this and productive job-searching together, can there?


*(And let it be known that my father stood there in a MICKEY MOUSE sweater made by Ralph Lauren for golfing so that everyone would know that he was the dad. Like they wouldn’t? Oh, I’ve been mortified many times since then, but that was my first taste.)

Please Don't Tell...

We have/had a favorite bar. And much like a favorite band, brand, movie, whatever, because we fancied we were one of the first to really have found it, we claim some sort of ridiculous man-on-the-moon-with-an-American-flag ownership. Sure, we know it existed for a while completely independent of us, we know it will exist afterwards; we know we are just a couple of dorks who stumbled upon it mere months before the rest of the city, but come on, we’re twenty six years old! What thrill of discovery can we come close to that doesn’t involve getting married and having a baby at this juncture?

So the tipping point has officially been hit at PDT, the not-so-secret speakeasy-cocktail mecca-strange family portrait and taxidermy-adorned alcove just beyond the riot grrrl waitresses at Crif Dog, coincidentally my other favorite place in the world. (If you have not eaten cheese tots and a bacon-wrapped hot dog here at four in the morning, then you have not vomited, er…lived, my friend. Horrible, sweet relief is the moment when they come back up minutes later and glorious is the next morning when you wake up alive. )

In any case, back to PDT, which we figure, as we are annoying implant New Yorkers who work in magazines and film, respectively, has a shelf life of about another two weeks on the “under the radar” and, as we all know, makes the place a “total sell-out” and “not worth visiting” anymore*.

Friday night found us excited to finally have a reservation at the un-un-godly hour of eleven. And yet, when we got there, we could not get in.

Because about eight armed policemen were in there “checking the liquor license”. Because it sure does make sense for that sort of search to happen at primetime on a weekend night. And utilize half a swat team. Sure.

So we sat in Crif Dog for about an hour and a half, nursing PBRs, in the bright glint and in sharp relief seeing what the place looked like to the virgin and un-inebriated. It wasn’t pretty. But we did start some camaraderie with the other misplaced patrons. We did start playing a game of guessing who was coming in to get a hot dog, and who was there to push open the door to their reservation-only table just feet away. And after a few beers and sheer boredom, this game began (alternating people who tried to get in, letting half discover for themselves that they couldn’t, and telling the other half).

Which created the following situation:

Guy with a sweet, sweet camel jacket, gelled hair, and his bored-looking girl of the evening approach…

Me, cramped by the door: “Oh hey guys, you can’t get in there.”

Guy puffing up in his button-down and staring at me with a Herculean strain of disdain and a “do-you-know-who-I-am?” face: “Um, no, WE can, WE have a RESERVATION”

Smug girlfriend sneers a smile.

Me, holding two beers, and sweeping my arms around the room at the five people we’ve been waiting with, bursting into a fit of giggles: “Ha! So do all of us! Ha-ha!”

Group of people now laughing with me at poor gelled guy and his girl.

Guy, pushing through anyway, only to be promptly turned away by the hostess. He and his lady friend scurry back to the place from whence they came. I’m guessing Murray Hill.

Me: “Oops. I don’t think he’s coming back. Was it something I said?”

My friend: “Let’s hold off on the beer for a minute, huh?”

Me: “You’re not the boss of me.”

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Anyone have any idea what went down at PDT on Friday?




*Okay not really, but you know what I mean, when you don’t really fit into the crowd any more and your aunt wants to go there, it’s just a tad less fun than it used to be.

Faux Pas

Last night at Graydon Carter’s playground, The Waverly Inn, inches from tuna tartare, feet from Anne Hathaway and neck-deep in swirling literati:

Me: Wasn’t he your Pushcart boyfriend?

Her: Pushcart? No, no, he won the Pen/Faulkner.

Me (half mock embarrassment/half real): I cannot believe I just mistook the Pushcart for the Pen/Faulkner! How gauche! I hope no one from Vanity Fair heard!

Francois: They did. But just for that joke, we won’t kick you out.

Catching up with the mentor and finally, finally getting back on track with my novel. With bad jokes like these, there’s no choice but to pretend to be a writer again…right?

And on our way out, the paparazzi took our picture…must have been the slowest night this year.

Do You Like Robot Rock?

This is what the definition-of-hot-for-euro Frenchman asked me, and I answered sure, no, wait, yes of course, maybe invigorated by the gleam off his gold-plated canine, or that I was misplaced in Brooklyn for the night, and Guns’n’Bombs was kicking the second set and everyone was so young, or Danish, sometimes you just can’t tell, and then he asked me did I like to kiss on the mouth hard like he did (his English was not quite as good as he would have liked)?

Friday means another social experiment with my girlfriend so we danced for six hours in the dark, a rotating circle of people falling in and out with the beats and us snapping pictures in the bathroom, our hands slipping, the disposable camera clattering on the floor. The refrain, go hard or go home, so we looked ridiculous, poseurs, posturing in sweatbands, onesies, short dresses, neon, and it was the apex of our Brooklyn attractiveness, and we kidded later that we could not go out again for fear of ever falling short, never matching the pheromonal frenzy and the unce unce unce.

