Fashion Week Hurts My Brain

The evil nuttiness that is New York Fashion Week has officially assassinated any creativity I posses. I’m trying to avoid the diva fashion crowd, the designer whackos, the billions of baby models, the endless lines, and the binder’s of lists – yes, that’s right. The bouncer at Kiss and Fly on Monday night for the John Varvatos “official fashion week party” looked my name up in a BINDER.

How exclusive can the list be if there’s a 4 tabbed binder worth of names? Are we waiting outside because the party’s ‘so cool’ or because SO many people RSVPed that finding names in the encyclopedia thick guest list takes hours?

This is why fashion week drives me into a nutty rage. Anyone who wants to learn more about my thoughts on this topic should be directed here.

Anyway, for now I’m hiding under a rock and waiting for the city to regain some semblance or normalcy, a task the weather and season one of Rescue Me on DVD is making it especially easy to do.

For now I present you with this. Silly, yes. But it made me laugh hard.

Never Choke in a restaurant in West Virginia

Two WVa hillbillies walk into a bar. While having a shot of storebought whisky, they begin to talk about their moonshine operation.

Suddenly, a well dressed woman at a nearby table, who is eating asandwich, begins to cough. And, after a minute or so, it becomesapparent that the lady is in real distress.

One of the hillbillies looks at her and says, 'Kin ya swallar?'The woman shakes her head no. Then he asks, 'Kin ya breathe?' The woman begins to turn blue and again shakes her head no.

The hillbilly then quickly walks over to the woman and stands her straight up, he then lifts up her dress over her head, yanks downher undies and quickly gives her right butt cheek a wet lick withhis tongue.

The woman is so shocked that she has a violent spasm and the obstruction flies out of her mouth. As she begins to breathe again, the Hillbilly walks slowly back to the bar an quietly picks up his shot glass once again.

His partner looks at him with admiration and says, 'Ya know, I'dheerd tell of that there 'Hind Lick Maneuver' but I ain't niver seednobody do it!'

Frighteningly Random Thoughts

On Fashion

Yesterday I saw a highly sophisticated, petite, Asian woman (she sort of resembled a stick figure) strutting down Mercer Street in SoHo wearing what appeared to be a black leather poncho as a dress. I wasn’t sure whether I wanted to tauntingly ‘moo’ at her, photograph her for a style magazine’s ‘what were they thinking’ section, or push her up against a building and see if she’s respond with sexual dominatrix moves. Lucky, she crossed the street before I could engage in any of the above.

A thick, black, leather sheath as a dress? In September? What do we think about this?

On Nightlife

So Room Service hasn’t only stole Pink’s infamously hot and cruel Aussie doorman Clint, they’re copying Pink’s indoor club vibe as well. While they haven’t began blasting Pink’s unique siren sound (which tends to go really well with obnoxiously bad house music), they have installed machines that randomly pump out cold air streams and unexpectedly spray confetti-like foam on patrons, both of which are Pink Elephant phenomena. Do I care? No. I just think it’s interesting to see one douchey clubbing institution ripping off the elements of another. Yet no matter how many fog machines Room Service sets up, they’ll still be light years away from being ‘cool’ enough to own their own vodka brand:



Do we think Pink vodka is more or less than the median outrageous going bottle rate? I wonder where it’s made? Is Pink vodka a blend of many vodka brands? A delightful medley of all the half-consumed vodka bottles from the night before?

It wouldn’t surprise me.

On the upside, the crazy drummer trend which infiltrated every club in the city (whether African / safari themed or not) seems to have died down. Thank God, because a person can only stand so much house music inspired live drumming in a lifetime. It seems clubs have taken the drumming budget and allotted the money toward hiring go-go dancers. I’m seeing more flesh exposed girls in coordinated booty shorts and bikinis than ever before. I have no qualms with these hired dancers. They’re certainly less noisy than the drummers, and in certain private moments, my heart goes out to them. The poor girls have every man in the room visually raping them, and every girl gossiping about the diameter of their thighs.

On TV

I know one too many people writing Weeds spec scripts, so I finally caved and put the damn show on my Netflix queue. I’m halfway through the first season and I just don’t get the hype. The show doesn’t feel like a sitcom, but also fails at being a half hour drama. Am I the only one who feels:

1. The black characters on the show sound like white people writing really good black characters?
2. The premise of a capable, presentable mom selling pot to support her family is entirely unrealistic. She’d get a job at a company in an instant – a job with benefits and health care and a starting point in which she could work her way up…?
3. That the opening credits song is insanely creepy (and catchy…make it go away!)

Also: when the show breaks TV taboos by showing sex tapes, intense parent-child cruelty, wives poking their sleeping husband’s erections, it just feels crafted. Like writers around a table trying to come up with ways to shock me. I dunno. Should I stick with this? Does the show get increasingly better?

What I’m excited for…

1. The return of Ugly Betty – this dramady is like Mean Girls on steroids.

2. The return of my latest obsession, 30 Rock – I’ve been catching up on the episodes I missed on the DVD which came out September 7th. Get it!

