Top Design: Musical Eco-Office Chairs

Offices, as a rule, suck as far as interior design goes. Unless you’re Anna Wintour (editor of Vogue) or Diane Von Furburger (famously accented fashion designer) or Martha Stewart (God), you pretty much are stuck with a room that has all the personality and sex-appeal of a wad of gum stuck under the conference room table. That is, if you actually have an office… with an actual door… for those of us not in management who are stuck with cubicles, it’s a helluva lot worse, and you actual-office-people need to stop bitching. Working in a cubicle is like living in an ice-tray or a fluorescent lighting fixture… it’s too bright, too cold, and everyone can see when you’re hung over by the way you’ve slumped over your keyboard and are currently shorting it out with your drool-flow…

…when you need some of the hair of the ALT key that bit you…

Well, Office-Slaves of the World, rejoice! Tonight’s episode of Top Design shows you just how much eco-friendly decorating you can do with some time, ingenuity and stolen ideas from Black-Eye Nathan! We’re all gonna just turn green (albeit for different reasons) after the jump!We’re gonna start right off with Eddie FuckeRoss reminding us of his BitchAssNess Quotientâ„¢ as he expounds on last week’s winning near-sweep by Nathan, “It’s like, I really really do wanna win, but if I don’t win I’m already so successful, like, Martha only hires the best, so, right then and there if I don’t win… *shrugs*“

…just in case there is going to be a “Fan Favorite Award” for this show…

Um, yeah, she didn’t do such a hot job of hiring a great stock-broker in 2001, did she, huh, Eddie? I’m beginning to seriously wonder if he isn’t playing up the role of Odious Villain because he thinks that his job with Martha Stewart exempts him from having to seek design work after this show is over… because his level of assholery is skating right off the top of the charts and it seems like he might want to keep in mind that his consistent use of Martha’s brand as a bludgeon and justification for being a dickface may be reflecting poorly on her organization.

Meanwhile, Silver Spoon Andrea is feeling an ever-deepening sense of self-doubt about her skills as a designer since she’s not coming from “an educational background” and says the bulk of her experience has come from “on-the-job training”. I’m thinking that somebody (Eddie) has replaced the pills in her Zoloft prescription with Pez or Smarties or something, because I can’t reconcile this frightened blonde Ball ‘O’ Depression with the haughty diva from the first four episodes. Buck up, Andrea! Nasal Natalie is just as much of a hack as you are!

It’s time to leave the Union Lofts, and they just can’t leave fast enough for Eddie “Bette” Ross as he spews, “All right, let’s get the fuck out of this dump! Look at this dump! Look at this disgusting dump of an apartment we live in!” I’m thinking the Top Design editors hate Eddie, too, because this is the shot they cut to while he’s complaining about the “dump” they’re forced to live in…

…I have friends whose entire apartments are smaller than this…

I’m beginning to wish that instead of “Fan Favorite” there really was a “Biggest Asshat” award, and that the “winner” of this award would have to pay $10,000.00 to the charity of Bravo’s choice (such as Jeffrey Sebelia, for example… he looks like he could use some clothes from a newer decade… like the 80′s or 90′s).

Over in the Top Design Studio, the designers are greeted by India Hicks and today’s guest judge, Danny Seo, who is a sweet little Gaysian and touted by India as “America’s leading lifestyle authority on modern eco-friendly living.” He’s also cute as a (recycled biodegradable) button, too…

…Danny’s the pretty version of Hobosexual (© Flipit 2008)…

I had never heard of Danny before, so I looked up some info on wikipedia (which could be semi-accurate) and his personal blog (probably more accurate) and it seems he’s been a little green-ass spitfire since he was just a teen, he’s written a bunch of books, appeared on Oompah, and has done some other television (CBS Early Show and HGTV) so he sounds like he’s got his green thang goin’ on!

Of course, I always feel like anybody’s credibility kinda takes a hit when they are featured as one of People Magazine’s “50 Most Beautiful People in the World”. Which I’m sure he didn’t ask for… but he obviously didn’t turn it down, either. Bitch. Don’t you know that People prints their magazine with ink stolen from baby octopusseses? Some Captain Green-Teen you turned out to be!

Oh well, setting aside the also-green-jealousy that I (and 6 billion other Uggos) tend to feel in the presence of such beauty, after India reveals that this week’s Challenge will be to redesign the offices for an “environmental consulting firm in an environmentally conscious way”, Danny exhorts the designers to “Think about the ‘R’ words! Reduce, reuse, recycle, refinish, repair, reupholster…”

…ooh!, don’t forget “recession” and “regurgitate”…

“Just be resourceful!” he finishes. This is going to be paramount, as India says they have to use all of the items already found in the office space in their redesign efforts (and please, SexOndineCity, no “decoupaging” the walls using different colored Post-Itâ„¢ notes!) This is to ensure that they don’t create any more excess waste (than they already will).

