Fab Finger Puppets

We recently acquired Beatles Rock Band, so we've been listening to/playing lots of Beatles music. And that's led to Jo asking lots of questions about these guys (she was really sad to learn that two are dead) so we've started watching The Beatles Anthology. Now I'm thinking we may need to get this set of extremely cool Beatles finger puppets. Aren't they fab?

Available from Pintassilgo Prints.

Why only independent booksellers are punished for breaking strict laydown dates

Unless you're a bookseller or work in publishing, you might be scratching your head over that headline. What I'm talking about today is the absolutely unfair and ridiculous policy publishers have of holding small, independent bookstores to rigid rules about when books can and cannot be sold, while simultaneously allowing the chains and discount wholesalers to repeatedly break the same rules without recompense.

First, some definition of terms. A laydown date is the day a book is scheduled to officially go on sale. Bookstores usually get books shipped to them before their laydown dates, which only makes sense. That way, they can put the book on tables first thing in the morning (or at midnight sales, in some rare cases) the day a book officially goes on sale.

Most books--like mine, for example--do not have strict laydown dates. That is, my books have official pub dates, but if a bookstore got their shipment of The Brooklyn Nine a few days in advance of its pub date, there was no publisher restriction against them putting it out whenever they wanted to. That's why my books begin showing up on bookstore shelves around my pub date--sometimes before, sometimes after. There's no urgency, so there's no hard and fast rule.

The biggest lead titles usually get strict laydown dates. Lead titles are the big books a publisher is pushing that season, the ones they're backing with the most promotional dollars, bookseller co-op, and buzz. (Co-op is a whole other deal, best saved for its own post.) These are the authors they hope sell hundreds of thousands of copies. Biggies like Stephen King, J.K. Rowling, Dan Brown, John Grisham, Rick Riordan--they get strict laydown dates. Sometimes unknown or lesser-known authors will also get this treatment too, if the publisher feels a book has breakout potential.

The whole reason for strict laydown dates is to prevent stores who get their books first from putting them out and getting a jump on the competition. It's supposed to ensure that each and every bookstore has an equal chance at drawing customers in to buy the big releases.

To enforce strict laydown dates, publishers send out affidavits to bookstores which dictate what a book's official on-sale date is, and what the penalties are for selling the books in advance of that date.

Here's some of the language from a typical affidavit. I've changed the name of the book, on-sale date, and publisher, but the rest of the language is the same:

The Great American Novel official on-sale date is Wednesday, November 11, 2009 at 12:01 a.m.

It is absolutely imperative you abide by the national on-sale date of November 11, 2009. If you receive your copies prior to November 11, 2009, you must ensure that these books and audios are kept secure and not placed on the selling floor, sold, distributed, or leave your secure environment prior to the on-sale date. This agreement covers the hardcover, GLB, boxed set, and audio editions plus any and all prepacks and corrugation that includes any one of a combination of these items. This includes distribution to your staff and distribution of complimentary copies. To be shipped prior to the on-sale date, orders received by Harper Penguin House must be in carton quantities.

All distributors, suppliers, RDCs, retailers, and online retailers, as a part of our terms of sale, are expected to enforce this policy with all of their retail customers and locations.

[Bolding and underlining all theirs.]

The language goes on to say in more detail what was just said above. It requires everyone connected with distribution of the book to sign copies of the affidavit, which will then be returned to the publisher. That doesn't mean individual booksellers, just managers along the way--particularly in the case of large chains or retailers who will handle the delivery of the books from publisher to shelf in stages. I'll skip all that. Here's more:

The earliest ship date allowed to an individual consumer will be Tuesday, November 10, 2009. No consumer may receive the books and audios prior to November 11, 2009.

And here's the kicker:

Any violation of the on-sale date will result in Harper Penguin House's refusal to early ship your account any further Harper Penguin House new release titles for a period of up to 12 months. Instead, the new title releases will ship after the titles' original on-sale date. Harper Penguin House intends to monitor this important laydown closely. We appreciate your complete cooperation.

