FlipitTypes TV - Recaps, Gossip, and Trash Talk

When I temped for a large publishing house in New York, I assisted the front desk receptionist, a gal named Debbie. Debbie was like a walking Encyclopedia, she could type over 100 words a minute, and knew every inch of the company, but unfortunately she was busted ugly. Grooming skills weren’t her forte, which shouldn’t matter in this day and age, but as we all know, looks count. Debbie couldn’t understand why she was always being passed up for promotions, so over lunch one day, I suggested she get a makeover. After she stopped crying, I explained to her that a little conditioner and and bit of eyebrow wax could change her whole life. She listened, and showed up the next day looking like a new, hot woman. People who refused to look her in the eye the afternoon before were suddenly forwarding her joke emails, inviting her to happy hour, and calling the front desk just to say hi. Well, come Monday morning, an old woman named Myra was sitting at Debbie’s desk. I asked my boss what happened to my friend, and he rolled his eyes. “That floozy? She’s outta here.”

This week, Top Design taught us that white people are lazy complainers, fags trump hags, and if you want to be taken seriously, don’t be fun. Be functional.

One day after eleventh grade I had to help out at my Catholic School’s Church running choir auditions because I got caught ditching PE to smoke some MJ under the bleachers. My job was basically to sign in the old ladies trying out and tell them where the bathroom was. Every single one of them asked. There was one biddy who clicked her tongue every time someone new went into the Chapel to sing. “She doesn’t even know how to hum, how can she sing?” “No one who dresses that trampy is fit to play for the Lord!” “She’s ancient! She’ll be dead before the end of the week.” Hideous.

When it was her turn, I listened at the door. She made my mom’s screechy shower version of “Manic Mondays” sound like a skilled, professional studio recording. When she was done disemboweling Ave Maria, the choir director stood up and said, as kindly as possible, “Margaret, I appreciate your moxy, but I think it’s time you stopped coming back. I just can’t use you.” She ran out of the building sobbing, and I spent some time watching her have a mini-breakdown in the parking lot while I enjoyed a smoke in my car. Wow, detention’s fun!

This week, Top Design taught us to stick to your loud, plastic, tacky guns no matter what, don’t trust someone who tells you it’s all gonna be ok, and you can talk trash all you want, but it doesn’t mean you won’t be taken out with it.

Calvin wasn’t only gorgeous on the outside, he was the sweetest human being I had ever met. I don’t usually trust nice people. They’re either feeling guilty about something and trying to hide it with thank you cards and kind nods to old people in the street or they’re crazy and they want someone to sit there and listen to them ramble on. Calvin donated his time to actual. Charities. He was an enigma. I waited through seven dates filled with stories of helping out crack babies in South Central and global warming before I went for the full on pass at him.

10:32 We make out. Fireworks. 10:37 He falls asleep with a huge smile on his face and I hightail it out of there with a doggie bag of the dinner he made. Great cook. I felt awful listening to him cry on my voicemail all the next week. Too bad he didn’t spend less time being so sweet to everyone and more time learning to rumble with the big boys. He could have been the one.

This week, Top Design taught us luxury is painful, don’t get cocky til’ you rocky, and nice guys finish fast.

A couple of summers ago, I was feeling depressed, so a friend suggested I do charity work. Nothing to make you feel better about yourself than helping other people! Well, let me save you the time. Other people suck. I only needed one day of getting bitched out by old incontinents in a state run nursing home to reaffirm that. I ended up spending a couple of months at the dog shelter, where I met my little friend Brodie. Brodie was a tiny terrier that had been abused by his owners and when he was rescued, his torture continued from the other dogs. I just didn’t get it. Why did every one hate the smallest creature? It just seemed unfair. I took him home, vowing to love him and squeeze him and call him George, and all hell broke loose. The second he was safe, he started to lash out. He bit me, peed on everything, and barked at me viciously when I came home from work. The abuse and torture suddenly didn’t seem so unfair. After two weeks, I had had enough. I was still depressed, and now I was physically and emotionally scarred. The morning I was walking him back to the shelter for a lethal injection, he bit my ankle, made a run for it, and got hit by a Prius. He didn’t die, which meant I had to spend two thousand dollars and three days in the doggy hospital. Drugged up and half dead, Brodie stared into my eyes and licked my hand, making me forget all about the little jerk he’d been for the past couple weeks. For the first time since I was a kid, I prayed. I asked God to make Brodie better. But not too much better.

