We've got a serious case of the rainy-day, writers strike blues—when not even Writer Boi's dope rollback rhymes, the fact that it's Friday, or the announcement that the Doggie Chow-loving star of Goddess has emerged from retirement to host a reality dance-competition on Bravo seems enough to cheer us up:

Last night's first-of-its-kind Project Runway challenge required the remaining contestants to design a menswear outfit for Atiim Kiambu Hakeem-ah "Tiki" Barber, former Giants running back and now a Today Show co-anchor. It posed several logistical problems: For one, most of the designers had no experience making clothes for men, resulting in some of the most ill-fitting runway atrocities in the show's history, and prompting judge Michael Kors to liken at least one outfit to "something the Elephant Man might have worn to the 1963 Kentucky Derby as Truman Capote's date!"

Now that we've had two weeks to get acquainted with the gays and ladies vying for the title of America's Next Top Project Runway Design Star, we thought the time was ripe to turn to the internets in search of some contestant nudity.

The breakout contestant of episode one would undoubtedly be resident kook Elisa, who "imbued" her expensive fabric with intentional grass stains, "hand-measured" her models (sure to be a commonly used defense from now on in designer rape trials), and who sent something down the runway that looked, to quote one party guest, like "a blue sack that shit the NBC logo out its back." Sadly, when it came down to Elisa's peacock poop or Simone's "boring, poorly made, no 'wow!'" outfit, as Michael Kors put it, the decision was all too easy: On Runway, the crazies always win.

You may have noticed Heidi "Kissed By A Rose" Klum roaming around the top of our site screaming, "IM IN UR 'POOTS, SEWING UR CLOZE!" That's because last night was the season premiere of Bravo's Project Runway Season 4. We watched. The ladies at Jezebel watched. It's a funny thing because we know at the end of the season we will have become passionate advocates and bitter enemies of some of the designers. Remember the passion for Santino? The antipathy toward Pepper? The love for Jay?

It seems young Spike Carter, who removed his college video project from his website yesterday evening, is not the only talented Emerson College student out there who kind of knows how to use Final Cut Pro! Bravo TV intern and Jersey native son Chris Ultimo recently made a video he made for the network's Intern Blog. It makes us like Spike Carter a lot more, even if he is the son of a famous man. Be warned: You'll never get these three minutes of your life back.

In honor of Project Runway's return tonight (and just in the nick of time, as the prospect of nothing but new episodes of The Rachael Ray Show made us want to plunge the closest shish-kabob skewer into the spongy centers of our brains), we thought we'd salute the competition's unsung heroes: The models, blank canvases called upon week after week to strut down the titular thoroughfare looking far sexier and more confident than anyone forced by a mentally unstable designer to wear a chain-basket hat has any right to be. And with a nod to our previous Runway guessing game , we'll throw out another puzzler: Which of these models loves the New York Mets, is addicted to chick flicks, and simply abhors tardiness? The answer is here.

A not-at-all hysteria-inducing AP item informs us that a "staph superbug" resistant to all known treatments is infecting 90,000 Americans a year and counting. Hopefully that's not the strain that afflicted Project Runway 4's Jack Mackenroth, leading Tim Gunn to give the contestant the once over and declare, "I don't know, Jack, I'm getting Patient Zero from you, and I must say, I'm concerned." [AP/Yahoo]

Now that we've all tried the reality TV play-along-at-home game sensation, Guess the Token Project Runway Straight Male, we thought we'd up the difficulty level with an add-on module: Now Guess Which One Allegedly Claimed He Was Voted Off for Being an HIV-Positive Bio-hazard? Gatecrasher reports:

Sharp-eyed observers may have noticed there was a brief shot of current Top Chef winner Hung jumping out of bed in his boxer shorts during the reunion special that aired on Wednesday. We sent the video to the Defamer Institute of Priapic Analysis, and the results have come back, proving conclusively that the speedy chef doesn't just have a cocky personality, he also has a...well, you get the idea. Click the censored photo after the jump for the full Hung experience.