Did you catch that? If you sell the book before the laydown date, the publisher will withhold the shipping on ALL of their new releases for an entire year until after the books have come out. That's a serious punishment. Every one of your competitors will have brand new, lead title books on tables the day they go on sale, while you...well, you'll get the books when the publisher gets around to sending them to you, well after the pub date. When people come in looking for those brand new books, you'll have to turn them--and those sales--away.

Independent bookstores, as a rule, are very careful about strict laydown dates.That year of withheld lead titles are sales they cannot afford to lose. The chains and big box retailers, however? Well, they're often not so careful.

First, logistically, it's difficult for the one person in New York or Bentonville who promised not to sell books before their pub date to make sure the hundreds or thousands of store managers under their purview don't open those boxes when they come in and throw the books up on the shelf ahead of a strict laydown date. Sometimes, these stores put the books out without even understanding what an on-sale date is. Yes, it's the company's job to make sure everyone from the board room down to the stock room understands that, but realistically, it can't always happen that way. So accidents happen.

Now, is it ever deliberate? Do some store managers ever put books ahead of time to capitalize on sales, figuring nobody else in Jackson, Tennessee, say, is going to notice? Probably. And if they're caught, they can plead ignorance, or accident. I don't want to get too rabid here and claim coordinated conspiracy, but I can't think every report is an accident.

And there are a lot of reports. It seems like a couple of time a year, reports surface about big retailers selling or shipping books before their strict laydown dates. Take this article about Wal-Mart jumping pub dates from Tuesday's PW Daily, for example:

For years, independent booksellers have complained that a few individual big box retailers have offered Harry Potter and other bestsellers before the publisher’s on-sale date. Now it looks like Wal-Mart may have jumped release dates for its online operation. When the retailing behemoth began offering books on its Web site for $8.98 a few weeks ago, Dean Swift, who opened Swift Books in Orangeburg, S.C., in May, decided to see if Wal-Mart would honor its advertised discount plus free shipping. It did.

But Swift was in for a different surprise. Although Stephen King’s Under the Dome releases today, his two copies arrived on Saturday, ditto for Linda Howard’s Ice. Walmart.com also shipped some of the books which released last Tuesday, November 3, several days early. For example, Swift’s two copies of J.D. Robb’s Kindred in Death arrived on Saturday October 31.

Surprise, surprise. Again, I'm sure the retailer in this case can (and will) claim accident. "Ah, it was a computer error! Those books weren't meant to ship early. Our apologies!" So, accident or not, what punishment will Wal-Mart suffer?

Absolutely none.

Again, surprise, surprise. Scribner and Ballantine, owned by Simon & Schuster and Random House, respectively, undoubtedly have loads of signed affidavits from Wal-Mart honchos agreeing not to sell or ship these books in advance of the pub dates. So, they're both going to withhold all their new lead titles with strict laydown dates from Wal-Mart for the next 12 months, right?

Not on your life. Because as much as Wal-Mart enjoys those sales, Simon & Schuster and Random House need them. Desperately. Take away the sales that Wal-Mart generates, and I dare say the houses might go under. (That's an uninformed outsider's guess, but the enormous impact of big box discount sales cannot be denied.) So of course they're not going to punish Wal-Mart by withholding titles. They'd be punishing themselves even worse.

Now, what happens if Malaprop's Bookstore in Asheville, NC, one of our favorite indies, gets caught putting those two books up for sale two or three days in advance? Or Little Shop of Stories, another of our favs in Decatur, GA, gets caught selling the new Rick Riordan book ahead of time? You guessed it--down comes the hammer. Why? Well, they signed that affidavit, didn't they? They promised to make sure those books weren't sold in advance of their pub dates.

But more importantly, the publishers don't need the sales of one independent bookstore. Not like they need the sales of every Wal-Mart in the country. One indie can be punished; an entire chain cannot.

