They’re making prom gowns. And that brings the total number of prom references I’ve experienced in the mass media this week to a total of, well, two. But that’s two more than I usually hear about. The first came from cochair of NBC Entertainment (Bravo’s parent) and super-classy gentleman Ben Silverman, who called the striking Writers Guild members the “nerdiest, ugliest, meanest kids in the high school” and accused them of trying to cancel the prom. The prom in this instance is the Golden Globe Awards. This comparison is, sadly, not quite accurate. Because the Golden Globes (cancelled -- ha HA!) are more like the way-less-important junior -- or maybe even the winter --prom than the big formal spring one for seniors. He should know that.
But he doesn’t. And that’s just one reason he’s a dick.
Let’s get back to me, though. I’m still sick. Just like last week. Hence the delayed posting of this recap. But I used up all my Garbage Pail Kids Movie analogies last time, so even though I remain full of lung items that need coughing up, I won’t be punctuating this recap with whiny references to my ongoing sinus infection. That’s what LiveJournal is for. I will, however, give you this week’s fashion tip from my model friend Elyse. It has nothing to do with the episode at all, but I figured you’d still like to hear what a real live working model has to say about life and stuff. Here it is:
“Goyard bags. God, they’re so ugly.”
I like this as a style pronouncement because it’s irrelevant to anyone who isn’t rich enough to buy a Goyard bag. Personally, I was totally unaware of them until the Barneys “Go Green This Christmas” e-mail popped up in my in-box early in December. That advert-email contains many environment-increasing gifts to buy for all your eco-pals. One of them was an $1,100 Goyard grocery tote for carrying all your organic veggies home in. If I had one I’d make sure it was full of Pop-Tarts and Eggo Waffles and I’d say, “Put those Eggos in my Goyard bag that cost me $1,100 plus tax, damn you.” And I don’t think the bag was that ugly. But that’s me. I like ugly stuff sometimes.
Spoiler (like it matters -- by the time you finish reading this you’ll know): Kevin gets the heave-ho this week. And it’s like they’re already weaning you off usual shots of him shirtless first thing in the morning by giving you opening ablutions shots of everyone else: tooth-brushing Ricky, blow-drying Christian, blush-applying Victorya, and now shirtless, betoweled Rami. Victorya says, “Crazily enough, I miss [recently eliminated] Elisa.”
I think it’s crazy that Victorya misses anyone, but I miss Elisa too. I also miss Santino. And Melinda Doolittle. And the first Becky on Roseanne. My husband/partner/whatever is sort of consumed with missing Kynt And Vyxsin from this season of The Amazing Race. We all miss something. Mostly what I’m starting to miss is this show being fun. I’m not the first person to note that as the talent of the designers grows, so does their emotional maturity and their unwillingness to act out like lunatics. And honestly, that wouldn’t be a problem for me (I just started watching Celebrity Rehab With Dr. Drew, and it’s got enough serious disturbance for all of basic cable.) if the challenges seemed fresh, but up to now they haven’t been.
The designers are seated by the runway. Heidi comes out in head-to-toe black. A disagreement ensues about the extreme super-bangs that nearly cover her eyes. I vote that they are amazing. Good friend Xtreem Aaron agrees with me because he and I share excellent taste in many things, including opinions about celebrity hairstyles. But the husband/partner/whatever has to naysay. “The only super-bangs in her life should come from Seal,” he says, thinking he’s so smart and funny.
“Are you ready for your next challenge?” Heidi asks. A wan half-hearted, borderline whiny chorus of “Sure” rises like creeping, anonymous flatulence from the group. Is it four in the morning? I know this happens sometimes. I have friends here in Los Angeles who work on TV sets and they tell me insane stories of all-night shoots where everybody’s dead on their feet and no one goes home until way after the sun comes up. That’s a job I could never handle. My body’s clock needs an early to bed, early to rise routine or I become irritable and beaten down. So that could be it. Or they could be sugar-crashing from the Hershey challenge. Or maybe they’re all just bored like the audience.
But oh, wait, perhaps I spoke too quickly. Because it might turn out to be an interesting challenge. Here come the short, real-bodied high-school girl models who will each have a prom dress created for them. As they enter, the designers begin laughing. Nice one, designers -- that’s not every teenager’s worst nightmare or anything, to inspire laughter by just walking into a room.
“I think prom is horrible and tacky and gross,” says Christian on interview-cam. And are we all in agreement that he’s 1000% correct? Mine was, anyway. A death sentence hanging over my head. For a senior in high school who had never even so much as touched a girl (or a guy), much less kissed one, the whole ordeal was nothing less than a humiliating scavenger hunt. Ask a girl to prom, rent a tux that smells like dry-cleaning, buy a corsage, pick her up, pin it on her, meet her parents, go to dinner, try to make conversation, go to the prom, pose for a picture, dance to “867-5309 (Jenny)” -- because my senior prom was in 1982 -- and then accumulate sex points. I had managed to skip my junior prom with some friends (We went to see The Empire Strikes Back instead. It was awesome.) but I had no choice but to go the next year. There was a girl with zero gaydar who had a crush on me. I figured I could at least use her to accomplish the goal of making out with another human being before graduation. I did, and we did. I got to second base, in fact, which was weird. I have no idea where she is now. I hope she’s happily involved with someone of matching sexual orientation. Anyway, I’m with Christian on this one, even though I know that as far as prom dresses go in 2007, they’ve evolved far beyond the bell-shaped, Gone With the Wind-style doom-frocks that were still popular in Hobbs, N.M., in 1982. These days they look like real dresses that a real woman might actually want to wear. Sort of.
