Back where we started from

I didn't meant to do a hiatus at the same time as Project Runway, but that's what happened, huh? Anyway, I've also been reading a lot more books that just weren't good or bad enough to review. They were just kind of there.

But since Project Runway is back, so are my recap/review/ramblings!

Every time Project Runway or Top Chef start a new season, I just watch the new people and wonder if I can get invested in them. They never seem to catch my attention quite like the first crowd (for me, Runway season two and Top Chef season one). But then somewhere along the line, one or two of them win me over. Last season, it was Chris March and Kit Pistol. In season three, it was Michael and Kayne.

The strength of each season, I think, is how I feel about those contestants that I don't become big fans of. While I loved Michael and Kayne, I still really liked Bonnie, Bradley, Katherine, Uli, and Robert. But in Season 4, most of the contestants were ones that I tolerated more than actually LIKED.

So now I'm sitting here wondering how this season is going to fall. I have to say that the women look like a lot of fun this time around. Some of them seem a little out there *coughStellacough* but for the most part, they seem like a really interesting bunch. Then men...well, we'll just say I like Joe, so far.

But enough rambling, on to the clothes!



This completely reminds me of Santino's disastrous skating outfit from season two. I know that Michael Kors said it was the wrestling challenge over again, but I don't see that as much as that turkey feather explosion.

First and foremost: what the hell is with the "girlicious" thing? What is so girlicious about this outfit? There is NOTHING that that moniker fits here. Girlicious to me is something that Britney Spears or Ginger Spice would wear. Something sleek that shows off their curves, possibly in pink but not necessarily.

There's also something very strange about the shoulders. You only got a glimpse of it once in a while, but they were made out of some odd colored fabric that had nothing to do with the rest of it. The whole outfit was just confused and going in too many directions.

Blayne also strikes me as a whiner. His model is too curvy apparently (they had their measurements, and they should realize that's what the hour of fitting is for) and according to my text messages, the supermarket clerk rang up his purchases wrong so he didn't have the money for a skirt.

Really? Austin's dress shriveled and almost died. It's called make it work.

I'm not thrilled with Blayne, at all.



I'm with the judges on this one: who goes in the grocery store and says "plastic cups! GENIUS!" But it worked, and it worked really well. That must have been such a time consuming and difficult dress to make.

I admit that it doesn't really look comfortable, or all that perfect (she is so obviously encased in hard, rough plastic) but if it was made of fabric it would just be a cute little dress. I think the only reason he didn't win is because he went with just one idea rather than the multitude of stuff that Kelli did. But it's a very strong showing to start out the gate with.



I have to say that I'm actually not a fan of this outfit. And I agree with Tim that everybody used a "fabric substitute" and that made it kind of boring. The outfits were interesting, and they were dresses, sure. But it went entirely against the spirit of the challenge.

The bottom of the dress, using the detail from the tablecloth, are cute. It's all at least interesting, but it honestly just makes me think that somebody stuck a bunch of gum on the model and this is the result of years worth of schoolchildren's bad habits.

Plus, there's the fact that the collar of the dress doesn't really seem to flow into the rest of the dress, it's like they're two different outfits put together. I have a feeling most of the collar is the result of Tim's angry comment about nobody being able to wow the judges.



I know that I'm technically yawning because I got almost no sleep last night, but this dress could easily be the culprit. It's so boring that there's so little I have to say about it.

See, I know it's made of paper towels, and that's interesting. But they didn't really transform into anything, it just became a boring little dress. Michael Knight's coffee filter dress was fluttering and fascinating. Somehow, it was both coffee filters AND a dress. Don't ask me what the difference is, but there's nothing that makes it MORE. Maybe that's what Tim means by wow factor.

(The fact that I just typed that as "WoW factor" means I'm playing way too much World of Warcraft, BTW).



On the one hand, I'm not entirely sure what this outfit even is. On the other hand, it's pretty whimsical and much more reminiscent of the outfits from the first time they did this challenge. The skirt is actually really cute, it's the kind of thing I'd want to wear. The top is a little out there, and the colors certainly clash a bit. But for some reason having the stripes on the top go all the wrong directions actually makes me like it MORE.