And so we have yet another story about a major retailer breaking strict laydown dates. Wow. Stop the presses. The indies abide by strict laydowns religiously for fear of losing valuable business, while the chains and big box discount stores flaunt them repeatedly with impunity. Let's call it like it is: the effectiveness of affidavits to keep the playing field level is a joke, and it will continue to be a joke until the publishers hold the major retailers accountable.

Just don't hold your breath.

Is it plagiarism to use real quotes in poetry and fiction?

There's a very interesting piece in Monday's London Times about a poet who is accused of plagiarism by a non-fiction writer. Part of the poet's defense of his appropriation: So what? Shakespeare did it all the time.

The non-fiction writer, Ben Shephard, is the author of A War of Nerves, which examines the psychological effects of warfare on soldiers. The poet is Sir Andrew Motion, who was asked to write a poem about war veterans for The Guardian newspaper. What Sir Andrew did was to read Mr. Shepherd's book and take quotes from it--things soldiers said--and rework them into lines in his poem. Here are some examples, per The Times:

From A War of Nerves by Ben Shephard (2000):
“War from behind the lines is a dizzying jumble. Revolving chairs, stuffy offices, dry as dust reports . . .”
“marching men with grimy faces and shining eyes . . .”
“bloody clothes and leggings lying outside the door of a field hospital . . .”
“I have been in the front line so long, seen many things . . .”

From An Equal Voice by Andrew Motion (2009):
“War from behind the lines is a dizzy jumble. Revolving chairs, stuffy offices, dry as dust reports . . .”
“marching men with sweat-stained faces and shining eyes . . .”
“bloody clothes and leggings outside the canvas door of a field hospital . . .”
“I have been away too long and seen too many things . . .”

Sir Andrew calls it "found poetry." Mr. Shepherd calls it something else. "Of the 152 lines in An Equal Voice, all but 16 are taken directly from A War of Nerves," Shepherd says. "There is a word for this. It begins with ‘p’ and it isn’t poetry."

More from The Times:

Motion described his poem An Equal Voice as a stitching together of voices of shell-shocked people, from a variety of sources, into “a poem by them, orchestrated by me”.


But Shephard said: “What Motion actually stitched together were 17 passages from my book A War of Nerves: the ‘voices from a variety of sources’ were not ‘found’ by Motion, but by myself. Of the poem’s eight stanzas, five consist entirely of material from A War of Nerves, very slightly rejigged; in the remaining three stanzas, extracts from the book sit alongside reworked passages from Siegfried Sassoon — the only other source used. Of the 152 lines in An Equal Voice, all but 16 are taken directly from A War of Nerves. There is a word for this. It begins with ‘p’ and it isn’t poetry.

“There is a further issue. My work can be lazily ripped off like this, without any recompense — what did The Guardian pay Motion for copying out my research? Yet every time I quote a line of poetry in a book, I have to pay. As most of the words here are not Andrew Motion’s — the entire first stanza, for example, is taken almost unaltered from a letter written by the American psychiatrist Thomas W. Salmon in 1917; I could list the generals, psychiatrists and soldiers whose words provide the rest of the poem — it would be obscene if Motion’s estate claimed copyright on this material. If a poet’s words are not his own, why should anyone pay to use them?

“And the poem itself? In War of Nerves I warned that it would be all too easy, given the nature of the subject matter, to take material out of context and ‘pull together a collage of horror and pathos’. Andrew Motion has now done exactly that.”

Sir Andrew's response is surly and defiant:

“He doesn’t get it, does he?”, the poet said of Shephard. “This is ridiculous. He has got completely the wrong end of the stick. To blow off about it like he has done completely misunderstands what found poetry is. It has a long pedigree, which he seems not to be aware of."


This long and honourable tradition, the poet explained, involved quoting or rearranging existing texts to alter their emphasis. He cited Ruth Padel’s book based on the writings of her great-great-grandfather Charles Darwin, work by James Fenton and Anthony Thwaite’s dramatic monologues in Victorian Voices.

