Manhattan Offender

There were a bunch of us together one night and the crowd thinned out to some close friends. There was this gap in the conversation where you recognize that you all want to hang out longer, but suddenly no one is saying something. Out of the blue J throws out a sure winner: "So, Rod. Do you have an opinion about the Project Runway finale."

See, J knows what kind of result this will get from me. A beery spit-take, because, holy shit, "Project Runway had a whole season?" I'm thinking that if there was a Project Runway season I would have heard something about it. Someone would have mentioned it on Facebook or something, wouldn't they?

So anyway, a week or two passes, and I'm looking for an alternative to Netflix and Amazon Instant and I'm tooling around on the Roku and I find Lifetime Television and I'm thinking, "Oh, yeah, why not?" The filler was skipped and I skipped to the finale. Here is what I learned:

The finalists were one obvious winner and two other people. One lady would be cool to do mushrooms with if we were out in the desert, but probably not in an urban environment. The black gay dude is about as interesting as reading junk mail. The other lady is the obvious winner. None of them are from New York like that one that was little and emotional and that one that kinda sexy but had a boyfriend or that one I had over that one summer afternoon that had a stubbly chest and I was kinda skeeved but bored and horny so whatever until I was like, no, really, I'm done hanging, buddy. Anyway, I think you need that New York ambition represented to keep things interesting.
Michael Kors was the special guest judge and he was apparently replaced by Zac Posen whose butt I wanna see as he's running out of our beach cottage in some small Costa Rican surf town for a quick skinny dip in calm morning sea. He's looking back with a winking smile that's projecting telepathically, "Get out here. It's a beautiful day!"
Nina Garcia wasn't as interesting as my friends when they used to imitate Nina Garcia which they don't do anymore.
Heidi Klum looks like a Suzanne Somers character in a movie where a prostitute gets old and goes crazy. Don't get me wrong. On her, it's fucking amazing. Or maybe not. I really just don't know what I'm looking at. Is this fashion?
There is celebrity commentary after the runway show from Kristin Chenowith, Marilu Henner, and Sammi (whom you of course remember from MTV's Jersey Shore). There were others but I was typing this and forgot who they were.
None of the collections were draw-jopping, but they were all saleable at Lord & Taylor. Which makes me think about Lord & Taylor and how they need to start working up their brand name with a really strong private label program and shore up their online operation. Everyone with whom I've ever discussed this agrees that it is one of the worst handled brands in American history. It's a great name in what was once a beautiful store filled with crap you can buy in a Cincinnati outlet mall.
The obvious winner whom you will recognize as such the very second you have seen her does win and it's obvious.

And that is it. That is all I learned. I didn't learn anything about fashion or technique or business or people or anything at all. It did put in motion some thoughts about the type of blog I used to have, and how I've been frozen about putting up new posts now after taking time to put some meat on the bones of some fiction stuff.

See, my voice changed over time. There was this horrid needy desire for readership that sort of worked and sort of didn't. There won't be much mention of current trends or "things we can all agree upon". This is probably going to be advertiser unfriendly. This will be a love letter seeking some other atheist, vegan, gay, liberal, business-minded, lazy activist, psychedelics-enthusiast who enjoys good times. It will be a public apology. It will be different than what it was. The site needs a makeover, but for now it's about the writing. Style follows form follows content. And yeah, let's keep the Manhattan Offender. It's about evolution in the land of the ever-changing.

Okay. Back in business.

Four years and five months is quite a long time to pursue any venture, and, like many, it's time for this venture to close out. Four years and six months ago my father died. While on an Indiana-bound plane, the whim of writing popped into my head, thinking about how Dad had made life work out for him. He grew up loving boating and by his last day he had travelled the world by water, even racing speedboats competitively at one point. I wanted to do more with what I love, and I love stories.

My stories are the little ones. Something I saw out on the street or heard from friends or noticed as ignored in the larger media was what I tried to throw down in the entries here. Long posts, short posts, picture posts, poems, videos, songs. The resulting melange has been any number of things at different times, but it's always just been a reflection of me.

While this venture ends,others are starting. There's the screenplay project that has been stalled in my brain for two months. There are pitches started that remain unfinished or unsent to some surprising places. There's a "big secret super-gay project" for which work has already begun and for which I'm incredibly excited. And there's life. And work. And my family and friends, who, sweetbabyjesus, just have no idea how much I marvel in them.

As ever, I'm humbled and thankful that you visited. This is the way the blog ends, and I continue.

(Image via Go Above.)