And when I was approached by the most ambiguously beautiful creature I had ever seen, I could not tell if it was a boy or a girl, what age, what sexual preference, what ethnicity, and it turned out he was a boy and his name was Jonas and he was interested in girls, possible in me if only I would say the right thing, and he could tell my outfit had come from American Apparel and that was good and he narrowed his eyes and tossed his long, straight, black hair from the horizontal sweatband that kept it off of his God-like brow and he leaned in and his hands were so elegant and they touched my neck without my permission and he asked, did I work there, and I laughed because I thought it was a joke and said no, did he, and he did not smile at all and said yes, he was an AA model and also some sort of director of corporate marketing and he looked me up and down and said it was a shame that I didn’t do what he did and then he walked away.

Still, I would say we ended the evening on a high note. This is where I met my nineteen year old among others, this is where our photos were snapped for Guns’n’Bombs personal use, we hoped at least, this is where resumes would be judged better if they were capped with mullets and this is what will provide stories where I sort of hang my head for the rest of the month.

Off the Chain Quote of the Day

Via text

“Hey, what are you doing right now?”

“Hey! Sort of having Cristal with Kanye’s entourage. No, not kidding.”

“So you’re saying you don’t want to meet me at the Waldorf for a drink?”

There might come a day, where you find yourself exiting a Duane Reade with band aids because you stabbed yourself with your new drawing pen, and you are thinking aloud how you will manage to fashion a meal out of Wasa crackers and Hawaiian Punch, and you will for some reason still have on the heels that you wore to work, and a man coming from a radio interview with a twenty thousand dollar chain hanging from his neck will stop you with “Miss! Miss! You dropped something!” and bend to the ground and pretend to pick up something but really pick up nothing and say, “You dropped my number!” and you will laugh and he will like it and then ask you to come with them to the hotel where he will pop champagne and then to the limo where there will be more and you pretend you have a boyfriend because he’s asked you if you want to go shopping at Gucci tomorrow and your response was “I can’t. I…have an expense report to finish.”

And you leave, because that is best, because you have been mistaken for someone or something else than what you are and you will one day be very grateful that you realized it first…

This must be someone else’s life…because it couldn’t possibly be mine.

But empanadas ARE the new cupcakes!

And unicorns are the new empanadas.

Hipster Olympics. Tie for my favorite part is the throwing away of sold-out bands and the very end.

Backlash to the backlash.

What I say to myself every morning in the mirror.

Someday I will be hip, I promise...

Dear Jay McInerney,

No Bob Saget, I will not make out with you…

Oh, all right. Don’t make a scene!

So I’m at The Waverly Inn with a snifter of brandy, revising my latest literary work and I’m thinking to myself: Self—this is living, this is New York and this is what it’s like to be fabulous and wearing the right shoes and being vibrant and sceney and colorful and above average—wait, scratch that, Self—you better be kidding or else the next round will be a LAX stick across the shins…

So I’m at The Waverly Inn, gulping down my second glass of expensive Pinot because I’m meeting my writing teacher who is clearly way hipper than I am because this is her chosen venue and I’m trying to look like I belong when a socialite who I’m sure I’m supposed to know but I don’t because I can’t ever keep up with that stuff spills her Kettel One all over my knee (did you know they refuse to serve Grey Goose there? Yes, yes, they know who your father is and no, they still won’t serve it to you, you pompous jerk—the bartenders are really affable guys and one looks just like Bill Nighy in tight jeans and frankly, I kind of fell in love with them the moment they said they had one beer for sale and that was it). So here I go—hey, it’s okay, don’t worry about it, no it’s totally fine, and she looks concerned so I think maybe she’s going to pay for the cleaning bill or toss a diamond my way—helping the plebeians and all—but I doth protest too much or something so she pattered off in flats and I was back to my wine and no one to talk to. Dang.

Enter my teacher and then some married guy who insists on shots of Patrone at 7:30 PM.

Dude, come on. I mean, do you see where we are right now? Don’t be a fool! It’s Jager and Bud Lights or nothing. (Zing! I got a million of ‘em.)

So he’s married, but that doesn’t stop him from touching her thighs and my butt and we’re a tad uncomfortable because the guy is really nice (okay he was buying us drinks—zing! What did I tell you about having a million jokes?), but no, he actually is pretty nice, but he’s getting handsy and we need fries so we order them and we look around and who do we see but Mr. Bob Saget negotiating a table in the front?

So I go up to him and the host tells him that his table’s first and I kind of throw my elbow out and I go And my table is last! Hey-o! and Bob’s actually really nice and talks to me for a hot second before I run off so that I can end the story without ruining it.

Another guy next to us at the bar keeps offering us artichoke and chicken and it’s pretty fantastic (I know the place got a so-so review, and maybe it was the ambiance and all the pretty people and Patrone, but I really thought the food was good and the staff was extremely helpful and friendly and all in all I think the man's Midas touch brought a really great slice of old literary elite back in style and I’m thankful for it).