Also, today’s show is brought to you by Sherwin Williams, who has donated “low V.O.C. paint” which I took at first to mean “low Violation Of Chic paint” (remember Eddie’s boogersnot green from last week?) but actually “V.O.C.” stands for “Volatile Organic Compounds”, which are these evil clusters of chemicals that are gathering together in out-of-the-way corners of the atmosphere late at night and planning the Downfall Of Humanity. I would be so totally scared of them if we as a species weren’t already so hell-bent on beating them to it…

Also, also, instead of buying brand new fabrics to use, they’ll be purchasing fabric remnants, and also shopping in the new “special eco-friendly section” of the Top Design Showroom! Oh, and then they get to dumpster-dive at Savers and Goodwill, too. Yay for eco-green-friendly-planet-love! Okay, I’m just kidding, there’s no dumpster-trip, and besides, Jerrell the Amazing Hobosexual (©Flipit 2008) already has dibs at both for his upcoming fashion line…

So everybody picks out their “paint chips”, grabs their Sherwin Williams “fan-decks” (design terminology is fascinating) and trots off to meet their new clients at Cadmus Environmental Group (Guilt-Tripping Consumers Our Specialty!)! It becomes crystal-clear very quickly that this office space has been “recycled” from the minimum-security prison it once was… ugh…

…don’t tell me that carpet doesn’t spew V.O.C.’s whenever you walk on it! …

Black Eye Nathan is introduced to his client Chris, and is instantly horrified by the fluorescent lighting (and I don’t blame him, I can’t think of a more boner-trouncing brand of illumination). Chris tells him that that office is actually going to be for two people (this can’t be good). In looking at color choices, Chris says he spent a lot of time living in East Africa so he likes 70′s colors like “Harvest Gold” (which all of the kitchen appliances of my youth were painted in) and Nathan says they could tear up the carpeting and apply pieces of it to the wall to use as pinboards… pretty ingenious idea, Natey-boy! Although I’m hoping he’s brought copious amounts of Eco-Friendly FeBreeze, because after 57 years of foot-traffic I imagine that shit smells pretty rank…

Here’s Nasal Natalie getting to meet her client…

…somebody’s made a brand new BFF!…

…and right away they are vibin’ on their commonalities of having bob-cuts with giant-Emo-bangs and being kinda spacey. Although she is dressed like Death, Miss Emily actually likes bright colors (so she’s lucked out big-time with Nat, who steers her towards a nice “Seafoam Blue”)… A little disturbing is after their consultation hearing Nat having to reassure Emily by telling her “Don’t worry!” Em insists she’s not, anything would be an improvement on what they already have (which is so true, you could torch the place and still have a nicer looking office).

His Ego preceding him, Eddie BitchAssRoss meets with his client, Seth Rogen…

…my mistake, it’s his brother Jed Rogen…

Eddie is, of course, horrified that they have to re-use everything within the room as he whines “This carpet is absolutely DUH-sguting… and everything about this room is so disgusting! This thing is like, out-of-control ugly!” Hey Captain Obvious, Jed’s not blind, they know the office is disgusting, that’s the whole point of you being there, so there’s no need to beat him over the head with how nasty everything is. Oh, but he doesn’t stop at complaining and talking shit about the room itself as he interviews “I have to work with a really disgusting desk… and a client… who is just a dork!”…

…at least the dork looked clean and had nice smooth skin…maybe the Edster should make a trip to the Clinique counter sometime…

Jed Rogen tells Eddie that what he wants is for the new office to be “funky”. This displeases Edmajesty further as he privately bitches “Ugh, that’s a word I just hate… ‘funky’… it sounds like it should smell… like ‘Oooh, that’s funky!’… ((**sniffs own fingers**))… Ew!” Yes, Eddie WebsteRoss, actually that is a word that means “smelly” (as well as “mental depression”) and I have just two words that perfectly describe his nastybitchy tone (it’s actually a quote from F. Murray Abraham’s character Chris in the 1970′s classic film The Ritz): Pisselegant fairy.

I actually have two other words for him as well, but let’s move on and see what our gentle Whatisit is up to…

…note the basketball-hoop halo over our sweet angel’s head…

It turns out Richard runs the entire office and has staff meetings in his own office all the time. Weirdly enough, Whatisit (for once) seems to be listening to Richard talking in Real-Time as he notes “From-what-I-ga-ther-up-from-Ri-chard-I-sense-that-he-wants-a-ver-y-mas-cu-line-space…but-I-am-not-the-type-of-per-son-who-wants-to-con-form-to-oth-ers-so-I’m-try-ing-to-think-of-ways-to-ex-press-my-style-with-in-the-con-fines-of-the-chal-lenge!” Eeeeeeee, the two words I have the hardest time keeping in a sentence together are “Whatisit” and “masculine” (and “masculine” is struggling to leave this entire paragraph as we speak)…

Silver Spoon Andrea slouches her way into her new client’s office…

…Andrea is jealously eyeing Tracy’s perky ones…

Tracy says that her space is the reception area, so it needs to be “warm and welcoming” with robust earth-tones. Basically, mud-colored? I dunno, but Andrea says her mind (like lightning) goes right towards “space-planning” and she immediately enlists Tracy’s help in moving the desks around (with great difficulty) to try and figure out how to place everything… I guess Andrea’s energy-level is still on a major low…

Ahhhhh, here’s a more welcome sight… Prettyboy Preston!

…bowm-chika-bow-bow!…

His client Joe is an Environmental Consultant who works mostly on recycling drinking water and says he’d like a “blue or ‘water-colored’” palate… isn’t clean “water-color” supposed to be clear? Too bad lucite isn’t so environmentally friendly. Crap, and neither is Saran Wrap! Anyhow, Preston believes he and Joe are on the same taste page.

