Who cares about Snooki puncrhers, ham munchers, and repeated ab crunchers? Inject your reality television viewing with a bit of class thanks to Heidi, Tim, and a new cast of designers vying for the title of World's best sewer?

It was bound to happen eventually: Gawker has dueling live blogs tonight. Project Runway and Jersey Shore both air tonight, and for two weeks their seasons—and live blogs—will overlap.

So I expect that this live blog to be more lightly attended than usually tonight and next Thursday (when the Jersey Shore season finale airs). During that period, as a live blog host, I may end up feeling a little like Monica in that "dueling parties" episode of Friends. Remember that episode? The one where Monica hosts a party at the same time that Joey and Chandler are throwing their own party across the hall? And people kept sneaking out of Monica's party to join the other one? Ah, that was a good one …

Where was I? Oh yeah! So, Project Runway Season 7 debuts on Lifetime tonight at 10 Eastern, and our group live blog of the show will take place in the comments section below, where all are welcome to join in. We can engage in all our usual season-premiere rituals, like inventing the first drinking-game rules, coining designer nicknames and playing "spot the straight guy" (there's usually only one). Also, some folks (like me) will have fun trying to remember what channel-number the show is on, having not tuned in to Lifetime since the last season ended.

I've done a little preview watching and new-contestant scanning, and here are a few quick impressions and expectations about the coming season:

  • The contestant mix has a very international flavor: Almost one-third are natives of non-U.S. countries including China, Mexico, Cote d'Ivoire, the Dominican Republic the Philippines.
  • Lady Gaga will have hit the scene by the time this season began production, so hopefully we'll see a little more avant-garde craziness in the designs this year.
  • Expect to see a lot of Anthony, who is already being hyped a bit as this season's "character." He features prominently in the 30-second promo spot, saying things like "I am stacked, packed and ready to attack!"
  • Tonight Tim Gunn will utter this classically Tim-Gunn-like sentence: "Some of you will have to recalibrate your ambitions according to the time frame." Ah, Tim … please don't ever change.
  • I actually have high hopes that this season to be a vast improvement over last year's suck-fest, for several reasons: It's in New York again, the regular judges will reportedly show up for every episode this time, and the contestants look more promising in terms of both personality and talent.

So let's all think positive tonight as we grab a drink and start looking for that damn Lifetime Channel. It's 29 on my cable lineup, I think. Or is it 30 …?

[Image via Genibee's Flickr]