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Project Runway Without Tim Gunn? How Will We Make It Work?

Project Runway is back and so are some of the All Star Contestants:

Austin Scarlett – Fun but crazy
Kara Janx – Don’t remember
Elisa Jimenez – Kind of Flaky but creative at least
Rami Kashou – Love LOVE -so glad he’s back
Sweet P – Yikes. Who wants to be a frumpy Mexican housewife for Halloween?
Jerell Scott – Don’t remember but his design was quite good.
Kenley Collins – Not everyone wants to look like Betty Boop, sweetcheeks
Gordana Gelhausen – From Mondo ” It looks like a piñata. I hope her model is full of candy.”
Anthony Williams – Love his personality, jury still out on design
Mila Hermanovski – Maybe – need to see more
April Johnson – Don’t remember
Michael Costello -Lovely, wearable designs
Mondo Guerra -What a visionary. I want to wear everything he makes

Angela Lindvall, host and low-rent Heidi Klum knock-off is joined by judges Georgina Chapman, Marchesa designer and Isaac Mizrahi who plays a bitchier version of Michael Kors.

I kept expecting Joanna Coles, editor of Marie Claire, and Tim Gunn stand-in, to complain about unkempt hair salon stations ala Tabitha’s Salon Takeover.

This week’s challenge was to create a look from 99 cent store items. There was a diverse range of styles and most designers shopped well and created some surprising looks. It’s amazing how high-end a handful of dime store items can look in the right hands.

I won’t spoil anything here, but the judges seemed spot on from where I sit as far as the best and worst designs this week.

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So, I Started a New Blog…

Ooohsomethingshiny will continue, of course, it it’s current absurd stream of consciousness state, but I will also be writing at onedietbookawayfromgoalweight.

At One Diet Book Away From Goal Weight, I will be writing about an assortment of books, websites, apps, articles that I stumble over relating to diet, exercise, fitness.

With any luck I will lose a few pounds along the way and take some readers along for the ride.

Who’s with me?

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Teakettle + Salad Spinner = Living the Dream

We went on a bit of a housewares shopping spree at Bed, Bath and Beyond the other day. We, of course, stocked up on basics like K-cups and Pez Dispensers, but I needed to upgrade the old kitchen as well.

The new kettle is pretty awesome. I drink approximately 867 cups of tea per day, so I beat the hell out of my kettles and need to replace them every couple of years. Especially because I leave the lid open so that it won’t whistle and accidentally boil the kettle dry pretty regularly.

The new kettle has a very unobtrusive whistle. It’s like the sound that a person who can’t whistle makes when they are trying to whistle. It’s kind of like excusemeyourteaisreadyexcusemeyourteaisready whereas my previous kettle was more likeTEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAA!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Obnoxious.

The salad spinner was another story entirely. I purchased this on the advice of some of my invisible Internet friends when I complained that I was throwing out a lot of fresh vegetables. Supposedly, if you centrifuge your lettuce to sahara-esque dryness, it will last longer than bagged salad which seems to take the train to Slimetown within a couple of days.

I just kept getting lost. I got the Oxo salad spinner. You just press the top once and it just spins and spins and spins. I kept thinking of things that would be fun to put in there like spaghetti or M&Ms.

And on a COMPLETELY UNRELATED note, I thought about how fun it would be to have a couple of gerbils as pets or maybe teddybear hamsters.

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2011 in review

The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.

Here’s an excerpt:

The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 16,000 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 6 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.

Click here to see the complete report.

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Shark Dog? I’ll Show You Shark Dog!

We are hosting guest dog Molly over winter break:

She is from South Carolina and is none too pleased with being required to go out into the cold to do her business, even though this has been a mild Buffalo winter. She complains about this frequently to The Management.

She is a tiny little daschund and could not me more different from our dear, recently departed Akeesha, a large golden retriever, but she has certainly brought smiles to our faces and made Akeesha’s absence a little easier to take over the holidays.

We frequently referred to Akeesha as “Sharkdog” because of her love of bumping into the bathroom door, much like a shark bumps its potential prey before sampling a tasty chunk of leg or torso.

Apparently Molly has overheard these discussions and gotten jealous, even though she headbutts the bathroom door, in her own sharklike way.

She decided that the best way to demonstrate her sharkworthiness was to eat a half a bag of Gummy Sharks which have been left unattended:

This is all that was left post-molly

She promptly vomited on my daughter, which may or may not have anything to do with the fact that she was wearing a Red Sox hoodie. I don’t know. I’m a National League kind of gal (Go Phillies!).

TMI Warning:

Molly’s vomit was a bright blue green gel, so I was frantically running up and down the stairs looking for what she had gotten into, thinking that it was some sort of a cleaning product.