Shakespeare’s Antony and Cleopatra borrowed whole passages from Sir Thomas North’s Life of Mark Antony he said, including the description of her barge: “The poop was beaten gold; purple the sails . . .”

The poem's title, "An Equal Voice," was also taken from Shephard's book--but Sir Andrew ran an attribution for that with the poem in The Guardian. It appears it was never his intention to disguise the sources for his material.

So which is it? Found poetry, or plagiarism? I've taken quotes--things real people said--from non-fiction research and put them into the mouths of my own characters. But I've never tried to pass them off as my own work in narrative passages. In Samurai Shortstop, in particular, I remember reading the comment of an early Japanese critic of baseball that it was a dishonest sport that encouraged 'stealing' bases, and I put those words in the mouth of Sotaro. I didn't see this as plagiarism--they were things someone real once said, and now they were things my characters were saying in their stead. When I wrote a play based on a mine disaster in 1902 in Fratersville, Tennessee, I made a point of using some of the trapped miner's own words--which they wrote on paper to their loved ones--verbatim in the play.

On that score, I agree with Sir Andrew--I was extrapolating from found non-fiction material to create a work of fiction. But I think Mr. Shephard makes a very interesting point when he asks if the poet's estate can now claim copyright on that work--can Sir Andrew now charge anyone who wishes to excerpt his poem, when he himself excerpted those pieces--for free!--from another source?

Ah, the murky world of copyright and fair use. What say you? Plagiarism, or found poetry?

Handmade Rocks

Um. . . is it weird that I'm completely in love with these felted stones covered with crocheted lichen? I think they're just gorgeous. See more goodness at Elin Art on Etsy. And thanks to Sweet Sweet Life for the link.

Suffering from crossover fatigue?

I love this ad on the back of Abe Sapien: The Haunted Boy. Dark Horse Comics is promoting nine of its fall titles as one-shot stories you can buy without having to worry about crossovers or continuing story lines. Crossovers--storylines that crossover from one comic title to one or more titles (often MANY more)--are one of the reasons I no longer collect the superhero comics I used to enjoy.

I got so tired of collecting a book--The Flash, say, or Wonder Woman--and finding three or four of the twelve yearly issues hijacked by the story occurring in some other book I didn't collect. That left me with a choice: buy the other books to understand the story, or suffer through (and pay for) months of meaningless story while I waited for normal continuity to be restored.

So I made the decision to just stop buying the comics. Now, if I want to read any of those stories, I wait for the trade paperbacks to come out. Yes, it's sometimes a year or more before these books come out. But it doesn't matter. I just stay away from the discussions about current continuity, and get to them when I can. (Much like watching a series on Netflix, rather than on cable.)

I understand why comics companies love crossovers--they want comics readers to buy ALL their comics, not just selected titles. But if the comics companies want to know why so many people are no longer collecting the monthly issues, they need to understand that some of us just aren't going to play that game. In the meantime, kudos to Dark Horse for realizing the backlash in the comics community to crossovers and producing comics you can read as stand-alones! Hit your local comics shop and give one of them a try.

Project Runway 6 - Episode 12 Preview

Four gals, one guy, and three tickets to Bryant Park

Here we are, kids. The last elimination challenge before Bryant Park. That's assuming we have a double elimination tonight, and not a last minute showdown in New York a la Rami and Chris from Season Four. Some of the faces we expected to be here. Others...well, they beat the odds. Now they have one last challenge to prove whether they belong at Fashion Week.

"It's for the professional woman who likes to parachute in to work."

First off, congrats are due to Althea, who takes home her second first-place finish. The Princess of Pantsuits now has five top three finishes, just one behind front-runner Irina and, surprisingly, tied for top three finishes with Carol Hannah. And Althea, like Irina and Carol Hannah, has never yet been on the bottom. With last week's win, Althea all but guaranteed herself a spot on the runway at Bryant Park. Only a meltdown as big as her hair would keep her from the finals.

