Given the less-than-encouraging events of the past month or so, I hesitate to post this New York Times article about brain-drain in New Orleans, but it’s a real problem–moreso now than before Katrina or even immediately after it. Not many of us want to talk about it, and I don’t know of much that’s been written on the phenomenon lately, at least not in any complex or meaningful way. It’s not for the faint of heart:

As a city in flux, New Orleans remains statistically murky, but demographers generally agree that the population replenishment after the storm, as measured by things like the amount of mail sent and employment in main economic sectors, has leveled off. While many poorer residents have moved back to the city, the “brain drain” of professionals that the city was experiencing before the storm appears to have accelerated.

. . .

In battered but proud New Orleans, abandonment is a highly emotional subject, in part because many have made sacrifices to stay and rebuild. To some, leaving now is tantamount to treason. When a report appeared a year ago that Emeril Lagasse, the famed chef, had said the city would “never come back,” reservations at his restaurants were canceled and strangers berated him. He insisted he had been misquoted.

And in response to an article in The Times-Picayune of New Orleans about a woman who had decided to move on, Poppy Z. Brite, a New Orleans novelist, wrote: “This isn’t an easy place to be right now, and the decision to stay or go is deeply personal. But why must some people use the media to take a parting shot at the city?”

On another occasion, Ms. Brite said, “If a place takes you in and you take it into yourself, you don’t desert it just because it can kill you. There are some things more valuable than life.”

—New York Times

In the end it’s a little vague, a little ambiguous, a little “Here are the facts, now figure it out for yourself, reader”, but then, that’s how it is, right?

Let’s be honest: we all want to love Top Design. The concept’s clean and simple, the hosts are kinda hip, and its spot on Wednesday night fills a gaping hole in our entertainment calendars until Project Runway returns. (Or at least until the weather heats up enough to warrant leaving the goddamn house.) But perhaps most importantly, as homosexualists, Top Design really speaks to us. Or rather, it should….

If the Bravo execs were to ask me–and surely they will someday–I’d tell those fatcats in their big fancy Aeron chairs and their three-piece suits and their big cigars, which they have to smoke on the terrace of the skylobby because the building’s non-smoking, that there are two simple, fixable problems with the show: the writing and the casting. Allow me to elaborate.

The writing: Okay, so Top Design is produced in Los Angeles, a city of how many million people? And they hired writers who pen alleged catchphrases like “You can stay” (when designers are allowed to stay), “Goodbye” (when they aren’t), and “See you later, decorator” (as a final, unnecessary kick in the ass as the loser is leaving the studio)? Did they find those writers in a parking lot at the Galleria? Were they a gift-with-purchase at the Clinique counter? Or was the script drawn at random from entries submitted by third-graders across the country? (Congratulations, Susie Higginbotham of Dothan, Alabama!) The producers need to firebomb the writing pool and start from scratch with native English speakers. Like me, for example.

The casting: Let’s start by looking at casting that works–namely that of Project Runway. We’ve got a lovable mentor in Tim Gunn (everyone’s favorite gay high school teacher); a sassy, supersexy, opinionated host in Heidi Klum; and bitchyfunny sidekicks in Nina Garcia and Michael Kors. One big, happy, fashionably dysfunctional family.

Top Design‘s producers have tried to mimic this arrangement, but like Todd Oldham’s bronzer, they’re a little off. Todd is, of course, an accomplished designer, but he’s got a deeply disturbing teleprompter-of-the mind thing going on. Even when speaking off-the-cuff, he sounds like he was programmed by Stanley Kubrik. He’s more wooden than some of that crappy pressboard furniture they use on the show. (Case in point.) And I see the Botox fairy has come to visit. Repeatedly. He looks like a cute, talented, mahogany camel. Please call in Amy Sedaris for an intervention.

Then we have Jonathan Adler–another great designer who’s as stiff as brushed aluminum for most of the show. Occasionally he’ll revert to human form, but only when he’s dishing with the other judges. On the plus side however, those Windsor knots are ferocious.

