Hello. My name is Joshua David Stein. I used to work here now I just drop in biweekly to discuss Bravo's reality show, Project Runway. Yesterday was the ninth episode of the fashion competition's fifth season. Soooo, um, totes out of character for me, I got pretty blitzed on Tocai before watching yesterday's episode.* Usually I keep my shit together but last night I was, as a little man we both once knew might say, a red hot tranny mess. So last night's episode kind of passed before me as an undifferentiated murmuring light show. Some narrative nuggets though were so bleak however as to pierce through my inebriation. They follow.PROJECT RUNWAY CANNIBALIZES SELF: I've been watching the show intermittently and whatever plot there was I lost a long time ago.** But it can't be a good vital sign when instead of reaching beyond the borders of the show, the producers decide to resurrect contestants of seasons past and, like so many bony mares, and force them back through the grinder. They do this twice in this episode. Once when they force this season's contestants to pair up with already executed ones (like Lame-o Jerry! Weenie fuck Dan! Gossip Girl Wesley! Angry Mormon Keith!) and again when they are confronted with another batch of zombie designers from season's past at the natural history museum. THIS IS WHY MUSEUM'S AREN'T FUN!*** Then they throw in Zodiac signs? Come on, you lazy reprobates! You can do better. Zodiac signs are only good for picking up high school girls in the Barnes and Noble cafe.**** TERRI IS SAD EX-MORMON HATER Keith is annoying, fine. I'm glad he's gone. But SRSLY! Terri, you are a skunky bitch. Keith doesn't like you. You don't like him. But at least he put aside his pride and put himself at your disposal. That's the challenge. Instead of making do, you were acerbic, defensive and bitchy. You once made us like you because you wondered what Suede was packing (in his pants). You asked whether it was a vajayjay (vagina) or balls (balls). But you squandered our good will when you let your bitchiness really injure those around you. Keith was already vulnerable in last night's situation. Imagine how difficult it was for him to be there. That you got sent home is not only a direct consequence of your inability to work with others but just retribution for your callous cruelty. I shan't be sad to see you leave. My only regret is that you didn't leave sooner. BLAYNE, I NEVER THOUGHT I'D SAY THIS BUT.... We've mocked Blayne in the past. He is still the same twerpy tangy troll. His design last night was also hideous. But, well, I'm getting choked up.***** Blayne, I'm sorry to see you leave. You left with a strange and bizarre grace. CONFIDENTIAL TO KENLEY You have a nice rack and a pretty face. Stop being so overpoweringly annoying. PLEASE! I want to like you but you are making it next to impossible. You don't look at collections? Come on! You have one week to comply with our request to stop being shitty. At that point, we shall have no other choice than to move you from Column A (Things We Actually Like) to Column B (Things We'd Like To Shut Up) * As if! It was really two glasses of Friuliano. 2007 was the last year one could call Tocai Tocai. According to a recent EU decision, the Italian grape from the Friuli-Venezia region is known as Friuliano after losing out on naming rights to the Hungarian varietal Tokaji, pronounced, confusingly, Tocai. Oh well, Klonopin is still Klonopin! **Memo to Mr. Hippity: I read your comments the other day (Nice job liveblogging yesterday. Always a pleasure to read.) One of the reasons that I'm here every other week is because the wonderful Mr. Lawson loves/hates/watches the show as much as I do. By alternating weeks, we ensure a plurality of viewpoints are voiced as well as gaining biweekly Wednesday night parole. ***I know, I know. Museums are fun. ****They're reading the Utne Reader. You're reading The Changing Light at Sandover. She's drinking an Iced Latte. You, an Earl Grey tea. You ask if she's a Virgo. She says, "Yes....born in 1990. Back off, creep!" You reply, "Oooh, Virgos are feisty." 1, 2, 3, 4, slowly walking to the door... *****OMG, did anyone watch Jerry McGuire before Project Runway? Tom Cruise is sooo good in that. Also, Zellweger wasn't as hideous as she has since become. You got me at Hello! AWWWWW! I choked up. (I get sentimental when I get pissy drunk, off the Henny and skunk.)

No really, I checked with Jezebel editor Anna Holmes, seriously no one cares this year. I even checked with the anonymous comments left on New York Times fashion critic Cathy Horyn's blog; this is like the most irrelevant-feeling Fashion Week since the terrorists got involved. Why? Well I thought of five good reasons! This guy (pictured) is your first clue…Marc Jacobs is the only designer anyone cares about and, even though his collection was sort of cool this year, his collection has always been sort of a loss-leader funded by his insane diva behavior and that behavior mostly stopped this year. Last September Marc Jacobs started his 9 p.m. show two and a half hours late and everyone had a hissy fit about it, which in turn caused Marc Jacobs to have a hissy fit over how he was an "artist" and people should not be thinking about quotidian details such as whether their dogs had been fed. Then he dyed his hair blue, went insane and maybe also to rehab. Anyway, that is as good as it gets, in fashion. (That should tell you something.) But he is sane this year. It's all about the clothes, and no one really cares about clothes! Everyone who isn't Russian is poor. Times Thursday Styles regular Stephanie Rosenbloom has a story about the nation's thrift stores. This is hugely significant for two reasons: 1. It is actually a story, and last year around this time Stephanie Rosenbloom was writing about horseback riding in the Hampton's, but it turns out she has been hiding out in the Business section lately, getting down to proverbial business. 2. The story is that the demand for other people's cast-off ill-advised purchases has exceeded the nation's supply of ill-advised purchases. Cindy McCain is the new Victoria Beckham. Example: last week Us Weekly decreed Michelle Obama to have hands-down better style than Cindy McCain. This week the selfsame magazine has a whole feature on Cindy's supposed "makeover" and how pretty she suddenly supposedly looks! And that is not even to mention the matter of Sarah Palin's disappearing-reappearing beehive, and Michelle Obama's Thakoon dress and the cool shirt pictured above, which we found on Philebrity. Political fashion icons are the new celebrity fashion icons, and that is bad for the industry because unlike worthless celebrities who are allowed to change outfits as fast as they can spill tequila and Sparks on the ones they were wearing, politicians, at least when they are not wearing $300,000 dresses, have to pretend they understand the realities of working-class Americans busy raiding thrift stores/insurgent safe houses. The must-have item this year is the jumpsuit. Perhaps you heard about the school in Texas that recently decreed that all kids who chose to violate dress code requirements by rolling up their skirts or whatever would risk being forced to don prison jumpsuits for the remainder of the school day. Now, there is always going to be that one group of totally cool high schoolers who make the prison jumpsuits into some sort of "subversive" fashion statement, but bottom line is that high schoolers would not be incurring dress code violations if they did not want to show off their skinny high schooler legs etc. etc. and those high schoolers grow into the adults who consume fashion. So this gives me pause:

Cityfile compiled a booklet of Faces at Fashion Week and posted it online so people like you could have your own glamorous little liquid crystal menagerie to admire right at your very own venue of indentured servitude. Look, Carine Roitfeld! The Ronsons! Andre Leon Talley and Kelly Cutrone and two separate Hearsts! And the most startling realization upon clicking and resetting text size enough to read the goddamn thing…

Tinsley Mortimer wore the same dress twice. Ohmigod, kill her. [BryanBoy]