well, the christmas tv hiatus is over.
9 Jan 2006 10:46 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
cimorenewhich is totally a good thing.
i love how a tim gunn burn is always so polite, and you can always tell what he actually thinks in spite of this. in the podcast for this episode, he says first that santino's dress is "very santino" and then praises it, and there's a very significant emphasis on understandably when he says that nick was understandably surprised when santino beat him. he says that nick thought he had the best dress, not that it was the best dress: but then there's this tiny embarrassed pause before he points out that nicky hilton herself said it was "the whole package" and stresses at some length how santino spent the night, like a large freakish-looking gay whore, hanging on nicky and sucking up like a leech... and then adds, quickly and a bit dryly, that nicky seemed to love santino though he doesn't know if she loved his dress. oh, oh, oh, burn, santino!
i also noticed that in the "clothes off your back" podcast, he says (with a subtle flatness of tone the only thing to indicate a lack of enthusiasm) that santino produced what he's coming to think of as a "santino-like" design. then he says in a nice way that santino always does the same kind of thing. then he praises that thing itself, which he mainly calls "attention to detail", and talks about how you can't help but admire it. (at least santino's crazeh and andrae's are all out there. i'm not surprised marla's the one tim thinks is a sociopath: she acts so quiet and normal and then... suddenly she smacks you in the face with this very blank and unresponsive detachment from reality. i still can't get my head around her copycat dress.)
i can't say anything like "i don't know what's going on with the l-word". it's kind of like back when people were saying nsync sold out because they did the chili's ad, and i believe it was chris who asked if those people were joking, because they sold out long ago. the l-word hasn't sucked this much from the beginning, but it's been sucking a lot for a long time and it's definitely completely shameless. apparently there always has to be one person crazy, and who that is is allowed to change with very little notice or plausible explanation as long as they're entertaining. (not that i mean this as an endorsement ofdana alice's crazy. i think jenny's was kind of funnier--there's just something funny about dolls and stuff where the pill-popping is more scary.)
shane's hair has to suck because she's a hairdresser, or because she looks too supermodelly to be immediately taken as a lesbian with less offensive hair, if someone happened to stumble on the show and catch nothing but her on the screen, naked for once without her mannish dressing to code her as butch. i dug the mexican mamma's burn: "who does your hair?" a very palpable hit.
shane was cute in that ancient and rather fugly prom (quinceañera?) dress. it looked like part of an arty fashion spread and it made her look like a supermodel--not only because she is one (or close enough--gwyneth's cousin, modelling experience?) but also because pants+ poor posture+50s prom dress+stupid hair+way more makeup than i personally can believe such a butch wearing=arty fashion spread almost inevitably.
i don't know why i continue to watch this show. why couldn't there be a lesbian tv show that was good? as wax points out, the actresses are hot, and sometimes it's entertaining, but i just know there's going to be another Dying Daddy plot that makes me want to hurl things through the screen soon enough. and i think that could well have to do with tina and bette, who were okay when they were broken up and i even started liking tina, but whom i now hate passionately again. even though they're fitter to raise a child than almost any christian fundamentalists, i almost wish the social worker would take away the damn baby. so much stupidity just should NOT be allowed to go unpunished. i wonder if the writers have crunchy-aunt rage they need to express or what? that's my working theory.
and finally: i don't remember when helena became friends with anyone--they seemed to all hate her when she was dating tina--but her dismay with the whole tarot thing was hilarious. and i hope they show more tarot readings, because ahahahah, tarot.
is it my imagination, or is csi going slightly downhill this season? don't get me wrong, i still love me some csi. i was excited when they started using their whopping big budget for good things, like quentin tarantino and experimental story-telling with different timelines and cooler special effects and funny camera angles. sometimes those worked really well, like the one where nick had the psychic connection to the little girl ghost who turned out not to have been dead at all so wtf was up with that psychic connection anyway.
but this last one just really didn't work for me on a number of levels, and it makes me think, hmmm, hasn't my response to the last several eps been similarly lacklustre? is it because they're getting too adventurous--ie the two-parter with sofia and brass and who really shot that cop anyway, which stepped away from mystery-solving formula into more of a cop drama!!!1, which is a genre i don't like, and if i did, i would be watching a cop drama instead of csi. and then this week, which made wax wonder if they were thinking noir.
