Get away from my cubicle, Weird-o! I'm trying to publish my blog!

Great episode of Hell's Kitchen last night. Of course the first item on the "Why do you claim that last night's episode of Hell's Kitchen was great as apposed to merely adequate?" list is that Andy cut his freaking fingers off! It was gnarly too! Seriously, I rewound the DVR because The Girlfriend didn't see it; I'm not easily queased (I know, but this is my blog, I decide what is and isn't a word), but on second time through I had to look away. Yikes. Unfortunately, no clip.


Andy's poorly executed run-in with the mandoline came- Wait, tangent; I watched "World's Greatest Dad" last night, I thought it was pretty good. That's not the point, the point is, Bruce Hornsby was in it -He wrote "Mandolin Rain" I know, different kind of mandolin(e). Obviously his career was not built on his outward appearance. Of course that asks the question, what's his career based on?
So, Andy's run in with the mandoline was really where this episode got interesting -except Dave's abortion of a desert crepe- speaking of Dave, watch this clip:




There's something wrong with this guy, I can't pin it down. Not I can't pin down what's wrong with him, I can't pin down what makes me think there's something wrong with him - Can I get a little help?

So Andy came back from the medics right before dinner service and was unable to complete any task -you know, because he cut his freaking fingers off! Here's the deal, Andy: Dave -there's just something wrong with that guy- has been working with one hand in a cast this whole time. Kevin -my darkhorse vote for the winner- has some kind of foot injury (They keep referring to it, but I don't know what it is). My point is this, both those guys are kicking ass right now, Andy's got a pass on dinner service if he stays out, but if he comes back, his injury is no excuse in the face of the two other guys. That's my point.Obviously Andy was a mess, but the women's kitchen -after seeing Suzanne take a run at a creepy attempt to become a "team player"- fell apart again this week, all in all, Gord-o kicked three people out of the kitchen! Andy, Sabrina, and Suzanne were all kicked out. The blue team finished service with three people, and the red with two!

In the end Gord-o instructed both teams to work together to pick two. They originally picked Andy and Suzanne. Someone pointed out that if they put Andy and Suzanne up, Gord-o would certainly send Andy home. Of course everyone really wants Suzanne to go home. The Girlfriend pointed out that "[Gord-o's] going to call up whoever he wants anyway!" Well said, well said. Gord-o sends Andy home and them moves Suzanne to the other team. It's been done before.
A couple fantastic quotes from this episode:

Gord-o:

"This risotto is fucking delicious!" -I've heard the same thing said about Jack-in-the-Box Tacos

"Hey Everyone! Come'er a minute!" -Presumably to taste the risotto

Andy in reference to Gord-o's in your face style:

"You don't necessarily have to be a douche nozzle to make a kitchen run well" -Yeah, but it helps

Suzanne about getting put up for elimination:

"The fact of the matter is, I was just trying to get everything right" -Yup.

"I'm trying to think about whether I deserve to go home or not" -Newsflash: It doesn't matter

And the number one quote of the evening goes to The Girlfriend. Unfortunately, I'm paraphrasing:

"The important question is; does she realize that every lamb that gets cooked wrong is a dead lamb?" -I have nothing to add. She is my inspiration.

That's all for today. Lots of good TV on tonight. Check out Glee.

This commercial aired twice during hell's kitchen, coincidence?

Bloging on the weekend gave me the flu.

Well, that's pretty clear, right?
I know, logic dictates that if I'm sitting at home all day on the couch, I should be able to throw some witty observations together, embed a clever YouTube clip and call it good. Logic dictates as much, but I do what I want!
So I've watched some stuff lately. The Girlfriend and I went to see Julie and Julia (or Julia and Julie... I don't know). It was OK. I thought about writing about it, but I don't care. So there you are. I will say this: Meryl Streep may be the best actor we have right now. Her half was incredible. The other half... not so much. It was all about some self absorbed nobody with such a complete misunderstanding of her place in the world that she thought people actually cared about her blog... oh.

