Thursday, July 13, 2006

Another Plug for Bravo

So with all the Project Runway watching I'm doing, I keep seeing this commercial for an upcoming episode of Queer Eye featuring my friends. Well, Joel's friends. Mine too, now, I suppose.

Fab Five aside for a sec, I wonder exactly when it is that your Significant Other's friends become yours, or vice versa. I think we've made the crossover, actually. Right before Joel left on his trip, we had dinner at his/our friends' house, and I shared a sausage-on-a-bun with someone. I think when you end up finishing someone's chorizo while feeling comfortable enough to make penis jokes about it, you can officially think of that person as YOUR friend. Also, Michael invited Joel to crash with him and Kelly at their place in Dayton on his first night heading west, AND he invited both Joel and Joel's dad to stay with them on their way back. So....yeah. Plus, Kelly had to knock on the door to check on Joel after he slipped in her new shower. There's a blurring of the friendship line there, after something like that. It's a good thing.

Anyway, remember this guy? Who had to swat the soccer ball off the cover of my landlords' empty pool over Memorial Day?





Yeah, so he gets a makeover and proposes to Tanii. This is the two of them, pre-Queer Eye experience. He pretty much looks the same, except he loses the ponytail on the show and hasn't grown it back.




They're a cute couple. Bravo was REALLY looking for a gamer/live-action-role-player to make over. Which Eric is, but he hasn't really been active in his medieval group for a year or so. The show really wanted to get him dueling or whatever; I don't know. I'm anxious to see the episode. I wasn't able to go, because all the "friends and family" have to RSVP to the producers ahead of time and swear on their lives not to wear clothing with logos on them. I had agreed to shoot a wedding that day for the Rich Bitch Who Punked Out On Me with Four Days Notice.

Also, I don't have medieval garb. There's a woman in the medieval group who makes really nice custom costumes. She made Tanii's outfit for the big moment. I'd buy something from this woman, but she prefers to barter rather than accept money. Which is totally cool. I offered to photograph some of her pieces for a brochure or catalogue or whatever, but she said she'd rather have me install her new kitchen flooring, which... WTF? No garb for me, then. Thanks anyway.

Anyway, I know Eric is worried that they're going to make him look stupid, and apparently Carson makes him wear pants with shields or royal lions or something on them. They had a good time, but I think the whole experience was more than they bargained for. You have to move out for a week. You have to pay really high taxes ($12,000+) on all the furniture, clothes, etc. Your apartment looks great for the reveal, because they deliver the floor models. Two days later, they take it all back and you have to wait six weeks for the actual stuff to get delivered.

In any case, Project Runway fans, when you see the Queer Eye promo that refers to a "straight squire" becoming "a knight in shining armor" and you hear Tom say "'Welcome to the knights of the round coffee table!' VO: Then Carson gets his head stuck in some armor"- that's them.

Oh, and out of curiousity, what was the moment you knew you made the Significant Other friendship cross-over?

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

As for the friendship cross-over, I don't think that's happened for us. I've become really good friends with the wives of some of Dave's friends. But most of the guys/husbands are kind of obnoxious. Maybe it's because every time I see them, they're drunk. (Why are the wives always the designated drivers?)

And Dave doesn't much care for my friends, either, particularly the one who moved into our house for two months. (But shhh, we're not allowed to mention that on my blog.)

Unknown said...

My friends are totally "our" friends now, but in the way that we all went to college together and then ended up in the same area and got married and have spouses that all like each other. For us, it was really about all of our friends evolving at similar times.
I still have some friends that totally wouldn't hang out with Ernie without me, and vice versa. But I think it really just sort of happens over time.

Alissa said...

Yeah, I don't know. There are some of Todd's friends that I totally hang out with all the time without him being around, and he has friends that I would feel very uncomfortable or very unhappy hanging out with by myself. For the most part, I think he really likes all of my friends, though. Because you all rock. :)

I think the "moment" where I realized the whole crossover thing, though, was probably the day that he drove all the way down to Lancaster by himself to go shooting with "the guys" while we were all at Amanda's bridal shower. And maybe when I show up at your parents house and everyone says "hi. Where's Todd?" :)

Chunky Photojournalist Barbie said...

Hee. I remain... Pro woman, pro choice, pro Todd! If it makes you feel all better, my parents come to my house, fall all over Bella, then go, "where's Fred?"

Anonymous said...

Aha! I finally saw the Bravo promo for your friends' QE show yesterday. I'm fascinated by all the behind-the-scenes stuff...$12,000 in taxes? Really? It somehow makes the show a lot less fun, doesn't it?

Oh, and Chris and I don't have joint friends, for the most part. When we hang out with other couples, they are either his friends or my friends. Our social scenes are so different, I don't really see this ever changing.

Chunky Photojournalist Barbie said...

Yeah, $12,000. I was shocked by this, actually. They do okay, but they ARE house-hunting and planning a wedding. Really high taxes weren't exactly at the top of their list of things to spend money on.

They sold a suit of armor on eBay and got a chunk of change for it from a QE fan, I think. The other thing that bugged him was the production crew. I may not have this exactly right, because Joel told me this, like, in February, but anyway... Because filming takes four days or more, the crew asked Eric not to talk to the QE guys between takes. Otherwise, he would develop an easier rapport with them over the course of a week that doesn't jive with the show's "all-in-a-day!" chronology. So that meant if he and Ted were in the kitchen, for example, and Thom was in the living room, the crew asked him not to talk to Ted too much while they were arranging lights and DEFINITELY not to hang out with Thom in the other room or bring him into a conversation. Which was really awkward.

It made me realize, though, that all the people you see on reality tv shows like Extreme Makeover Home Edition pay tax on ALL the stuff they get, plus increased property taxes. I always knew this was true for game shows and the lottery, but it applies to reality tv, too. I only hope that the Katrina survivors who got their houses rebuilt were exempt because the network teamed up with Habitat for Humanity. Paying the taxes on all that generosity would really suck if you had recently lost everything.

Anonymous said...

I'm totally fascinated by all of this. Now I feel really sad for the Extreme Makeover Home Edition people, because most of them have no money to begin with (which is usually why they're on the show in the first place), and how in the hell are they ever going to pay for those kind of taxes? Yikes! Do they get the floor models, too? "Reality" TV is so weird.