Monday, September 14, 2009

Jamaica Has a Bobsled Team

Well Dear reader(s),

I just don't have anything to blog about. I watched some good stuff this weekend, but here's the thing; is anyone still waiting to hear my thoughts on Thursday night's Top Chef? Nope, me neither. For the record, though I would like to point out that Top Chef's theme this week was French Cuisine. Hell's Kitchen's theme last week? Yup. French cooking. It's a little fish in a barrel, no? I write something in my totally obscure blog that gets read by 3 people (I'm including myself) and it comes true. What was that movie with John Candy where he was a Soap Opera writer who ended up inside his Soap for some reason, and everything he wrote came true? Cool Runnings? Anyway, I feel like that. Then someone came to Mikes house for some reason and gave him a shoe-box full of $100s.

Some notes: (Is the "notes" thing lazy? Or should I completely abandon prose for bullet points?)

-(Top Chef) Frenchie Red-Kerchief -still wearing his signature "boyscout who joined 'the Bloods'" Kerchief- thought he had this one in the bag, you know, cus he's french... but he blew it, even ended up in the bottom group!

- (Top Chef) Also, The woman who's all bitchy, professional, and good got paired up with one of the twins, I don't know if it was douchy twin or boring twin. Either way, she was all up in his bizzy. -Classic quote: "I think his rabbit would be great in my sauce." yikes.

-Two big blogging possibilities came out of this weekend 1) Vampire Diaries... it's bad, like really bad. So much so that I think it might be exceptional in it's drudgery. 2) America's Next Top Model. Say what you will about ANTM and any questions that may arise from me blogging about it, but there's some good stuff here. We were mere inches from having one of the craziest christian girls ever to evolve from monkeys on this season. She got selected, but dropped out for reasons unknown. Also, there's a purposefully anti-social girl who claims that her nickname growing up was "bloody eyeball". I'm sure that it was.

I'll have a "Design Star Finale" blog tomorrow... didn't have time to watch it last night.

Sweet!

Thursday, September 10, 2009

Glee, confronting my shortcommings, and emerging from deep primeval swamp that is Wednesday night fall TV programing

There is nothing like running up against your shortcomings to keep you young. Last night The Girlfriend and I sat down to watch Glee and it occurred to me "Crap, I don't know if I can blog about a fictional show!" I'm sure I'd be a lot better off if I'd drop my "I won't take notes" policy, but I'm not there yet. And despite The Girlfriend's cries from the shores of Supportia, I'm just not sure I can bring myself to do it, I get a lot of mileage out of doing things half-assed.

Of course there were a billion shows on last night, so many shows, in fact, that I'm amazed we were able to get all of them onto the DVR. Last night we had the premiere of Glee, Next Top Model (I know), and So You think you can Dance, as well as new episodes of Top Chef and Ghost Hunters -Ghost Hunters is a fantastic show, just give it a watch or two, it's on the SciFi channel 14 hours a day. You'll thank me.

Anywho, in the face of so much TV we opted to watch the first part of SYTYCD and Glee. SYTYCD is starting another season after finishing up it's last one like 2 weeks ago, pretty soon they're going to be running back to back seasons. The next couple weeks are auditions, which for me always dances on the line between funny and too much. Reality contest auditions were going well until American Idol made fun of the fat kid who was clearly mentally disabled a few years back. Honestly, that kind of killed reality TV contest audition shows for me -thank you American Idol- Ooh Speaking of American Idol, I just found out who's replacing Paula!!! Ellen DeGeneres. I wish there were a way to write the disappointed trombone sound... you know the one. Clearly American Idol has jumped the shark... also clearly "jump the shark" jumped the shark so long ago that I'm not sure if I'm ashamed of myself for using it. Regardless, I love me some American Idol, I've forgiven it of worse crimes -as mentioned above- so I will give the show the benefit of the doubt. Prove me wrong American Idol!

Back to SYTYCD, two things keep me watching this show; Fist, Cat Deeley. Hands down my favorite reality TV host. Even Jeff Probst -my second favorite reality TV host- has moments where I want him to shut up. I never want Cat Deeley to shut up. She's delightful, and 14 feet tall, which makes for great awkward hugs with the dancers.

The other reason I watch SYTYCD? There are some legitimately unbelievable athletic feats performed on this show. Seriously, some of these people are un-real. It's like the NBA in it's wow-factor. But it's also like the NBA in that I pretty quickly tire of it enough that I can't ignore the absurdity. But with the current Wednesday competition, I'm not sure that's a bad thing. So I won't be blogging about it anymore.

Let's talk about Glee. Here's what concerns me; this show is good. It's funny. It's surface funny, like when cheerleading coach/gym teacher(?) Sue (played perfectly by Jane Lynch) suggests that the Finn and Rachel should be "hobbled" as punishment for using the Cheerleaders private copy-machine. But it's also funny in a more subtle way -at least I think it's subtle, I could be a elitist... OK, I am and elitist. It's laughing at itself, and it's laughing hard. There are moments of genuine discomfort that -if you're not in on the joke- may be too much to bear. Like the way that the Glee performances are obviously overdubbed -and way cheesy, or the way it teases with the threat of characters breaking into song musical style repeatedly but rarely delivers. Few shows can get away with playing around with discomfort. The Office does it, and it succeeds because the characters are so likable. I get the feeling from the first two episodes that Glee has enough likability with the characters to keep it around for a few seasons... if only it weren't on Fox.

Key Moments:

-The Principle responding to Sue's outrage that her dry-cleaning budget is being cut to help the Glee club: "The dry cleaners we have are just as good as the those in Europe"

- The first sequence features a conversation in which Sue is trying to intimidate Will (played by Matthew Morrison, another truly likable character):
Sue: "Iron Tablet? They keep your strength up while you're menstruating"
Will: "I don't menstruate"
Sue: "Yeah? Neither do I"

- During a meeting of the "celibacy club" Finn reveals that to keep from prematurely ejaculating while making out with his girlfriend, he thinks the time he ran over the mailman with a car.

