New York found in the headlines - Project Runway: It's up to you, New York!

New York

That about covers it. Also, some dude named" Seth Aaron" broke one of the beds, I guess to prove he shouldn't be messed with. He's also dressed like Tommy Lee, in his post-Motley Crue, post-Pamela Anderson, post-Hepatitis C look. (Now that I think about it, can you really be post-Hepatitis C? I bet Tommy and Pam are hoping so.) 

Up on the rooftop, HeidiBot 3000, the most fertile and beautiful cyborg German scientists have ever created, welcomes our crew and proposes a toast of champagne to welcome us back to NYC.

"I'm pregnant, so I'll be having apple cider," Heidi says. Of course you are, honey. I should mention she's wearing another leopard print, her go-to outfit for last season. Say what you will about her, but the woman loves draping herself in the essence of jungle cats.

Tim Gunn is looking fabulous, as expected. I shouldn't even have to say that. But I will. As the only person to retain his dignity from Season 6, Tim is owed that much.

During the small talk, one of the designers, Emilio, mentions he's from New York. Heidibot 3000's super hearing mechanism immediately picks up on this.

"This used to be my town too," Heidi laments.

Yeah, it's a shame someone held a gun to your head and made you and the Weinsteins move the show to Los Angeles, or forced you to pick designers who were attractive, but bad at actually making clothes, which destroyed the show's aesthetic and made us feel like you'd sacrificed its soul to the Evil Goddess Lifetimeus.

We won't get too deep into any of the contestants just yet, although I will say that I was a bit taken aback by the fact that they gave Ben -- a designer from Tampa who looks like he's from Eastern Europe -- subtitles when he spoke, even though he seemed to be speaking perfect English. I'm no expert, but I'm going to assume that's racist, Heidi.

The challenge this week is to design an outfit from some fabrics you found in Central Park. Project Runway and Mood have made this easy, however, by leaving reams and reams of fabrics around in Central Park, within about 15 feet of one another. I'm not even sure why they bothered to go to CP if they weren't going to make this interesting. Were the producers sitting around thinking, "So, we have a really tight budget, but we need something that is really NEW YORK to make everyone forget about last season's disaster. Hey, how about going to The Park?"

They could have at least thrown in a twist: Design an outfit inspired by someone sleeping in Central Park. Alas, no.

There is a lot of running and screaming when Tim tells the designers to grab as much fabric as they can in three minutes, but not nearly enough cat fighting. Seriously, Project Runway, if you really wanted to win back my heart, someone should have been pushed in the pond during this challenge. Now you're just going to have to earn it.

At the end of the challenge, one of the desingers, Ping, who is from China by way of Chicago, waves a huge swatch of red fabric around, almost like it's the Chinese Communist flag. I think Glenn Beck just had aneurysm.

Back in the workroom, our fearless designers get to work, some of them on HP TouchSmart Notebooks, which is a new twist this year. Project Runway lurching forward into the new century! How this is better than a sketch book, I have no idea, but he designers all feign enthusiasm because product placement is essentially these days when running a low budget reality show.

"If you choose to use them, please do!" says Tim Gunn, in a bizarre bit of Orwelian NewSpeak.

Ok Tim, I'm on board, but only because someone has to pay for your tie budget.

Is it just me, or does this episode have about 200 commercials? My TiVo seems exhausted. I feel like I've seen about six minutes of actual content, and 30 mins of original Lifetime programing starring Thora Birch about teenagers forming a pregnancy pact. Based on a true story! (I bet Heidi put them up to it, btw.)

Not much interesting happens in the workroom, except for the fact that a designer named Anthony quickly emerges as this season's comic relief. On the "Just how gay is he?" scale of 1-to-10, he's an obvious 12, which is awesome. It takes a lot of gay to Out Gay everyone on Project Runway, but already Anthony has established himself as my favorite personality of the young season.

"Oh my! I'm sweating like a Baptist preacher!" Anthony says.

Ping, in a predictable twist, is clearly going to be this season's eccentric but talented weirdo. Tim Gunn questions why she's wearing the outfit she's designing, and when she confesses that she didn't have dress form growing up, it oddly makes sense.