3. Gossip Girls – I really hope this is as promisingly evil as it sounds. I’m hoping for something Cruel Intentions-like, but the less ridiculous series version. High school? Drugs? Sex? Plaid skirts? The Upper East Side? If the CW can’t pull this juiciness off I’m actually going to start referring to them as a fake network.

4. Pushing Daisies – I’ve heard good things from sources I trust. Plus I have no idea what the show’s about. I find that promising and hope to stay ignorant until viewing the pilot October 3rd.

What I’m trying to be excited for…

1. The return of Friday Night Lights – I worry it’s getting too soap-opera-y, but trying to keep the faith.

2. America’s Next Top Model, Cycle 752. This show just keeps going and going and while it’s gotten old, I still like it. I think that’s because I passionately enjoy criticizing every girl on the screen, especially while eating. I feel this exercise in humiliating others sharpens my wit and joke making ability. Plus it’s always been a special pow-wow hour for me and my roommate, Tatas. Nothing spells out girl bonding like hurling profanities at other females while simultaneously stuffing our faces with Chinese food.

And don’t even get me started on Tyra. She’s like one of those expandable ‘just add water’ toys. She gets bigger and bigger every time I see her. Bigger hair, bigger fake eyelashes, bigger…build. I’m not saying Tyra’s fat or getting fat. I’m just saying that she’s proportionally blowing up. By the time my kids are teens I think she’ll be the size of the statue of liberty.

On food

The colder weather has rekindled my obsession with milk and chocolate chip cookies, so much so that I had to make an emergency run out for cookie dough last night. Was I ashamed? Kind of. And after pulling a cookie monster (devouring the freshly baked chewy morsels double fisted) I now feel sick.

On Life

I wish dirty hair were in style
I wish I had a helper elf that cleaned my bathroom, gave me foot rubs, and also knew how to write html code
I wish I didn’t have to throw away my favorite pajamas pants, which are now disintegrating and crotchless
I wish there were a zip cable swing between JFK and my apartment. That would make my dreaded voyage to the airport today So. Much. Easier.

Fashion Week My Ass

Here’s a question: Why is fashion week so painfully long? I just want my normal New York lifestyle to resume. During fashion week, all once-pleasant Manhattan activities are suddenly on steroids. And if it lasted just a one week as its title implies, maybe I could handle it, but fashion week is dangerously akin to Christmas – you see suicidally-annoying ads and promotional material for it ions ahead of time and then have to continue to watch the holiday deteriorate as people trees slowly end up in their driveway weeks after the fact. Why doesn’t the fashion industry fess up and just call this excuse for debauchery, ‘fashion mini-month’? At least then we’d know what we’re in for.

Needless to say, I’ve completely rejected this ‘fashion week’ excuse to party. In fact, if I see one more invitation to something with ‘fashion show,’ ‘fashion show after party’ or ‘open bar’ on it (this open bar shiznit is 96% of the time a LIE) I’m going to pull out my own expertly highlighted hair. Am I the only human being in New York who thinks fashion week is completely overrated? Am I the only one who doesn’t enjoy sitting through fashion shows in the first place, and then especially doesn’t enjoy having to pretend you liked the whacky feather contraption they body-glued to a six foot starving Croatian girl before shoving her down a runway? For me, the strangest fashion week phenomena is that I honestly don’t notice the extra influx of models and ‘fun’ that theoretically occurs. When I go out, everything looks the same. The amount of beautiful women is the same; the amount of male models in hoodies is the same. And I’m fine with that. New York doesn’t need fashion week to be more spectacular. This city’s so glittery you need industrial strength sunglasses on an average day. If anything, fashion week means there are so many parties occurring simultaneously that it actually diffuses the crowds (and by consequence, the party’s energy). People are frantic trying to hit up six events a night. Where’s the fun in that?

Here’s another mystery. How is it that people who don’t work in the fashion industry have fashion week parties? Does this make sense? For example, I recently received text invites that read:

“Come to Jay-Z’s fashion week party at the Inferno, going to be off the hook.”

“Mandy Moore’s fashion week blow out party tonight.”

What do these musical artists (if you can even qualify Many Moore as that) have to do with fashion week? Why can’t Jay-Z’s party just be Jay-Z’s party? Does no one pause to analyze how ridiculous this whole thing sounds? It’s like if you plaster the phrase ‘fashion week’ across everything it makes it ten times cooler. And let me be the first to tell you that this promise of extra hot women and free booze never pulls through.

So I’ve made it a mission this season to avoid all fashion week related activities. Sadly, a birthday party I attended last night also had a link on aSmallWorld announcing, ‘come celebrate fashion week.’ This made me want to sit under my bed sheets chewing my nails for the rest of the night, but out of respect for this friend (who was a huge hit at my birthday party) I went and got drunk in a bitter way. Can’t we just celebrate a dear friend’s annual existence without bringing the fashion week nonsense into it? It’s like they feared no one would show up unless those silly magic words were scribbled across the invitation.

My next biggest fear…doesn’t fashion week come every season? As in several times a year? And for a mini-month each time? Fashion Gods, help us.