Also, Design Star was on Sunday night, of course I didn't watch it until Monday because of aforementioned flu -yet I'm writing through the flu right now... I'm like Micheal Jordan! Anyway, it was a really boring episode... like really boring. Here's what I got: Dull woman #1 (or#2, I don't remember! The one that had to have been in weird Texan child beauty pageants as a young girl) Dull woman #1 got the boot. She was up against Ambiguously Gay Carpenter (Dan. Really, that's his name... the Girlfriend says his gayness is not so ambiguous, she's probably right.) So she was up against Dan because her and Dan had some weird thing where she gave him $10,000 but said $5,000 or something like that, and he bought a $10,000 gazebo and screwed everything up, or something like that. It may have been the most confusing thing I've ever seen on reality TV... and there's been some confusing stuff. I just tried to find a clip of it, because it's totally out of control, but I couldn't find one... I might recommend watching this episode simply for that, I really can't do it justice. I'll transcribe what I remember about it;

Dull Woman #1: "How much do you need for the gazebo"
Dan: "$5,000"
DW1: "OK. here's $10,000... How much did I give you?"
Dan: "$5,000"
DW1:"OK, so you've got $10,000 there, right?"
Dan: "Yeah"
DW1: "OK, you've got $5,000 for the gazebo, you think that's enough?"
Dan: "I'm sure a gazebo won't cost more than $5,000"

That's seriously how it went -or at least a decent representation. The point is, they were dealing in cash!!! They were holding the cash in their hands the whole time!!! Never once did anyone just count the cash!!!
Anyway, Dull woman #1 got sent home. Also, the two women judges want to get at it with Antonio, Vern Yip wants to get at it with Dan. Dull woman #2 stands no chance.

In other news, we watched Hell's Kitchen last night. Love the hell's kitchen. Tonight was the obligatory "taste test challenge". I'm pleased to say -as someone who's watched several season's of Hell's Kitchen- that Gord-o seems to have finally caught on that it's a funny challenge, or he was drunk. Either way, the chefs come up blind-folded and Gord-o feeds them something and they have to guess what it is. They rarely get it right, and when it's wrong it's usually ridiculously wrong -example: Andy, aka "Next guy sent home" was given avocado, he guessed it was "Boiled Coconut". Odd, I have no idea what boiled coconut would even taste like. You know because it's hard to find. You know, because no one, in the history of boiling things, has ever boiled a coconut. Or maybe they have -I don't care, this is my blog.
So the women won and got to go on an "eating in the dark" lunch with Gord-o. Amanda fell on Gord-o (or pretended to fall) and "copped a feel". I think that plays in later. Nothing else worth mentioning happened during lunch.
The men's punishment was to make sorbet and bring in a shipment. I started out thinking that it seemed like the women's reward and the men's punishment were weaker than their counter part's of last week, and was going to make some crack about Gord-o being a misogynist, but then I remembered that one of the men almost died on a punishment just a few weeks ago. So I decided to leave that one alone.
So dinner service was dinner service -Oh! did I mention that the "palette cleansing sorbet" that the men made and the teams were serving between courses was a "Hell's Kitchen first"? That's two weeks in a row! Maybe three, I don't like to remember crap that doesn't matter. So, yeah, dinner services could essentially be traded out for each other, and with the right editing, no one would ever know. I'll say this about it; The women lost and it was someone's fault. We'll call her "the outsider" because no one likes her -including the producers apparently, because the whole thing was edited to make her look way worse than she could have actually been. Also, I don't remember her name.
Dave "I forgot where I am" BeanieHat (that's his full name) was anointed as the "best of the best, and Whoopi Goldberg was the "best of the worst." Whoopi was way excited about that. She put up The Outsider and Chubby Blonde Girl, but Gord-o decided to add a third -Side note to Gord-o: Seriously, we all get that you're in charge, and it's great! But continuously having them vote on two people then bringing a third up a) wastes their time and b) puts into question the integrity of the process... just something to think about. So Gord-o added Amanda because she tried to cop a feel in the dark luncheon. Then Gord-O sent Amanda home because she wouldn't follow through on the copping a feel -too far? I don't care, it's my blog. Anyway, next week, there's... umm... more cooking. Comcast cut out during the previews for next week. I won't lose any sleep.

Note: "Glee" on Fox is re-airing the pilot that it aired a few months ago... if you didn't see it, watch it, I think this could be a legitimately good show. Also, if you haven't seen it, watch the 3rd season of Arrested Development. I'm pretty sure when they made it, they knew they were getting canceled, it's legitimately bizarre.

OMG! Almost forgot!!! No more Dating in the Dark! I know, right?!

