And guess what? That's a word you don't say on teevee...

Synopsis: The designers use their artistic expression to create their latest design; the winning designers go home to design the line of their dreams.

I just watched Diane Keaton in a commercial for some kind of Loreal skin product. It was excellent. It was much better than Mad Money.

There was no new episode last week, so I am starving... and this just came in: "Writing from the big apple to say you HAVE to Live Blog PR tonight. We're 9 minutes in and it is the hugest jumping the shark train wreck I've EVER SEEN." Sweet!

In honor of Super Tuesday, where My Candidate beat up Your Candidate, thanks for asking (and depending on whom you are asking), I give you something else:

My hatred of The Dairy Queen Lips.

I hate the Dairy Queen Lips. They are the worst fast food mascot in the history of televised advertisings. Everything about The Lips is horrible. Everything.

You know The Lips—the talking CGI ones from the commercial. I can’t find a single image of them on Google, nor a sign of them on YouTube, so you’ll have to dredge it up from memory. Sorry about that.

But trust me. They are awful.

There was a time when Dairy Queen's advertising---its image---was quaint, even adorable…

…and its ads have attained the height of ultra-swing….

Even The Lips weren’t so bad way back in the day (as it were), when they were confined to the Dairy Queen sign, like so...

Then you could hardly tell they were lips at all. They sort of looked like a liver upon which the words “Dairy Queen” were blasted somehow--or like a tulip drawn by a retarded Georgia O’Keefe. They were inoffensive. I hardly noticed them.

But then CGI happened, and some poor fool in the DQ marketing department conjured up the genius idea to animate The Lips and create of them Dairy Queen’s televised mascot. They gave The Lips a voice, and a “personality”, and, ugh.

First, The Lips are not a mouth---with hollows and cheeks and uvuli and tongue---make no mistake. It is just lips---lips with teeth, and a voice somehow. Disturbing.

And the voice that comes out of The Lips is all wrong. It is a man’s voice. The Lips clearly belong to a hooker. They are Corvette-red and lip-gloss-shiny and curved and pouty and lipsticky---hooker lips. They seem to say, “Oral sex, $20” not, “Burger and fries, $3.99.” What exactly is going on here? Are the lips transvestite? Transexual? David Bowie? A Republican Congressman? What exactly are you trying to say, Dairy Queen?

Also, there is no denying it, The Lips are way overmuch like the Rocky Horror Picture Show Lips---those iconic red lips singing against a stark black background...

How DQ avoids a huge lawsuit? A mystery. And The Rocky Horror Lips do not, I say, do not, inspire me to think of popcorn shrimp. (“Where are the kids? Ahhhhhh!”—another disaster of advertising.) They lead me to think of perverts from outer space. And geeks.

Even the voice that comes out of the Rocky Horror Lips (a film teaming with transsexuals, let’s remember) is a proper WOMAN’S voice, as women’s lips should have. What is your excuse, Dairy Queen?

And I would like to ask exactly what Dairy Queen has to say about this, which Twizzler has been doing for twenty years or better...

Really now, Dairy Queen. I demand an answer. Plagarism is so unnatractive.

And the “animation?” The CGI that brings The DQ Lips to life? Well, it is not good. Not. Good. Instead of moving like a pair of manlips naturally should while discoursing upon the virtues of Chunky Blizzards, The Lips move like a cocker spaniel with partial facial paralysis trying to pry a boll of barbed wire out of its molars. It really makes me uncomfortable.

So, in conclusion, I hate the Dairy Queen Lips. They are all wrong. They are a total rip-off. They are tragically executed. They make me feel bad. I wish they would go far away. Thank you.

Lindo,
I was just at 15th video and saw the new Twin Peaks box set. I like the most prominent quote on the back. I wonder what other directors have provided positive reviews for their own work. Did you know that Orson Welles thought that Citizen Kane was "really good"?
Tom

This just in: My mom says I'm cool!

Well, the dumbest show after McLaughlin Group, of course. Has anyone else been suckered into an episode of Bravo's awful, abysmal, really bad, no good Make Me a Supermodel?

It's a bad sign that I can't remember who was eliminated on Project Runway last week. All I know for sure is that it wasn't Ricky, which was criminal. There's no excuse for his continued presence on the show after this. I mean, please.

