SPECIAL TO PHILEBRITY: When we heard that our pal Ryan Creed, along with Thom Lessner and Rose Luardo of the band Sweatheart, had been selected for an episode of perennial cable classic Trading Spaces, our brains nearly melted. People this cool (or thin) just usually aren’t on this show. And given Sweatheart’s penchant for the absurd, God only knows what that room is gonna wind up looking like. Production is underway as we speak, and we’ve been lucky enough to tap Ryan Creed from dispatches from the set. After the jump, Ryan’s first day with Trading Spaces.

Me, my roommate Aryon, and Rose and Thom of Sweatheart are participants in the hipster episode of Trading Spaces. I am the blogger, Aryon the print maker, and Rose & Thom the artists. I snuck away from the set while the crew is outback shooting B-roll footage and am right now huddled behind lighting equipment in the back room. I have about five minutes before they make me get back to painting. Here’s what I have to report:

1. In the first three hours of shooting I discover that half the words out of my mouth are “Fuck,” “Retarded,” and “That’s what she said.”

2. I’m completely helpless. I can’t tape walls, I can’t paint, and I will forever be haunted by the moment when I couldn’t cut a thin piece of plank wood with an industrial table saw. When it happened I sheepishly looked at the camera and whined, “Sorry, I’m used to caressing wood.”

3. Speaking of wood, our carpenter Brandon is, in the words of my “straight” roommate, “totally dreamy.” Brandon and I talked about television, and he doesn’t know what a blog is and tells me that “MTV is evil.” He is no longer dreamy.

4. I’m crushed to learn that Genevieve and Hilde Santos Tomas are no longer with Trading Spaces and that I will instead be working with new designers. Right after the producers broke me the news, in walks Goil from season one of Top Design who will be decorating my house. Goil is “bouncy,” and he hopped from wall to wall to person to person cooing over how much he loooooooooved Martha Stewart, houndstooth patterns, the color pink, ties, Trading Spaces, Jonathan Adler, the staff, my house, Philadelphia, America, the world, the universe, etc. I’m actually a little in love with Goil and I can’t decide whether I want to work with him or have him work on my house. Later, I have the second most devastating news of he day delivered to me by a production assistant who said that Goil is already taken by a man who looks just like him only he’s white, not Asian. Sigh.

5. Before the actual shoot, me and the other gay crew members gossip about Anderson Cooper. Some of us are dismayed to hear that he’s short, but our spirits are lifted when a producer from the other room informs us that Hugh Jackman is a tall glass of water.

6. Aryon and I are working with Lauren, the other new designer. When she cracks open the paint can to show us the room’s color scheme, her own ample cans pop out of her blouse. CUT! Later, she said that she’d never heard of Pavement or Cat Power because “Black people don’t know indie rock.” I responded, “That’s Ok, I don’t know hip hop and that’s all black people listen to.” We laugh.

7. Most of the crew lives around my neighborhood, in South Philly and I plan on eventually pitching to them my television show idea, Cranky Ranch, about 12 senior citizens running a dude ranch in Arizona. It’ll be equal parts City Slickers, Big Brother, and Cocoon, and I hope either Bea Arthur or Joan Collins will be the hostess.

8. I caught wind from a field producer that Rose is ruling my house with an iron fist and is making all the crew take their shoes off every time they enter my house. She’s also apparently calling Thad, their carpenter, “Thor.” He doesn’t realize that she will call him that for the remainder of the shoot. Also, Thom is wearing a wig that the crew thinks is his real hair, and he wasn’t allowed to wear his Darth Maul tie because of copyright issues.

9. The carpenter tent is set up in the center of the parking lot of the Acme in South Philadelphia. During our shoot, a woman drives around the tents screaming, “You guys’ show fucking sucks. It SUCKS!”

10. Apparently the crew are karaoke maniacs, and we spend the end of the day singing Heart songs when the cameras are off. “Alone” is the house’s particular favorite. Sadly, I will be stuck in the house doing “homework,” which I thought was totally television BS, but I guess I was wrong.

10b. Can I just talk again about how much I love Goil, my little pocket dandy? The crew actually had to tear me away from him because I was holding up the shoot. Fun Fact: Goil plays soccer! God he’s cute.

This entry was posted on Friday, September 21st, 2007 at 11:29 am.