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The Wimminfolk Are Angry

One of the top searches on Oooh Something Shiny this week, number two behind Maya Sieber, in fact, was:

“My husband does nothing every Christmas.”

C’mon guys. Step it up.

And ladies, if you want to share responsibilities, you can’t be all control-freaky.

Your way and the wrong way are not the only options

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At Least She Didn’t Name Him Kenny

Airline mishap leaves dog in Alaska

 If you thought it was bad when the airlines lost your luggage, how about them losing a beloved pet?

http://www.wivb.com/dpp/news/erie/airline-mishap-leaves-dog-in-alaska

Maybe this is another reason to own purse-sized pets so that you don’t have to check Bowser with your Louis Vuitton.
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South Park lovers (my husband is not one– he calls them  “those stupid-ass short people”) will recognize the name  Cartman which is a much better pet name choice than  Kenny, who dies in nearly every episode. Kenny would be a bad pet name for anyone with even a touch of superstition.
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(I have no way of knowing if  Carlynn Barrientos, the pet owner, named her dog after South Park Cartman. If could be her grandmother’s name or her favorite superhero for all I know).
It looks like she and her dog have finally been united. With little thanks to United
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The Latest in Bizarre Searches That Led to my Blog

A lot, a LOT of people search for Maya Sieber from Ice Road Truckers…I will not question their motivation.

There were many about The Bloggess (especially Beyonce the Metal Chicken), the cello and ill Scarlett — things that I think about frequently and include in a lot of blog posts.

Here are some nutty ones:

  • slutty volleyball girls
  •  kevin bacon cold war
  •  something on toast
  •  modern day songs that contain iambic pentameter
  •  funny black person (well, that’s not general now is it?)
  •  why do women sleep with the men on jersey shore (HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA- Good Question)
  •  weightlifting ninja
  •  unemployment oooh
  •  what song should my facebook status be (like lyrics as status isn’t unoriginal enough without googling which one)
  •  how to get my husband to wear a bib  (now THERE’S a fun marriage)
  •  giant steel fork 4 foot
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Cops: Drunk tried driving hurt deer to NY hospital

I don’t normally just cut and paste things from the news, but this is just priceless.

Cops: Drunk tried driving hurt deer to NY hospital

Police say driver’s blood-alcohol level was .16

Updated: Thursday, 22 Dec 2011, 12:08 PM EST
Published : Thursday, 22 Dec 2011, 12:08 PM EST

GREECE, N.Y. (AP) — Police say a drunken New York man struck a deer with his vehicle, then tried driving the injured animal to a nearby hospital — for humans.

Police say 29-year-old Andrew Caswell hit the deer early Monday in the suburban Rochester town of Greece. They say Caswell and three companions argued over what to do with it before Caswell decided the deer needed to go to the hospital.

An officer who pulled the car over discovered the deer was in the vehicle’s trunk and had died.

Police say Caswell’s blood-alcohol level was .16, twice the legal limit. Caswell’s phone number couldn’t be located Thursday.

Police Chief Todd Baxter tells the Democrat and Chronicle that while trying to save the deer was commendable, “driving while intoxicated will not be tolerated.”

Copyright Associated Press, Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

http://www.wivb.com/dpps/news/offbeat/cops-say-drunk-tried-driving-hurt-deer-to-ny-hospital-ob11-jgr_4020255

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People With ADD Should Not Go to Pier One

Not that I’ve actually been diagnosed or anything, unless you include every layperson I encounter. There is WAY too much going on in Pier One to focus on any one thing. It is, however, great fodder for Awkward Photojournalism.
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I went in there with high hopes and walked out with almost nothing. I did almost buy a sofa, but I figure it’s probably best to confine impulse buys to things like gum at the register in Wegman’s.

One of the first things we saw there was this Hipster Penguin:

Hipster Penguin

By all rights, he should be wearing black rimmed glasses, but he has no ears, something which I assume he is pretty self-conscious about, so I wouldn’t bring it up if I were you.
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I also saw this band of metal cats which I’m sure would make an awesome gift for anyone who likes cats or music or metal:

Jazz Katz

This next item I nearly bought. Its a giant fork– authentic in appearance. I think it would make an awesome diet aid. Just limit yourself to one fork full of food per day and wala!
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You’re an Olsen twin. (My fork model is also available for Bar Mizvahs and weddings):

Giant Fork

This last item was quite a find. It’s a wooden rooster who was sitting on a shelf, pining for Beyonce the Giant Metal Chicken.
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What appears to be a staring contest is actually my fork model trying to explain to Mr Wooden Rooster that he is not Rooster enough for the likes of Beyonce:

Out of His League Rooster

He seemed to finally get it, but he is still sad and alone. Look how pensive he looks in this photo:

Oh What A Lonely Bird

You really don’t see that much pensive poultry.