But I'm going to be tuning in tonight regardless. He's gotta get the boot this week and I want to drink his bitter, bitter tears. So we'll be Live Slogging PR tonight. Sorry we neglected to Live Slog last week's episode--and the last Democratic debate, which was almost as important--but, uh, we were drunk or something. Or out of town. Anyway... 10 PM tonight.

RIP.

Thank you all for playing! Carry on!

With Dan Savage off mingling with porn stars in Vegas, tonight's Project Runway live-blogging duties are falling to me.

Die-hard Savage fans: Don't worry, we're basically the same person. We're both homosexuals, we're both writers, and we both have the initials "DS." (Also eligible for the group: David Sedaris.) But where Savage is a homosexual writer who likes guys that look like this, I am a homosexual writer who likes guys that look like this.

See you here at 10:00 pm Pacific time.

P.S. Bring your bongs.

Did anyone else happen to catch last night's television broadcast of the People's Choice Awards? Oh my god.

Toronto Star columnist Vinay Menon lays it out well:

With no red carpet, no live audience, no attending celebrities and no reason for host Queen Latifah to be as giddy as she was, the broadcast had the look and feel of a cable-access retrospective. CBS promised a "newsmagazine" approach. We now know what this means: clips, taped acceptance speeches, asinine questions from the People and, most bizarrely, a musty glut of "highlights" from previous telecasts.

It's as if some executive suddenly stood up during a sombre planning meeting and triumphantly declared, "I've got it! We can't actually have a show this year, right? But we could just replay bits from previous years!" And then somebody else chimed in, "Also, let's get Queen Latifah to routinely break into song for no apparent reason! And let's make sure all the taped speeches induce mass narcolepsy!"

From Katherine Heigl to Reese Witherspoon, from a mute Robin Williams to a cue-card using Joaquin Phoenix, the speeches were delivered with all the spirit and energy of political hostages. And let's not even get started on Queen Latifah. Was she rapping? Doing research for an upcoming operatic role? Trying to be funny? Or just heavily medicated?

Who knows but the People should definitely consider a class-action suit for hosting negligence.

True, true, and true. It was one of the weirdest things I've ever seen on television. Despite being royalty, Queen Latifah worked her ass off, in all directions. If a winning movie or actor came from or took place in Britain, Latifah announced the name in a kicky Cockney brogue. For every category, Latifah came on with a level of enthusiasm typically reserved for lottery wins. It was just her and the camera and she effing went for it, to everyone's detriment.

More than anything, it reminded me of the Simpsons episode where Springfield bans television so Krusty the Klown commences 24-live broadcasting from a scrappy outpost, eventually just dancing wearily before the camera saying "Hey HEY! Hey HEY!"

If anyone else lived this nightmare, please share your experience in the comments. I'm still kind of freaked out, and need commiseration.

A significant portion of the ridiculous mountain of cash I hand over to Comcast every month will be completely justified tonight as The Wire begins its fifth and final season.

The fifth season adds another element of life in a decaying American city--print media--to the already astoundingly rich portrait created over the past four seasons.

It's the best show ever made, and certainly the best thing to come out of Baltimore--my home town--ever. (Sorry, Natty Boh.) I'm already sad it's over.

Oh, and Obama loves The Wire, which is as good a reason to vote for him as any, no?

More on the fifth season from The New York Times.

Sorry, folks, but the liveblogging software isn't working. Tragic.

10:05 PM: Ricky is already weeping. And Heidi's makeup is fu-huh-ucked up. And I think, since I can't access the liveblogging software, I'm just going to sign off and watch the show. But I have to agree with the woman who just said she was traumatized by being wakened by Tim Gunn. I would be too.

Can't... just... watch... must... comment...

10:10 PM: Hershey's Time Square--the sweetest place in New York. Ugh. Bad American chocolate and folks are jumping up and down with delight? Chris looks like he's in heaven. Wait--they're making clothes out of candy? WTF? Yes, thanks Michelle--thanks for letting us trash your store.

10:12 PM: Ack, Santino Rice! What's with the trotting out of previous season's contestants every week? All it does it drive home how lame this season's contestants are. And does anyone really care where Santino goes for inspiration?