Emilio doesn't even have a top done and we're less than eight hours from the Runway Show, which gives Tim and opportunity to lecture Emilio on how "no one has ever not finished an outfit in the history of Project Runway." I think this is a bit of selective memory on Tim's part. I think we all recall when crazy Angela sent a model down the runway with a scarf stuffed under a jacket in Season 3 because she totally bombed a shirt.

Time to skip ahead to the runway show. Guess who's back, suckas? Oh hellz yes, it's Michael Kors and Nina Garcia. They sure better be rested and ready for maximum snark after phoning it in all last season. Somewhere, Zoe Glassner weeps, I'm certain.

Ruining my fun somewhat is the fact that Nicole Richie is the guest judge this week. Heidi describes her in her introduction as a "television personality" who is "getting ready to launch her new line." That's a bit more generous than how I would have introduced her: the adopted daughter of Lionel Richie who was best known for being a talentless socialite and former heroin addict until she was impregnated twice by the lead singer of Good Charlotte, a pop-punk Green Day rip off band.

Let's skip straight to the meat of things, shall we? Emilio's dress came together beautifully. A designer named Jesus appears to have put together his look with Sharon Stone in mind, and not the "Basic Instinct" Sharon Stone. More like the leather-wearing, eyes-glassed-over, headed-for-rehab Sharon Stone. His dress is so tight, I'm pretty I saw the outline of the models kidneys. Ping's tornado of fabric, I think, was inspired by the garbage heap on Fraggle Rock. And yet, it's not that bad. I'm totally blown away by this.

Christiane, a designer from Los Angeles who is originally from Ivory Coast, has pulled together something that Paula Abdul would wear. I don't mean this as a compliment. It's bad. A designer named Janeane puts together a simple black top and a skirt with pleats in the front. I like it, but my wife thinks it's hideous and since she still have pregnancy hormones pulsing through her, I nod my head and pretend I hate it too.

My man Anthony did not exactly nail it, presenting a dress that looks sort of like someone has stitched a satchel to his model's hip where she hide  a loaf of French bread if she needed to smuggle it out of the store. (But who am I kidding? Models don't eat bread. I meant watercress.) Michael later describes it as a way for her to "steal champagne bottles at a garden party." Damn you Michael Kors for writing lines more clever than I. Where were you last year when Lindsay Lohan was passed out in her chair, mumbling about Nicolas' brilliance?

All the other designers are fairly unremarkable, except for Seth Aaron, who has put together a nice little punk rock plaid dress with a cool back. I could see Nicole Richie in this outfit, if she put on 30 pounds.

 In the end, Emilio earns a well-deserved victory, and Christiane gets sent home, just edging out Jesus' Sharon Stone stripper outfit. (I was so unmoved by the whole thing, I'm not even going to do my usual gag about scary music and tension mounting. But just know that the music was scary, and the tension was not.)

 I'm not sure Christiane was the worst designer by a long stretch, but she was boring and bad in the first challenge. If you're going to be bad in the first challenge, you need to be memorable. She just didn't create a character for herself. Essentially, if you stab someone with a needle in the workroom, your chances of staying are better than if you're boring.

Until next week, gang! 

 

Photo: Project Runway promotional handout

Does anyone know a good auto insurance company new york that doesnt charge hundreds of dollars?

i just moved to new york, and i plan on bringing my car our here only if i can afford the car insurace a month i pay no more than 170 a month in california , and im not planning on paying any more in nyc >>so if anyone knows of a company that has good prices please let me know>>>thanks!

Sphere NYC Haitians Reel From News of Earthquake

NYC

NEW YORK (Jan. 13) – They say not knowing is the worst part. For New York City's Haitian population, many of whom still cannot get in touch with relatives in Haiti, the stress is overwhelming.

At the Bedford Haitian Community Center in Crown Heights, Brooklyn, this morning, employees were on the phone trying to get through to relatives with no success. "It is stressful," said Maidjine Bataille, a 27-year-old native of Haiti who has a great-grandmother, grandmother, half sister, cousin, uncle and aunt still living there. "It's like you don't know what's going on, who's alive, who's dead."

Throughout the city's Haitian community the message was the same. Few people had been able to contact family in Port-au-Prince, and as images of devastation poured through television screens, fear and anxiety grew.

"Everybody's worried because we don't know, deeply, we don't know what the damage is," said Joseph Dormeus, executive director of the Bedford center. "Physically we see the damage on the house, on the building, but we don't know how many people that are dead."

