Lessons learned from tonight’s episode of "Project Runway":1. If you can’t say anything nice, say it loudly and at inappropriate moments (Laura). 2. The camera loves a sore loser (Jeffrey).3. Once you make it on the show, never, ever interview that fashion is your life, and you don’t know what you’d do without it. Because once you do, that’s the week you flame out spectacularly and are sent home. Unfortunately, we had to learn that via ALISON, and not penultimate-place designer Vincent. Note to self: On "Project Runway," they value crazy more than comfort.Heidi trots out all gleeful and, after the model moment — goodbye, Hopeful Model! — asks the designers if they’re ready for their next challenge. And all we hear is Angela: "Yes!" Just to prove it’s not a rhetorical question, Heidi asks again: "You are?" And there’s Angela loud and clear: "Yes!" Heidi’s just baiting them now: "I think you’ve had it pretty easy so far." Angela’s the only one who responds: "No, we haven’t!"Right now, Angela is reminding me of those annoying people who always sat in the front row of college courses — you know, "returning students"? — and felt the need to chime in about everything useless and random, and how it pertained to their life, and to engage the professor in a lot of dialogue, challenging perceptions and the like, while the rest of us are left sitting there wondering how we could sink into the floor and escape. (And, sure enough, a quick shot reveals Angela is sitting in the middle of the front row. Brown-noser!)But Heidi’s not sharing: She says Tim Gunn will have more tomorrow morning, then trots off.What she didn’t say is that Tim would show up at 5 a.m., telling the designers they had an hour to get ready. Vincent is so groggy he can’t even look out the door — he just stares blankly at the wall of the hotel while Tim tells him to tell his roommates they can’t wear open-toed shoes. (Seriously, though, can you imagine waking up to camera lights at 5 a.m.? I’d be staring anywhere but straight ahead, too.)They pile in vehicles and drive, drive, DRIVE. Alison says she’s started humming "The Sopranos" theme song, and Laura says New Jersey looks as awful as it ever did … and they end up in Newark. Now, on a press junket for the movie "The End of the Affair" (Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes, guy from "The Crying Game" whose name escapes me), I took a cab from the Newark airport to Manhattan (and back), and it was indeed one of the least inspiring drives ever — it managed to suck all the anticipation out of my first-ever trip to New York City. That’s a depressive trek, that’s for sure.They end up at a loading dock and once the rolling doors are thrown up, are greeted by mountains of recyclable material. Robert says: "My first reaction was, ‘Shut up! I don’t want to work with trash,’ " which I think he stole from whoever ended up producing Paris Hilton’s new CD.And here’s crazy Tim, all suited up with hardhat and safety goggles, acting like there’s absolutely nothing amiss about the fact he’s standing amid piles and piles of waste. In fact, he sounds exactly like he’s at a cocktail party: "I am delighted to be able to introduce" some guy from Waste Management Recycle America, he says, in the same tones he would use if he were introducing the mayor.He also uses the word "source" as a verb: He tells the designers they’ll be "sourcing" recyclable materials for their outfit: They’ve got three bins and 15 minutes.And here starts the crazy Vincent talk: "Because this is trash, I want to make something contradictory to trash. I’m gonna make art." Later on, we’ll see how miserably he fails at this, but first, poor naive Alison waxes rhapsodic about how working "in something other than fabric is inspiring." Apparently not inspiring enough (see Lesson #3, above).The next steps: They get 15 minutes and $25 at an art store … and the news they’ve got to finish their outfits in about 10 hours instead of the usual two working days. Right about now, I notice Alison’s getting a lot of screen time, and I suspect last week’s correlation of Sudden Screen Time and Ouster is about to be proven.But Vincent’s right up there, too: "I’m letting things evolve," he says, which any manager recognizes as code for "I have no idea what I’m doing yet." "I don’t own the future, I don’t go there, you know what I mean?" Actually no, I don’t — but I do know producers should check his bags for mind-altering substances.Laura, in interview, says: "I think the guy’s like completely wack, he’s gonna crack any day now. He’s not mentally stable." And