At this point, 24's seventh season has been hit with more obstacles than the beleaguered Jack Bauer — so what's one more? After suffering through a WGA strike, a one-year delay, and a stint in jail for lead Kiefer Sutherland, the Fox drama is once again shutting down production, says EW. Producer Howard Gordon tells the mag that he was unhappy with the scripts for hours 19-24, so the show will power down until writers can start from scratch. Still, thanks to the eight episodes banked before the strike, producers don't expect the season premiere to be delayed any further — which is more than can be said for the Lifetime debut of Project Runway, now pushed back to January 2009. Originally slotted for this fall, where it would have followed quickly on the heels of its Bravo swan song, producers couldn't make the abbreviated schedule work. The delay lends Lifetime the extra time it will need to craft an all-important needlepoint challenge and secure the participation of "fashion legend" Meredith Baxter Birney as final judge at NY Fashion Week. [EW]

Though any avid Top Chef viewer knows that the quickest way to get a thumbs-up from judge Padma Lakshmi is to appeal to her love of alcohol, it seems that one former contestant can outdo even Padma when it comes to his appreciation for the hooch. Yes, Wolverine-resembling Season 2 runner-up Marcel Vigneron has been busted by the Laguna Beach PD, who found him driving erratically while tequila-infused saliva foam dribbled from the corner of his mouth. Says the OC Register:

Have you ever tuned into Bravo's reality series Flipping Out—that's the show that stars psycho real estate investor Jeff Lewis—and seen his housekeeper on the show, Zoila, and said to yourself, "You know, I'd love to have a portrait of her hanging on my wall?" Well, someone apparently did because a portrait of her sold for $10,400 at a Bravo-sponsored auction on Tuesday night. [NYT]

We don't know if you've been keeping up with the big-ticket realty-sales going on down by Bravo's Million Dollar Listing, but these aren't one-bedroom rentals in Van Nuys, mmkay? Seriously posh properties are being sold to seriously surgeried occupants by seriously egg-haired agents. As fabulous as these homes are, however, there's still nothing like the personal touch of being left a beautiful orchid accompanied by a handwritten note wishing that they "have a wonderful summer in the BU." BU. B. U. Buh? Byooooooh. Boston University? Blair Underwood? We're stumped.

Whatever investment we still had in Project Runway—the once-great, now-irritating sartorial decathlon presided over with an iron fist by Teutonic Sealfucker Heidi Klum—it was quickly sapped away by last (Lipstick Jungle!) week's corporate synergistic (Lipstick Jungle!) episode guest-judged by Brooke (Lipstick!) Shields (Jungle!). Still, challenges are at hand, models require fittings, and various Its are in need of being made to Work; so we trudge ever onward, swallowing our basest designophobic tendencies as we endure a violently unlikable bunch.There's of course that blonde freak whose obsessive need to append the suffix "-licious" to any word he cant think of can only be logically explained away as some ugly neurological byproduct of methamphetamine addiction. There's Suede, he of the blue mohawk, because just a wispy, gelled mohawk isn't quite stupid-looking enough; did we mention he goes by "Suede," and refers to himself in the third-person? Is it any wonder, then, that the laser-depilated, elevator-boot-wearing drag cavalry was called in to shake up the proceedings? There's really no following an act like Christian Siriano: This show is a victim of its own fierceness.

Even those who care nothing for the "lifestreaming" website NonSociety, the Bravo reality TV show pilot being spun off from it or the fameballs behind it can appreciate the fundamental truth on display on the site this weekend: Conflict is central to any "reality" driven broadcast. Without conflict, reality television would be watched mainly by sociology professors and prison inmates. That's why producers in the genre tend to seek out dramatic clashes of any sort, going so far as to line up racists, sexists and just overall idiots for their casts. It's also why the most interesting thing posted so far to NonSociety, one month in, is recently-insecure designer Mary Rambin's tiff with bitch-blogger Frangy over... well, over whether two streets intersect. Spoiler: Things do not end well for poor Mary.

