Behind the Scences!!!
I have to tell you folks that, HGTV should put together a two hour episode of behind the scenes Design Star footage. So much comedy and one of a kind moments took place that I wanted to give you guys some idea of what actually took place behind our 30 story Penthouse Bungalow. What a better way to do this than tell what my favorite moments were from each contestant and possibly some crew members as well.
It all started when we all pressed the penthouse button in the elevator, we reach the top of Vegas and walked out and into our new home. This place was located in the Las Vegas Country Club Estates and dominated the skyline. It was actually in my opinion better than being on the strip itself..we were approximately 1/4 mile from the strip, so we could see the whole thing, end to end...and looked down to an elite golf course.
There was seven in one bedroom and right off of that one the other four shacked up. Nobody was sure how it happened but, Sparkles, Christina, Adriana and Robb shared that one while the rest of us crammed into the other. These were not normal bedrooms..plenty of space yet when you have seven in a room, everything gets exaggerated.
Where do I begin the comedy???
The first night, according to the rules, we could not sleep in our beds if they were not made..once "time" was called for the challenges we could not alter our designs in any way...period. Yes even our beds. After we realized that we could not make our beds, we didn't have any sheets anyways, we slept on the floor with our clothes piled on top of us. Pretty interesting for our first night. At that moment, 2am, we became a solid team of eleven. Within seconds we new that we were all in this together and that it was going to be a team effort. I felt that in this moment we all became really good friends, regardless of what was edited for good television later on.
It was like any other large family household, water supply goes way down, no hot water, people snore, smell good, bad, and miss being..well...home.
You could tell that every single person in this home deserved to be a Design Star for numerous reasons. All had amazing personalities and came from very diverse backgrounds with a full list of life achievements.
My first feeling that I knew I was no longer home is when I tried to fall asleep. Cute little adorable Kimmy, who worked really hard that day, (thankfully because she was on my team), fell asleep first. What I realized within seconds of lying down, is that that woman snores like a lumber mill just opened up four feet away. I was sooo jealous that she could just shut down like that, obviously comfortable in her new environment. For the remaining weeks in the home I had to gather small soft objects to throw like hand grenades at the metal dragonfly winged sculpture next to her to get her to stop snoring in the middle of the night. It was quite hysterical. She was always polite, apologetic in the morning and asked that I just get up, walk over to her and gently shove her to stop and that she would be OK with that. Well folks, that lasted about a half hour before I started to plan my assault on that wing sculpture next to her midmorning..getting up at 4:45 am was becoming far to difficult as the days passed. Kim was always puzzled in the morning when she would find Wills clean socks, or wooden nickles, and shrapnel from the days construction next to her every morning...poor sculpture never had a chance.
Will...He was soo funny and always had random hilarious stories that made us all laugh for days on end. Yet his natural ability to bring us all together through his talents of cooking and story telling made us all surround him constantly. One night while we waited for his award winning marinated steaks to be done cooking, he joined a few of us hanging around on the half pipe for a glass of wine. He was all excited to jump into another story and just walked up and said.."Man..I have never been on one of these half pipes before" and just walked up in his penthouse socks holding his freshly poured beverage and just ATE IT on the half pipe slipping with the first step he touched trying to climb up and landed on his back hard...the whole time he was smiling and NEVER spilled a drop of his fresh juice. He jumped up not expecting this, of course, and slowly made his way to the top to join us in our little camp. Sad thing is that he went down right in front of a camera and they never showed it...please HGTV..shows us this bail..no one was hurt and it was quite comical, even for Will...Funniest home videos is fairly successful, give him the chance to be on two shows.
Sparkles...well Sparkles didn't always have his famous name folks...and in fact he didn't really like his name either until later on. It was not because "Robb" called him Sparkle first either. He just wasn't sure of it and I think he may have thought for two seconds that we were making fun of him. Well I asked him politely once in front of everyone, if he liked it or not and he looked up and slowly said ..yeees! Sparkle you are! He just kept bringing the hardcore bling and it stuck.
When Sparkles came up last into that first room where we all met for the first time, I thought and felt we were all pawns in his new DS show. He had Luis V bags piled ten high and walked in with his witty humor and said "Am I in the right place"? nuf said...we were all in the wrong place, he owned it.
We then looked over to "Scott" and said is that all your luggage? (pointing to an espresso maker).