-Sue: "That the most offense thing I've seen since an elementary school production of Hair!"


More Sue -she's obviously the heavy lifter on this show:

Wednesday, September 9, 2009

From the desk of the "Fortune cookie companies are amusing themselves at my expense" Department

I received the following fortune in a recent fortune cookie:
"You constantly struggle for self improvement - and it shows"

Should I be insulted? Embarrassed? A little sleepy? I'm just not sure how to feel here.

Tuesday, September 8, 2009

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?

    Design Star has shed it's disguise and finally shows us it's true purpose: to pit straight male designers against gay male designers

    All right, so gay is a reoccurring theme in my blogs, but I only hold up a mirror to the TV... it is TV that relies on people's sexuality to create interest where otherwise there would be none!

    So Dan on Design star isn't overtly gay, fine, I'm one dimensional. Still this week's design star brought it down to Dan, Antonio, and dull woman #2 -guess who goes home. Correct, but I'll get there later. This week's challenge had the designers making over celebrity rooms. It's funny, I don't remember the exact wording, but they made a point of leaving the type of room generic, but it just as easily could have been "the designers make over the guest bedrooms of celebrities, except Kathy Griffin, she wants an office or something. Also, she's not a celebrity". But really, none of them were.

    So to pick the celebrities -and they do this to choose a number of things on Design Star. It's been something that's troubled me before, but I already write 98,000 word blogs, I've got to leave some stuff out. So, to pick which designer gets which celebrity, the designers each stand behind a stool with a can of paint on it (you know, cus it's a design show) and they lift up their lids to determine who they get. Here's the thing that bothers me; every time they show this, the designers are just standing behind their paint cans. You never see them go over and select a paint can. So this leaves me with a strong feeling that they are only creating the illusion of this being a random selection. I'm pretty sure it's all planned out (I know, everyone reading this is saying "duh, Mike... moron". But you're the one talking out loud. I can't hear you, who's the moron now?!).

    So the Celeb-Designer combos end up like this; Dull Woman #2 gets Kelly Kapowski from Saved by the Bell. Kelly wants an eco-friendly make-over for her room. There' s no sense in repeating myself, if you care about my thoughts on "eco-friendly makeovers" go here -It's about half way down. It's only like two sentences, but I'm really thrilled I get to reference one of my past blogs, I feel like this is a milestone for me. So Dull Woman makes the room all eco-friendly, and does her signature "One wall has a pattern that repeats vertically". Honestly, I thought it was kind of cool, but it's been done... by her... a few times. Also, too much grass wall-paper, and she didn't have enough time to hang her headboard.

    Dan "I'm probably gay, but if I said I wasn't your response would be 'really?' as apposed to a sarcastic 'Yeah, I'm sure you're not'" -umm, I'll be honest, I was going for the First-name "kinda funny description of the person" Last-name thing, but the whole idea was shortsighted on my part, as I don't know his last name. Regardless, I think you get my point. Anyway, he got Brandon from 90210 -I think his character's name was Brandon, I didn't watch as much 90210 as I did Saved by the Bell in my formative years; It's Jason Priestly, whoever he was on 90210. So Dan got whoever Jason Priestly was on 90210 and his very pregnant and oddly accented wife -The girlfriend and I had a discussion about where her accent came from... the girlfriend was arguing "Britain, maybe Australia?" I was arguing "The land of make-believe". They wanted their guestroom made into a nursery with a "nautical, Cape Cod theme". So he painted it blue and hung abstract boat frames from the ceiling - naturally.

    Finally Antonio got Kathy Griffin and all of her craziness. Apparently she has three employees. Yeah, and she said it pretty much exactly like that "I have three employees". Apparently it takes three people to manage the media circus that is Kathy Griffin's career. Furthermore, they work in her house. So Antonio made some desks and -according to Vern Yip- decorated like a hobbit (but seriously, these days, who isn't decorating like a hobbit?). Also, there was a metal cutout of America at the front of the room so that they could plot out her tour schedule -"You'll do a show in Topeka, then come home, then a week in Bakersfield!". Lastly, he had 6 clocks on her wall all in different time zones -No snarky comment, just tossing up that meatball for you.

    So they all hosted their spaces, Antonio was great, Dull Woman #2 was decent, Dan was awful, how awful? If you've ever watched "More to Love" you've no doubt noticed the heavy-set British woman who comes in at the elimination ceremony, says something along the lines of "there are three rings left", then leaves. Dan could not do that job. That's how bad his hosting was.

    So Dull Woman #2 got sent home. I think it was mainly due to the headboard, but I can't say for sure as my omnipotence is failing me today.


    Remember these commercials? Oh the glory days!

    My glorious return to the shores of Bloggonia!

    So, the flu (or some approximation of it) put me down for a week, but I'm back! and snarkier than ever! I watched a fair amount of TV this week, started a blog about Top Chef -but never finished, and -when I was feeling better- built a shelf the right size to fit in a closet, but didn't measure the closet door -I'm a little embarrassed about that one, but it is what it is.
    The point is that all of that is behind me, including my unfinished Top Chef blog. It's been long enough that I've completely forgotten what happened on Top Chef last week, and my only remaining Top Chef memory is of the lesbian chef from Seattle raging about having to participate in a challenge that was -very remotely- tied to an institution that she wasn't allowed to be a part of. It was kinda funny, I kinda get it, I mostly don't care... but my self imposed window to comment on it has closed, so that's all I'm going to say.

    Tuesday, September 1, 2009

    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)