Perhaps cognizant of the fact that this is their last season to milk Project Runway for all it's worth, Bravo parent company NBC Universal has been cramming the show with so much obvious corporate synergy that you can practically hear Tim Gunn muttering, "This concerns me." Still, last week's challenge to create an outfit for the Olympics (currently being broadcast on NBC and NBC-owned channels!) was just a drop in the fierce, organza-draped bucket compared to the corporate chutzpah on display during last night's episode. With guest judge Brooke Shields in the house, the designers were challenged to create a look for her character on season two of the barely-renewed NBC drama Lipstick Jungle. Thanks to Molly McAleer, we've assembled a video of all the times the show's title was uttered last night — even when it sounded suspiciously ADR'd in! Who could have known that "Lipstick Jungle" would surpass "licious" and "Holla at your boy!" to become this season's biggest catchphrase? [Bravo]

NonSociety, Julia Allison's new media project of indeterminate meaning, needs your help! The protocelebrity and Wired cover girl is filming a TV pilot show for Bravo with her friends, and she's sent out an invitation seeking "35 fashionable, vivacious people who will agree to go on camera." It's interesting that while Julia's show has been heavily hyped for some time, she's rather self-deprecating about its prospects. The exclusive affair happens tonight, so the invite is last-minute. While you might expect, say, half of your friends to come to a party you throw, we're conservatively estimating that Julia is counting on around a 5% response rate, meaning she sent this email out to 700 people in search of 35 takers. We could be wrong! After the jump, read the entire invite-then RSVP and help her out. It's the least you can do. Spies, please send us some details.

So that show on Bravo called Million Dollar Listing. It feels a little 2006, doesn't it? "Obviously, the market is different today," Andy Cohen, the network's senior veep of programming, tells the Times today. But Bravo, which is still reeling from the loss of the Harvey Weinstein-produced Project Runway, isn't giving in. They're holding firm, damn it! "The channel has bravely stuck with the name and the format instead of steering the show in a more topical direction, like Million Dollar Foreclosure." Oh, and Josh Flagg, one of the brokers on the show, was arrested last Thursday. And just days before the second season debuted, too. What a coincidence! [NYT]

Time Warner yesterday announced some weak quarterly financials, with earnings off 26 percent. But there was a big bright spot, the media conglomerate's cable networks like HBO and CNN, where profits were up 18 percent, led by advertising gains. There's a similar situation at NBC Universal, where ratings gains at Bravo (Runway, Top Chef), MSNBC (Keith Olbermann, Chris Matthews) and even the USA Network have formed a thick silver lining around the storm cloud that is the flagship broadcast network. The business-side gains add a financial dimension to the cable industry's creative golden age, described by the Times' David Carr in June and obvious to anyone with a smartly programmed DVR or Netflix queue. Cable is the swaggering golden child of television, and it's only going to get more confident, because the advertising model that's fueling all its fun happens to be perfect for a recession.

• Whoops! The "anonymous" magazine editor who was quoted in this week's New York cover story about plastic surgery? Meet Elle's Carol Smith. [Portfolio]

Kelly Killoren Bensimon is a former model, former Gotham and Elle editor, and the former wife of photographer Gilles Bensimon. She's also the new member of the cast of Bravo's Real Housewives of New York City. So you'd think she would have thought long and hard about whether participating would be good for her career and image, right? Maybe conferred with some friends or a PR person or two? Or maybe just watched the show to see what she was getting into? Apparently not. Killoren says she hadn't watched a single episode of the show before signing on, but that she's "excited to show American women how you can live a dream life where you're taking care of your kids and working and socializing." And it's not about her. "I'm just a vehicle for the show to feature all of the amazing people I'm exposed to on a daily basis—artists, writers, athletes, actors." She really never has seen the show, has she?

