Very, very much

I know it's old, just felt like sharing it again.

The episode of abominations

The designers wake up to the twin feelings of fear and foreboding, airing their grievances unto the steadily rising sun.

Santi, he of the Sarimanok faux!hawk, has been dealt an ego-crushin blow by his team's performance during the last challenge.

The Fisherwoman a.k.a. Jas has finally experienced -- perhaps for the first time in her life -- what it feels like to have people expect something good to come from you, and feels the pressure to live up to that expectation.

Ugly Tracy nee Betty feels the way she has always felt in the presence of the cool kids: unwanted and unloved. She knows that it was her ass that was supposed to be sent home last week.

The rest meander aimlessly around the Amorsolo Mansions like so many reanimated corpses, their undead hunger to be sated only by sucking out any smidgen of creativity or innovation from their surroundings.

Once they're ready -- pancake make-up plastered on, formaldehyde injected once again into their veins -- the designers are shepherded into their holding pens at the School of Fashion and the Arts, where they immediately notice the Aranaz bags on the accessory wall. This is of course the producers' completely subtle way of hinting that this week's challenge is going to be bridal wear.

BUT! It's not just going to be any bride that they'll be dressing up! This season's celebrity client is model Isabel Roces, who we all remember for her blanket made of chili peppers. At least almost all of us, because Randy a.k.a. Inday has no idea who Isabel Roces is. Expect his gay license to be revoked once the paperwork gets through.

The designers are given free rein with the fabric, just as long as it isn't the usual white. Russel apparently sees that as a license to resurrect his third grade crafts project, because his gown is NEON GREEN and has LEAVES on it. I hate it with the heat of a thousand fiery suns and wish to burn it and crap on its ashes.

The Fisherwoman, of course, is not resting on her laurels, and once again fishes something out from the murky depths of Manila Bay. Once again she stays true to her roots -- the gown looks like it died and sunk into the bottom of the bay centuries ago.

The producers are also quietly planting the seeds of future bitchiness. Hanz and Patrick apparently have a "friendly competition" going on. Hanz says something but I tune it out because he doesn't make any sense. Sarimanok Santi, on the other hand, doesn't like the way Inday Randy is looking at him. Meanne, who has as much personality as a dirty dishrag, bleats meekly about who she thinks is going to win.

All of these tensions will have to be resolved some other time, because runway day is upon the designers. The models walk, the gowns are paraded, Russel is inexplicably safe. But never mind that, because the judges are at their acerbic best in this episode.

A sampling:

""I want to find something nice to say...but it's tragic. It's a tacky, tragic, Tracy wedding dress." -Rajo

"She took the darkest years of the Madonna era." -Isabel Roces

"That thing was an abomination." -Rajo

Apples was especially bitchy this episode as well, but I couldn't type fast enough while I was watching it. Suffice it to say that she is a deadly, venom-spitting viper and I love her.

The Fisherwoman and Ugly Tracy nee Betty end up in the bottom, this despite The Fisherwoman's immunity from the last episode. All signs point to The Fisherwoman leaving...but she lives to fish another day! DO YOU BELIEVE IN MIRACLES!

Because I don't.

Who is Tyler Shields?

Shields' latest video featuring Alex Meraz

I think the first time I ever heard of the name Tyler Shields was when the video of Matt Dallas (Kyle XY) dripping wet, muddy, and moody came out. It was a short clip, and basically just had Matt Dallas wet, shirtless, and staring intensely at the camera.

I didn't give him any further thought until the "Zachary Quinto being showered by faux!cum" video came out. It was Tyler Shields behind it again, with the same short clip of an attractive man staring intensely at the camera. Shields once again vanished from pop culture consciousness after that.

And now the video above comes out, and I am now genuinely curious as to who he is. How does he get these stars to participate in what he does? It would seem like he is a pretty familiar photographer among the Hollywood crowd, as his videos on Youtube include names like Summer Glau, Brittany Snow, and Gary Busey.

I visited his blog to try to learn more about him, but I was put off by his complete inability to bend the English language to his will. Perhaps it isn't his first language? If anybody else musters the energy or inclination to find out who this guys is, send me the appropriate links or something.

