rumors

A highly-placed, design-savvy little birdie has told us that the next episode (that's #6) of Project Runway will involve a chocolicious designer challenge. Our source reports that the regal and charming Tim Gunn will give the remaining 11 contestants all the details on a trip to the Hershey's Times Square megastore at 48th and Broadway, the "16-floor candy spectacular" that teems with people from all over the world buying candy that is available not only in their own hometowns but also at any drug store and bodega in Manhattan. Meanwhile, we're taking bets on: Who will make the first Willy Wonka reference? Does Tim Gunn like chocolate? Will Mood run out of dark brown fabric? Will they be able to interpret non-chocolate Hershey's products, because we think Rami could do a lot with a Twizzlers theme (think of the ruching!)? Tune in to Bravo tonight at 10pm to find out.

UPDATE: Alas, it turns out that we'll have to wait until 2008 for the next episode of Bravo's Project Runway. But look on the bright side: now you have a couple of weeks to ponder what designer Elisa Jimenez might do with an unlimited supply of Reese's Pieces.

We can't verify anything just yet, but Jean Snow has up an interesting, very short post talking about rumors that Kidrobot will soon be opening up a retail store in Tokyo. That would make their fourth store, following New York, LA and San Francisco. We hunted around on the Kidrobot message boards some, but couldn't dig anything up, so, for now, we'll just take Snow's ever-good word for it. That'll be a nice setup for them, seeing as that's where the big designer toy movement first started.

We're hearing whispers tonight that that Amid Capeci, art director of Rolling Stone, is heading back to Newsweek, where he'll be replacing Lynn Staley. Yes, that's the same Lynn Staley who gave us the Best Baby Poop Quote of the Week. More information after we dispatch our UnBeige informats.

So Alex Gorlin runs into Fat Joe at the Gorlin at Aqua Miami Beach and Fat Joe says:

I know you, you are the "Gorlin." What's it like to have designed the building, live in it, and have it named after you?

Whoa.

Today's ramping up to be a chock-full-o'-gossip day. First Brad. Then, news of Ralph's defection to Hong Kong. Now, our frenemies at the Gutter (feeling a little snippy today, guys?) have got the full story, the whole scoop, the entire shebang. Their answer to our question:

Which Ralph Lerner lost his job as dean of the architecture school at Princeton several years ago when he attempted to cover up a nasty sex scandal? A professor was trolling for undergrads--quel horreur--and when one tasty trollee approached Ralph, he advised her to keep quiet or face the consequences. So old school. She went straight to the university admin. He's on his way into exile.

Damn.

We heart Brad. And although we felt a little twinge for Jen when he dumped her for the newer, hotter, (albeit slightly weirder) Angelina, we totally understand wanting an upgrade.

So we were a little shocked to see he's upgraded himself right out of Frank's hair. From Newsweek, via our Gutter-living frenemies:

Newsweek: Just to digress for a moment, there's been quite a bit in the press about how Brad Pitt is really into architecture and is working with you on a big seafront residential development in Britain. Is that true?

FOG: We were--I don't know if we are any more--working in Brighton, England, and the guys at Brighton knew I knew Brad Pitt and knew he was interested in architecture. And they asked me if he would like to participate and design the bar, or an apartment or something. So I called him and asked him and he said maybe. And he came by the office and looked at it, and somebody here took a picture of him leaning over the model next to me. I don't know how it got into the press. My guys didn't do it. Somebody took that picture--he must have sent it to somebody or we must have inadvertently sent it to somebody. From that day, I've never heard from him.

Newsweek: You've never heard from him?

FOG: Never. [Laughs.]

Yeah, Frank. It's funny. Until it hurts.

We caught this yesterday from our frenemies at the Gutter, but weren't sure enough of their follow-through abilities to trust that they were actually going to go through with an entire week of single-answer blind items. Today, it looks like they are. We have to confess that it's with a very large grudge that we send any of our multitudinous traffic their way. Crackhead Hemingway (who, us?) is one thing. But this?? It's not right.

Still, our collective type a.5 personalities are just reveling in our know-it-all-ness. The answer's in our addled history.

Seems gossip is everywhere. We've been party to it ourselves, way back, before we got paid to do it, and after. We called it sieving, but only when it was responsible. Today, kids, we're up against a moral wall. There's a blind item over at our still-not-responding-to-our-softball-request counterparts at The Gutter, and we just have to reproduce it for our own solipsistic pleasure. We know the answer, and as the Times pointed out on Monday, sometimes just knowing isn't enough -- you have to share.

Knowing that your boss is cheating on his wife, or that a sister-in-law has a drinking problem or a rival has benefited from a secret trust fund may be enormously important, and in many cases change a person's behavior for the better.

"We all know people who are not calibrated to the social world at all, who if they participated in gossip sessions would learn a whole lot of stuff they need to know and can't learn anywhere else, like how reliable people are, how trustworthy," said Sarah Wert, a psychologist at Yale. "Not participating in gossip at some level can be unhealthy, and abnormal."

We can't full-on sieve this one, but look out. The hints are uber alles.

What G.O.M. of the profession, then living out of a trailer adjacent to a certain name-brand project, once asked a junior female member of his staff to deliver a package to him chez trailer. In the middle of the day. She rang. He answered. Naked. She fled. We hear it happened more than once.

The answer is eating us alive. Please, help us absolve.

We're hardly blog strangers to the closest counterpart we've been able to find in our gossip-addled approach to the ludicrous world of design we somehow found ourselves smack-dab in the middle of, but we'll confess to being a little put out by an Architectural Record article on The Gutter, only because it just kinda makes us feel a little chopped liver. And we're only one-sixteenth into that.

The anonymous "guttersniper," as the blogger has named him or herself, has covered more happenings (mostly in New York) than most design publications, and often digs up dirt on commissions, oddities, personal gaffes, and outrages sent by sources in the field. Recent subjects for ridicule have included New York Times architecture critic Nicolai Ourousoff (who the sniper calls "Big Nic"), Daniel Libeskind (the site said his recent Ground Zero editorial in the Times "gave hubris a bad name"), Frank Gehry (called a "developer's bitch"), and New York's last-minute Olympic stadium plan in Queens ("Welcome to Atlanta").

"Big Nic." Wow. Now that is a hella large amount of smack. But "hubris" for Danny? Please. Gehry a "bitch?" Weak. And we're not even gonna go to Atlanta.

We've noticed it's softball season. Guttersniper/s, we invite you to play.

Even if it weren't fast just turning into Reader Participation Day, we'd still just be in the mood to share. And now, we're sharing our pathos. These are the qeustions that have been keeping us up at night, for real, on our freon-soaked mattress as our stolen airconditioner spits god-knows-what black crumbs onto our ever-dwindling hoard of Haribo. We can fix all those things, but we can't fix our wonder. Please, help us, so we can help ourselves.

Are Paul and David Lewis twins?

Do Peter and Cynthia post-structurally pillowtalk?

Why is too much still never enough?

We can handle the truth, we swear.