I saw this on CBC last night while watching Jeopardy (clearly America's missing the boat on TV ads)

Musings on the various kitchen's of the afterlife

Hello undetermined number of reader(s),

While watching Hell's Kitchen last night, I started thinking about the name, and whether it was a reference to a proverb, or folksy saying or something like that. Ultimately I came to the conclusion that it was none of these, and it was just a name meant to say "Hey! This show's centered around a kitchen, and boy, that Gordon Ramsey sure is tough to work for!". But it also occurred to me that the restaurant's name would have a completely different context for the diners. Stripped down, they're really just paying a lot of money to eat dinner in a place with a horrible tense atmosphere and a screaming British man where their food may or may not ever arrive. Sure, I'd imagine the kitchen in Hell would be infinitely worse, you know the food wouldn't be any good, there'd be no lemon slice in your water, etc... but no one would call their restaurant Purgatory's Kitchen -just doesn't ring right. Neither does Kitchen for People Who Didn't Use Their Turn Signals But Otherwise Lived An Acceptable Life So They're Only Being Punished In Death With A Less Than Preferable Dinning Experience. So Hell's Kitchen is what we get. But enough with my musing about the level of service in kitchens of the various levels of the afterlife, I've got a show to talk about!

The big question of this weeks episode, the question on everyone's mind: "Hey, does this episode seem 500lbs lighter?" Too mean? Alright. How about "Hey! Where the hell's Ralphie (Robert)?!" So everyone wants to know where Robert (Ralphie) is and whether he's alive. Well, we're just going to have to wait. Other stuff happened first.

But before we get to the other stuff. There's something that's been bothering me. Van and Beanie-hat guy (don't know his name... he's Anthony today). What's the deal with Van and Anthony? Could both of these guys be highly functioning Autistic? Personally, I think Anthony's deal is that he's done way too much of some heavy drug, and it's left his body unable to produce emotions... like maybe he spent a summer on Ecstasy, or maybe he's a high functioning heroin addict... I don't know, but there's something wrong with this guy. Van! -Seriously, you could tell me anything violent/illegal/dangerous that Van has done, and I'd believe you; You:"Van beat up his grandmother" Me:"I'd believe it"... see? Anything!.


-Important note: you have to stick through this one to get what I'm saying... it's the last 30 seconds or so that are worthwhile.


Now that's out of the way. This weeks reward challenge was Vegas themed, you know because this season's based in Las Vegas. No? That's Top Chef, you say?. Oh, well then it must be because Whistler B.C. is a well known gambling location. It's Not? It's a ski resort? Oh. Well then they just like craps. Underrated line of the episode; upon revealing that the reward challenge would involve Craps, Amanda (really her name, I know!) said "Oh Crap!". So the deal is this, they each role the die? dice? I don't know, I think it was like 12-sided -who remembers Dungeons and Dragons?! Just me? OK then. So they role this die with letters it and whatever letter comes up, they have to name an ingredient that starts with that letter, then that ingredient will make up their dish. So the women go first, and it's boring... they do really well coming up with ingredients that will go well together. The guys go and end up with Haddock (it's a type of fish), fig, angel hair pasta, apple, and tomato. At first glance, this looks awful, and the guy that chose apple (Kevin, I think... bald guy) said that he chose it because everything was already screwed. I disagree. Take the apple out, you can make a nice tomato sauce with fig. Turns out that's exactly what they did. Chef Ramsey somehow missed the fact that there was no apple in their dish, and awarded them the win (strangely enough, no one else noticed they were missing an ingredient. I felt like I was taking crazy pills.) So the boys get to go to Vegas -that's why they did the craps!!!- and they have fun and bond and decide that they never want to see Ralphie (Robert) again. Oh, but guess who returns immediately upon their arrival home! Yup, good ol Robert (Ralphie). Robert tells his team that the doctors said his heart was too small for his body. I have to say, I loved the deadpan delivery by Ralphie (Robert) you could watch the realization that he was joking run through the room like 'the wave' at a baseball game (For the record -FTR- I hate the wave. Sit the hell down and watch the game!). So they had dinner service, and because Hell's Kitchen is way into things that haven't happened on Hell's Kitchen before -Next week they'll be serving dinner from low-earth orbit- they have two chef's tables. It appears the purpose of these tables are to distract the chefs and provide each kitchen with it's own Statler and Waldorf.



So the men's kitchen got off to a strong start, but kind of fell apart when the entrees started going out. Van kept leaving paper on the fish. I'll write that again. Van kept leaving paper on the fish. Also, Robert (Ralphie) tried to send out rabbit that was raw -Gord-o said it "Still had it's fur!" Needless to say, Chef Ramsey got super angry and shut down the kitchen. It looked like he was just shutting down the blue side, but they didn't show anything more about the women... so I don't know how that works.