Heidi tells the designers that the girls have already chosen which designer they want to work with. On interview-cam Chris is wondering what the girl who chose him was thinking, as his portfolio is nothing but him in out-of-control theatrical drag with giant steer horns and fire hydrants on his head, which if you think about it, would look better than that thing that Molly Ringwald put together for herself at the end of Pretty in Pink. Remember how she was supposed to be so creative and punk rock? And then she shows up at the end wearing the gross mutant version of the vintage dress that Annie Potts picked out for her, and all you could think was, Well she must be really good at making out because both Blaine and Duckie still want to hit that. Better to have a fire hydrant on your head, really.
In the workroom Tim tells them that they have until midnight that day and then all the next, a budget of $250, and some clients coming in who will have “strong opinions” about the dress they’re going to wear. He sends in the girls and almost immediately we get to see Kevin’s prom picture. He has floppy hair, an orange tan, and both ears pierced. He cops to the tan and to stealing booze for the night. Then he guarantees parents that he’ll put a chastity belt inside the dress. That’s not me trying to be cute, either. He says that.
Rami’s girl says she wants something that’s not “too traditional.” Rami says that this is perfect. Because, you know, he’s so avant-garde. Victorya’s girl fesses up that she got last pick and this doesn’t seem to faze Victorya much. Sweet P’s girl knows the true function of prom and asks for something that plunges deep in both the front and back. Christian’s girl has done two years of fashion design in school and now believes that she’s a teenage Yves Saint Laurent. She takes Christian’s pencil away and starts sketching. I love this because I want Christian to flip out. He’s got to start carrying the personality globe on his teeny little shoulders or this season’s going to go comatose. Therefore, anything that winds him up is fine by me.
They all go to Mood. Kevin picks some red silk that he says “is so gorgeous it’s going to glow on the runway.” Now, see, that’s my kind of hetero guy, the kind that says homo shit like that. Is there even a word for that kind of likes-to-ball-chicks-but-is-also-faggy guy? A straight fag. A strag? Is that a good word? Because that’s Kevin.
Back in the workroom we see Christian’s prom picture (tight black something on his body, a big chicken-y mohawk, standing next to two girlfriends) and he announces that he was voted best-dressed at the prom. Then he complains that the client requests have left him feeling fenced in and not “fierce.” Cut to Jillian, who asserts that she wants her dress to look like the inside of a “joo-lery” box. Welcome to my worst pronunciation nightmare. I hate that even more than I hate “noo-kyuh-lar.” And that’s a lot of hate. It’s a good thing Jillian is so sweet and cute. If it had been Ricky saying it, I’d have thrown something.
WHOA! KIT WAS A PROM PRINCESS! They show her picture. She looks absolutely unlike what I expected. Here I had an entire ska-based Orange County hardcore past constructed for her in my brain, and from the looks of the picture she was listening to the Lion King soundtrack in the little red Miata her dad bought for her.
In the workroom Ricky asks if anyone has any good jokes. Something tells me a producer put him up to this. Don’t you know they’re all panicking behind the scenes when every day the tape gets logged or reviewed or whatever and all the designers are just buzzing at their workstations like little bees, not bitching, not fighting, not screaming, not storming out in a huff, and, now that Jack is gone, NOT BEING CARRIED AROUND IN TOTE BAGS. SERIOUSLY, BRAVO, BRING JACK AND HIS DECEPTIVE BITCH-FACE BACK. OK, so anyway, here’s the joke:
“What would you call the Flintstones if they were gay?” asks Chris. You knew he was the king of telling jokes.
“What?” asks Ricky and Kit.
“Fags.”
Hey, that’s a good one. Ricky doesn’t laugh, of course. Instead he says, “I get it.” See, that’s the kind of gay I’m not interested in knowing. If you can’t laugh at a good fag joke, then you obviously don’t like things that are great. This leads us a heart-to-heart phone call from Ricky to his mom, who we learn was a self-taught seamstress. She taught Ricky everything he knows. That figures, because everything he does looks like crap to me. And I’d also like to stop here for a second and thank the editors/producers for not being dumbly obvious about who’s going home based on the backstory we get. Recently you’ve been able to tell who was going home based on how much face-time the person got in that episode. And like I already said, it’s Kevin’s turn to get two final cheek-smooches from Heidi. But we get Ricky personality footage instead. We also get Ricky weeping and expressing deep fond wishes for winning and doors opening and blah-blah-I-want-this-so-badly-blah. Fag.
More scenes of work work work, sew sew sew, no-fighting no-fighting no-fighting. The day ends; everyone’s beat.
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