Last up is SexOndineCity…

…I kinda wish Joe wasn’t playing pocket-pool while greeting Miss Ondine…

Yes, Joe is also Ondine’s client, and she’s gonna get to redesign their conference room. You know, I don’t know what working on “Sex And The City” did to our Lady O, but I find it harder and harder to believe that she and I are the same age, cuz she looks kinda hard… maybe she and Eddie should go visit Clinique together… Anyhow, she’s using grey, blue and white as her color scheme. Just what the employees will need, another conference room that induces somnolencezzzzzzzzzzzzz…

Now that they’ve all been given keys to their respective office spaces, they’re off to The Loft, which sells fabric remants by the $2 pound (mmmm, nothing like the smell of bulk), where they have 45 minutes and $100 to blow… everything is in giant mismatched boxes and rolls, and it looks a lot like my linen closet. Prettyboy grabs denim and pinstripes to achieve the “business suit masculine” look he’s going for, while Andrea says she’s looking for “hippie-chic prints” and flowers, and her face as she describes “hippie-chic” made me giggle…

…I guess in AndreaWorld, this is an authentic “hippie-chic” face…

Guess who’s whining again? NO, it’s not me (ok, well, not just me) but Eddie HayFeveRoss, whose delicate and highly-refined nasal passages are being irritated by all the remnant-dust… “I need a benadryl! I’m having an allergic reaction!” He further complains “Some fabric looked like it was left over from making granny-panties…” You oughtta know, Eds, you’re the one whose grandmother is your biggest design influence! And again with using the word “panties”! Stop it! He’s walking through the section touching random fabrics and saying “Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew. Ew!” My thoughts exactly, ‘cept I’m not talking ’bout the fabrics…

Whatisit is wisping his way amongst the boxes looking for that perfect “masculine” palate, and he settles on a pale beige and a grayish-green colored fabric. Yup, when I think of “manly” the first word that pops into mind is “sage”. I think Whatisit is headed for trouble.

Now that they’ve got enough dusty fabric remnants to set off everyone’s allergies, they rush over to the Top Design Showroom’s new “green area” to spend $500 and 30 minutes picking out extra crap to jazz up their spaces. You can tell the new “green area” by all the green tags all over everything…

Ahhh, but here comes India Hicks running in to announce that time is up and assembles the designers in a line in front of her. Nasal Natalie is shitting down the back of her Spanx at India’s appearance. She explains, “When I see India, I’m pessed because I’m thinking that we’re gonna have a ‘Pop Design’… and I hate ‘Pop Design’!”…

…prolly cuz she pretty much sucks at it, bless her heart…

Nope, it’s not a “Pop Design” challenge, although they’re about to wish it was. “We want to see if you can handle a bit more pressure!” says India gleefully… as she makes them each hand over their office keys to the person at their right! Oooooh, drama! “You are inheriting the decisions the previous designer made for you in these spaces!” India is all but peeing herself watching the seven of them squirm and look dismayed!

Whatisit is giggling madly as he realizes “I’m-get-ting-Nat-a-lie’s-stuff-which-um-just-makes-me-a-lit-tle-bit-ner-vous!” That makes several million of us. Eddieth BunkeRoss, on the other hand, is quite excited that he got Black Eye Nathan’s room, because he thinks Natey-boy is an awesome designer. Much to my surprise, I think he’s right, Nathan has shown surprising competence when allowed to design to his own aesthetic, and I’m damning him for having stood next to Eddie The Fuckwit… why couldn’t Eddie have stood next to Natalie??? Damn!

Oh well, a much less excited bunch of designers exits the studios and heads back over to Cadmus’ craptacular building, where they have an hour to meet with each other to find out exactly what kind of design shit they were planning on doing in the first place (and see if any of those ideas can be salvaged).

And immediately there is a kind of ethereal disconnect as SexOndineCity attempts to glean from Whatisit’s cotton-candy mind exactly how he hoped to make a masculine office with “a very very very pale sage green… and a cream… and um, to me those are two very feminine colors!” she says…

…”So, you were gonna put the bead curtain on this doorway, and the lace doilies on the desk as… coasters?”…

Ah, quit complaining Ondine, just throw a couple of nudie magazines (printed on recycled paper!) on the coffee table and that’ll butch it up some! Besides, Whatisit has drifted over to what was once Nasal Nat’s office to listen in mounting horror as she recounts how her client loves “colorful and bold” style. Whatisit is dubious, “Does-she-say-she-liked-*gulp*-ze-bra-print-or-it-was-you?” Nat grimaces and admits “She didn’t, that was me.” You can tell she’s pessed (Nat’s version of “pissed”) about the whole sitch, natch. Whatisit surprises me with his semi-evil fantasy, “I-was-just-kind-of-won-der-ing-may-be-if-I-could-light-a-match-to-Nat-a-lie’s-stuff… I-sup-pose-it-would-n’t-be-so-green-but-um-at-least-it-would-bring-more-peace-to-the-world!”…

…Color me shocked!…And what in the name of Clorox is he using to whiten those teefs?!?…

They cascade down through each other’s rooms, Nasal Natalie to Silver Spoon Andrea, Andrea to Eddie BitteRoss (where he and Andrea manage to accidentally break the legs off of Jed Rogen’s desk and help everything spill out of it… smooth move, A-listers!) and Eddie on into Black Eye Nathan’s office… where they both bandy about non-words like “prit!” (short for “pretty”, I guess) and “gorge!” (short for “gorgeous”, I guess) and “delouche!” (short for “delicious douche”, I guess, which makes sense when applied to Eddie) and they just sound really… well… stupid.

