Just when we'd forgotten what channel Lifetime was on again, another season of Project Runway has snuck up on us. It starts tonight, so join us in the comments for the premiere-episode live-blogging festivities!

If you haven't participated in one of these shindigs before, here's how it works: Turn on Lifetime (whatever the hell channel it's on), wait for the show to start (at 9 pm Eastern) and start posting comments. The rest of us will be doing the same. It's like a big commenting commune, but with Tim Gunn instead of hallucinogens!

Here's big news about this year's season: The episodes are supersized! Each one will be 90 minutes long. I remember wishing they'd done this years ago, back in the salad days of the show's Bravo era, because I felt like they short-changed much of personal drama and clothing creation to cram everything into one-hour episodes. But can the episodes in the show's new, less-compelling Lifetime era sustain our interest that long? I'm always an optimist when it comes to this show, so I vote yes.

Regarding this year's designers: I glanced over their bios, and the most striking impression I came away with is that this is the most non-NYC-based group I can remember. Only three of them live in New York; the other 14 hail from diverse locations like Georgia, Hawaii, California, Oregon Utah, Ohio. In fact, over half are from states West of the Mississippi. I'm not sure what to make of this. Is Lifetime trying to connect more with their "heartland" viewing audience? Or did they just run out of talented and game designers from New York to feature on this show?

Anyway, here are few of the more interesting-looking contestants to keep an eye on this season:

  • Andy South could be this year's answer to Christian Siriano—young, talented, flamboyant and funny. He hails from Hawaii and makes cool avant-garde outfits as well as pretty, hand-dyed dresses, which he says he often likes to try on after makes them. He's my pick to win the whole thing this year. If he doesn't, I'm sure he'll hang around long enough to entertain us for most of the season, anyway.
  • Peach Carr is a 50-year-old housewife from Illinois who could best be summed up as the "middle-aged, Midwestern crafty-and-kind-of-batty lady." Her house is a converted stable with lime-green walls and sliding horse-stall doors inside, and she likes to wear bizarro-preppy outfits like pink pants with big green alligators embroidered all over them. The clothes she designs look more hideous than the ones she wears. Could she be this year's answer to Season 1's Wendy Pepper?
  • Jason Troisi appears to be this season's token straight guy (there's always at least one) and he lives in his parents' house, where he designs clothes in the basement. He likes to work with materials like black leather and molded rubber, and says his influences include "bioluminescent deep-sea creatures." I'm guessing he does drugs in that basement too, just like he probably did in high school. He lists his occupation as "landscape designer," which probably just means his parents make him mow the lawn and weed the driveway in exchange for living in the house.
  • Sarah Trost is a costume designer who likes "vintage-inspired" clothes and kitschy stuff like Elvis Presley clocks and Spiderman backpacks. She seems like a cool, likeable person, but what's striking about her is how much the judges (including Tim Gunn) seemed to hate all of the looks she presented in her "casting session" video clip. In fact, in that clip, Zoe Glassner said of her clothes: "The only thing that's consistent about them, to me, is that they're all kind of ugly." So how, I wonder, did she end up on the show? Is "kind of ugly" a hot new trend in fashion these days?

OK, it's about time for me to stop babbling on here, because the show's about to start and we have lots of premiere-episode work to do: There are drinking-game rules to invent! And contestant nicknames to coin! Also, we have to find that Lifetime channel again. Let's see, was it 27? 39? I'll click around, and then see you down in the comments section.