Matt Dallas

Zachary Quinto

8-bit Trip

It took them 1500 hours to do this whole thing. That's dedication, folks.

What's it to you

People are apparently protesting against the Stanford Hotel in New York's meatpacking district because you can see naked people through the windows.

To quote: "Note to parents strolling the High Line: Don't let your kids look up.

The Meatpacking District's newly opened, much-touted urban park along an elevated, former railroad trestle has unwittingly turned into a peep show near The Standard hotel, as randy hotel guests perform sex acts in front of floor-to-ceiling hotel windows."

Neighbors are "outraged" to have seen people performing sexual acts through the hotel's windows, some of which include the shooting of porn films, masturbation, and plain old vanilla sex. The concerned citizens want the "obscenity" to stop.

But my thing is, you're not required to look. It's not like not paying attention to these exhibitionists would be detrimental to your life. And besides, it's a hotel room that I'm guessing they paid for, so what do you care what they do inside it?

Today's gratuitous manflesh

You guys all know who Zac Efron is.

"Love is a dangerous angel"

I honestly can't remember when I first heard of the Weetzie Bat books. It just seemed like they had always been there, in the back of my mind, waiting to be uncovered. But it would really take me quite some time before I actually went out there and got myself a copy.

I only got my hands on Dangerous Angels, a compilation of all the Weetzie Bat books, a few months ago, and it would take me a few weeks more before I would start reading it. Now I'm kicking myself for not doing it much earlier.

In case you're not aware of them, the Weetzie Bat books are made up of Weetzie Bat, Witch Baby, Cherokee and the Goat Guys, Missing Angel Juan, and Baby Be-Bop. All the books are told through the eyes if Weetzie and the members of her family, specifically her children Cherokee and Witch Baby, as well as her gay best friend Dirk McDonald.

We are first introduced to them in Weetzie Bat, where we follow Weetzie and Dirk as they look for the love of their lives in the city of Los Angeles. The other books revolve around this central theme of love, with variations that give each novel a flavor of its own.

Witch Baby, for instance, has the main character looking not for romantic love, but for love from her parents. Cherokee and the Goat Guys have the characters grappling with adolescent love and their self-esteem. Missing Angel Juan is about loving someone enough to let them be on their own, while Baby Be-Bop is about a young Dirk struggling to come to terms with his homosexuality.

After reading Weetzie Bat, I had initially thought that this series was merely overhyped and not really as good as everyone made it out to be. Despite being a charming work, I found Weetzie Bat to be a little too thin -- in plot and characterization -- for me to keep on going.

It's a good thing that I still kept on reading, though, because the series keeps on getting better and better with each book. Block has the ability to balance her whimsical prose and the heavy topics she often takes on, and the combination makes the books moving without being too overly heavy for younger readers.

And Block certainly isn't afraid to take on some pretty daunting topics. In Cherokee and the Goat Guys there is a harrowing scene filled with drugs, booze, and underage sex, while the latter chapters of Weetzie Bat talk about the AIDS crisis, if in a roundabout way.

My personal favorites are Missing Angel Juan and Baby Be-Bop. It is in these books that Block is at her very best, telling stories of heartbreak, loneliness, and homophobia in hopeful tones usually reserved for fairy tales.

I also love how Block tackles homosexuality in her novels. When Dirk tells Weetzie that he's gay, Weetzie's reply is a simple: "It doesn't matter one bit, honey-honey." Then the two decide to look for boys together. I can only imagine how empowering that is for a young closeted gay man reading these novels for the first time.

And it's not just gay men. All throughout the series there are lesbians, bisexuals, there's even a transgender couple with a baby. It's a delightful and idealized world that one can't help but wish for.

The fact that Block doesn't hesitate from showing the dark side of life either -- Dirk, for instance, is almost mauled to death by a homophobic gang of neo-Nazis -- just makes her idealized Los Angeles even more precious and beautiful.

Dangerous Angels is certainly something I wouldn't hesitate to recommend to anyone looking for a good read. Multilayered, poetic, and unafraid to tackle some pretty sensitive topics, it is a young adult book that is both challenging and entertaining.