Jan 27, 2009 12:00 PM
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New York, 5:32 AM
Wed Feb 10
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The City is a show about feelings. Big, swooping feelings. Small, lonely feelings. Sideways, awkward feelings. All were on display last night during this, our sixth tale submitted for the approval of the Midnight Society.
Everyone was still pretty wrapped up in Modelgate. You might remember that last week the Male Model went to a nightclub dance and drinks party, where he chatted up a girl named Catra and then supposedly took her back to his apartment and was up until 8 am just... kissing. Mmhm.
Anyshit, the Girl Model was all upset about it but then Male Model told her that it didn't happen and he called her 'honey' and 'sweetie' and stuff and then they went home to make plastic, unbendy love to each other and the heavens crinkled and a lesser angel (Whitney) sighed. Or farted. It was hard to tell.
The big Event in this episode was that Male Model and his best pal, Whitney's boyfriend Hugh Jackman, were planning a special fops-only art gallery opening on something called the Lower East Side. You see Hugh is a musician of some sort and Male Model is a particle physicist, so it made sense that out of nowhere they were buying tequila at a liquor store for their big gallery opening. (Male Model: "Well, 50 people, five drinks each..." Hugh: "No, you should only allow for 2 drinks each, not five.") Everyone was all a-tizzy about the art show not because of the art—which was made by a hobo with glasses who used tea and whiskey and wine and the blood of Ryan Adams and maybe some shoestrings and a few Asian girls and maybe, I dunno, PAINT—but because dramz was unfolding.
You see Male Model and Girl Model were at the party, but so was Catra, the Brazil-faced Mug Sucker. So to the pulsing beatz of ambient house trance or whatever the two women spoke to each other and Catra apologized and someone hosed water up through Girl Model's plastic bottom so lifelike tears poured from her eye holes and everyone felt bad. Adam felt the most bad because he was all "baby... baby... I know... she's lying..." and they both 'walked' (great stop-motion animation in this episode!) out of the art gallery and he apologized like a boy would apologize to a girl in fourth grader Mindy Kleinman's watershed short story "Love and People Who are In It: A Mindy Kleinman story for Miss Marcuses Class: A Story About Love." Remarkably Girl Model was not instantly won over by Male Model's attempts to be gallant and give her his coat while straight up fibbing to her.
But don't worry. Later on they met at MercBar in Soho and he sipped wine and she said "we're a team and I have to believe you" and then the producers came back and fixed the twist-ties over their arms and they knew they were going back into their boxes so they kicked and fought as best they could but it wasn't enough and they were boxed and shelved and put in a collector's creepy parlor where they'll be forced to stand forever in plastic eternity. A sad end for them. A giddy rejoice for us.
And, I dunno. Whitney gurgled something at Hugh about how he shouldn't lie like his friends lie and he played one loud, long didgeridoo note into her face and Whitney fell over and died. There was a small funeral and then Lauren from The Hills came and they stood at the edge of the land and the beginning of the wide, wide sea and they opened the urn and spread her ashes on a big bowl of Kix. Because it was her favorite thing.
My favorite thing this episode was Olivia Palermo, the box-faced socialite who thinks she poops designer handbags. She don't. What she do is say things like "that's really way more than I wanted to hear. We're adults. You're 23. This isn't high school" when Whitney begins to moo about the latest Male Model business. Which, buried under the pile of hosiery-colored bitchery, contains something of a valid sentiment. Except, not when Olivia fucking Palermo says. Olivia who has agreed to be on The City, a show about how the term "this isn't high school" is never true because it's always high school, every miserable day until we take our last rattling breath, it just gets quieter and hopefully less zitty and people like Olivia just go to prove that sad terrible fact.
And then she went to the gallery and acted all wide-eyed and beyond it and her bloated cousin swished by and they giggled and then back at her Tribeca apartment Cousin Jub-Jub issued an oral pamphlet about how 'downtown' folks are so confusing, what with their hats and all. He said he doesn't know anyone like that from his tony Uptown upbringing. And then I wanted someone to walk on and ask him if all of his fancy Uptown friends like to solicit hookers in Miami with offers of Oxycontin while wearing exposed shiny black underwear or if he was just special. Then the apartment caught on fire and they ran down all the stairs and escaped to safety only to be struck and killed by a hybrid taxi. Jub-Jub flipped up into the air and just kept on flipping. Up and up and up until he was in the atmosphere and then outer space and then he became a constellation. Now when farm boys are trying to charm their dates while lying in the cool blue Iowa grass, he can take her hand and point it towards the heavens and say "that there's Jub-Jub. He's about as Uptown as it gets."
Then the episode came to a close and everyone clapped and the orchestra took its bows and old ladies searched for their gloves and the ushers waited patiently and when everyone got outside they realized that suddenly it was nighttime and yet another day had deftly eluded them. So they felt sad and they felt silly and they felt small but they also felt glad. In short, they felt feelings. And so, once again, The City had done its job.
The End.
Send an email to Richard Lawson, the author of this post, at richardl@gawker.com.
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