Is That A Salad Around Your Neck?

If you know me, you know what a sucker I am for Project Runway. Actually, the whole family is addicted--even Bengal, our eight year-old, will comment on the challenges. He knows that one really should stay away from produce during the Make-an-Outfit-at-the-Winn-Dixie challenge. Though it worked out for Korto last week. (Love the kimono look, but, really, the tomatoes were just too much for me.)

Not bound to television broadcast times, we didn't see last week's premier until this weekend. And imagine our surprise when the camera panned past Michael Kors to show...Nina Garcia! She was fired by Elle last spring, then re-hired the next month as Editor-at-Large. Interesting that Elle figured out that the power of television can perhaps sell magazines.

One thing we like about the show is that it demonstrates what creative people can--or can't--do under pressure. It's a twelve-week apprenticeship (though I think it's more like six or seven weeks in real time. It can be brutal and is often painful to watch. But the designers who survive to the end have been re-made themselves.

What if writers were apprenticed this way? (Not on television, of course. No one wants to see a bunch of writers type, window-gaze, head to the kitchen for snacks, drink too much, etc. Well, maybe the last part would be mildly amusing...) They would be locked in their offices, given deadlines, their work critiqued by--hm. Maybe an editor, a marketing person, and Tim Gunn, just because he's cool. I'd love to see Margaret Atwood, Robert Olen Butler, or, perhaps, Dean Koontz be writer-guests!

Atwood: "I like the internal rhyme here, but the phrasing is pedestrian."
Butler: "Poetic. Fruit images are so powerful. Well done!"
Koontz: "What you really need here is some major movement in the plot. I'd like to see someone die. Then maybe he comes back as a ghost. And his dog is the only one who can see him. Make it work!"

I'm glad to see I'm not the only writer smitten with the show. [via Galley Cat]