"A Bit More Progressive and to the Now"

First things
first. I think I accidently stole an expression from the
GoFugYourself ladies without knowing it. I wrote last week
that Leanne’s dress resembled a HEPA filter.
Then I was informed that that was something the
brilliantly funny GFY women say all the time. I must have
absorbed it into my brain without realizing I was
plagiarizing. Sorry GFYers. My mistake. You win at
inventing clothing descriptions. I’m not fit to
carry your Goyard bags. 

In my dreams
there’s an opening bit like there was in seasons
past, where the designers prance around and say silly
things about their potential to take it to the most
fashiony limit, yelling “I’m gonna fuck his
corpse!” and other charmy little pronouncements
about how full of win they are. But I’ve
resigned myself to the fact that we’re just not going
to get that this year. No Chris March squealing,
“Let’s go!” or Nick saying,
“Heck, yeah, I’m gonna win this!” No
Malan murmuring, “I’m better than they
are.” Just Heidi. And normally that would be plenty,
given my weird love for her. But it’s not. It
feels deflated. It’s like someone opening the
door to a party they’re hosting and muttering a glum
“Oh, all right, come on in.” 

Look,
there’s Mary-Kate again on this week’s
Elle product placement. Did you hear that she
wants immunity from prosecution before she’ll
cooperate in the Heath Ledger investigation? I read
that on the super-reliable Internet today. If you
hadn’t heard about it, then you must be reading some
other, less entertaining news source that’s all
about how the president is a war criminal and how this
whole offshore drilling ping-pong match between McCain
and Obama is just about an oil industry land grab and
nothing more. I’m firmly fixed on the
real news myself, like whatever tabloid it was
this week with a picture of Tom and Katie on the cover
with the screaming headline “GET OUT OF MY
HOUSE!” I saw that one at the grocery store and
tried to read it in line, but the damn checker was
being too speedy with the people ahead of me. I almost
bought it but then realized that that’s just what
they want me to do. Anyway, so yeah, Mary-Kate wants
immunity. Is that a standard legal operating procedure or is
it only about when you have something to hide? I need
to call my lawyer friend Dennis. 

[Break in the
recapping to call a real live lawyer] 

OK, he says that
it’s pretty much what you’d do if there were
even a millimeter of a chance that someone could say,
“Oh, that bottle of your pills was in his
luxuriously appointed apartment? Time for you to go off
to the big house. The big full house. In a New
York Minute. So sure, give her immunity. And
take notes on what she wears to the questioning sessions.
She’s on the cover of Elle, you know.
She won’t just show up to the precinct in
something unchic. But yeah, it’s a good move for
her to demand immunity. All those celebrities have tons of
free drugs coming out of their asses. No reason why
she shouldn’t too. 

Now, on to the
show. They’re all waking up. Keith is hunched over
the sink, shirtless, giving us more tattoo
presentation. There’s a big giant one on the
side of his torso that’s been hidden by clothes until
now. And to the guy who wrote me last week complaining
that I was being too hard on his favorite Utahnian, I
have the following response: OK, OK, KEITH’S
HOT! YOU WIN! DANG! 

And I will
concede that, generally speaking, more tattoos tend to make
me happier than fewer tattoos. Unless they’re
awful. And Keith’s look OK from a distance,
even if I can’t identify what they are. Just
don’t let it be said that I piss all over what
the gays are into these days unless it’s
something truly awful like biceps implants or those T-shirts
with the word ACRIMONY on top of a skull on top of a
flaming bush erupting with thorny roses and cobras.
Keith’s none of those awful things. He’s
just a guy -- a really quiet, unsmiling, seemingly
crushingly dull guy -- trying to fashion-design his
way out of Salt Lake City. Brilliant designer Jared
Gold sees fit to stay in that Mormon-thick, landlocked
hometown, but if you want to scram, then more power to you.
I can get with that. I just can’t get with that
rat tail. Seriously, fuck that thing. Keep the
bandannas. Wrap whatever you want around your head. Just
get rid of that fuckin’ parsley sprig of a
ponytail. 

Tonight, once
again, my husband/partner/whatever is shirking his watching
responsibilities and is instead out working because he has
to review the new Woody Allen movie about
Penélope Cruz making out with Scarlett Johansson.
Fat lot of help he is. But I still have Xtreem Aaron on the
couch nearby and he’s already making an out-loud list
of what he thinks the tattoo could be: 

1. Spawn
2. Zorak 3. Angelica Huston in Captain
Eo 

Oh, wait. Now
Keith is wearing a T-shirt with a big giant skull on it.
Shit! Stop making it easy, man! 

They get to the
runway and Heidi greets them in a see-through ruffled
gray top and some skintight pants that look like she was
dipped into a vat of molten black tar and her
unusually chilly body temperature simply willed the
liquid into becoming clothing with no harm to her.
“You know her hands are cool to the
touch,” offers Xtreem Aaron as I pause the
TiVo. “Like a really nice marble countertop. Do you
think she knows she’s dressed like the ending
of Grease? And do you think her next sentence
to the designers is ‘Have you guys seen the part
when they are driving the car AND IT BEGINS TO FLY? IT IS
AMAZING! TODAY I WEAR THAT MOVIE ON MY
ASS!’ 

“I believe
she might say that, yes,” I respond. 

“And do
you think she ever cries?” asks Xtreem Aaron. 

“No, I
don’t,” I say. “I thinks she only knows
victory piled on top of victory and her tear ducts
have simply evolutionarily inverted and become
vestigial from a lack of functional necessity.” 

Heidi dispenses
with last week’s losing model and tells the designers
to get up and go meet Tim Gunn. He’s going to
take them to meet their challenge. Everyone gets in a
van and speculates for the camera. “We’re
going to the Boogie Down Bronx,” says Korto.
“This is a hip-hop challenge.” 

“That
would be awesome,” ways the unimonikered guy with the
blue fauxhawk, “Suede loves that.” This
makes me wonder just what kind of hip-hop Suede likes
and what would happen if Suede met an actual rapper
face-to-face. Like how would that go down? Xtreem Aaron
says, “I can see Jay-Z taking a meeting with
Suede if he somehow won this whole thing and became a
big deal. Like Jay-Z would want to know what the next shit
would be and he’d be OK with Suede. And then
after Suede left the room, Jay-Z would turn to B-Day
and say, “What was up with that faggot?” 

In the van Tim
Gunn engages Blayne in a discussion about tanning, during
which we learn that Blayne enjoys tanning every other day.
Tim Gunn expresses concern about the amount of time
that must take. Blayne says, “Other people,
like, go to the gym. I go tanning.” 

I can sort of
understand that. Not the tanning part. That makes less than
zero sense to me. But I know I spend at least as much time
tracking down vintage Japanese monster toys on eBay
and trying to find the perfect flavor of loose-leaf
green tea and wondering about where my next piece of
cake is coming from. Also furniture. I think about furniture
a lot. Like I need a new desk. The old one’s a
big piece of particleboard on some dumb boxes. But I
need a grown-up desk. I can waste hours looking at
furniture websites figuring out which desk is going to keep
me until I’m 95 years old. And then I look up
and it’s time for lunch and I’ve
accomplished no work. So if Blayne wants to spend his time
getting his skin dyed the color of a yam’s
innards -- or worse, baking himself like a yam -- then
that’s his choice. It’s a shit-for-brains
choice, but still. He lives in the freedom-loving USA.
We all do. My Megalon is your Mystic Tan. 

Jerrell leans toward the weird.