Really?

Do we really need yet another dance show? Particularly one that's hosted by yet another former Dancing with the Stars contestant? When they put out the call for hosts, is "must have competed on a dance show but otherwise have no dancing expertise" a requirement?

I saw a commercial the other night for a new show coming on TLC called "Master of Dance" where basically, they have people come on and do the routines from various famous songs/videos. It actually looks like it could be entertaining, but man, I'm just burned out on dancing shows. Between DwtS, America's Best Dance Crew, Step It Up and Dance (which I totally abandoned in its lame-osity and only watch on repeats at like 2am when nothing else is on), and now the return of So You Think You Can Dance, I just don't have room in my brain for another show.

Speaking of SYTYCD, I have to admit, I'm not as juiced up about this season as I have been in the past. Normally, my sister-in-law and I furiously exchange texts during the shows and pick our favorites, but this year we both sort of didn't realize it was on. Maybe it's just the auditions, which have become kind of predictible and repetitive, if not downright lame. Yes, we know, you're some whack-job wearing a silly outfit who thinks that you're a stud...next! OK, another badass popper who won't be able to make it through choreography...next! It's all getting kind of old. I'm hoping that the Vegas round is more entertaining.

Six of one, half dozen of the other

I thought about titling this "Goodbye to another Ugly Hat man," but I have to say I have mixed feelings about the whole thing. Spike is gone. And deservedly so. But now that means that Lisa is in the finals. Ridiculous. As the episode got down to those last few minutes, I was really really wishing that they'd just ax both of them. I am so sick of even looking at Lisa...but Spike's smart mouth (well, those scallops were in your walk-in...gah!), not to mention idiotic choice of the aforementioned frozen scallops...blech. I'm really really happy to see that Stefanie and Richard made it into the finals. I think it's going to come down to those two, unless one or both of them managed to choke big time at the end, which I hate to admit, may happen with Stefanie. I love her because she seems like such a nice Midwestern girl, but sometimes she does some goofy shit. For some reason, I'm just not a big fan of Antonia. Something about her...it just puts me off. Honestly, I think this contest is Richard's to lose, much like Hung last year.

I also have to mention that I really like how this season, they've done more challenges that were about basic skills. Butchering meat was an excellent idea for a quickfire, especially in Chicago. I'll confess, we spent maybe 15 minutes talking about butchering when I was in cooking school (they gave us some lame excuse that it's rare to need that skill), so I can't butcher a damn thing. But I totally wish that I could.

ARRRGGHHH!!!

I cannot believe that Dale got eliminated!! I'm too upset to say much more than that.

....

Ok, I'll concede that as the Exec Chef, he deserved to take the fall. I can't believe that he was dumb enough to volunteer to be the leader of what was obviously going to be a tremendous train wreck. I think I despise Lisa more than ever now. I can't believe that (barring an even bigger catastrophe) either she or Spike are going to be in the final four. Erg.

I must be a glutton for punishment

I opened an account with Chase bank today. Again. I know, I have to be crazy after all I went through with them last time. For those that have no idea what I'm talking about, I had an account with them many years ago and had numerous BIG problems caused by errors on their part which cost me all sorts of fees; my ensuing hatred and crazy rants sort of inspired my original bitchyasiangirl website - which I'm hoping to get back up one of these days.

In the end though, the lure of free money was too much to resist. T & I had been talking for a while about each getting accounts to keep our own separate "mad money." So last month, we got an ad in the mail from Chase offering $100 to open an account. T went and opened his a few weeks ago. I've been bogged down with the child, so it took me till today to be able to go over on my own to open mine. And of course, what I thought would be a simple, 'here's the money, open the account, sign here please' transaction turned into 40 minutes of my "personal banker" trying to sell me every product under the sun. No, I don't need another rewards credit card. No, I'm not interested in re-financing my house. No, I don't need a savings account that gives me 0.5% interest on my lousy few hundred bucks. Sheesh.