This week, Top Design taught us that empitness in inexusable when you have a lot of money, Taylor Hicks is an asswipe, and last minute grace may not save your ass, but it might just save your soul.

About eight years ago, I moved to Long Beach and took a cush job as a pet sitter. I was basically paid to go to people’s homes while they were at work and hang out with their pets. Well, if you haven’t noticed by now, I’m an extremely lazy person. If I don’t have a boss or manager nit picking me every five minutes, I will never ever work. Not working is my favorite hobby. I made fast friends with a fellow employee named Donald, who was even more of a lazy stoner than me. The day Beloved came out, I was first in line to buy tickets (I know, I know, but Oprah had me brainwashed). Only trouble was, I had a doggie gig. If I called in “sick” one more time I was gonna get the boot, so I begged Donald to fill in for me. He did it for a single bud, and I couldn’t believe my luck. PS. Beloved sucked ass.

That night I got a call. It was my boss. “Flipit, were you at the Alvarez house today?” Yes! “How long?” All day! I just got home! “Will you please take Mr. Alvarez back his stuff?” Turns out Donald robbed the place blind. I was questioned by the police, fired and completely humiliated. To this day, I blame Oprah and that horrendous movie she made.

This week, Top Design taught us to act nice (even if you aren’t), flowers shouldn’t have fur, and if you’re going to steal credit for something, make sure it doesn’t suck first.

Lucius was a tattoo artist I met at a war protest (they had free hot dogs) in Austin, TX. His body was covered in tattoos, he sported a spilt “snake” tongue, and had holes in his earlobes held stretched open with what looked like hip-hopper Bentley rims. At first I was very afraid, only because this type of person usually wants my type of person dead or in serious pain, but Lucius made me laugh, and that’s all I really ask for in a friend.

He would rant on about the government’s secret brainwashing missions, the Man holding down the little guy, and America’s piggish consumption habits. I would sit in the audience and watch him perform these rants like beat poetry to a single guitar strum weekly in a run down loft space on South Congress (Kill Life/Blood Tree was my favorite) and I have to admit, he had me going for awhile. One morning, as I stood in line at Starbucks, I questioned my existence. Am I just feeding the Man’s machine? Is plucking my eyebrows just another way I try to homogenize myself for an ignorant, shallow public’s consumption? Is George Bush a lizard? As I looked out the store window a Range Rover pulled up and out popped Lucius in his green and black uniform. That hypocrite! One of the greatest spokespeople for the movement works at Starbucks and drives a RANGE ROVER?!? I calmed down and realized I was relieved. Who wants to live in a world where poor people are just as good as rich people and there are no massive soul sucking chain restaurants around? I can live without a lot of things in life, but I will never ever give up my God given American right to a daily Venti Iced Non-Fat No Whip Two Pump Mocha.

This week, Top Design taught us garages aren’t playgrounds. Crate and Barrel kind of sucks, and Che Guevara didn’t wear a LIVESTRONG band.

My cousin Macy was going on a long-planned trip to the Bahamas with her (asshole) husband Richard and she’d lost her babysitter at the last second. It was either trust old Flippy or cancel the vacation, and she wasn’t willing to do that. “I need meeee time, Flipit! Goddamit just get over here!”

I tried to hide the pure joy in my voice because I knew she feared that I would leave her three year old in the mall or teach him the f word, but I loved her son. Mason was like a mini-me. He loved green, hated vegetables, and kicked anyone who tried to wake him up. His first word was “no” and his first sentence was “I don’t like you”, which isn’t a perfect match but is close enough to my first sentence: “I hate you.” I couldn’t wait to show Mason how to con marks, bag babes (or dudes, depending on that outcome) and lie his way into a decent job. His mother knew this, and that’s why she kept us apart as much as possible. But now, for a four-day weekend, he was all mine! In the short course of our time alone together, Mason called me fat, stupid, and ugly. He threw his dinner in my eyes, came into my room to pee in my bed while I slept, and put rocks in my shoes. When Macy came back, Mason told her I was mean. I defended myself (”He totally started shit with me every two seconds!”) but she curtly said thank you and got me out of there as fast as she could. As I left that day, I hugged Macy tight, knowing I was going to have to start blowing her off now. You see, Mason was like me in every way. And I never wanted to have to deal with that brat ever again.