Tireless, chin-mole-free multi-hyphenate Sarah Jessica Parker is donning yet another hat, and this one you'll be pleased to hear contains not a single twig-sculpture or lepidoptera specimen. Rather, she'll be executive producing a new Bravo reality competition from Project Runway/Top Chef studio Magical Elves. The discipline? Like, art:

Oh poor Bravo. They're soon losing their beleaguered flagship show, Project Runway, and now they're stuck with a competition show about art. As we wrote about back in January, Sarah Jessica Parker has been shopping around America Artist, in which contestants paint, sculpt, basketweave, rhythmically stilt-walk, and other artsy stuff in the hopes of furthering their sure-to-be long and luxurious art careers. And now Bravo has picked it up. Terrific. Because Deitch Artstar did so well! Add this to Date My Ex: Jo and Slade and Bravo is looking a little sickly these days. Next thing you know we'll be watching the exciting spin-off Top Sous Chef.

• Most amusing bits from the lengthy Times piece this past weekend on succession at Condé Nast: That overlord Si Newhouse still "personally hand-counts ad pages in his magazines and their competitors." And that he goes to work every day in "chinos and an old sweatshirt." [NYT]

Click to viewLured as much by its illustrious roster of Hollywood comedy power-players as we were by Quebec's notoriously lax champagne-room laws and the promise of a poutine stand on every corner, Defamer dispatched editor Seth Abramovitch to Montreal to take in a few days of the 2008 Just For Laughs Festival. Now a quarter-century old, Just For Laughs has grown into the largest comedy festival—two weeks of stand-up, sketch comedy, movie screenings, and street performances. Tonight we'll be front and center for the much-hyped Apatow For Destruction, billed as "a unique night of stand-up comedy as writer/director/producer Judd Apatow assembles a veritable all-star team with one of Canada's biggest exports, Seth Rogen, Craig Robinson, Russell Brand and a line-up of some of the most buzzed about film and TV stars in comedy."

The fifth season of Project Runway premiered last night—something you might have easily missed, considering a scorned Bravo did everything in their power to sabotage the Lifetime-headed series short of retitling it People Sitting At Sewing Machines Acting Bitchy and burying it after a 4 a.m. Shamwow! infomercial. In any case, despite all the essentials being in place—i.e. Tim, Heidi, Michael, Nina, and even a surprise cameo by Season One breakout fop Austin Scarlett—there was no mistaking it: the bloom is off this rose. Case in point, the designers blatantly solicitous attempts at establishing themselves as this season's Christian Siriano, whose arsenal of Christianisms—we won't even bothering repeating them here, you know the ones—helped propel him to become the breakout sensation of Season Four. "Girlicious?" "Suede is gonna rock it?" Subpar Tim Gunn impressions? Please. Make it stop.

Wired posted its profile of Julia Allison, the Time Out New York dating columnist and onetime protocelebrity (now in the process of crossing over into the real thing). Yes, the cover story (preceded by the cover itself) retreads much that Gawker readers already know about Allison, and many of you will, no doubt, find the piece altogether too friendly, a celebratory, rather than judgmental, distillation of her techniques for self-promotion and attention whoring. But there is news. Confirmation, for one, of Allison's long-rumored reality TV show for Bravo, IT Girls. Wired said the deal was signed in June, though it's clearly been in the works for much longer. Then there's a terrifying new wrinkle to Allison's new "lifecasting" Web venture, Non Society:

It's no secret that Bravo is a gay friendly network. They've got Kathy Griffin, Project Runway (at least for a little while longer) and shows about people getting their hair did. Plus, who could forget about their great big sexy bear, Mr. Tom Colicchio? But if you happened to tune into Bravo on Monday night, you may have bore witness to an historic milestone: The first ever gay personal lubricant ad to appear on television! Check out the video after the jump.

$8 million. Does that seem like a lot of money for a company to pay to have mediocre models use their hair products on a mediocre cable show for a few seasons? It kind of does. But that's how much The Weinstein Company, run by entertainment mogul Harvey Weinstein, is trying to squeeze out of L'Oreal for three seasons of sponsorship of Project Runway. Of course, Weinstein has a long history of pimping out the fashion reality show to every company on earth willing to pay a dime to be on it, using it as a profit machine to support his company's less sure-thing ventures. And he's still milking it for every cent. How do we know? Because he left all the evidence in a public trash can: