Friday, November 09, 2012

Project Runway All Stars Season Two, Episode Three: Up your chlorofluorocarbons!

Julie Chen: "Welcome to Project Runway All Stars. I'm Julie Chen and I'm a serious journalist. This week Kayne won the coveted Head of Household position and he is trying to form an important alliance with Ivy so he can convince her to vote Laura Kathleen off the show. Or maybe he's trying to form an alliance with Laura Kathleen so he can convince her to vote Ivy off the show. I really can't tell."

Kayne invites Ivy into his private Head of Household bedroom:

Kayne: "Hey, Ivy, why don't you come into my private Head of Household bedroom so we can gossip. So, can you believe what a bitch that Laura Kathleen is? Everyone hates her."

Ivy: "I don't have a problem with her."

Kayne: "Don't worry, I'll fix that."

And he does! That was some clever strategery, Kayne! They hate each other now! Mission accomplished!

OK, so that's it for the Big Brother theme, I'm afraid. I've never seen more than a few blissfully brief moments of the show, so I really don't know anything about it.

I do, however, know a lot about aerosol art. I don't want to brag, but I went to the "Art in the Streets" exhibition at the Museum of Contemporary Art last year. So I'm an expert.

Unfortunately, I didn't love that exhibition. But that's probably because I went on the wrong day. I went on a day when the museum was free to the general public, so it was completely filled with all these regular people. Obviously, I'm only accustomed to being in the company of other members of the liberal media elite, so this was a new experience for me. I was standing in that gallery for over an hour and not once was I offered a glass of champagne. Is that what life is like for most people?

Laura Kathleen: "I know, right?"

Anyway, as everyone knows, graffiti art was invented by the Romans in 126 B.C. but then Rudy Giuliani cleaned all that up and put in a Toys R Us so we didn't see it again until the 1970s. Now there is a building in New York dedicated to it and it's completely legal to paint that building and if it's legal it isn't graffiti and that's why they had to come up with a new name for it and that's why they call it aerosol art. True story. Well, it could be true. I bet it's close.

So the designers use spray paint on fabric and then create "wearable art." I'm just going to say it: I did not hate everything. Can you believe it? Mr. Grumpy Pants actually didn't hate everything.

The bottom three were Laura Kathleen (spoiler alert: she's safe), Kayne (the judges can't decide whether everything he makes is major tacky or Four Star General Tacky), and Pleather, who made yet another craft project. And the never ending question of What happened to Andrae? I actually liked his dress. I think. Anyway, he's safe.

The top three, and I agree with the judges on this, were Ivy, Anthony Ryan, and Emilio. Anthony Ryan's dress was very cute, but the print actually reminded me more of Jasper Johns than graffiti art:

not really graffiti art

Ivy was inspired by comic book art (by way of pop art) and her look was at least a bit edgy. Emilio, on the other hand, really nailed it. His look really gave you the feel of graffiti art, without looking too obvious. And considering how bad his last self-designed fabric was, I was very impressed.

Our guest judge this week is People Magazine's Sexiest Man Alive 2013, Nate Silver:

Oh, yes, crunch those numbers the way I like it!
Nate Silver: "Conventional wisdom has Ivy winning this thing. And she made a late play for Isaac's vote. But is that confidence or desperation? It appears she has momentum coming out of the previous challenges, but if we dig a bit deeper the data is telling another story. There seems to be a disconnect between the comments from the judging panel as a whole and the tastes of the individual judges, with internal polling suggesting that Emilio is actually in the lead. We've projected that Georgina will be the tipping point judge, bringing him past the number of votes he needs. Now, it's always possible that there is a bias in the polling. But it would have to be a consistent bias in one direction, and if you look at the previous seasons of the show, while individual polls might have a margin of error, the aggregate of the polls is remarkably accurate. So Ivy really is going to have a hard time pulling this off. We currently have the odds of Emilio winning at 137%."

Some Old Guy: "That's ridiculous! Anyone who says he is that sure about the outcome of this challenge shouldn't be allowed near a typewriter!"

A typewriter?

Some Old Guy: "Have I mentioned I'm old?"

Right. So Emilio wins the challenge. Congratulations, Emilio! And it turned out he didn't even need Carolyn's vote, which is a good thing, because she's still trying to add up her scores. She could be at it for weeks, with recounts and court challenges. Pleather is out. I'm sure he will be missed, but not by me.

Carolyn: "I just have to say that I think internal polling sounds really painful!"

5 comments:

Cliff O'Neill said...

I am in agreement about A/R and Emilio. And you're totally not missing anything with BB. And sooo glad Pleather is going back to Ohio while Kayne takes up space for another week. But how Ivy missed the bottom three and Casanova didn't make the top three is beyond me.

Also "aerosol art." Drink!

eric3000 said...

Cliff, I forgot about Casanova. I liked his dress, too.

libby said...

Thanks for the recap, Mr. eric3000. ITA---I knew Emilio would win the moment I saw him spraying his fabric, and that Suede would lose from the moment I saw any part of that thing he made. I thought it was tough on the editors to make this episode look a mystery, KWIM?
ooh! Speaking of mysteries, maybe they could re-animate the corpse of Robert Stack to host All-Stars 3? He's certainly thin enough by now to fit the gowns, but especially because RS knew how to make any hackneyed tripe sound riveting. Just thinking out loud.

That pic of Nate Silver--is that from his OKCupid, because I'm a single 'nerd whisperer' who'd like to check out his profile. Thanks.

Btw, where's our friend from DISH? He mad?

eric3000 said...

Libby, the sexy Nate Silver image is from a National Review Online article by Josh Jordan in which he basically says Nate Silver has no idea what he's talking about (published prior to the election, obviously).

Anonymous said...

That impressive Jasper Johns reference might have been relevant in an "aerosol ART" challenge, but this was, of course, an "AEROSOL art" challenge, as Josh gave away while pathetically trying to convince Joanna that his TinTin point was achieved with the use of some aerosol product.