And the paper umbrellas are a fun touch, I'm surprised nobody else thought of it. Overall, a good idea, but not the best outfit to walk down the runway that night.



Poor Jerry, I actually liked him. I think his problem here was more styling and presentation than the actual outfit. Well, there's a few problems with the outfit too.

But the boots? Too much. The gloves? Never in a million years should have happened. That weird hat she's got on? Bad choice. The wacky cape on the raincoat? What in the world was that for?

If he had actually taken the shower curtain and made a really great raincoat with it, I think he would have been middle of the pack safe. But he tried to just chuck stuff at it to capture that "wow factor" and none of it worked at all. Plus, if he had said something about his inspiration being the whole "april showers bring may flowers" and then actually followed through on that...

Think about it, cute little white raincoat (that was tailored and fit without the weird bunching on top) is atop a neat little dress that actually is covered in fake flowers (or real ones) or umbrellas, or something bright and colorful and reminiscent of flowers...

That would have been a great reveal on the runway, it would have been cute, and it would have been a great soundbite for the judges. But instead, it's just blah. Plus, the dress under the raincoat was a disaster. The gauze, and the random swaths of purple just made me think of a bad sci-fi movie.

I'm sorry Jerry. I don't think you were the worst of the bunch...in fact, I don't eve think this was the second worst. But it was third to last, probably.



This was a really cute idea, and he styled it really well. But I just really like that he went in with a theme and an idea (pasta, one of my favorite foods) and he executed the theme from top to bottom. The pasta makes a really fun pattern on the skirt, the pot holders make a great bodice. It's not really making a dress out of banana peels, but it's still a really cute little outfit.

I'm already thinking I'm going to like Joe.



Again with the yawning. And this time I can't even talk about how it's paper towels. It's just a tablecloth. Yay.

It's not even a new or interesting silhouette or a really fabulous gown...it's just a little cocktail dress. We've seen this plenty of times before.



I think it's obvious that this should be the winning outfit. I have no qualms here, this was the best, the cup dress came in second. I really love the skirt, that's the kind of print that I would wear if I could pull it off (and if there was really a top that matched it). She's the only person that didn't use a single thing as it was intended. Well, aside from the cups.

But she didn't use any plain fabric. Even her fabric substitute, the vacuum cleaner bags, she transformed with die and bleach. She made clasps out of a notebook, she made a pattern with thumbtacks (and I'd like to know how she did that without killing her model). The whole thing was exactly what the challenge was about.

When it comes down to the dress itself, I like the skirt, and the clasps in the back. The thumbtack belt I'm okay with. But I'll be honest, I hate the coffee filter bodice. I can recognize that it was exactly the right thing to win the challenge, but I have to admit that it just looks weird on the model. It doesn't really flow from the top to the bottom, it feels like three pieces put together, like one of those books where you flip part of the page to make silly pictures.

But it's still the clear winner.



I love that you could still see the texture of the dodgeball on the bodice. I also really like the fun, asymetrical nature of the skirt. If Kelli and Daniel's outfits hadn't been so great, I think this one would have been in the top. It's a cute, fun outfit. It's colorful when most of them really weren't and it seems to fit pretty well too.

I imagine that it wasn't that comfortable to wear though.



I don't really see what Michael Kors was so in love with here. I do like that she used fresh produce, and that she thought about it. It wasn't just "I want to throw something living on here to be impressive" it was "I wanted to slice the tomatoes to look like brooches or jewels."

It sort of reminds me of the salad dresses that Chris March made before he came on the show. But I see why the judges didn't really want to put it too far ahead because it, once again, was just a piece of cloth that happened to come from a grocery store.

It's a good dress though, it's made well and it's just different enough to catch the eye. Plus, the colors are all fabulous together.



This is a really cute dress, but it seems like something you'd make for a five year old for Halloween. Add a tiara of twizzlers and call her queen of candyland.

But I do have to say that of all the people that listened to Tim say "what's with all the fabric" Leanne actually did something about it. There's not much different between her gluing the meringues on top of the tablecloth than Joe gluing pasta on a muslin skirt, or Chloe gluing leaves on a dress for that matter.

It's not my style at all, and it could probably stand to be a few inches longer, but it's a pretty good effort. Also, for some reason, I really like Leanne and can't wait to see more from her.