Nathan tells him about his idea to pull up that stanky-ass carpet padding and tack it to the walls, and Eddie interviews that he’s definitely going along with that idea… but of course, he can’t just leave it at that, can he? “Is it my taste?… No!… They’re Nathan’s choices.” Remember this, because it will be recycled later on in this recap…

Nathan moves on to meet with Prettyboy (and prolly secretly touch himself… I dunno why, but I get the distinct feeling that lately Natey-boy’s been in a bit of a dry-spell as far as the hot-monkey-lovin’-thangs have been concerned, and I imagine being so near to a luscious piece of eye-candy like Preston has gotta make his sweet-tooth ache… and his balls tighten). Nathan thinks Preston chose his color palate and fabrics well, but “it’s nothing new.” Gee, Nate, how “new” are you gonna make “office” and have it still be functional, huh? Don’t let Eddie’s Dickface fumes cloud your head…

…that girl is poi-zzzuuuuuunnnnnnnnn!…

Lastly, Prettyboy Preston meets up with Hatchet-Fa-… er, um, I mean SexOndineCity to go over the plans in the conference room, which he notices is about 3 times the size of the room he WAS dealing with before, so he’s gonna have a lot of extra work. My boyfriend is hoping he does so much work that he gets real hot & sweaty and takes his shirt off. I’m beginning to think I might need to drop a few pounds…

Oh well, the last hour of the night is spent meeting with the Carpenters… hey, won’t they need a ouija board for that? (Zing! That’s two, count ‘em, two Karen Carpenter references in one week!) Sorry… I can’t help myself… rainy days and Mondays and all that… where was I? OH, yeah, they’re meeting with the carpenters and seamstresses, and Nathan is wanting to put the desk top on a pair of “work horses”. (???) The carpenter answers my question when he says…

…well, some kinna horses, anyhow!…

Silver Spoon Andrea is lackadaisically taping stuff up to get ready for the teal-blue paint that she’s being expected to slather all over Jed Rogen’s office, and her carpenter is dubious of this decision, saying “It’s gonna look like a Tijuana nightclub…” Then again, he’s got one of those doinky half-ponytails (if I could find the person responsible for telling men that those ever looked cool, I would booty-smack-him and drop-kick him to Jesus!) and I can see stink-lines wafting upwards from him even through my television, so I’m pretty much throwing anything he says out with the rest of the babble-trash.

Eddie CholesteRoss is wowing his carpenter with an interpretive dance meant to show how they could take apart the wooden blinds and take the wooden slats and “I just go boom! boom! boom! boom! and make like some really funky light fixture!”…

…what I wouldn’t give for small localized earthquake to strike directly under that desk right now… *sigh* …

Whatisit is still trying to make heads or tails or intestines of the fabric choices Natalie left him to work with, and seems to have discarded most of them (his seamstress picks one up and says “No, not even this one?” and Whatisit replies “No, that hurts me.” and giggles some more). Poor Whatisit, he’s edited out the orange and zebra-prints that the client might have actually liked, and says he’s going for something “sim-ple-and-al-most-mi-ni-mal!” Obviously he doesn’t realize that the danger in “minimal” is that it can often be equated to “unfinished” and “bare bones” and “lazy”….

Well, it’s now Elimination Day, and it turns out that while our poor exhausted designers have been sleeping the night away, the various craftspeople (carpenters, painters and seamstressii) have been pulling an all-nighter and completed the majority of their projects!

Black Eye Nathan has his “workhorses” *snicker* and while the ones I have seen have always been of a robust wooden construction held together with bolts & shit like that, these are bright yellow metal… and they look cheapo…

…not to mention flimsy…

Nasal Nat has had the bookcase in her room cut down and she’s covering the boards in fabric to make panels to hang on the wall. Why is she doing this? I don’t know. All’s I know is that for some reason she is suddenly sporting an awfully raccoony makeup job…

…maybe she got pessed at her blush-brush this morning?…

SexOndineCity doesn’t appear to have worried much about makeup this morning. Instead, she’s gonna show just how committed to “green design” she is by making a water-bottle chandelier… interesting idea! I hope she wipes off the lipstick stains around the bottlenecks first (that’s how you can always tell my mother’s water bottles at home… and how you could always tell my grandma’s cigarette butts in the ashtray).

…and speaking of stains, Eddie’s running around and wielding a staple gun like a madwoman as he’s tacking up the carpet padding to the walls of his office… and would you just get a good look at what Eddie is wearing today?…

…speaking of elderly panties…

Wow, I didn’t think that I’d ever see Eddie looking so to’ up from the flo’ up, but Jesus, that’s just hideous! Does he remember that he’s, you know, on TV?!?!? You mean to tell me that this guy travels with a sterling silver butler service and yet he can’t spring for a T-shirt that’s a.) not a V-neck… b.) not been filled with buckshot… and c.) paired with my grandpa’s baby-blue shorts from the 60′s? And he’s usualy such a dapper little fuck…

Guess who’s having a major ColorPhobia-related reaction? You got it! Our sad little Silver Spoon Andrea and her aversion to anything vivid is feeling trapped by the endless teal blue walls that her client wanted…

…she needs Nuprin. Little. Yellow. Different…

I think Andrea can only deal with color when it’s in caplet form. Anything larger just scares the bedoobies out of her. She’s completely at a loss for how to tone down the “shocking” blue of the walls and says “I don’t think Eddie really wants to help me right now so I have to figure out something else on my own.” Oooooh-kay. Andrea-honey, I hate to break it to you so bluntly, but this is not a team challenge. Eddie doesn’t have to “help” you at all. You’re supposed to be coming up with this design all by your self.