We'll see how badly they screw me over this time around. Worse comes to worse, I guess I made a hundred bucks out of it.

My new favorite Japanese game show

And yes, I do have more than one! I never thought that I'd find a show more ridiculous than Ninja Warrior. But then (from the same producers) along came Unbeatable Banzuke! Oh my gosh, this show is freaking AWESOME! Whoever comes up with this stuff is either insane or a genius or both. And the person at G4 who finds these shows - also a genius.

So the premise is pretty simple. There's a list of events and people compete in individual events for a spot on the "Banzuke" or list of champions. The events are insane and most of them involve doing some sort of obstacle course. My favorites include the Hand Walk, Bamboo Derby (walking on stilts), and Kangaroo (pogo stick). And when I say obstacle course, I'm not talking about just bopping along a little race course. There are some serious obstacles. In the Bamboo Derby, there's a very fast conveyor belt, which also has little hurdles that have to be stepped over. And in one of the Hand Walk courses (there are several), there's 30-degree inclines and water hazards!

The most hilarious part of all this is the contestants. Some of them are super hardcore: 50-year-old men who've been walking on stilts for 40 years. And some of them are just morons off the street who thought that it'd be easy to use a pogo stick. It makes for some hilarious hi-jinks.

There's also some other, more interesting challenges, like Daruma 7, where the contestant has to use a big hammer to knock out a stack of drums from bottom to top without toppling the "daruma" figure on top. Or Ottoto 9, which involves balancing a pole on your palm. Super weird. As my mom would say, "Oh those Japanese - they think of everything!"

It's about frickin' time!

Let's just cut to the chase. Nikki is finally gone! Hooray! I'm sorry, but she was clearly the most useless person, not just in last night's episode but in at least the last 2 or 3 episodes. All she's done is talk about how she's Italian and she makes comfort food, and then when the judges don't like her stuff, she says that she's not doing it for them, she's cooking "for the people." Pfft...whatever! Something about her has just always rubbed me the wrong way, and her food was never spectacular. Goodbye, you won't be missed. (And before you get your panties all in a bunch, no it's not a real mugshot - it's from some lame event.)

I think T is planning on writing another "guest blog" but in the meantime, here are my thoughts. Last night's episode was pretty entertaining. I liked the idea of doing Wedding Wars instead of Restaurant Wars. It's a pretty mean bait & switch to pull though. Catering a wedding is really nothing like working in a restaurant, and to have to pull an all-nighter with no warning - rough. Especially having to make wedding cakes.

Nikki's team had disaster written all over it from the start. You just knew that Dale was going to clash with everyone. And he had every right. Most of those people were morons. I mean, they took what should have been a super easy theme (Italian food) and totally screwed it up. And not to keep bashing Nikki, but way to step up as leader. I mean, if you're connecting with the customer on what he's into, and you have the most experience with the type of food he wants, then WHY would you shirk the leader role? Again, have you not watched this show ever? I understand not wanting to take the bullet if things go south, but you'd at least get props for taking on the challenge! When she flat-out said, "I was not the lead in this effort" at Judges' Table, my jaw about hit the floor. I think you could see the shock and disappointment emanating from Tom's bald head.

Maybe I have a soft spot for Dale since he's Asian and from Chicago, but I think he was a bit unnecessarily villainized by his teammates too. There was a lot of grumbling about how he was doing things wrong or whatever, but no one actually wanted to step up and correct him or offer to take over. I hate that attitude. It's like when you're trying to decide with a group of people what to do on a Friday night, and someone sits there in the corner and says nothing while the decisions are being made, but then once you get to the bar, they're like, "This place sucks. Why'd we come here? I wanted to go to this other place." Well why the hell didn't you say so? It's so easy to complain about decisions after they've already been made.