This week, Top Design taught us crimp irons went out for a reason, grapes and bananas are pretty fruits best avoided by petty fruits, and if you ever meet someone just like you, turn your head and walk the other way.

I was tingling. No drugs, no drink, no pills. The only stimulus was a shirtless stud standing in front of me calling me baby. I told myself a normal (gay) man would have jumped in head first and swam to Paradise, but there was something I just couldn’t see past. When he kissed me with his full, bee stung lips, my eyes stayed open to look down and take another peek. At those hideous socks he was wearing. Who wears bright purple socks with pink Christmas trees on them? In the Summer?

Shut uuuuuppp, Flipit! Score the point now, question the player later. Color is a minor thing. You can buy him new socks. In a few minutes we were both naked. Well, me except for my cowboy boots (I like the height they give me) and him except for those socks. Those horrible, horrible socks. I have the opposite of a foot fetish, so it wasn’t easy when I got on my knees and put my fingers under the rim and pulled. On his left foot he had four cubic zirconia toe rings and his nails were painted different colors. Ew. I acted like I had food poisoning and made vomit sounds in his bathroom for ten minutes before getting my shit and calling a cab. The sad truth? A normal looking guy would have lost me at purple socks.

This week, Top Design taught us if you’re on a reality show you should bring more than two outfits, if you go out in the sun put on some shade, and if a sock tries to warn you, listen to it.

The first time I learned I had a disease was when my parents shipped me off to a Teenage Weight Loss Clinic (FAT CAMP) in New Mexico. As my camp counselor Ryan (hated him on sight) explained it, I wasn’t a two hundred and ninety pound thirteen year old because I refused to move and gorged on Little Debbie Brownies and pounder bags of peanut M&Ms, I was fat because I had a disease. A disease called addiction. He grilled me, tyring to find the “trigger” for my “emotional blocks”, but I wanted no part of it. One day, Ryan forced me to share during Group Boo-Hoo Hour. “It’s time to stop running.” Actually, it was probably time to start, but thanks for the advice, Chunk. “What has brought you here, Flipit?”

I wanted to bite out his jugular, but instead I mustered up the courage to tell a love story. A love between a box of chemical brownies and a little boy who enjoyed living his life to the fullest. Skinny people were mean, and sex was gross (I still thought I was supposed to do it with girls back then), so what’s the point of it all? I wanted to watch Hollywood Squares after school while my mom was at Junior league and eat til I passed out on the papazan. Was that so wrong? I wasn’t looking to be “cured”. I’ll never forget the stunned silence. I like to think that in their heads, the fat kids were cheering. Ryan looked at me like I drowned his puppy, and I couldn’t help but smile.

I gained 11 pounds at fat camp, and brought a few kids with me. One of the proudest moments in my life is taking down the Mayor of Excuses Village.

This week, Top Design taught us camp beats drab, floor’s a whore, and being yourself is key, unless of course you’re a horrible, horrible person.

I’ve been waiting for this show. Not just because it’s another clone of Project Runway and I would watch any show in that format (even though I probably would), but because it revolves around interior designers, the gayest (in both senses of the word) and most melo-dramatic people you could base a reality competition around. Except for maybe celebrity stylists, and even Bravo has to draw the line somewhere. At first glance, Top Design is a cheap plastic version of it’s big sisters, but a few minutes in, I realize it’s that cracked out drag queen cousin we publicly cringe at but secretly sneak off with to smoke a bowl at weddings. Nothing personal, Bee, I love you! As the moments went on, this show traveled further and further into Crazy Town, and even though my face was scrunched the entire time, I went with it. It’s all hazy now, but I remember bright colors, strange creatures, and a sock puppet narrator guy named Todd.