No-hit Wonders

I can hear my
neighbor Jill watching this week’s episode because
both of our front doors are wide open. It’s
almost October and still way too warm in Los Angeles.
Everyone else in the civilized world gets to wear jackets
already. Not me. I spent this week sweating through
T-shirts. Who wants to trade me my glamorous zip code
(I’m one over from 90210, y’all -- I
know, exciting) for 25 fewer degrees Fahrenheit, starting
right now? Anyway, I can hear Jill. And she’s
at the point in the episode where Kenley gives Tim
Gunn way too much lip. So I walk over. Who cares that
I’m wearing a ratty T-shirt that’s soon to be
a dust rag and a pair of boxer shorts? Not Jill.

I enter her
apartment and she’s chopping up apples because
she’s about to make some kind of baked apple
crumble thing. “I hate that fucking Kenley and
here’s why,” she starts. “Number 1,
she’s a megalomaniac. You probably like her for
that.”

“Uh…”

“I
knew it,” she says. “I knew you
enjoyed that about her. You live for evil. Also?
She’s so mean, laughing at other designers on the
runway, being rude to everyone, never saying one
decent word to Tim Gunn, not even ‘thank
you.’ Nothing. She’s awful. And number 3, her
voice. That nasal, pouty whine just cuts right through
me. I want to see her get punched in the face. I say
that as a woman. I’m embarrassed that she’s
one of my people. She is, I guarantee you, an only
child.”

I can’t
argue with Jill. Kenley is a brat. But still, I want her to
stick around because she livens up the show. You
simply can’t count on Korto, Leanne, and Jerell
to be cruel to one another. But you can count on all
of them to hate Kenley. And that’s why
I’m here. If I want real fashion, I’ll go
watch runway shows on the Internet.

“I need to
step up my game or I’m gone,” says Suede, who
opens the show wearing a black leather vest. I get the
feeling he bought it at some BDSM emporium hoping to
butch it up a little, maybe scoop himself a
cigar-chomping Daddy to bankroll his line. Korto, meanwhile,
is wearing jeans that really show off, for I think the
first time this season, the level of booty
she’s maintaining. If her ass were math it would
be:

Badonk + adonk +
Janet Jackson’s “Pleasure Principle”
video + one of those hydraulic things they lift your
car up on to change the tires.

It’s a
stunning achievement in buttocks. Normally I don’t
like to comment on the bodies of reality show
contestants, especially the ladies, because even
though I’m a gay it still seems sexist when you
criticize, and I’m not that kind of asshole.
But this is praise, so I feel OK about it.
She’s been hiding her coolest feature this entire
season.

Next?
Model-stealing time. Heidi meets them all on the runway and
trots out the nameless women that no one really cares
about. Jerell stays with his model, but Leanne takes
Suede’s. The Leannimal is loose! She crouches!
She attacks! “Childish!” pouts Suede on
interview cam, and Korto says, “You’re a
heartbreaker, Leanne.” But Leanne doesn’t
care. And why should she? Suede’s going home
this week anyway. Everyone can feel it in the air.
Because even if he and Kenley have competing badness on the
runway at the end of the show, who’s better TV? The
brat or the lump? I vote for the brat.

Then it’s
off to the workroom, where Tim Gunn is going to explain the
challenge. It makes me feel a little cheated out of Heidi
time, but I’ll recover. I have to start weaning
myself off her anyway; the show only has like three
episodes left. I don’t even think we’re going
to get a fighty reunion episode and that annoys me.
Thanks for nothing, Bravo.

Tim explains that
they’re going to design for each other -- so all that
model stuff was even more filler than usual -- and that the
designs have to reflect a specific genre of music. I
wish I had a little link to a sound file you could
click on to hear Tim Gunn say the word
“genre,” because he fancies it up like
he’s actually French, pronouncing it
“Jeawwuhnruh,” not elongated necessarily, but
swallowed way into the back of his throat. I hit the
TiVo repeat several times to hear him do it. I love
that Tim Gunn.

Suede gets Jerell
as a model and rock as a jeawwuhnruh. His response:
“Suede is gonna win and get Tia [his model]
back!” Ha. Wrong and wronger. Kenley gets
Leanne and hip-hop. Korto gets Suede and punk. Jerell
gets Kenley and pop. Leanne gets Korto and country.
Everyone gives a mild chuckle over that one. Translation:
“You’re black so this is hilarious.”
Jerell is excited. He’s going to make Kenley
look like a rockabilly Jawa. Suede explains that he’s
not punk rock at all, in spite of his lame blue
fauxhawk. And somewhere off camera back at Atlas,
Stella is putting her fist through a wall.

I sit on the
couch with Xtreem Aaron (sorry, but the
husband/partner/whatever has been traveling for work a lot
or missing episodes because he’s out at movie
screenings for his job, so if you’ve been
missing our warm, loving, longtime companion interplay,
you’ll just have to wait until next week, I
guess -- or American Idol -- I don’t know what
to tell you) and we discuss what Leanne’s taste
in hip-hop might be:

Xtreem Aaron: She
likes Mos Def.

Me: I was going
to say Talib Kweli. Maybe Common.

Korto grins as she is "countrified."