maybe they were! and of course, there's always hints of noir, or associations with noir, in detective stories, and scenes where you're sneaking nervously around the crime scene in the daaaaaaark. but this time it seemed to me that meta stuff, in the camera work and possibly the soundtrack, heightened the atmosphere in a way that raised expectations without fulfilling them by going all the way. i'm not sure what all the way would actually have been; maybe a more theatrical ending or a louder Moral of the Story.
i love how a tim gunn burn is always so polite, and you can always tell what he actually thinks in spite of this. in the podcast for this episode, he says first that santino's dress is "very santino" and then praises it, and there's a very significant emphasis on understandably when he says that nick was understandably surprised when santino beat him. he says that nick thought he had the best dress, not that it was the best dress: but then there's this tiny embarrassed pause before he points out that nicky hilton herself said it was "the whole package" and stresses at some length how santino spent the night, like a large freakish-looking gay whore, hanging on nicky and sucking up like a leech... and then adds, quickly and a bit dryly, that nicky seemed to love santino though he doesn't know if she loved his dress. oh, oh, oh, burn, santino!
i also noticed that in the "clothes off your back" podcast, he says (with a subtle flatness of tone the only thing to indicate a lack of enthusiasm) that santino produced what he's coming to think of as a "santino-like" design. then he says in a nice way that santino always does the same kind of thing. then he praises that thing itself, which he mainly calls "attention to detail", and talks about how you can't help but admire it. (at least santino's crazeh and andrae's are all out there. i'm not surprised marla's the one tim thinks is a sociopath: she acts so quiet and normal and then... suddenly she smacks you in the face with this very blank and unresponsive detachment from reality. i still can't get my head around her copycat dress.)
i can't say anything like "i don't know what's going on with the l-word". it's kind of like back when people were saying nsync sold out because they did the chili's ad, and i believe it was chris who asked if those people were joking, because they sold out long ago. the l-word hasn't sucked this much from the beginning, but it's been sucking a lot for a long time and it's definitely completely shameless. apparently there always has to be one person crazy, and who that is is allowed to change with very little notice or plausible explanation as long as they're entertaining. (not that i mean this as an endorsement of
shane's hair has to suck because she's a hairdresser, or because she looks too supermodelly to be immediately taken as a lesbian with less offensive hair, if someone happened to stumble on the show and catch nothing but her on the screen, naked for once without her mannish dressing to code her as butch. i dug the mexican mamma's burn: "who does your hair?" a very palpable hit.
shane was cute in that ancient and rather fugly prom (quinceañera?) dress. it looked like part of an arty fashion spread and it made her look like a supermodel--not only because she is one (or close enough--gwyneth's cousin, modelling experience?) but also because pants+ poor posture+50s prom dress+stupid hair+way more makeup than i personally can believe such a butch wearing=arty fashion spread almost inevitably.
i don't know why i continue to watch this show. why couldn't there be a lesbian tv show that was good? as wax points out, the actresses are hot, and sometimes it's entertaining, but i just know there's going to be another Dying Daddy plot that makes me want to hurl things through the screen soon enough. and i think that could well have to do with tina and bette, who were okay when they were broken up and i even started liking tina, but whom i now hate passionately again. even though they're fitter to raise a child than almost any christian fundamentalists, i almost wish the social worker would take away the damn baby. so much stupidity just should NOT be allowed to go unpunished. i wonder if the writers have crunchy-aunt rage they need to express or what? that's my working theory.
and finally: i don't remember when helena became friends with anyone--they seemed to all hate her when she was dating tina--but her dismay with the whole tarot thing was hilarious. and i hope they show more tarot readings, because ahahahah, tarot.
is it my imagination, or is csi going slightly downhill this season? don't get me wrong, i still love me some csi. i was excited when they started using their whopping big budget for good things, like quentin tarantino and experimental story-telling with different timelines and cooler special effects and funny camera angles. sometimes those worked really well, like the one where nick had the psychic connection to the little girl ghost who turned out not to have been dead at all so wtf was up with that psychic connection anyway.