then, after she imitates his weird grimace, a very awesome "He’s weird." Nominee for understatement of the year.Meanwhile, Kayne and Robert sneak off to the break room for a quickie — lunch, that is. And, like any time two of The Gays get together in a room, they start talking trash about someone who’s not there — in this case, Laura. However, this is a case when I could have used some closed-captioning, because although I can tell they’re saying mean things, I can’t understand an entire phrase. I hear something about being shot in the face, and one of them says she kissed him on the face today and the other says he’s going to get a rash. And then out of nowhere, Jeffrey chimes in with this gem, about her design: "Another high-waisted skirt: (Dirtiestwordever)." Apparently people are not digging the Laura right now, although would I take Jeffrey’s word about anything? Aw, hell to the no. In fact, when he later interviews: "I think I’ve got this in the bag," I can’t wait until he comes close and fails. Comeuppance or schadenfreude? It can be both.Robert’s fun quote: "I love the idea of recycling. I recycle plastics, papers … ex-boyfriends…" Also, earlier this episode Robert is wearing man-pris, and I just can’t condone that sort of behavior. Kayne’s having a little trouble with his dress: It’s described alternately as "the clear dog in the room" and looking like "a toad exploded all over it." When Tim Gunn arrives, he says it looks like a high school project and, more damning, "like an amateur hour." Kayne, who is clearly freaked out by this, can only muster up " ‘Kay" as his responses.Also, Tim reminds Alison that her model is a little "zaftig." If you listened really hard, you could hear the model’s eating disorder kick in again as she watched the program from home.When they get home, Michael says he still had confetti in his clothing. Robert says he has still glitter in his shoe — sure, try to pass that one off on the recycling center, Barbie Boy!The next morning, it’s time for hair and makeup, and while they’re waiting, Laura goes on the offensive. To Kayne: "I wonder about your choices so often, sweetheart!" (It’s not clear if the ugly green she’s talking about is on his clothes or his model’s eye shadow. Both do look distinctly high school drag rebel.)He takes this not-so-inadvertent jab about as well as any uppity gay boy would — nose high in the air but pointing in the other direction, he replies: "Well, I wonder about your character, and that’s worse, so …" and then he looks at the two models surrounding him in that "I just burned her back, right?" way that just makes him look insecure, especially because he won’t look her in the face when he says anything and his whole body’s positioned away from her.Vincent, meanwhile, is pulling some weird Austin Powers vibe: He’s splayed out on the floor, telling his model to walk so he can see how his paper dress moves. "To me, it looked like a huge canvas of art. It just got me off," he says. "I loved it — it was like a child’s drawing." Now, it’s creepy that he’d say that something that looks like a child’s drawing could get him off, it’s creepy he keeps using that phrase, but I’m distracted from all of that when he pronounces "drawing" as "DROH-ring." It reminds me of the Mike Myers "Saturday Night Live" sketch as the little British boy in the tub who made "DROH-rings." Hmm: Mike Myers is swingerish Austin Powers, telling models to walk while making sexually inappropriate comments. Mike Myers also played Simon the British boy. Maybe Vincent has a man-crush on Mike Myers!Nobody’s dress fits their models. This causes great consternation and last-minute fixes. Or, in Alison’s case, tape.Here comes Heidi. This is the first week I’ve noticed her pacing cagily, shifting her weight like a boxer while she talks. The camera work makes me a little dizzy. She’s wearing a cute black top, though, and her hair looks great.Celebrity judge is Rachel Zoe, who’s responsible for inflicting the likes of Lindsay Lohan and Nicole Richie’s "style" upon the general public. Loosely translated: Eating disorders, ugly tops and big sunglasses. Rachel looks uncharacteristically unhaggard as she gives a kittenish "hi." Uli’s short strapless dress is muslin and silver Mylar — the skirt has a petal effect but is braided. Angela’s outfit has a weird strip tube top, and then a bib-overlay of holographic Mylar. (I will say this for it, however: No fleurcons, or whatever she’s calling those stupid rosettes.)Michael’s skirt is made out of a peanut sack, the bodice is strips of gold Mylar and the wrap is a plastic