As it stands, the only likeable people–nay, the only people–on Top Design‘s panel of experts are Kelly Wearstler (good-natured, friendly, stunning, hot socks) and Margaret Russell (patrician, catty, gorgeous, MILF). They bring originality and spunk to a show that’s obviously based on a formula where someone forgot to carry the two.

The solution? Fix the fags. Boot Todd altogether and move Jonathan into the teacher slot. Bring in someone with personality for the judging–someone likeable. Mizrahi comes to mind, though he’s not considered an interior designer. At least he’s got some range in his vocal cords. Alternately, the producers can hire me.

And the girls? They can, like, totally stay.

Courtesy of Slate, one of six great poems about sex:

BODY, REMEMBER

Body, remember not only how much you were loved,

not only the beds on which you lay,

but also those desires for you

that glowed plainly in the eyes,

and trembled in the voice—and some

chance obstacle made futile.

Now that all of them belong to the past,

it almost seems as if you had yielded

to those desires—how they glowed,

remember, in the eyes gazing at you;

how they trembled in the voice, for you, remember, body.

—Constantine Cavafy

And yes, I’m still busy, but very, very bored.

I’m busy designing crap for some crappy crap. Why don’t you listen to my sister’s latest mix instead? She’s way more interesting–today and every day….

Crazy Girl at BrooklynRadio.net: download • stream • tracklist

HEY FAITH!!!!!!!

Thank you SO much for letting me borrow your car last week! Mine gets out of the shop today!! Who’d have thought that a homeless guy could cause so much damage to an engine?!? What woulda happened if I’d hit his grocery cart, too?!? OMG! Can you imagine??!! HAHAHA!!

Anyway, my new boyfriend, Lenny, is coming over in a minute to drive me to the garage. You’d love him–he’s got TONS of tattoos, and he’s TOTALLY mysterious and stuff!! HOTTT! I’m gonna leave your car key on the front porch under the ficus, and I’ll put your house key under the cactus-lookin’ thing. (Whatever it is, it sure is cute!!) I don’t know your code, so I guess I’ll have to leave the burglar alarm off, but you’re a big star!!! I’m sure it’ll be fine!!!

Thanks again, Faith! Tell Tim I said HEY! See you soon!!!!!!

XXOO BFF (I MEAN IT!!)
TRIXIE

Okay, so maybe I got one picture I liked:

Grand Time: Thanks to Ray “Undisclosed Location” Nagin’s stellar inability to get things done, New Orleans’ Municipal Auditorium remains out of commission, so we held this year’s Mystic Krewe of Satyricon bal masque in a warehouse space that no one in the krewe was very excited about. And wouldn’t you know, it was fan-freaking-tastic. Maybe the best ever. The Boyfriend got some beautiful pics. Me, not so much.

Grand Guignol: On behalf of crackers everywhere, I would like to apologize to anyone born south of the Rio Grande for the allegedly journalistic, allegedly comic writings of irrelevant lunkhead Angus Lind–in particular, today’s “guide to all things Mardi Gras”, intended for New Orleans’ “new Hispanic neighbors”. Although Lind tries to play up the quirks of Carnival à la Nouvelle Orléans, in the end he sounds like a fatass gringo in some Tijuana cantina who’s had one too many shots of tequila and is now dancing an atrocious hat dance around a novelty sombrero.

I mean, Lind could’ve addressed the article to anyone residing outside the levee system and it would’ve been fine–hell, there are still oodles of things New Orleanians themselves don’t understand about our city’s version of Carnival. There’s a cultural barrier there that’s tailor-made for comedy. (And one that’s been milked to death, but whatevs.) Lind, however, goes one step further and adds a language barrier to the mix, and…well, you know how it is when you’ve got on the perfect dress or suit or costume, and you add that one brooch too many, and suddenly you look like an idiot? That’s what happened.

And to my lesbian friends and other politically correct types, let me be perfectly clear: I don’t care whether or not Lind is being culturally or racially insensitive. I care only about the fact that the Times-Picayune hasn’t yet put the man out to pasture.