I thought the smacktalk between Dale & HatBeard was dumb. I understand that at this point, they'd probably all been up for well over 36 hours, so tempers were flaring. And much as I like Dale, it's obvious that his fuse is shorter than most. Punching the locker because they lost the Quickfire...kinda pathetic. But I do think HatBeard was just baiting him. In case I haven't mentioned it before, he REALLY annoys me. Way to cover up for your own lack of work by trying to point the finger at the guy who did the most. Yeah, that made sense. For once, Lisa did the smart thing at Judges' Table and just kept her mouth shut. She knew that her cake, ugly as it was, was going to keep her out of harm's way, and chiming in on their pissy little fight was only going to draw unnecessary attention to herself. Of course, I wonder if part of the reason that she didn't say anything was because she'd fallen asleep standing up. She looked exhausted! Way more so than her teammates, almost to a scary degree.

Not a lot of comments about the other team. It was another lovefest, led by once again by Richard, who I'm begrudgingly beginning to like and root for. I'm with T about the faux-hawk though - it's lame and needs to go. I did think it was pretty cool of him to share his win with Stephanie. And I guess TweakBeard must not have packed enough speed in his bag that day because he was strangely quiet through most of the episode. Although his comment about the "culinary boner"...well, I could've done without that.

A funny conversation

I keep telling T that he needs to get his own blog. He refuses, usually under the guise of either that he does not have enough time (but he has time for multiple fantasy baseball leagues), or that no one but me finds him funny. Both of these are untrue. I think the real reason is that he just prefers to make fun of my blogging efforts, even though he secretly longs to blog. So in the meantime, I thought I'd share an exchange we had last night which cracked me up, and then the follow-up this morning.

We were talking about the new Indiana Jones movie coming out in a few weeks, and specifically, how we're both pretty excited to see it, even though it's been 10 years since the last one. There was a minor discussion on which of the first three we'd seen more, etc., and then T ended it with, "I don't care if it's 2 hours of Indiana Jones drinking coffee, I'd still pay $10 to see it." I laughed at this for a solid 5 minutes, with the occasional giggle returning every few minutes for a while after.

There was also some discussion about the X-Files movie coming out this summer, to which we had pretty much the opposite feelings about. I mean, come on. Is anyone but the most die-hard fanboy nerds actually excited for this? It's not like David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson's careers have taken off like rockets since the last one came out. Anyways, so T & I are both going on about this (although I don't know why, since we're both in total agreement with one another) and then T goes, "What's next, '227 - the Movie'? I hear Jackee is looking for work."


Ok, both of these little tidbits may not be anything more than mildly amusing to anyone but me, but then there was this exchange this morning, over email, which started with his throwaway line at the end:

T: 227 - The Movie. Think about it! It could be awesome. Me: I'd rather think about Indiana Jones and the Steaming Cup of Coffee... T:

-- close up on Indiana Jones' face --

Indy: (tired voice, deathly serious) "I'd need some joe."

-- cut to show barrista --

Middle eastern cryptic looking guy working at Starbucks: (slight accent, wearing a turban) "Vente?"

Indy: "Yeah, that's right, vente." (focus on Indy's chin scar, Indy rubs it while reminiscing of past coffee drinking)

---cut to slow pan out: Indy reading Wall Street Journal in dusty leather jacket and hat, whip attached to belt --

Barrista: "Indiana!"

Indy: (goes to counter to fetch coffee, walks as if very sore all over, gravelly voice) "Yeah, that's right.....thanks." (tips $2 in "karma" mug with rainbows on the side)

-- fade to black --

.

.

.

.

-- Screen is black. Very slow pan out. We realize that the "black screen" is actually one of the darkened spaces on Jones' NY Times crossword. As we pan out, some scone crumbs fall onto the paper out of the corner of his mouth.

Indy: (to himself, mumbling) "Flightless bird....three letters....is it 'emu'?"

-- (this continues for 90 minutes) --

Worldwide gross: 800 million dollars

OK, someone tell me that wasn't funny!