Clearly the blue team lost, and Gord-o decided that Dave was the "best of the worst" so he was tasked with picking two of his team to go up for elimination. He put Ralphie (Robert) -Seriously, let's talk about commitment to a gag!- and Van up for elimination. But, just to remind us that he can, Gord-o also brought up Dull Chef Mopey Face (obviously I don't know his name). He put Van back in line pretty quickly, and left it to Robert and Dull Chef Mopey Face to argue their way out of elimination. And boy did they argue! Robert went on a tirade about how he was insulted to be standing up there with Dull Chef Mopey Face, and Dull Chef said something dull back to him... Finally, Gord-o decided to send home Robert. Robert left with some talk about how we'd all see him again (yeah, cus I totally keep track of professional chefs). So, here's the thing, I've got a theory. I think the producers and lawyers of the show realized last week that Robert actually had a decent risk of dying on their show and decided to get rid of him. Not to say that he didn't allow them to do it this week, but I think it was coming one way or the other.

So that's all I've got for today. I'm going to try to get a More to Love column in tonight or tomorrow morning, but no promises.I've already embedded a couple clips, so I'm leaving you with a link. The top picture is the English version of this add the bottom is the polish. We can't blame them, I guess, it's just the way they were raised.(also, check out the dude's hands... they forgot that part)

http://pokazywarka.pl/msmurzyn/

Some thoughts on things

The inevitable decline in post frequency happened much quicker than I had assumed it would... such is the way of things.

Part of the issue is that there is very little good TV on. Another part of the issue is that I can't help but feel that keeping a note-pad with me to write down witty thoughts for a blog nobody reads while I watch TV with my girlfriend would make me a huge douche-bag.

As such, for the time being, I feel like there's going to be a lot of blogging about nothing in particular.In that spirit, we move forward! TV!;

First off, I'm tickled by the return of Hell's Kitchen. So much anger! So much smoking! At this point I'm convinced that all chefs listen to Kid Rock, Smoke two packs a day, and have decals on their car/truck of Calvin peeing on either "tweekers" or a NASCAR car number. Does this make me classist? Yes. Yes it does... but this isn't about me, it's about the fact that this season of Hell's Kitchen features Whoopi Goldberg and the return of Ralphie (is that really his name? I feel like I might be making that up. Also, what's the over/under on how many episodes he lasts before causing or experiencing a serious medical problem? Does this make me a fattist?). Also, this week we get a special guest of honor... that special guest of honor?!? Some lady!!! That's right, the special guest is no one in particular. Her husband appears to be a marine(?) but other than that, she has no specific characteristic that separates her from anyone else. Let's make her some dinner! Last thing before I move on; apparently next week Whoopi tells chef Ramsey that he's "Crap"! I'm on the edge of my seat!

I love reality TV... and reality TV loves people in the military. Really... they love doing whatever it is their show does for people in the military. Because they're heroes. And there's a lot of them. Design Star this week takes on the living-room of two military families. One of them has a father abroad, and the other one likes video games. I have nothing else to say about this week's episode as I haven't finished it yet, but I can -with confidence- say that this show is fantastic! Three things to watch for 1) The guy doing his best "Will Ferrel as a slightly overweight ambiguously gay man" impression 2) The guy from Jersey (I don't know when it happened, but approximately 1/3 of the population is now from Jersey. It's know in the scientific comunity as the the "Red Sox Fan phenomenon") 3) The ridiculous product placement -in fact, this is commonplace throughout HGTV, and consistently awkward throughout HGTV... well worth any time you put into it. One more important point about this, and this applies to "Toddlers in Tiaras" too -also highly recommended- as this show is on a cable channel, it is much more respectable than any similar show on network TV -Case in point Hell's Kitchen v. Top Chef.
A couple notes on recent movies:
- District 9 is fantastic! Contains no disappointment... FAN-Tastic!- So I know I'm the last horse to cross the finish line on this one, but I saw Marley and Me last night, or at least a good portion of it... so there's a part in the middle that's -seriously- like 10 minutes of Owen Wilson speaking in sentence fragments over a montage of their life with the dog... It's like the film was originally an hour and 45 minutes too long, and to deal with this they took a two hour chunk of the movie, made it into a montage and had Owen Wilson narrate it... but then the movie was still 35 minutes too long, so they cut the first half of every sentence of Owen's narration. Too far fetched? I challenge you to watch the movie again with my theory in mind, it's the only answer that makes any sense!
Also, I get these Wiki-how's on my home page for just such occasions as this; This one should be titled "How to be make choices your grandparents would be ashamed of" or "How to become the punchline of an amusing anecdote":
http://www.wikihow.com/Convince-a-Girl-to-Buy-You-a-Drink