I hate this outfit and I don't like the designer much more. Remember when I said Blayne was a bit whiney? Yeah, Stella turns that up to eleven. She's the one that got the trash bags without looking to see if they were high quality or cheap, and not thinking about it. And she put more in her bag than one box of trash bags and yet she couldn't muster herself to do anything but this?

It's a horrible, horrible outfit. It's not even close to the outfit that got Kirstin eliminated in season two (the clothes off your back challenge). That one at least had an interesting skirt to go with it.

Not to mention that she styled it with the hair under the halter top, so I kept wanting to yank it out and fix it.

She did nothing to make this outfit. She barely draped it, and sure she "hand sewed" it, but really? That's barely any effort compared to what some other people did here.

She should have been eliminated, I can't imagine why she wasn't. Jerry at least showed some creativity. This, this is something that a middle-school goth kid might whip up.



It's boring. It's a checkered tablecloth. Lather, rinse, repeat.

Also: SUEDE? And he owns a bedazzled denim jacket with his "name" on it? Wow, I am not impressed.



I don't exactly love the look of the top, but I love that she did it. It was something different, and nobody else really did anything similar (unless you count Blayne's weird jump rope belly patch). I can't imagine how much work went into weaving that together, I'm impressed.

It's a pretty nice outfit too, but there's not that much I can say about it.



Boring. Tablecloth. Only with fly swatters as decorations. And? And nothing, that's it.

You know what I'd like to see? Next week's challenge to be "take all that crap you bought and didn't use, you know, all the fun stuff? Make THAT into a dress now you slackers."

But I guess they didn't know people would buy all those fun looking things and then not bother using them.

I think this crowd looks promising, but if Stella doesn't get eliminated soon, I might snap. Especially if I have to see her in those leather-booty-short-with-striped-leggings pants again.

Tithe, Valiant, and Ironside by Holly Black

This is again my contribution to the Mythopoeic Award Challenge, but only Tithe and Valiant are on the list of nominees. Ironside I read just because it rounded out the story.

Okay, this is a hard review to write. Because I love the Spiderwick Chronicles, I love Holly Black's blog. I even met her for a brief moment at Faeriecon last year and she was fantastic and interesting.

But I just couldn't get into these books. I didn't dislike them, don't get me wrong. The characters just didn't engage me somehow. I blame this partially on the fact that Roiben, the main male character, is an elf. I don't like elves. I know, this makes me a bad fantasy fan, but I don't. They're always gorgeous and perfect, lean and athletic, with pretty hair, and some kind of tragedy that tries to make up for their perfectness. Not interested. Roiben got much more interesting in Ironside, but in Tithe he just seemed like he was a foil more than a character.

My problem with Valiant was that while I could sympathize with Val's desire to run away and I even thought parts of her story were fascinating, the fact is that I just couldn't muster up any sympathy for all the drug users in the story. Maybe I'm not supposed to like them all, but as soon as Val agreed to shoot up Never, I just couldn't feel bad for her when bad things started happening. In my mind I just said, "Well, she's the one doing drugs..."

Now, this part is hard to explain because I read kids books all the time. I don't care what age range a book is for, I care if the book is good. But these books read like young adult books, and that sometimes got in the way of what they were trying to be, I think. Also: I have an intense personal problem with pop culture references. It's very difficult for me to stomach them, no matter what they are. The current trend in young adult novels is basically full of pop culture references. I hear Avalon High is an excellent book, but I made it about two Britney Spears comments before I put it back.

This makes it sound like I'm very negative about these books, I'm not. I would happily recommend them to anybody that likes faerie tales (the original kind, with the dark settings and the bloody bits). Anybody who likes young adult books would probably also love them, and anyone who liked The Blue Girl by Charles De Lint would enjoy them as well, I think.

But if you aren't a regular reader of faerie tales or young adult novels, I think you'd have trouble with all the genre conventions that these books exhibit.

I really look forward to reading anything that Black writes, but I expected these books to be a little different than they were, so I can't help feeling a little disappointed.

Sunshine by Robin McKinley

Okay, so there will be discussion of the Project Runway final collections, but for now we're going to take a break and review a book!