10:17 PM: I don't remember anyone's names. No one is making a lasting impression, and the two week break didn't help. Hm... blue teddy bears and brown pillows... a print. That's going to be fugly. But Chris's dress looks cool. "Real food is not practical," says Chris. No comment.

10:21 PM: Severe head injury--that explains a lot. It doesn't, however, excuse naming your daughter "Caliape," however that word is spelled.

10:23 PM: "Jillian, what are you doing?" "Crashing and burning, Tim."

10:24 PM: Tim to Sweet Pea: "It looks like a coffee filter or a maxi pad." That can't be good, right? And... uh... Ricky's outfit looked good in that quick shot, didn't it? Is that why they didn't show us the Tim/Ricky interaction.

10:30 PM: Project Runway is brought to you by Hershey Chocolate." Yeah, no shit. Says MadameCrow in comments: "today's lesson: never take a risk with twizzlers." Too true. Jillian is going down... or maybe not. They're drawing so much attention to her and her troubles and that's usually a sign that someone else is going down. Unless the producers are as dull as this season's contestants and they're not faking us out anymore.

10:33 PM: Says Chris... "I have been there, exactly where she is, using real food and having it fall off." I want more details about that incident. Christian re: Sweet Pea: "Her dress was a hot mess."

10:35 PM: Okay, here's hoping one of the designers finally--finally--explodes at the judges. "This doesn't look wearable," says Michael Kors. "Yeah, Michael. We had to make these dresses out of CANDY WRAPPERS, you dumb bitch! You ever do that? You wanna give a whirl and see how 'wearable' a dress you can come up with, you MISERABLE BITCH?!?!" It really is about time--the challenges this season have been nearly impossible. It's time for someone who knows he/she is going down to take a chunk out of the judges.

10:39 PM: Okay, someone got to Heidi's face and fixed her makeup. Good thing.

Ricky's dress: nice, but a bit tarty.

Chris: Looks like a tube sock--nice use of materials. But not fitted.

Kit: It's a mess.

Kevin: Eh.

Elise: A mess.

Christian: He thinks his outfit looked amazing!

Pea: She pulled it off.

Rami: NIce.

Jillian: No Twizzlers fell off her dress! She pulled it off!

Victoria: The "ice princess" pose didn't work. The dress is boring.

10:43 PM: Rami--he impressed the judges. Elisa--no joy in her dress. Come Elisa, explode! Explode! Someone explode! Jillian--she's not going home. Told you so. Victoria--"She works at the Dairy Queen." Chris--good dress. "This girl could go into a studio and be shot for the pages of Elle." Sweat Pea--Heidi says it's boring, Nina says it looks easy, no joy says Michael.

10:48 PM: Who do you think is gonna win? I'm hoping it's Chris. But I think it'll probably be Jillian--edible garment and all. Who's going home? I'd say Sweat Pee--and, man, is Sweet Pea's model a little too skinny or what?

10:53 PM: From the comments: "I think the guest judge has a boner for Rami." I think he's the sleeper sex symbol this season--now that Jack's giant tits are off the show, Rami's hotness can be appreciated.

10:55 PM: Here we go...

Continue reading "Project Runway" »

It's on tonight, right? If so--if it's a new episode--I'll be liveslogging the thing. So take your laptop to bed and join the conversation. First topic: Is this season the lamest yet? Is it the end?

Stewart and Colbert to Return Without Writers (NY Times, requires registration...or not)

Lots of "no comment" from all involved, which means the Times is left to merely speculate as to how Comedy Central's biggest shows will operate during the writers' strike (hosts "will have to improvise their monologues and interviews," etc.). Hell, I might as well add my ambivalent, uninformed opinion to the discussion: Uh, it'll probably be awkward, especially if Jon Stewart winds up interviewing a whole bunch of snoozer athletes while other actors/politicians choose not to cross the picket lines ("Lebron, are you an alien creature?"). The only definite information comes from the hosts themselves, though at least their response is appropriate:

In a statement, the two hosts said they would prefer to return to work with their writers. “If we cannot, we would like to express our ambivalence, but without our writers we are unable to express something as nuanced as ambivalence,” they stated.

Starting in January, PBS is showing the “The Complete Jane Austen” series. On Sunday evenings, Masterpiece Theatre will broadcast adaptations of all of Austen’s six novels, plus a new drama based on her life.