So I go to the bathroom and I’m digging the dancing zebra wallpaper and I wonder if I can bring back the phrase “digging” and I come out and Russell Simmons and I have a brief, but intense staring contest (he won) and I go back to my teacher and I go—holy crap, Russell Simmons is here! And she’s not impressed because she saw him last week, but the guy next to us wants to do more shots and we sort of look at each other, having talked about none of the things we said we were going to, namely cleaning up the first few chapters of my novel so that it can be sent out and someone might be fooled into thinking it's halfway decent, and we kind of have this unspoken thing like we can leave right now with the illusion of dignity or not, so we leave and we talk to some guys in a black Suburban staking out the place, presumably for Page Six, and I hand her what’s there of my novel and beg her to read it and I kind of hope out loud that she cuts me a break on her fees because even though the guy who started the soap opera Passions bought our last house and insisted that my dad install a dog elevator, we live in a much smaller house now, I mean it's not the 90s anymore is it, and I don't make much money and my parents don't hand out much either and I go home thinking, wow, I kind of got away with being there tonight, and almost fit in and it kind of felt pretty great…now if only I could learn to quit while I’m ahead…

An old exercise revisited...but does stream of city consciousness suit my style?

This guy I know went to the Golden Globes and all I got was this lousy blog….

One of the great things about not being someone who is going places, is having friends who are going places (I highly recommend this as it will enable you to never have the burden of working towards real accomplishments, but still gives you semi-interesting party stories to spin as you scan the room for left glasses of half-drunk vodka). So one friend, because he is going places and is pretty important in the scheme of movies, dolls out perks to us little people. Like we get to see reels before their release dates and occasionally go to parties where Nick Cannon is in attendance and the popcorn is free for the taking (score!).

But even better is hearing the weekending stories of aforementioned guy, one who wears a veritable utility belt of Razrs and Blackberries, one who works fourteen hour days and eats sushi on a private jet, one who now wants to wear a tuxedo when he goes out, because it “kind of feels cool”.

Some of the best tidbits:

Brangelina’s collective waistline is a mere 30 inches, and much shorter than previously thought. (For those of you who don’t believe, a re-enactment including a pair of jeans is available upon request.)

Jessica Biel can bench 350, minimum, with one arm even, we bet.

Michelle Trachtenberg is the new Lindsay Lohan, minus the rehab.

Sienna Miller is lovely, polite and British.

Emile Hirsch is the LA equivalent of the fifty dollar bill slip, when passed to the checkpoint at the door, you sail right in….but not at Hyde.

Paris Hilton still thinks she’s a star.

Fader Friday

Our elbows balanced on the low wall, our hands gripping bottle-shaped cans of gifted Bud Select (a sponsor), sparkly adornments swinging heavy from our earlobes.

This was Friday night, and we were ready.

The Fader party was a tribute to Nina Simone, a soulful jazz musician and fixture of the civil rights movement. The first to entertain starred a singer (Tiombe Lockhart) whose honey-coated voice was only matched by the slink of her hips.

“This is for Nina,” she purred as her black dress swished around her thighs. Her bassist bopped his head rhythmically, popping his thumbs along the strings.

The crowd at Joe’s Pub loved her set—the eclectic urban vibe, candle flames licking the table with swoops of light. Behind the stage a slideshow clicked, stills in black and white picturing a legend, emanating blue beyond the screen.

During the change we flipped through the stiff and smooth pages of the magazine, stealing glances at the seemingly-too-young publisher, only thought of because he was hosting the party--we were merely plus-ones--and it was painfully clear that he could wear Pumas to work while we never would.

Next up, Mira Billotte of White Magic took to the piano, accompanied by a man bearing a striking--and in our near stupor, hilarious--resemblance to Philip Seymour Hoffman (Doug Shaw). Her long hair slipped across her Big Love-inspired dress as she sweetly whispered renditions reminiscent of Rainer Maria.

The Budweiser ran out halfway through, but her voice kept us there anyway.

Afterwards everyone headed to Puck Fair for the afterparty. We made plans to meet up with the boys at Bowery Bar, where we would pretend it was still in its heyday and slurp strawberry martinis under the glow of colored bulbed-lit trees.

On the way in, we shook the rain from our trenches and chatted with the bouncer.

Didn’t he get bored out there? We wondered, didn’t he hate just standing there and dodging requests and drunks all night? We insisted he take a magazine, and read the Nina spread. He smiled thanks.

When the boys arrived, they called us frantically from the curb. A torrential downpour, a walk since they first thought we were at McSorely’s, and now, no more guys allowed.

“Stay here,” I pointed to her Lemon Drop, “and keep drinking.” I came to the door, tipping once in my heels, and then to the gatekeeper, still cradling the magazine.

“Hi again!” I said.

“Hey baby. What’s good?” He managed, as three meaty drunks pawed at him (“We got chicks coming, dude. Swear! And like, hot ones!”)

I motioned to my wet friends. And with a nod, they were in.

Note to self: from now on, bring magazines, not bills, for greasing palms on Friday nights on Bowery. And weasel an invite to every Fader party possible.