but this last one just really didn't work for me on a number of levels, and it makes me think, hmmm, hasn't my response to the last several eps been similarly lacklustre? is it because they're getting too adventurous--ie the two-parter with sofia and brass and who really shot that cop anyway, which stepped away from mystery-solving formula into more of a cop drama!!!1, which is a genre i don't like, and if i did, i would be watching a cop drama instead of csi. and then this week, which made wax wonder if they were thinking noir.
maybe they were! and of course, there's always hints of noir, or associations with noir, in detective stories, and scenes where you're sneaking nervously around the crime scene in the daaaaaaark. but this time it seemed to me that meta stuff, in the camera work and possibly the soundtrack, heightened the atmosphere in a way that raised expectations without fulfilling them by going all the way. i'm not sure what all the way would actually have been; maybe a more theatrical ending or a louder Moral of the Story.
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(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 08:58 pm (UTC)marla is totally a sociopath.
*MONDOMEGAHEARTS* for tim gunn. *fangirls*fangirls* seriously, next to fangirl in the dictionary goes: "how cim and missi feel about tim gunn." with a picture of us holding a picture of tim.
that we've probably drawn hearts on. and kissed with lipstick.
i'm just sayin'.
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 09:05 pm (UTC)and then i was restored to disgust with humanity by the contingent of people who apparently did not have any idea tim gunn was gay. oh my god, seriously, how clueless can you be? am i supposed to believe that these people have not only never seen a gay person but never watched tv before? it's not like you have to rely on gaydar, here. tim is, he's, he engages in plenty of stuff that is all culturally coded gay. there were these ladies all like, "the people who are referring to tim as if he is gay are stepping on my fantasies". 1. take your grubby paws off tim, you icky het housewife. 2. as another poster succinctly said, the sexual orientation of your pretend tv boyfriend hardly matters. (to which that particular whiner was like "really? okay! good! yay!")
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 09:14 pm (UTC)santino and daniel v ride an ambiguity line to some degree.
but not tim gunn.
disgust with humanity RESTORED.
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 09:20 pm (UTC)reminds me of [not-ambigously] gay coffeehouse skinhead lecturer, who can be found under my tag professor!slash. i had been calling him ambiguously gay even though he, like tim gunn, is not particularly ambiguous (though definitely at least a little more ambiguous than tim. i mean, he doesn't work in the fashion industry or always dress like ten million bucks or say things like THAT DRESS IS NOT FOR TERRI HATCHER! otoh his reknown in sociology is all for his queer studies, specifically of transgender communities).
but anyway, i took the 'ambiguous' off his name, as you may recall, when i asked him why we had to read two articles before a lecture and then his lecture didn't even address one of them at all, and he cocked his head adorably and made this little nose-wrinkle, and said, "you're right. i had to give you something to read about the straight people--but i just--they're just so BORING". and the whole class cracked up and i felt suffused with joy and love
and a tingly premonition that someday i would slash him with someone.but really, NOT KNOWING THAT TIM GUNN IS GAY. i just. what. i mean. how can you. what?
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 09:29 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 09:36 pm (UTC)♥
(no subject)
Date: 9 Jan 2006 10:08 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2006 01:58 am (UTC)I wonder if some of the crazy OMG!TimGunnishetero people are just so used to defending characters against the HoYay people on TwoP that they have not really registered that Tim Gunn is a person with a real orientation outside of the show, unlike, for example, Lex.
(no subject)
Date: 10 Jan 2006 04:11 am (UTC)i really, really don't think so. their expressions are innocent and, except in the one instance, cheerful. there's nothing like defending going on. and i'm not sure how much overlap there is between reality tv like this and stuff like smallville. i think they're aimed (by the studio) at different demographics.
then he repeats 9-0 just in case you misunderstood
he talks more like santino is crazy, and the whole thing is unbelievable, but what amuses me is that he reserves the real censure for fashion faux pas like marla's copycat dress and raymundo's barbie dress: "it was just really, really inappropriate" (burn!) and something about how he hopes raymundo wouldn't make the same mistake if he had a chance to do it again.