As I mentioned in January, I'm doing the Mythopoeic Award Challenge over at Foxy Writer.

The first book I decided to read was 2004's Adult Fantasy Winner, Sunshine by Robin McKinley

I actually had picked this book up a few times, trying to read it probably three times. I got it from PaperBackSwap on the basis of a friend's recommendation. I picked it up again after another friend mentioned how much she loved McKinley's other book, Beauty.

But I just couldn't seem to crack that first chapter. Reading the book for the challenge, I made myself get through it and I'm not sure if I feel this is an accomplishment, or a foolish endeavor.

McKinley has created a fascinating world, where the Voodoo Wars have changed the face of the city where our protagonist is a baker. Vampires, ghouls, weres, and other paranormal creatures are a fact of life there. Magic handlers are famous, and there's a branch of government called the Special Other Forces.

The author created an interesting situation: the main character, Rae (who is called Sunshine) is the heir of a very important magic handling legacy. She's ignored these talents for years, but has some skills at transmuting. Her "element" is sunshine, which is rare, but gives her interesting skills. Through a few quirks of fate, she ends up imprisoned with a vampire named Constantine, and befriends him. She then ends up joining him in an effort to kill the vampire whose gang captured her.

Okay, with that description, it still sounds like a pretty great book, at least a very interesting one. However, the book doesn't try to actually be about this fascinating world. It doesn't really explore the strange connection between Sunshine and Constantine (though it pretends to, it never gets anywhere). It certainly doesn't really explore why Constantine, of all the vampires in the world, is a good guy. We're told that there are different ways of being a vampire. But then we're told over and over that vampires are evil, terrible, etc.

WHY is Constantine special? HOW is he substantially different from the others? Well, that certainly wouldn't matter, would it?

Except it does. Everything that the reader might desperately want to explore is thrown by the wayside. Why?

I fully blame the fact that the book is written in first person. Rae has only a few settings in her brain, and we're treated to them ad nasueum:

1. She makes cinnamon rolls. Amazing, astonishing, large, popular cinnamon rolls. Lest you forget, we are reminded of these cinnamon rolls every chapter, at least once. If not more times.

2. Rae doesn't trust the SOF, or authority in general. Or really, anybody. So she's constantly talking about all these fabulous people in her life, and then telling us why she doesn't trust them and can't rely on them. Only, her reasons aren't all that sound. Her boyfriend has tattoos. Apparently this means something, though we never get to find out what, and it keeps her from telling him anything. Because he has tattoos. Huh?

3. Rae is a complete vampire fangirl, but don't mistake that to mean she thinks vampires are cool! They're evil, she shouldn't be friends with one! She should stake him on sight! She totally reads anything ever written about vampires but she knows better, she knows they're bad, she just likes to read stories where they're not bad! Or something.

The entire book is Rae complaining that she wants her life to be normal again, while never acting like that's what she actually wants. She pretty much walks around using her powers at every available opportunity, while complaining that she has them and wishing they'd go away. This isn't just a case of the reluctant hero, who eventually accepts that they are the only person who can complete the task. This is just a bad character.

If the story was about Rae, but we weren't treated to her inner thoughts, I think it could have survived. But instead, she thinks the same things chapter after chapter. She doesn't really grow or change. Being treated to her inner workings doesn't give us some insight to her development as a person. She just keeps complaining about how she wants to make cinnamon rolls.

I desperately wanted anybody else's insights. I eagerly read any scene involving her landlady, because Yvonne actually had something to say, and revealed interesting things. But even scenes with Constantine were bogged down with Rae's inner ramblings about vampire physiology. Which would be interesting, if she ever got anywhere with it, but she has no answers or really astute observations.

Sunshine is not a bad book. I've read bad books, this isn't one of them. But I think it desperately needed to be switched to third person, or to go through one more draft to make Rae a fleshed out and interesting heroine. As it is, it reads like a book designed solely to set up a series, but as far as I can tell Mckinley hasn't written any other books in this world.

I encourage people to pick this book up and try it themselves if they think the plot or characters sound interesting, or if they like McKinley. But I also suggest that if you don't make it through the first chapter, don't keep trying. It doesn't get any better.