tarp fastened with a pin. It looks pretty awesome, but you can tell it’s a tarp. Vincent’s dress is awful — to the floor, rigid construction paper with black plastic straps and then confetti all over it. The model has to walk ludicrously slow to avoid ripping it. We have to hear him in voiceover again: Seeing the dress come down the runway, "it just got me off." I’ll give him $5 if he never says that out loud again. Who else is in? Let Robert sum up his own dress, made of silver Mylar strips: "A cocktail dress, albeit a cheap, tackey cocktail dress that a hooker might wear, but nonetheless it still looks like real clothes." His model walks weirdly bowlegged in it, with this insane smile on her face that makes me think she’s practicing for a drug pageant. Jeffrey’s dress is made entirely from newspaper and magazines that he’s painted with acrylic paint. The belt is trompe l’oeil (read: fake), and I hate to say it, but it’s a pretty cool effect.From the front, Laura’s dress is a pretty simple sheath dress with Chanel-style flower at the high waist. When the model turns around, though, you can see how the pleating has created a cute little saying: Where originally the peanut sack said "For peanuts only," now the back of the dress is emblazoned with "For nuts only." Alison’s yellow paper skirt is a mess: Stiff and rigid, with an Angela-style bubble skirt. She tried to play up the craziness with the model’s hair bow, which will come back to haunt her.And Kayne: His model looks like a Christmas tree. After a certain point, it doesn’t matter what the dress is made out of — it’s just ugly.The judges confer. Alison, Kayne, Laura, Vincent, Michael and Jeffrey are the best and the worst. Everyone else is safe.The judges love Michael’s dress; Vincent says his outfit "turns me on"; Laura’s dress is "an elegant joke" (in a good way). Kayne’s gown "stepped over the boundaries of taste," and Nina says we went "from Marilyn Monroe to Frankenstein," although with her pronunciation it’s like she said, "from Marilyn Monroe to Frank N. Stein."Michael Kors tells Jeffrey he’s got an ugly/beautiful thing going on, "which seems to be your aesthetic." (Dig! And, even if not, ouch.) And Alison’s — well, everyone just sort of exhales when it’s time to discuss it, although Michael calls it "a paper brioche."Laura’s safe. Michael wins, while Jeffrey swallows hard and later interviews that Michael won for designing "clothes that are the equivalent of diabetic food — no flavor." He says this while wearing the ugliest damn sweater — it’s like a plunging knit from the Freddy Kruger line that shows weird sprockets of chest hair and a festering red sore. Sexy! Also: Shut up. Anyway, Michael appreciates the fact he’s won two in a row, and I appreciate the fact he’s got immunity next week — apparently that wasn’t the case this week, because his prize was a Tresemme ad, and immunity wasn’t included in that. (Did they mention that last week? I don’t think so. Cheaters. Springing it on him after the fact.)Kayne is … in? It’s down to Vincent and Alison. Heidi tells Vincent there’s a "fine line between innovation and insanity." Alison gets told her garment is unflattering. And, in a is-this-sexist? moment, Heidi says it’s surprising that a female designer would create something so unflattering for the female figure. Like breasts and a uterus give you inherent design skills? Anyway, Alison’s out.And then, while everything seems to be the standard bittersweet goodbyes, Laura busts out on Vincent. Maybe she was frustrated he got to stay? Maybe he was actually muttering all sorts of weird things beforehand? Anyway, Laura belittles his outfit: His model "couldn’t (dirtyword)ing walk in that dress, Vincent. You call that a (dirtyword)ing walk, what that girl was doing on the runway?" Meanwhile, Laura’s trademark wide-cut blouse is dangerously close to unleashing one of her puppies, which distracts me from what else she says.Vincent retorts: "You shouldn’t open your mouth that way. Why don’t you put some Harry Winstons up your nose?" That makes no sense. Paul Simon wrote about diamonds on the soles of her shoes, but what would putting diamonds up your nose do, besides make you talk funny? And make people not want to look at your jewelry? You know it’s bad when Kayne, of all people, pleads for nice behavior while they get their last moments with Alison. Pot, kettle: Both black. At least he’s doing his criticism in a smaller venue, I guess? You know he’s just saving it for his date at the snack table with Robert.

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