Bravo's Project Runway 5 & CBS's Big Brother 10

I tried to make it all the way through the first episode of the new season of Project Runway, really I did. I made it as far as the point where the Top 3 and Bottom 3 were singled out.

But, unfortunately, Project Runway had not hooked me and I did not care who won that episode or who got the boot. So, I bailed. By this morning I don't even remember a single one of the dressmakers. Maybe I was too tired to be watching TV. I had had a long day of working at the computer and staring at a monitor.

I think what non-plussed me about this Project Runway show is that it is about making dresses, near as I can tell. I know for a fact I will live my entire life without ever making a dress. Or caring how one is made. Or knowing if one is fashionable. One of the reasons I find a similar Bravo show, Top Chef, interesting, is that it is about cooking food.

Cooking food. And eating it is something I actually do. So, at times I actually learn something from watching Top Chef.

But watching men and women, or semblances thereof, make dresses, was like watching someone knit. The only minor entertaining part of it was how goofy the dresses were and what they were made of.

The challenge was the group of dressmakers were let loose in a grocery store to find something to make a dress out of.

One of the dressmakers made his dress out of blue plastic cups. The judges liked that one. Another dressmaker made her dress out of black garbage bags. The judges didn't like that one. Only those two were retained in my memory.

Another thing I do remember is the Guest Judge. His name is Austin Scarlett. He was the winner from a previous season of Project Runway. I found him sort of scary. That's him in the photo. Actually I'm not totally certain he's a him, I guess I'm assuming that due to the "Austin" name.

Now, why did I mention Big Brother 10 in the title to this blog? Well, some cruel person calling himself "dvrgasm" commented on what I said about Big Brother, telling me...

"Sorry to tempt you, but it has just gotten started and it is already soooooo good. You are missing out..."

Well, despite the temptation I have continued, and, as God is my witness, will continue to resist the temptation to watch Big Brother.

Big Brother 10 on CBS

I did not realize Big Brother was back on. I did not watch a single second of last winter's Big Brother 9, that CBS quickly threw on the air during the TV writer's strike.

But, I will, with some sense of slight embarrassment, admit I have gotten hooked on 4, or is it 5, of the 10 seasons of Big Brother.

I am fairly certain I will not get hooked on the current version, that being Big Brother 10. One thing is it can be too addictive. It's on 3 nights a week. That's 3 hours a week.

And then there is the live feed. I watched the Big Brother 2 live feed, because it was free. And I watched a lot of the Big Brother 6 live feed, because that was a summer I was in Tacoma and Lulu paid to watch the live feed.

I remember when I first saw Lulu watching the live feed she was viewing it in this little postage stamp size window and holding a speaker to her ear. I did a one button click and the live feed became full screen, to Lulu's amazement. She'd pretty much strained her eyes to borderline blindness watching that little picture. Then I fixed her speakers so Lulu could listen without holding the speaker to her ear.

On the live feed you see stuff you'd never see on network TV. Most of the good stuff ends up on YouTube. Like on Big Brother 4: The X Factor, everyone was in the house with someone they had a prior relationship with. It was on Big Brother 4 that Big Brother history was made, as in the first time the Big Brother cameras filmed a couple doing that thing that in olden days you were supposed to wait to do til you were married. And then the next day the guy in that coupling voted to evict the girl he'd been coupling with. Appalling.

That was Big Brother 6 that Lulu had the live feed for. That was probably the best Big Brother ever. The house split between the Good People and the Nerd Herd. The Nerd Herd were deluded, they thought they were the good people, but they were despicable and really easy to hate. The Nerd Herd was led by the worst case of Little Man Syndrome I've ever seen. The Good People were led by a Marilyn Monroeesque beauty named Janelle.

Big Brother 2 was also very entertaining. Big Brother 2 produced the guy who many consider to be the #1 Reality TV star of all time. Dr. Will Kirby. You started off thinking he was totally nuts. And evil. And then it became obvious he was very conniving and clever. And then he became one of the funniest characters ever on TV.

Dr. Will and the aforementioned beauty, Janelle, were on Big Brother 7: All Stars. That was an unfortunate season of Big Brother. It could not be Big Brother without Will Kirby. But he insisted the disgusting person known as Mike Boogie, a creature who for reasons no viewer could understand, became Will Kirby's best friend. Boogie was hated by the viewers on BB2. No viewer considered him an All-Star. And then he won the thing and the half million bucks that go with it. Beating everyone's favorite, the beauty Janelle. It was appalling. Afterwards Boogie was harassed in public, and by Rosie O'Donnell on The View. Boogie being on BB All-Stars and winning tainted the whole thing.

I swore I'd never watch again after the All-Stars debacle.

And then Big Brother 8 came along. And I got hooked again.

And now Big Brother 10 is under way. I don't know if Lulu is watching it. I am going to resist her attempts to get me to watch, if she is hooked again. When I was up in Tacoma in July of 2004 Lulu was already hooked on Big Brother 5. She talked me into watching an episode. By the first commercial break I was hooked and asking all sorts of questions so I could understand what was going on.