Dormeus said the community center was open late Tuesday night as people gathered to try to call family. This morning people came again, some in tears, trying in vain to get news of their family members. By late morning the seven people who remained, mostly employees, watched scenes of destruction on the news and on YouTube.

"We have not been able to digest what's going on because the news has been scattered," said Samuel Barthelemy, who has lived in the United States for 40 years. "I hardly got any sleep because my younger son is in Haiti and I couldn't get any news."

Barthelemy, 62, works at the Haitian Centers Council in Flatbush. He was one of the few who finally did make contact with family when he received an e-mail this morning saying his 13-year-old son was safe.

His co-worker, Dr. Marie Pierre-Louis, was another one of the rare lucky ones. She had been in Haiti for the holidays and got back to New York on Sunday. She managed to speak with her 93-year-old father, who lives alone in Port-au-Prince, and her sister right after the earthquake Tuesday evening.

The news they had could have been much worse. Her brother-in-law had hurt a few fingers and had a gash in his head. She had just enough time to tell them where she had left some gauze before they were cut off.

"I try all of them and keep trying and keep trying," Pierre-Louis said. But since last night, she has not had any news.

Her brother has fared far worse. His wife works in a government ministry in Port-au-Prince and he has not heard any news from her. Pierre-Louis said he is "going nuts."

Pierre-Louis also has a blind uncle she has no news of, and her son can't get in touch with his girlfriend.

Stories just like these are the norm today. And though many woke up and went to work this morning, disbelief and shock have consumed many of New York's Haitians, who are used to dealing with hurricanes on their island nation, but rarely earthquakes.

Haitian President René Préval told reporters today that the destruction from the 7.0-magnitude quake was "unimaginable" and that he was now homeless himself. Early unofficial estimates place the death toll in the thousands.

Dormeus of the Bedford center said he hoped the aftershocks would stop. "A continuation, the way I see it, will be the end of Port-au-Prince," he said, adding that the devastation there will damage the rest of the country, which relies heavily on the capital.

The idea that Port-au-Prince will never be the same added to the shock and disbelief in New York.

"It will never be the way it was when I grew up," Pierre-Louis said. "Port-au-Prince as we know it won't exist anymore."

What would be the fastest way to get from New Jersey to the New York Public Library in Manhattan?

Also probably the fastest that's the least expensive. I was assuming driving to Staten Island and taking the ferry and then a bus uptown would be the better of the ways. Any other suggestions?

Mayor Bloomberg's House Is Fair Game for Protest, Fans of Public Schools Say: I'm sure we must all feel sulky

New York City

     MANHATTAN (CN) - Activists say New York City unfairly denied them a permit to demonstrate in front of Mayor Michael Bloomberg's house to protest his support of a policy that could close 22 public schools.

     Bloomberg declared himself a "strong supporter" of charter schools, which the students, parent and teacher plaintiffs say "have generally denied parents meaningful involvement in their children's school affairs, denied teachers the right to unionize and often have worked to the detriment of the education of students."

     In their federal complaint, the plaintiffs say that under Bloomberg's plan, "There are approximately 22 schools currently slated to be closed, at least in part to make way for charter schools, including secondary schools with longstanding ties to the communities in which they are located."

     The Department of Education will convene a 13-member Panel for Educational policy to vote on the 22 closings on Jan. 26.

     The activists say they planned to protest in front of the mayor's house before the vote, on Jan 21, but the city denied them a permit.

     "Unlike previous New York City mayors, Mayor Bloomberg lives in a five-story townhouse on the north side of East 79th Street between Fifth Avenue and Madison Avenue, rather than the Gracie Mansion," according to the complaint.

Though there is a space near Gracie Mansion commonly used by protesters, the city has barred the plaintiffs from gathering near Bloomberg's house. The students, parent and teacher say that Bloomberg's house is fair game because it has been used for fund raisers, meetings with political leaders and receptions for visiting dignitaries.

     They say the NYPD allowed people to protest the closing of a firehouse in front of Bloomberg's house in the summer of 2003. And they add that demonstrations have been permitted in front of the homes of former Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau, former New York City Fire Department Commissioner Nicholas Scoppetta and State Senator Carl Kruger.

     The plaintiffs say New York City has violated First and Fourteenth Amendments.

     They are represented by Norman Siegel, formerly of the NYCLU.