Here comes Todd OldMa’am to do his daily two-minute useless consult. I can’t even bring myself to tell you what he said, because none of it was really important anyhow (other than, he really loved the teal-blue paintjob in Andrea’s room which made her sploosh diarrhea out of every bodily orifice she has) and actually, his total screen time in tonight’s episode isn’t even 2 lousy minutes, it’s a minute forty! You know, at least Tim Gunn offers some criticism and advice, whereas Todd just seems to breeze in, gladhand everybody, tell them how wonderful it all looks (even when it’s clearly a giant pile of fug) and collect his paycheck. OH, and give everyone a hug after they’re eliminated…. putz.

Oh God, it gets worse, as the Cadmus people have all come back to check things out 2 hours before Elimination, and they’re just now being informed that the designers have all be switched around… there are some interesting looks being given, especially from Richard the director as he gets a load of his new “masculine” office…

…wow, I guess I am a girlyman…

Doesn’t he look like Daddy Jim Walsh from 90210 (but with more hair)? Ondine is trying to sell him “No, really, it is masculine!” line of bullshit, but it appears he’s not really buying it. However, it seems like several of the others (Jed Rogen, Joe, Chris) are buying the looks being sold in the other rooms, so go figure.

Receptionist Tracy mentions to Nasal Nat that she isn’t seeing the recycle bins that she asked for, so Our Gal Friday Nat decides to make some out of her leftover MDF board (and since I had no clue what MDF stood for, and they never bothered to explain it, here’s what it stands for… Medium Density Fibreboard… a.k.a. that shitty pressboard stuff that they make all sorts of cheap shelving out of and that often warps under the combined weight of your 90210 Seasons 1, 2, 3, and 4…).

Anyhow, Emo-Emily (Nat’s new BFF) couldn’t make it in to view the progress on her office, so Joe is standing in for her as he checks in with Whatisit. I love when they have actual real people on these shows who are forced to “live with” these designs, they rarely conceal what they’re truly feeling about the shitty work that’s being crammed down their throats…

…I get this same look whenever I’m forced to watch Lifetime network…

Joe’s quite seriously asking Whatisit if all the drab does a good job reflecting Emily’s style, and Whatisit’s comeback is: “Quite-hon-est-ly-mi-ni-mal-is-m-real-ly-works-for-a-young-sty-lish-girl-I-think-it’s-age-ap-pro-pri-ate…” Sorry, Whatist, but you’re rationalizing. That shit is boring with a capital BLAH. Still, he’s sticking to his glueguns, as he says “I-hope-that-the-jud-ges-will-ap-pre-ci-ate-that-I-chose-to-do-some-thing-el-e-gant-in-stead-of-some-thing-that’s-o-ver-ly-cre-a-tive-and-gim-mick-y.” Wow, well, we wouldn’t want to be “overly creative” now, would we? Girl, come on back to Planet Earth, you’ve drifted on over into some other time-space continuum!

Now Black Eye Nathan has had a chance to see what Eddie GrannyRoss is doing in his former client’s office… and says,”I think Eddie’s just rollling with my ideas. It’s exactly what I was planning it to be!” I still bet it smells like feet in there. I hope another one of Nathan’s ideas was to spring for a Glade Plug-In or two.

Over in Reception, Silver Spoon Andrea is all but begging Eddie to help her come up with some kind of idea to help lessen the overwhelming TEAL of it all, but he’s not sticking around to have his bitchbrain picked and kinda walks away from her mid-question. “I’m not really helping Andrea, you know, like, I don’t wanna put my name on something that’s shitty!” Gee, Andrea, remember how last week you were wondering if Eddie’s really being 100% geniune with you?…

…well, he is… 100% geniune asshole…

I bet Eddie smells like feet, too, ‘specially after working with that old carpet-padding all day (and poor Andrea looks like she’s about to pass out from having her nose shoved into his armpits). Andrea decides to take out her frustrations by talking more shit about Nasal Natalie’s room, she thinks the fabric-covered shelf-panels on the walls look “silly”…

…that’s not true, the only thing that looks silly in this room is Natalie!…

As if she’s Spidey-sensing Andrea saying nasty things about her design, Nat decides to check into what Whatisit’s been up to with her former client’s office, and right away she says his room is not working, pointing out that the client Emily really liked bright colors “and Wisit decides not to use my fabulous fabrics… which is really stupid.” Um, okay Nat, can you explain to me where the “bright colors” are in a zebra-print, cuz unless the zebra is really embarrassed, that shit’s just black and white, right? You’re treading on very dangerous ground when you start calling out other people for being not-so-bright… people who live in glass houses shouldn’t eat stones, okay?

