Tuesday, March 01, 2005

Four Days
The kids in DC have had four straight snow days. It's really sad, because there's basically no snow on the ground, or hasn't been for two or three days. So sad that no one can drive in the snow here.

I just wanted to say one more thing about the Cabaret cast. I really admire the way all of you stayed true to doing the musical the way you wanted to do it, and not conforming to the movie or to the way its done before. That's what real art is, doing it the way you want to do it.

Those of you me know that I don't have a great deal of live for the world of high fashion. I tend to view fashion as something that's silly, as I would rather have clothes be comfortable, I prefer function to form. But I thought Project Runway was incredibly fun to watch. If you didn't see any of it, it was a reality show featuring 12 fashion designers that were competing for 3 spots at a show at Olympus Fashion Week. Each week featured a different challenge, from designing a dress from items at the grocery store to designing new postal service uniforms. All the designers were of course outsized characters, as most fashion designers are, and it made for a lot of good viewing in. I had my favorites, especially Austin Scarlett, who had to be one of the most flamboyant characters ever on TV (His picture on the Project Runway website features him in pearls and women's gloves). But he had a really great story. He was never the biggest man in the world, and knowing he was gay early on, he got teased a lot in high school. After he was eliminated, he talked about how hopeful he was that he might have served as a role model for kids who didn't fit in, the way he didn't. Supposedly, the kids at his high school, as a joke, made him prom king. When he showed up, his date, a woman, was wearing a dress that he had made. That's a fabulous story. Austin also served as a model in a pinch, so you can imagine how small he is because the models were all women with tiny tiny waists.
The clothes were almost universally beautiful, but the fun part was watching them being put together, seeing the work that all the designers had to do themselves. It really showed how much of an art clothing design is and I guess you might say that it changed my mind a bit.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Aww, Jim, how good to see that I was not the only one who thought that show was something of a high point in reality TV. And i'm pretty much just as ambivalent toward fashion as you are/were. But yeah the art, design and creativity really came through. Thoroughly entertaining...

Must admit, during my first reading of your post, I read the sentence as "after he was effiminated" ... which i subsequently found hilarious.

Bset wishes to you out in Wonkette's domain from my tawdry, Gawker-lambasted media world.