The series includes new versions of Northanger Abbey, Persuasion, Mansfield Park, and Sense and Sensibility. It will also include the version of Emma starring Kate Beckinsale, and the Pride and Prejudice miniseries with Colin Firth and Jennifer Ehle.

Perfect viewing for cold and rainy winter Sundays!

Yeah, kids, we're not really feelin' it either. But we're going to be LiveBlogging your asses anyway. Try and make it worth our while.

Project Runway. 10 PM. Take your laptop to bed with yours truly.

UPDATE: Never mind--no new episodes of PR until January 2. So no liveblogging tonight. No nothing. Carry on.

Full press release here. There are seven nominees for best motion picture drama (there were a couple of ties), so with all the siphoning, the winner will be even less predictive of the Oscar winner than usual.

The movie with the most nominations is Atonement. The awards ceremony will be broadcast on January 13, probably sans any funny jokes.

As Eli noted yesterday, last night brought the premiere episode of Crowned, the new CW reality show in which teams of mother-daughter pageant queens live in a house together and compete for...something.

"Crowned is the first in an onslaught of nonscripted programs to hit the networks' schedule since the Hollywood writers' strike began," notes the Washington Post. "If Crowned is any indicator of what to expect, viewers are in for a thoroughly depressing 2008."

That's one way to look at it. Another is: holy crap! Despite it's complete immersion in/obsession with/exploitation of grotesque meaningless bullshit, Crowned scores major points as a collection of uniquely awful human behavior.

Among the premiere's key delights:

*The mandatory, introductory mini-performances given by each mother-daughter team, which ranged from bite-size raps to messily choreographed pose-dances to what looked like simultaneous acid flashbacks.

*The team names chosen by the mother-daughter competitors, most of which deployed the word "bombshell" (the Blonde Bombshells, the Redheaded Bombshells). Leading the surreal team-name pack: Silent But Deadly, chosen by the mother-daughter pair that "may not say much, but when it comes time to deliver, we're winners." Neither mother nor daughter displayed any awareness of their moniker's gassy connotation. (Such linguistic klutziness is also at play in the show's title, which obviously refers to the crowning of pageant queens, but given the mother-daughter set-up, also serves to remind viewers that, once upon a time, the placenta-smeared skulls of half the contestants emerged from the other half of the contestants' vaginas.)

Needless to say, the whole thing's terrible, but it's terrible in some fascinating new ways, especially for those of us infected by Shari Cookson's miraculous Living Dolls with a lifelong morbid obsession with all things beauty pageant.

Crowned continues at 8pm Wednesday on the CW.

He's off Project Runway... but Jack's Flashdance parody is all over YouTube:

Via Towleroad.

Help! I was sitting here with friends, minding my own business, waiting for Project Runway to come on, and all of a sudden this happened (on some show called Crowned):

So, I've volunteered to live blog Project Runway tonight. "But wait," I can hear you saying, thanks to the awesome power of the internet, "Is Eric Grandy straight? Doesn't he wear the same pair of jeans and rotating band T-shirts every day? How the hell is he qualified to live blog a faggy fashion show?!"

Yes, I am (forget what you heard), and, yes, I do...But! Tonight, I'll be joined by no less than two SCCC apparel design students and two "actual queers!", so everything should be perfectly faggy fine. Live blogging starts here at 10:00 p.m., do tune in.

I will be live blogging Project Runway tonight using that snazzy live blogging software that Eli's been wasting on trifles like presidential debates. So take your laptop to bed and join us for a spirited, as-it-happens discussion of the most important TV show in the history of the world starting at 9:45 PM. And remember...

Asians are fierce.

Sorry, Brad & Jonah, but High School Musical going up against a professional football game does not pit the straights against the gays. It pits straight teenage girls against straight adult males. While a few gay men find that Zac kid attractive (I do not; his teeth are small and stumpy and he has a rodent face), the overwhelming majority of his fans are straight teenage girls.

High School Musical vs. pro-football? That's an internecine conflict, boys, not a battle between the forces of light (the homos) and the forces of darkness (the heteros). Better luck next time.

Jack from Project Runway 4 is dating Dale from Top Chef 3. That's just wrong. Details here.

Give it up, dude, it's over. The homos won, the heteros lost.