As of Friday, Jack, Chris, Ricky and Steven were the out-loud, out-proud designsketeers angling for the title and prize money that were confirmed by the network as openly gay. And as it's our site's policy not to speculate about sexuality, we left it at that. But today we've had a few more fellas come forward to join the gay party:

Finally, Bravo has announced a premiere date for the return of Project Runway: November 14th. In anticipation of that long-overdue event, BravoTV.com has posted photos of the new batch of contestants—a rogues gallery of dandies and divas that led to an impromptu round of "guess the token straight male" here at Gawker HQ.

Last night was the first half of the "Top Chef" finale. Last night was when jerky boys Brian and Dale were supposed to go home. Last night, particularly, we planned to celebrate the departure of Dale, the LOLmegagay, from our lives forever with a bottle of Chandon. But Bravo once again jiggled the rules of the competition, so only one contestant was going home. Why, why can't they respect the stern rule of reality show law?

We enjoy nothing more on the day after the Emmys than to check in with Bravo executive Andy Cohen, on whom we can invariably rely for an uncensored, eyewitness take on the proceedings. Sadly, there is none of the ebullient, "Wowza!!!!!!" -chanting Andy of nomination day in today's post, as much of the air appears to have been taken out of his sails by the roughly 80 people who accepted last night in his category for The Amazing Race. It was a bitter defeat that brought out an ugly side to the blogging bon vivant, who manages in a matter of just a few sentences to disparage such universally beloved figures as America Ferrera, Helen Mirren, and the show's sexually ambiguous, label-divining host:

Upon seeing the bile-spewing, assistant-firing, OCD-fueled "monster" captured by Bravo's unblinking TV cameras, Flipping Out star Jeff Lewis had something of an epiphany: Holy crap, I really was that guy with the screaming and the cat psychics and the 70 percent lemonade/20 percent punch/10 percent Sprite drink orders, wasn't I? Rather than blame the network's editors for making him into the most watchable reality TV star in recent memory, Lewis did the unthinkable: he apologized to his abused employees. [Ed.note—Audible gasp!] He tells the OC Register:

The New York cover story about former Bravo contestants contained a great many shocking revelations about life after reality TV—for example, that Project Runway's first winner Jay McCarroll is currently homeless* (we blame his McDonald's Archcards dress for Kelis), that the mystery of "Where's Andrae?" has finally been solved (he wound up back at Disney Hall, waiting tables), and that Runway Season 3 standout crackpot Vincent Libretti was last seen wandering naked near a Santa Monica laundromat, holding a placard warning passers-by to the impending "Blogspots Armageddon."

"I was still working there while it was airing," he tells me over lunch. "Boy, was that surreal. The guests were freaking out. They were like, 'I can't believe it's you! You have to take a picture!' He gestures to an imaginary plate. "And I was like, Uh, I have this tray." [New York]

Continuing its proud tradition of reality programming centered around larger-than-sane-life characters whose low-grade mental illness enhances their professional success (see Blowout's narcissistic personality disorder sufferer Jonathan Antin and Hey Paula's apparent dissociative identity victim), Bravo tonight unleashes Flipping Out and its house-renovating, compulsively abusive protagonist on the world. Notes the NY Times:

Our visits to BravoTV.com are usually spent reading about the latest in over-the-counter European pharmaceutical trends from executive raconteur and confidante to the stars, Andy Cohen. Today, however, Andy redirected us to a bold new initiative undertaken by the cable network's online presence: There, nestled between a Padma Lakshmi post about what foods go best with dumping your fatwa'd spouse, and a terrifying slideshow tour of Paula Abdul's subconscious, is the Bravo Interns' Blog. Finally, the hard-working, fresh-faced kids who spend their summers thanklessly tracking down Xanadu: On Broadway house seats for a sock-eschewing overlord have a voice. Let's check in with intern Rich, who is still grappling with the sometimes awkward mechanics of workplace culture:

It took five soul-deadening episodes, but Bravo's Hey Paula finally offered something by way of quality entertainment on this week's show, when unstable protagonist Paula Abdul appeared to have been relieved of her producing duties on the Bratz movie, the most hotly anticipated release of the summer (among RealDoll fetishists). Despite an amazingly convincing meltdown, in which she openly questioned the existence of God and berated her staff for daring to speak as she tried "to tell a goddamned story," Abdul now claims that the entire sequence was concocted by dastardly reality show editors. Paula wasn't fired—she fired them!