mtv designer guest blogging

Hi! I am the production designer for the MTV show "The Real World". I know you can't believe it's still on, and I can't believe I got a job! As a designer! Let me tell you how I took a beautiful New Orleans mansion and turned the interior of it into a pile of crap.

Not since Katrina, or the recent oil slick, has the image of New Orleans been so fucked over by MTV for the world to see. But hey, it's just a place to party.

Big ass beads are draped on the beds. Ain't I clever? And dig the ginormous masks over the headboards. It was more of a challenge for the tech team than the art department. They had to go in and make sure all this junk looks decent. And by decent I mean getting paid big bucks for using every tacky cliche I could throw on the set. I shopped my ass off on Bourbon Street.

The house's front door opens onto a grand staircase with a railing that I totally desecrated with a shit load of Mardi Gras beads I found in the garbage. Another wall is decorated with corny Dr. Bob signs ("Be Nice or Leave"). I was very cool to install a female mannequin removing her shirt, you know, winky winky a real bead whore begging for "beads". Her name is Ravishing Rachel. She's available online. We didn't pay any of the artists for their tourist crap. Why should we? We give them huge, I mean HUGE exposure on our crap show.

I had them build a streetcar in the hall. It's so quaint, just like the Southern Cajun hicks in New Orleans. When the bratty cast kids came on set, they thought it was a public toilet, and the little creeps never clean up after themselves, so thank God the entire set ends up where it belonged in the first place - in the dumpster. The occupants of the spaces I designed will shame themselves and defile the city. It's like my design for this big old house and this decrepit city totally inspired the no talent cast.

In the basement I designed a kitchen, dining area and lounge decorated with weathered, reclaimed window shutters (my personal kick in the ass homage to Hurricane Katrina damage), a stupid chandelier made of brass instruments, and dig, a player piano, and tom-tom drums serving as end tables! I added a pool table and a fish tank just for more wacky New Orleans fun. It was so fugly it made the trash piles after Katrina look good.

Thinking outside the box, I wanted to try to cram as much of New Orleans crap into this house as possible.

People ask me if I claim much of a "Real World" house's decor for personal use -- I used to do that, then I realized I have a whole house full of junk. But I did keep two vomit and urine stained wing chairs from the New Orleans season. I'm looking forward to putting them right by my fireplace and having a little piece of the New Orleans I trashed right inside my very own house. Most of my key signature pieces like Ravishing Rachel end up in our (Los Angeles) home office. It enhances the cesspool look we got going there.


For laughs, I put a vintage fortune-telling machine in an upstairs sitting room. A first-floor sitting room carried a sportsman's paradise theme, strung with fishing net and accessorized with oil soaked plush-toy renditions of local wildlife. Oiled up plush toys! Man how is that for thinking outside of the box?

And speaking of boxes, I did a first-floor "confessional box" -- where cast members could retreat to record first-person testimony about whatever pathetic drama had just occurred elsewhere in the house. I packed it with voodoo shit to scare the little turds.

I hope some voodoo queen doesn't zap my ass with some bad mojo for touching this shit. Cause like man, I dig New Orleans. Who doesn't? I mean it's all good right? It's a parteeeeee!!!!!

Who watches this crap anyway? It starts Wednesday 9 PM.