‘Desperate Housewives’ Outscores Football

Drawing 20.6 million viewers on Sunday, “Desperate Housewives” lifted ABC into first place for the night’s ratings, according to Nielsen’s estimates. The 9 p.m. drama delivered the largest audience of the night, easily outperforming NBC’s “Sunday Night Football” which averaged 13 million viewers.

Apparently there's a Project Runway Canada--who knew? It's hosted by Iman--supermodel emeritus, Mrs. David Bowie--and it's as good or better than the original Project Runway, according to our Project Runway Canada Slog tipper...

Have you see Project Runway Canada yet? It's AMAZING. It reminds me of Season 1, when everybody was younger and less polished. Also, they have Canadian accents!

More here.

Thank you to the handful of Slog tippers who wrote over the weekend to make sure that I heard about this—Bravo's forthcoming dance-competition reality show, hosted by the one and only Elizabeth Berkley.

The subject line expresses my feelings perfectly, and was inspired, of course, by this classic Berkley moment.

I am equally fascinated by The Hills and the writers' strike, so this Judd Apatow-produced short (starring Mila Kunis and James Franco) made my week.

"Fuck them. LITERALLY.
I don't give a FUCK."

Many thanks to Audrina Patridge's dead face (ARE YOU OKAY IN THERE?); and to Justin Bobby's parents for having sex, inventing the name Justin Bobby, and raising the world's most transcendent douchebag.

Also, good point, Apatow. I want my writers back.

This Project Runway gossip is from a reliable source...

the reason why christian (bitchy twink) has asymmetrical, fucked up hair is because he's going prematurely bald as a 21 year old and has the most atrocious receding hairline. hence, the fucked up coif.

jack is apparently one of the biggest assholes around. and has frustrated bravo by going on illegal TV appearances. and the girls are apparently all really nice people who didn't really cause drama, except for carmen, who everyone was kinda like, meh, stop being so aggro.

And, of course, Carmen was auf'd last night.

I wrote about My So-Called Life in this week's DVD column:

I was just starting my first year of high school when ABC aired My So-Called Life—set during a turbulent sophomore year at Pittsburgh's fictional Liberty High—so I was probably, like, morally obligated to revere it. What's surprising, watching the series again 13 years later, is that it was worth the adoration.

I watched all 19 episodes and all the commentary tracks for this measly 400-word review, so naturally there are some things I didn't have room to mention. First: It's annoying when it's clear that the people doing commentary tracks know less about the series than you do. Can't the producers of the DVD set force their prima donnas to at least watch the episode in question before sitting down in front of the mics? No, Scott Winant, So-Called Angels was not the first episode to introduce metaphysical elements, though it was the first to do so with any degree of success: The Halloween episode has Angela falling in love with some dead boy. And speaking of shitty episodes, why did Claire Danes and creator Winnie Holzman get assigned to the schematic Self-Esteem? (That track is pretty cute, though.)

To further elaborate on my points about the character of the eyeliner-wearing, girls' bathroom-hanging, half-black, half-Latino Catholic Rickie Vasquez: The way this show treated teen sexuality--whether promiscuous, abstinent, straight, or otherwise (Rickie gets called bisexual and ambiguous before he finally tells Delia he's gay in the last episode)--is really remarkable. I get so annoyed when the media studies types interviewed in Further Off the Straight and Narrow (shown at this year's Lesbian & Gay Film Festival) fall all over themselves praising Joss Whedon for the Willow character on Buffy the Vampire Slayer without mentioning MSCL (ok, I know, it was referenced in the earlier video Off the Straight and Narrow). Whedon is a fan of My So-Called Life (he has a tribute in this box set), and the Willow character is so... feminine... and tame. My So-Called Life didn't have any same-sex makeout sessions, true, but Rickie is a much more complicated and provocative character.

Rickie's storyline in the episode The Life of Brian (directed by Todd Holland) is especially touching and subtle. His cathartic dance scene at the end of the show is right up there with my gold standard for dance in the movies: Denis Lavant in Beau Travail. It almost made me go back and watch Holland's most recent movie again to see if I missed anything. Almost.