He thought he would be nice and make whoever needed one in the morning....well I'm not sure how one can possibly fit seven shots into one little cup, yet Scott made the strongest tiny cup of coffee mankind could ever create. The military should patent this and use for self defense of alien war craft. I made the mistake of downing one the first morning and was so high on caffeine for three days I could not comprehend what was happening. It was hard to believe that Scott slept like a baby at night. Yet how could this be?! I understand now that his only mistake in the competition, was having six of these shots right before the 99 cent store challenge. America needs to know that he couldn't stop folks..you don't stop when your running on jet fuel and god given talent.
Jet fuel...hmmmm..kinda reminds me of "Robb".
Does anyone remember that guy? I know only four people in America who liked him, yet I have to stick to my guns folks...he is really one of the nicest, most sincere, caring guys in all of downtown, side alleyway Winnemucca , Nevada truck stop. No seriously...I talked to "Robb" for hours on end and had life altering/enhancing conversations with him. Then I found out his down fall. I jumped into his van by mistake on the Wayne Newton challenge and looked down as to why my feet were not touching the floor and noticed over five MONSTER energy drinks on the floor. Yes the 32 ounce ones...and this was just from the trip from our home to the ranch. That means he must of had over 160 ounces of nuke bomb caffeine by 9 in the morning! nuf said...his problem wasn't being a team player, his problem was that he was not human. No one...can call themselves a human being after consuming that amount of 7 eleven crack drink. He has since gone into monster rehab and is slowly crawling his way back into our civilization and talking to people nicely for many weeks now...good luck Robb and we look forward to the new you!
Lost civilizations...what about "Lisa"?
It is really too bad we did not get to see much of our dear "Lisa". She was a design in herself..did you know she made her entire wedding dress out of wax paper and it looked better than most wedding dresses I've ever seen. Lisa was also great at putting her outfits together in the morning. She would put layers of different fabrics and textures on and looked like a rock star before most of us even got up. She has so much energy and wild ideas that it would have been nice to see her blow up something other than a penthouse garage door. Only the good go young.
"Adriana", while kickin' butt and making things happen on the show, had a young one at home waiting for her. Adriana was just too good for her britches, and a tool belt was holding them up most of the time. I don't know what her Austrian husband does or is into yet, he has no worries about fixing, or calling anyone to fix anything in their house, that's for sure. She is such a stellar craftswoman and she hand builds and makes almost all of her designs in her and other peoples homes. I was actually very surprised she didn't move on through the 99 cent challenge. I felt that she was calm and quiet around the house so that none of us could snake her good ideas and way of going about designs. She was truly very creative.
Hmmm calm and quite... does this ring a bell? Yes our lovely "Christina". I almost couldn't believe how nice she is. She would, at the start of everyday, read a letter from her husband about how much he loves her and how wonderful she is and that her two boys missed her dearly, especially her youngest one who wondered the house slowly saying "mommy,... mommy" all the time. Her husband was obviously as nice as her. Christina represents love and respect in the most caring way possible. She is a true, genuine and sincere person. Keep on wake boarding Christina!
Go green and stay green"Josh". When you almost removed my head with your table saw antics, that was my favorite moment hands down...No wait...it has to be the time when we played frisbee in the house, while skating and just tearing apart your hot pink pillow collection on the kidney bean lounge. I had soo much fun talking about how you made the nationals team and just rapping about college experiences...It was a cool segment of video shorts of you and I playing in the house and having fun. I am looking forward to seeing you save this earth of ours with your go green mentality and design style. Fifth gear full throttle huh...what? no more motocross airs?
"Neraj" America is waiting to see your pictures of your model daughter...where can talent scouts find those? She will have a good time in the summer Olympics dominating the water polo scene. There was something about your "I don't care attitude" that made me want to care more about not caring...What I do care about is the next Club experience you are going to design for America to enjoy. Where is it going to be? What heavy style are we going to see? I want the the mother-daughter team representing the Palm Springs area to bring us some House...(house music). Is your music playing loud out there in the desert? Your personality was in Vegas. I look forward to seeing you In da club.
Please, HGTV, give us our Penthouse comedy skits that unfolded on the Vegas skyline with all the contestants unedited goodness in a solid two hour DVD. Give us our House, as it was, in all it's unfiltered comedic genius. It would definitely be entertaining...
Todd Davis
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