Time is called, and now we get to see just whether or not their “green” designs will be judged as being either sparkling emeralds… or hay-filled, fly-covered horse-turds…

They’re going to start off with Eddie CopieRoss’ “partnered” office… he says “I did take some of Nathan’s concepts but then I pushed it to the next level!”…

…by brilliantly adding an erasable month calendar…

Eddie is most proud of the fact that he took the old blinds, tore them apart and then made this really awesomely avant-garde jack-straws-in-a-hurricane light fixture…

…then I’ll huff, and I’ll puff, and I’ll blooooow your light fixture down!…

Gee, I hope those bulbs are of the long-lasting 50-to-60 year-life kind, otherwise good luck trying to change them! Replacing fluorescent bulbs is a big enough bitch when you have full access to the end-sockets, how in the name of Katrina are they supposed to do it with this fucked-up rose trellis in the way? Besides, if I had to look at that shit every day it would totally creep me out… it reminds me too much of that eerie duct-tape job on the upstairs closet in The Grudge (you know… the one where the kitty-cat-boy was hiding?)… *shudder*…

…Meow…

He did the same shit on the door, too. Anyhow, India wants to know if Eddie was happy to take on Nathan’s choices, and Eddie gushes “Oh. My Gawd! I think Nathan has the best taste!” Certainly better than you, Eddie, because Nathan would never have appeared in front of the judges wearing that holey piece of shit T-shirt and those old man shorts. Nina Garcia would have stabbed you to death with her pencil for daring to stand before her in such an offensive state. Although I don’t have a clue what is up with India Hicks and her weird muumuu…

…I guess she’s recycling old parachutes from gay skydivers?…

Back to the judges, Jonathan Adler wants to know what was “Nathan’s stuff”, and Eddie is extremely quick to answer “Uh, the paint colors and the fabric!” And, apparently, nothing else. Interesting.

Now Danny Seo and Margaret Russell are visiting Nasal Natalie’s Reception Area…

…I think that’s actually the simplified Chinese character for “ugly”…

Natalie seems real proud of her fabric-wood-art-board-stuff, and Danny wants to know “Are these functional at all? Could they be used as, like, little memo boards?” Natalie’s scrambling and says “Yeah, it has a little bit of a padding because of the fabric…?” Okay, and of course, everybody needs a big bunch of “memo-boards” behind their desk, right? Well, okay, only if you don’t have this new-fangled thing called ‘email’. Isn’t being paper-free considered “green”?

Anyhow, Nat goes on to point out how she used her leftover MDF board to make these three rather geometric-looking “recycling bins” and with that, they’re off to see the Whatisit… the Wonderful Whatisit of Odds…

…sure looks like “fun” and “funky” and “colorful” to me!…

Whatisit is telling them all about how he edited out the more “funky” color elements Natalie had chosen in favor of this “calming” blue color. If that color were any calmer, it would need to be embalmed. Maggie wants to know what’s under the so-called “slip-covers” of the two uncomfortable-looking airport-terminal-reject chairs… Whatisit says they’re “scary furry bathmat covered chairs!” and giggles some more…

…those aren’t “slip-covers”, they’re “army blankets tossed over a chair”!…

That really looks like shit! It’s like he didn’t even attempt to recover them, and it looks damn sloppy. Meanwhile, Danny Seo’s eyes have fixated on the desk itself and he wants to know if Whatisit painted it, which he admits to, but when Danny wants to know if it looks the way it does because he did a “faux-finish”, Whatisit is forced to admit that his paint did not adhere to the desk because it already had a surfacing on it…

…it looks like he lit the damned thing on fire!…

Mags wants to know what was his “strongest ‘green’ effort”, and Whatisit replies that it was the fact of him not wasting anything that makes his work so eco-friendly, see he’s helping to save the planet by not buying stuff that he did not want! This causes Danny Seo to loudly guffaw and Margaret says “That’s a bit grudging!” and they leave… Whatisit rushes back over to smooth down the “slip-cover” that Danny and Maggie disturbed…

India and Jon-Jon are now visiting SexOndineCity in the “manly office”…

…where are the nudie magazines?…

Ondine says that she was quite challenged by Whatisit’s femmy color-choices, so she butched everything up a bit, and she even made a “chandelier” out of recycled water bottles, which actually looks kinda cool…

…but, again, I dunno how they’re supposed to change the bulbs…

Jon-Jon loves it, too! “Props for the chandy!” he says. Wow, I had no idea that “prit” and “gorge” and “delouche” and “chandy” were acceptable abbreviations! Awes! India is asking Ondine what she thought about Whatisit’s original color choices for this office and here’s where Miss ‘Dine brings up that it’s supposed to be a man’s office…

…a man in the “Crying Game” sense of the word?…

India and Jon’s faces are classic, and India says, “Funny, this feels so… feminine!” Ha ha, Ondine! I guess your attempts to inject some Y-chromosomality have failed… girly, girly, girrrr-leee! India and Jon-Jon thank her and flee the estrogen-den…

Let’s follow Danny and Margaret in to see what Black Eye Nathan was able to come up with…

…no smelly carpeting on the walls here…

He points out that he had the carpenter cut the top off the desk (so he could support it with the yellow metal sawhorses) and they turned the legs of the desk into the shelving over by the window. Good thinking, Natey! Margaret wants to know what else he did that was ecological, and Nathan points out the curtain rods are the inner cardboard tubing from the bolts of fabric, which causes Danny to instantly orgasm. Also, his “art piece” is made out of leftover fabric as well…

…I bet Nathan calls this piece “Down With Vaginas!”…

Actually, I kind of like what Nathan did the best so far, it looks masculine with enough color pops to keep it from being sleep-inducing, and yet it’s not wacky and bizarre like Eddie the TwatLips’ room…

Presently Margaret and Danny move on to visit Prettyboy Preston and see his new conference room…

…I bet there will be numerous fights over late-night pizza-topping selection at this table…

It looks pretty nice, everything looks clean and sharp, and the molding on the walls is kind of an interesting touch. Danny wants to know what Preston’s top three “green” things are in the room… Prest-O-Matic says that 1.) using the desk in the room as the conference table, and 2.) repainting the bookshelf that was in the room, and 3.) his purchasing of…

…a pair of silver “snap-cups”?!?…

OH, my bad, those are “recycle bins”. I’d say you could fit a pop can, a wad of gum and a lollipop stick in there before you’d have to dump it. Danny honestly does not look so impressed, but I’m guessing he’s gonna prolly ask Preston out on a date anyways.