The perfect look for a night on Broadway--
if you're a cast member of The Lion King.

Irina thought she had another first place finish in the bag herself, but it reminded Nina a little too much of a couch she once found herself on, and that was that. Irina, meanwhile, was a little miffed that Althea was aping her big sweater look. Yes, Irina stuck a flag in oversized sweaters and claimed it in the name of Irinastan, but as Uncle Nick said, you can't spend that much time in the same workroom and not begin to influence each other. And Irina didn't exactly invent the big-ass sweater-jacket. Still, it's that time in the competition where everybody starts to get a little more bitchy, and each of the designers is rightfully guarding very jealously what few tricks they still have up their oversized sweater-sleeves.

 "Logan stole my zipper collar, but I'm stealing
your baggy sweater thing, so we're even."

Irina came this close to actually respecting someone else on the show when she and Althea found something in common with their front-runner statuses. She might even have made a friend this past episode (of course, she's not here to make friends, natch) except that, well, she sort of called Althea out on the runway for stealing her big sweater look. Add that to Althea's good-girl guilt about being snarky (see her recent apology on Blogging Project Runway!) and you can almost see the footprints on Irina's scarf from Althea's hasty backpedaling.

"See, I thought I could add some feathers here, or some sequins, or
--oh hell, I don't know."

Carol Hannah did what she could to hang with the big dogs, putting together a cute little dress that many readers at Blogging Project Runway thought was the best look of the challenge. This was her hump to get over, her Waterloo, and she made it--though not without losing a little of her soul. How will she rebound next episode? We saw Shirin zapped of everything she had left and crash out after hitting the top three earlier. Will Carol Hannah follow suit?

 Next stop for this dress: Regretsy.

And Logan is finally out. We used up all our "rollover elimination" minutes in one week. How telling was it that each of the remaining six designers last week had at least one first place finish--except Logan. Not only did he not have a first place finish, he had never been in the top three. Worse, the dress selected as his best was his very first dress. The subtext was pretty clear: it was all downhill from there. That Logan lasted this long seems to us to be a combination of inconsistent judging, weak overall competition, and shiny pants. Shiny, shiny pants. Those shiny pants weren't enough to bail him out this time though, and finally the judging and the competition caught up with him.

 "Screw your courage to the sticking place, Christopher!"

Which leaves us with Christopher as the low man on the totem pole--even though Gordana's drab business suit was in more danger of going home. (And boy has Uncle Nick taken some heat for his Warsaw, Poland comment about it!) Christopher has clearly lost his mojo and isn't getting it back, despite our hopeful predictions for him along the way. Meanwhile his model, Katie, has turned into Lady Macbeth.

"Is this a tape dispenser which I see before me?"

We won't be surprised if Katie puts a dagger in Christopher's hand and tells him to sneak into the girls' room late at night.

But out, out, damn thoughts! It's time to rank the survivors on the Big Board of Shame™ ahead of their final showdown.

Irina: 25 points (Three 1st places, Two 2nd places, One 3rd place, Five safes)

Althea: 21 points (Two 1st places, One 2nd place, Two 3rd places, Six safes)
Carol Hannah: 20 points (One 1st place, Two 2nd places, Two 3rd places, Six safes)
Gordana: 7 points (One 1st place, One 2nd place, One 3rd place, Five safes, Two 3rd worsts, One 2nd worst)
Christopher: 0 points (One 1st place, Two 2nd places, Three safes, Two 3rd worsts, Three 2nd worsts)

--------------aufed--------------

Shirin: 8 points (One 1st place, One 3rd place, Six safes, One Auf)

Epperson: 6 points (One 2nd place, One 3rd place, Five safes, One Auf)

