...4... I shall Make it Work, Damnit!

Yep, three more weeks to go. But enough about school...

No, ok, a little about school (groan, groan): Alright first off "Lear" continues to develop. Our offiical performance date is February 28th at 10:30 in Room 138 of William H. Gates Hall. There will be spray tans involved and we will be getting personal bleepers to cover the swearing. I missed the script re-writing meeting this weekend, so I'm not really sure what Jersey Shorrors have evolved, but I am sure they will be very funny indeed.

 In educational moments, Washington has "the oddest pet trust statute." If by chance you have no idea what the hell that means, it means that many states have statutes setting up the rules and conditions by which somebody can set up a trust for the care of their darling pets, but apparently a Washington senator was particularly worried that people would starting setting up trust funds for their ant farms, so while you can in fact set up a trust for your cat fluffy, you can't set up trusts for invertebrate pets...

Anyways, in no state are there car trust statutes, but you can actually set up non-charitable trusts called honorary trusts in which a trustee agrees to manage money for a specific request like, say, laying flowers on your grave (just in case you think you will miss flowers when you're dead), so I can provide for my poor Kia after I kick it. Just saying.

I haven't been driving much since the "accident" (or heroic vendetta against parked cars, as I liked to call it). This may have something to do with the fact that I'm not supposed to drive the car over 20 mph due to the chance that the hood might fly off... apparently. Oops. I hate driving in Seattle anyways, and hey the Kia has waaay more street cred at the moment. Still, getting it fixed.

I think my Kia needs a bad-ass nickname

I've also been continuing my spring-feveresque flirtation with fashion (wait, the clothes you throw on yourself as you roll out of bed groaning may be arranged in some sort of common scheme to "say" something about yourself in the relation of the world?? Naw). Not in actuality, of course. Just in fantasy land.

Mainly I've been tormenting myself watching dvds of Project Runway. Just worked my way through Season 1, which has been interesting, because as you may or may not be aware, the last season caused quite a stir with its "Gretchen" shenanigans... if you don't follow Project Runway, basically a lot of fans are really mad because this designer who was kind of not a nice person sometimes, but then also made clothes that a lot of people really didn't dig won instead of the adorable gay man with AIDS who was a total sweetie and made amazing clothes... anyways there was also a lot of disgruntled flaming about the general timbre of the last season - and how it seemed to focus much more on the DRAMA and people being nasty to each other than the clothes. Oh and it was particularly heated because Heidi Klum and the guest judge (I totally forget who) really thought Mondo should have won, but Nina Garcia and Michael Kors were insanely adamant and Heidi even asked Tim Gunn to intervene, but he felt that although he disagreed with their decision, it was not his place.

Sometimes the villain has to win...
But where's Batman when
you need him?

Season 1 is kind of a nice reminder that every show needs a villain, no matter the season. Season One's was actually a very interesting villain: a "mom from Virginia" who had these cockamamie schemes of "finding others' weaknesses" and "playing designers against each other" that didn't necessarily come to much, but somehow despite her comparative weaknesses as a designer, she made it to the finale after a number of - needless to say - dramatic fights and scenes with other designers, sometimes being stone cold hard-ass and sometimes breaking down about how sad she was that nobody liked her despite the fact that she routinely threw people under the bus.

How could I design such hideous outfits and
make it to the final three???

This is a "design"???

 I say that I hate that she made it that far, but did I as a viewer actually need her too? Sure, we want a fair fight, and Austin Scarlett (the person who came in fourth and now has arguably the best career from season one) etc., but I love a story of good triumphing over evil and the longer it takes to get to the triumph, the closer to despair I come, the more I love it. It scratches an itch that talent triumphing over other talent just can't do. Because she wasn't just kind of crazy, she shouldn't have been there based on her designs!! The ultimate injustice. They retooled her to be both unlikeable and irredeemably talentless. Then every once in a while, the show would dangle her adorable six year old daughter and her entire personality change around her... just to add nuance. But we still knew that she was somehow representative of all that contaminated an otherwise good world and it was a minor victory to see her "get hers."

 So, I secretly wonder if Gretchen winning this season of Project Runway just serves as those rare cliffhanger episodes that television shows have where the bad guy wins, because it lacks as much oomph when the good guy wins every time. Or maybe the judges were just smoking crack... Either way, there is still a I Hate Wendy Pepper facebook group and people will still refer to "Wretchen" with a shutter well after their senility has wiped away memories of their last twenty years. 

The Evil Step-Mom of

Season 1

And I love the good guys too. Tim Gunn, of course, our PR Obi Wan, being my favorite. He makes me secretly ashamed to walk out in public without having spent at least an hour coordinating my outfits, doing my makeup and taming my hair. Which is odd, because my fascination with Project Runway is kind of the same fascination that I have with Top Chef... high fashion and haute cuisine are so removed from my actual experience of fashion/food that it's kind of this odd abstracted and alien world to me. But the man drips with poise and personal style and I feel a yearning to please him by acquiring some of the same.

you *will* dress yourself
fashionably!

 Anyways,I have been dangerously circling ebay recently, which bodes ill for my checking account. And I did do another comb through of my wardrobe a while back. I found it interesting that I seem to have evolved a bit of a color palette to my wardrobe that's a little different from my previous red and black staples:

 Generally, my compromise with the world of fashion: I will look like I have slept in the same outfit at a bus station for many weeks, rarely tend to my hair and forgo all "beauty implements" but I will wear fabulous earrings. Oh and pluck my eyebrows and wear foundation some of the time if it's also got an spf and I'm not a huge hurry...

Some day I will have money and will invest in some kind of a style scheme, but it may be a while. Until then, I will stick to fantasizing about Tim Gunn as my personal shopper and style guru and make catty comments about the designers on Project Runway.

Really??? The winning collection???