Last in line tonight is Silver Spoon Andrea being visited by Jon-Jon and India…

…what it looks like to work in “Waterworld”…

Well, she cut up the original desk into squares, painted them white and threw them up on the walls. Hope Jed Rogen never has to put up a white-dry-erase board or anything, cuz he doesn’t have any flat wall-space left. She also mentions that the client had wanted the desk in front of the window, but she moved it back into the dark corner because it made more sense to do it that way, rather than having his back to all the traffic that’s apparently going to be traipsing through his office.

Okay, Andrea? Huge fail. I dunno about you, but in most of CorporateWorld, people kill each other to have an office with a window (in fact, it’s usually easiest to get your own by pushing someone out of the window in theirs) and I doubt he’s going to be happy that you not only moved him as far away from his as possible, but you also picked two giant boxy desk lamps that further narrow his field of vision and will make meeting with more than one person at a time very difficult… you know, unless everyone is standing up…. but Silver Spoon thinks she did a bang-up job and did well…

…I’m not getting that from JonJon or India…

And that’s it! Time for the ripping of new sphincters by our Top Design panel of experts. Danny thinks they all did a great job, though, as he admits it’s hard enough to go green without having ridiculous twists thrown at you like these people had. Okay, he didn’t call the twist “ridiculous” but I did, cuz it was.

Margaret says “The ones who were good, were really, really good!” I’m waiting for her to finish with “and the ones who were bad, they were hor-rid!” but no, she goes on to point out that it didn’t matter what the color or fabric choices were from the previous designer, they made it work anyhow. Um, I think Ondine and Natalie would argue with you on that score, Mags… but here’s the breakdown…

Silver Spoon Andrea: Jon-Jon liked her being forced to use a vivid color for once, and says she had some “good and bad moments”, her white squares on the wall were boring. Margaret actually likes the fact that Andrea moved Jed away from the window. Someone should try that with Maggie and see how she likes it…

SexOndineCity: Danny remembers her right away because of her “really cool light fixture” and he loves that (duh). Jon-Jon says the room was semi-femmy, but that Ondi did the best she could with Whatisit’s color choices.

Black Eye Nathan: Jonathan says Natey really knows “how to decorate a whole room!” As opposed to just half? JonJon thinks Nathan wants to be a “provocateur” and “edgy” and “avant-garde”, which is fine by Mr. Adler as long as you give him… well, at first I thought he said “the sheep foundation” and I was totally scratching my head over that, so I listened to it back a few times and I think he said “the chic foundation”, which is something he believes Natey handed out in spades. Yay for hearing loss! And Nathan!

Prettyboy Preston: Jonathan is hogging all the judging time and won’t shut up to let anyone else get a word in edgewise. He thinks Preston is super hot and sexy and wants to take him away to The Parker Hotel in Palm Springs for a long, romantic weekend where they can make pots in the nude and watch re-runs of Season One of this show. Okay, I’m kidding, he says that Preston knows how to edit himself and lay things out in a very “restrained, strong way”. Okay, I guess he still wants to have that sex weekend with him, only it involves bondage.

DannyBoy does have a teensy bitch to air, as he says “I will nitpick, though… those ‘recycling bins’ that he picked up?… I don’t know what he’s recycling, cuz they’re this big! ((**makes teeny boxy hand gesture**))” Margaret’s guess as to what Preston’s recycling? “Kleenex!” Ew.

…”Yeah, and what was the deal with Preston having his shirt on all day?”…

India was also impressed by Preston’s painting of his bookshelf, but that makes Jonathan think of Whatisit’s “depressing little bookshelf”…

Whatisit: Jonathan thinks there’s a lot of potential here, but he wants the Wispy One to “crank it up a notch!” Margaret thinks Whatisit “gave up” after his desk-painting didn’t properly take hold, and India chimes in “and those chairs were covered in rather a sad fabric!” JonJon remembers the client asking for colorful and bold! Ooooh, you’re in trouble now!

Nasal Natalie: Maggie wades right in with “She’s back to not being sophisticated!” JonJon agrees that Nat “doesn’t have the taste level yet” because of her youth. Danny says he liked her recycling bins because they weren’t just cubes, but her fabric-covered shelf-wall-art-memo-board thingies looked “sloppy” and “unfinished” and clocks that she kinda sorta lied about their being able to be functional as memo boards due to the hardness of the wood repelling your basic thumbtacks.