Ra'mon: 3 points (One 1st place, One 2nd place, Two safes, One 3rd worst, One Auf)
Nicolas: 0 points (One 1st place, One 2nd place, Four safes, Two 3rd worsts, One 2nd worst, One Auf)
Johnny: 0 points (One 2nd place, One 3rd place, One safe, One 3rd worst, One Auf)
Louise: -1 point (One 3rd place, Four safes, One 2nd worst, One Auf)
Malvin: -3 points (One safe, One Auf)
Ari: -4 points (One Auf)
Logan: -8 points (Six safes, Two 3rd worsts, Two 2nd worsts, One Auf)
Qristyl: -8 points (One safe, One 3rd worst, One 2nd worst, One Auf)
Mitchell: -10 points (Two 2nd worsts, One Auf)

Scoring: 1st place (4 pts), 2nd place (3 pts), 3rd place (2 pts), Safe (1 pt), 3rd worst (-2 pts), 2nd worst (-3 pts), Aufed (-4 pts)

 Annotated Big Board:

- For making it to the top six, Logan doesn't put in a very good showing on the Aufed board. He ranks just above Mitchell--and is tied with Qristyl for next to last. 'Nuff said.

- Irina: still here to chew gum and kick ass, still out of chewing gum.

- Althea edges past Carol Hannah for the number two spot on the Big Board, but it's neck and neck. Still, if everything holds true in the next challenge, there's really very little mystery about who we should see in the finale.

- Gordana ends up in the bottom two on the runway for the first time this season, and her phoenix-like rise comes crashing back down to earth. Gordana is finally learning to stand up for herself, but last week she didn't produce a look worth fighting for. Still, she's around at the end, which counts for something. Could she prove to be a surprise spoiler?

- Christopher isn't in the bottom two this week, but he still wasn't in the top. He's officially back to even now, ahead of whatever happens next...

* * * * * * * * * * *

SPOILER ALERT: As we point out each week, we don't have any prior knowledge of what's to come, other than (usually) the guest judge, (sometimes) a vague idea about the competition, and (occasionally) whatever preview videos Lifetime chooses to air. Using all these sources of public information, we make guesses about who will be in and who will be out. Often bad guesses but, (we hope!), fun ones. If you prefer to be surprised by this week's episode, why don't you break out that watercolor kit you bought a few years back and paint a portrait of Tim Gunn?

* * * * * * * * * * *

 

 Jail break!

It's time for a field trip, kiddies!

 

 "All right, Nina, let me explain it again. Schrödinger's cat illustrates
the paradox of the Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics..."

Cindy Crawford guest judges this episode, so the remaining designers head down to the giant Rooms To Go showroom in downtown LA to get inspiration from the "Cindy Crawford Home Collection":

"I see what she did here."

Wait. No. Cindy Crawford is the guest judge, but it's not Cindy's interior design chops that have her on the show this week--it's her expertise in pre-20th-century European paintings, drawings, and illuminated manuscripts. Instead of Rooms to Go, the designers are headed for The Getty Center, one of the nation's premier art museums. We're not sure how this art-museum-as-inspiration is much different from Season 4's "The Art of Fashion" challenge, but we'll allow that there are some mysteries of the universe still not revealed to us and let it go.

 

"You flash the security guard, and I'll grab the van Gogh."

The designers will be met there by their models, and possibly by the mayor of Los Angeles, Antonio Villaraigosa, who is not a fashion model. He's supposed to appear in the episode sometime, and The Getty's commanding view of downtown LA seems like a better bet for his appearance than the break room at FIDM.

One day each year the smog lifts and you can see all the way to San Diego.

Will the designers' final looks have to be worn to some big city soiree, or is the museum just for inspiration? Probably just the latter--although we haven't had a designers-and-models-on-the-town-together episode this season, which is surprising. And we're vetoing our own soft prediction last week that we'd see a return of the aufed designers--there isn't a whiff of them in the previews. It's the final five's time alone in the spotlight this week.

"I like dat it is gray."

Gordana finds inspiration in a scary painting...

 The Girl in the Fireplace

...Carol Hannah looks for inspiration up a chimney...

"What if I attached about thirty of these dongle things to a big poofy dress?"