One last thing: My So-Called Life producers Marshall Herskowitz and Ed Zwick have launched this new internet-based show quarterlife, which appears to have been designed to appeal to exactly the demographic who would've been fans of MSCL back in 1994. It also seems like it was even timed for the release of this box set. NBC is picking up the show for a midseason replacement, but don't be fooled--that's just the writer's strike talking. There are some decent moments in the second episode, but the show is basically precious and stupid. Avoid.

I don't have Eli's snazzy liveblogging program but I thought I'd toss this up anyway.

Hey, it's about to start...

Jack takes a lot of pills, man, but nice tits, huh? And why is the fat dude making fun of Christian? And I wish Jack would stop doing that thing with his eyes.

Hey, no models? What's this no models shit? And, hey, nice tits on Jack, huh? This whole episode gonna be about Jack's tits. Tiki Barbar? "None of us really know who he is." "I know nothing about football except that it's the one time on television that spandex is acceptable."

Oh, there are Jack's tits again.

It does seem unfair that they're making them all do menswear, huh?

Has anyone else noticed that there's not really anyone all that sexy on the show this year? No Daniel V? I mean, Jack's got nice tits--have I mentioned his tits?--but no one is really compelling in repose, you know what I mean?

So... uh... it hardly seems fair that half the designers are using Jack's shorts as a pattern. Oh, hey, some of the other designers agree with me. Scandal.

Man, I hate all these car commercials at Christmas. Do you know anyone that has ever--ever--received a fucking car as a Christmas present? A car?

But what if I don't want a text message from the designers?

Man, I love the fat guy: "Pants are just two big sleeves sewn together--it's not that hard."

So... uh... the male models? I wonder how many of them have slept with Trent Lott. One or two at least, don't you think?

I'm sorry, that Elise bitch is one crazy bitch--she doesn't want to touch that model? What the fuck is wrong with her? Oh, the models are leaving. I'm going to miss the models.

Oooh... a special guest. Ginny Bahbah, Tiki's wife, is here to critique the designers work so far. Tiki likes layering, says Ginny, and Ricky is panicky. What is up with Kevin's hat? To Carmen: "This looks like a Member's Only jacket." Oh, snap!

Oh my God, it's Kara Saun from season one--driving a Saturn down to the beach to get a little inspiration for her designs. Now I'm inspired to get Terry a Saturn for Christmas. Where do you get those huge-ass bows that are always on top of Christmas-present cars in those Christmas-present-car commercials?

Okay, I'm having an attack of nerves here. So I'm going to stop typing and sit back and watch. Poor Sweet Pea! Poor Carmen! Poor Ricky!

Oh, good the models are back! Good lord, Kevin's model is the hottest of the bunch.

Everything looks a mess--oh, man Carmen's hand are shaking. I can't watch. I can't watch. I can't watch!

Okay, a commercial. What is with all this text message bullshit? Text message and we'll have the designers send you a text! Vote for another sports star you think we should have on the show by sending us a text! Is Bravo making so little money off this pop culture phenomenon that they have to milk us for text message fees? Sheesh.

A show of hands, please: Who's excited about the Sweeney Todd movie? Everyone? Thought so. And, man, come the revolution those Real Housewives of Orange County are first against the wall.

Eeep! We're back... oh man, oh man. Just one of them will be out. Hard to believe only one of them is going home. I can't watch and type... so I'm going to watch.

Okay, Carmen and Sweet Pea got their asses handed to them -- Ricky too.

Alright we're in a commercial. I think Carmen should go home, Terry thinks Ricky. Carmen didn't finish... a single piece. But I can't believe how much they praised Jack's two pieces--it was just dull. "It looks like you bought it in a store," Jack said. Yeah it does, Jack. It looks like you bought it at J.C. Penney's. But we both agree that this challenge isn't really fair. Most of these folks have never done menswear at all. Now some who never did menswear rose to the challenge, I guess--the fat guy in particular. But the whole challenge seems like a giant psych! Okay, we're back to see who gets auf'd...

THE RESULTS... after the jump...

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Sorry, Ogre.

In 1988 many writers used the 22 weeks of the strike to work on novels and plays. Today the action is in writing for the web, videogames and graphic novels. (Variety.com)

As a junkie of all three mediums listed, I'm mixed on this idea--writers from Lost working on comics sounds good to me, but if the dudes who were staffed on Cavemen get anywhere near my Wii, I'm moving out of Mom's basement for good.

Proceed to after the jump.

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