Grand Gaffe: Does anyone find it slightly ironic that a Grammy™ winner–a Grammy™ winner receiving an award for a song called “”Jesus, Take the Wheel”, no less–would blurt out “This is unbelievable. I owe everything to Simon Fuller” during her acceptance speech?

Oh, Anna. In the immortal words of Joan Jett, I hate myself for loving…well, not you per se, but your boundless spirit of fucked-uppedness, your joi de vivre (or perhaps, joi d’ivre), your willingness to grab a stereotype by the triple-Ds and run with it all the way to the bank. Case in point:

You may be dead, but your spirit, your breasts, your nose, and portions of your lips will remain with us always.

Snarky is the new Aqua, which was the new Orange, which was the new Brown, and so on and so on, down to the color of the house that Jack built, which was itself the new Flagstone.

Now, it’s no secret that writers who report on trendy events and commodities tend to get a little catty. When your goal is to stay one step ahead of the game, cattiness gives you a well-shod leg up. As in, “Ooh, girl! Look at Miss Thing over there, with her handbag pulled straight from the Fall 2006 time capsule!” Suddenly you’re at the vanguard, and Miss Thing is trapped waist-deep in the bargain bin.

Recently, though, cattiness gave way to something more insidious: snarkiness. I know it’s a thin line–thinner than [insert celebutante joke here]–but there’s a difference. Catty is all in good fun. Catty is over the top. Catty is drag queens who dish it out, then share a bag of coke in the men’s room. By contrast, snarky is mean, underhanded, and underplayed. Holier-than-thou with a jigger of envy thrown in for good measure.

Recently, I’ve noticed an uptick in the nation’s snark level. Maybe it’s just because, as an avid homosexual, I’ve been reading the news from Fashion Week–which, by its very nature, veers toward unprecedented levels of snarkification. But even in that milieu, voices like those of New York magazine’s Fug Girls have been mitigated by tamer voices like Cathy Horyn, Eric Wilson, and even Guy Trebay at the New York Times, who prefer to give readers some historical context for their thoughtful critiques.

Well, unless you’ve been living under a heterosexual male rock for the past couple of weeks, you know that Cathy Horyn has started a blog. And she’s calling Thom Browne’s collection “Hobbitville” and wondering if she should buy a wig. Oh, Cathy….

Who is responsible for this? Some would point to the Michael Musto-Liz Smith cabal of gossip mongers, who’ve been doing this kind of thing for years. Others would cite that cave drawing from Lascaux where a tribesmen is snubbed after wearing the same loincloth for both hunting and gathering. But whether such shenanigans have been going on for decades or millenia, they’ve never made it to the mainstream. Now, suddenly, we’ve got pundits on every streetcorner–the equally hideous, equally ashen Nancy Grace and Glenn Beck come to mind–and they’re all sporting the same arched-eyebrow sneer. What the hell happened?

Personally, I blame Gawker. (Or credit them. The jury’s still out.) They single-handedly made snarky both fashionable and readily available. And they’re funny. Let’s face it: snark sells. But alas, not everyone can pull it off–which is why you may find me getting catty now and then, but I’ll take the long way around Snarkville, ’cause baby, I know when I’m beat.

An Experment in OMG

Last week I had a problem with an Amazon order, and today I wanted to resolve it. So I went to the Help section of the website, and on the right-hand side of the page, I noticed that I could contact Amazon not only by email, but also by phone. “Provide your phone number and customer service will call you right away,” it said. So I clicked through and entered my phone number, expecting a callback sometime later in the afternoon, but…well, try it.

Ultimately, it’s no different than dialing a customer service center [in Bangladesh] yourself. Yeah, technically they’re calling you, but you still get put on hold ’till a rep becomes available–same experience in the end. Still, by framing it as a “call back” and by making that “call back” happen immediately, they make it seem like Amazon is really on top of its game. Pretty sneaky, sis….