Eddie ThieveRoss: Margaret asks right away who had Eddie’s room before, and Jonathan replies “Nathan”. Then they all go on to get all orgasmic about what Eddie did with the carpet, by putting it on the wall, and how great that was… “He was the only one who really repurposed stuff found in the room!” gushes Jonathan, “and instead of just shoving two desks together, he put the top on them both, and it was just that extra detail that cranked it up, and he sort of nailed it on all levels!” Yeah, too bad those weren’t really Eddie’s original ideas…

They bring everybody out, and it looks like Eddie’s wearing a pink miniskirt!…

…yeah, you really need beefier legs to carry off this look, Eds…

Tonight’s top three are Black Eye Nathan, Prettyboy Preston… and Eddie PioneeRoss! Danny calls his using the carpet padding as both a memo-board and sound-dampening material “ingenous”. Instead of giving true credit where credit is due, Eddie just says “Thank you!” and beams… totally missing this meaningful glance from Black Eye Nathan…

…I think someone’s about to start looking for a new bestie…

And the winner of this challenge is… duh, Eddie TrailblazeRoss! He seems mildly excited by his victory as he interviews “It totally awesome to win. I just wanna, you know, show what I’m capable of!” Yup, you’re sure capable of stealing other people’s ideas and failing to properly acknowledge it. “Who knew I was green?” he finishes. Uh huh, like a jealous booger. Dickface. However, Nathan is pretty cool about it as he posits “Eddie wins, and that’s super cool because that was my old office, so… it’s kind of like I won, but… not.”

Time for the loozahs… SexOndineCity and Silver Spoon Andrea have done enough to keep safe and are dismissed, and we’re left with Nasal Natalie and Whatisit, both of whom look pretty unhappy.

Margaret calls Whatisit out on his assertion that by not being wasteful in his shopping he was somehow being “green”. He tries to defend by saying that since he created something beautiful and timeless, they won’t have to remodel the office ten years down the road. This pisses Danny off and he comes right back with “When you say things like ‘timeless design’, ‘it’s gonna last the ages’… to me that’s a lot of greenwashing! Saying things like that really aren’t changing anything in the long run…”

…ooh, Duelling Gaysians!…

Jonathan calls the design “bland” and Margaret apologetically tosses out the dreaded “one trick pony” phrase, and JonJon chides him for not having used some of Nat’s bright and bold color choices! Ouch. Poor Whatisit!

Speaking of Nat, she’s insisting that she really was trying to “think green”. This prompts another verbal stabbing from Danny Seo, as he asks her to remind him what the material was that she made her “recycling bins” out of. “It’s MDF!” she chirps. “Is MDF an eco-friendly material?” he inquires in a silky-smooth voice. Don’t take the candy, Nat, he’s setting you up! She stupidly continues “It’s wood that has been chopped up and… reused for something else.” Too late, as Danny pounces, “MDF gives off different V.O.C.’s, so that’s not the greenest choice…” and goes on to say that it would have been a much better choice to use some of the wood from the wall-art-memo-board-thingies to make her recycle bins with, and would have been a much better “green” choice.

Maggie goes on to say that while Nat did a great job last week, this week not so much, and she’s especially upset about the throw pillows Nat put on the window seat, as she thinks they don’t say “office” as much as they say “condo”. “I don’t want my office to look like a condo!” she exclaims, “and you can’t just design a room around a cat!” Okay, I added that last part, but it would have been the perfect capper, don’tcha think?

…”Yeah, you pretty much both suck mud.”…

After deliberations, the designer going home tonight… Awwwwww, it’s Whatisit!!! The Sad Guitar Of Sorrow is playing as he smiles and giggles (like we knew he would) and says “Thank-you-so-much-it’s-been-a-lot-of-fun!” There are no hard feelings between him and Nat, and they walk out of the Red Room arm in arm…

And everyone seems to be genuinely sorry to see him go, he’s getting a lot of hugs (and kind of over-kissed by Black Eye Nathan… I wonder if they had a bit of a Midnight Rendezvous at some point? Hmmmmmm.) At any rate, he continues “You-know-I’ve-al-ways-felt-that-I’ve-been-ve-ry-tal-en-ted-but-then-there’s-al-ways-that-kind-of-self-doubt-that-comes-a-bout-from-re-jec-tion… I-sup-pose-it-would-be-nice-if-some-one-watched-the-show-and-thought-I-was-you-know-a-great-de-sign-er-or-mu-si-cian-or-art-his-tor-i-an…but-you-al-ways-have-to-keep-go-ing-and-try-and-try-hard-er.”

This is really weird… usually the eliminated designer is the one who leaves everybody behind in the waiting area… but tonight, the rest of them leave Whatisit sitting there all by his lonesome…

..♪.a-lone-a-gain-na-tu-ral-ly.♪..

How is Whatisit going to leave us all behind? By singing one of his weird operatic arias, of course… “Sooooome-tiiiimes I feeeeel dis-couuur-aaaaaged aaaamd feeeeel myyyy wooooork’s innn vaaaaaaaain, buuuut theeeen theeee ((**unintelligible**)) spiiiiii-riiiiiit reeeeeviiiiiiiives myyyyy sooooooooullll aaaagaaaaaaaaiinnn…”

…the Gasmii are gonna miss you…*snif*…

…and with that, he leaves in dead silence…

Wow, what an ending! What did you think of this episode? Should Nasal Nat have gone instead of Whatisit, or did he deserve the boot? Is Eddie becoming the biggest shitdick in the entire universe? Perhaps he should keep in mind that Miss Nina Garcia was higher up at Elle than he is at MS Corp, and they still fired her ass… and Eddie doesn’t have a Project Runway gig to fall back on… Tell me your thoughts…

love, J-Mo