...while Christopher communes with upholstery not designed by Cindy Crawford.

"I'm thinking about putting feather and sequins all over it."

Back in the workroom, Carol Hannah goes for a simple but striking silhouette.

 "Who ya gonna call?"

Irina goes for the Ghostbusters "I've been slimed!" look.

Pay no attention to the woman in the foreground...

And Althea, in the background behind Gordana, is making something glittery, gold, and diamond-y.

"Look, Tim. If I'm aufed, the entire state of Minnesota and parts
of northwestern Wisconsin are gonna go crazy and invade Canada."

But it's Christopher who has Tim completely befuddled. Part of it has to do with these:

Perhaps the Getty had a paper airplane exhibit going on back when the show was filming. Otherwise, we're not quite sure what's going on here. Neither is Tim. He calls them stalactites. When Christopher tries to explain ("They're going to be edged in...") Tim is only more confused. "Christopher...what!?" he blurts. It's a rare moment of discombobulation from the usually unflappable Mr. Gunn, and we can only think it spells trouble for Christopher, who will hear worse on the runway. In fact, the previews show Christopher in tears again, professing that his final look "speaks more about me than any other piece I've put down the runway."

Heidi doesn't want to hear it, son.

We highlight Christopher's crying not as some kind of exercise in Schadenfreude, but in our duty as prognosticators. The waterworks and the stalactites point to just one thing: an underground sea Christopher's elimination. So we're going to go with not-so-hard-to-believe prediction #1: Christopher will be out this week. It's been an incredible run for the Shakopee Kid, who has outlasted eleven of his fellow designers--no small feat--but he's going out with a dress he stands behind 100%, which is about all you can ask for.

"Dis week I vill make Heidi eat de crow."

And what do we do with Gordana? She has hardcore fans, but Heidi seems to have it in for her. Is it some kind of European rivalry thing, like UCLA fans hating USC fans? We never got this vibe from Mistress Heidi when Uli was on the show, but they were both from Germany. Conspiracy theories abound, but one thing you really can't argue is that Gordana's last effort was a show-stopper for all the wrong reasons. Gordana's got three top-three finishes in the pocket of her short-shorts, but she doesn't seem to have the dynamic design sensibility the judges are looking for--and the dress above isn't talking us out of it. Tim tells someone, "It's looking like roadkill," and we have to wonder if that was for Gordana. The previews certainly imply that.

 

"Please. I have fourteen hungry children at home."

Not-so-hard-to-believe-prediction #2: Gordana is out this week. She put up a good fight there at the end, but she just never found her voice on the show. We were pulling for you, Big G, but we don't think there's a chance in hell the judges will send you to Bryant Park.

No, this show has been Irina's, Althea's, and Carol Hannah's since week seven, and even longer for anyone who has gone to have a look at the final three runway collections that were shown anonymously before the season even aired. It was pretty obvious early on that at least two of these three were going to Bryant Park based on the work we saw at Fashion Week (Irina and Carol Hannah) and since then we've been able to confirm the third (Althea). The only real question is, who will wind up sweating it out on stage with Gordana in an effort to make the final decision more dramatic?

Given the way Irina's outfit looks (above), and a comment from Heidi in the preview ("I'm a bit shocked to see this from you today") we're guessing Irina. It could be Althea too, but Irina has been the clear leader, and if she slips up here we can see Heidi lowering the boom on her. Who will win, and carry that momentum home with her? Dark horse Carol Hannah--although, since she was sort of living out of her car before the show started filming, we'll be interested to see exactly where "home" is for her in part one of the finale.

And that's how we see it, Slimer fans.

 

Bustin' makes me feel good...

See you in seven!

______________________________________

Gratz Industries: We watch the previews twenty times so you don't have to!

Amazing Baseball Bat Tricks

Meet Josh Womack, outfielder for the Long Beach Armada minor league baseball team. Josh has some pretty amazing bat-handling skills! Check out the video above, then watch the one below for even better bat tricks.