bitchyasiangirl

Hooray hooray hooray!

2009-08-22T10:14:00.004-05:00

Honestly, I've been too busy with travel, other blogs, and life in general to keep up with this blog for some time now. My tolerance for reality tv has also hit an all-time low. It makes me sad to realize that my original project has sort of turned into the red-headed stepchild. I'm going to try harder to keep up, but I won't lie, posts here will probably become even more sporadic.

I'm also starting to feel like it's a bit dumb to even post about Top Chef or Project Runway when there are a billion other bloggers writing about them and they probably don't wait 4 days to post either. Whatevs, I'm guessing most of them don't have hyperactive 2-year-olds driving them crazy night and day either. So I'll just say, hooray for Rick Bayless for winning Top Chef Masters (had to root for the hometown guy), hooray for the return of regular Top Chef (T can now resume his crush on Padma) and super hooray for the return of Project Runway!

And then, just because this sketch came up in conversation recently, here's a funny.

Disgusted

2009-07-27T19:04:00.004-05:00

I've never made any bones about being a reality-tv whore, but even I have reached the point of total disgust, particularly with VH1. I mean, Daisy of Love...ok, we knew it was coming - Daisy is like the walking, talking cartoon caricature embodiment of every guy's adolescent wet-dream. But I watched the first episode and realized I simply couldn't stomach this round, particularly if I was going to have to tolerate her "singing." I have to mention though, I did catch T watching an episode yesterday and without her makeup? Yeesh, not pretty. Or rather, even more ghoulish than with the clown-whore makeup.

After 2 rounds each of Flavor of Love, I Love New York, and Rock of Love (I couldn't make it through the third outings), I'm just done with the celebrity+freak Bachelor format. Which is why I was all the more disgusted last night when I happened to stumble across the "preview" commercial for their new show featuring that iditotic gold-digging camera-whore, Megan, from Rock of Love 2. They actually built gold-digging into the premise by enlisting supposed millionaires as the contestants vying for her "love." And by "love," I actually mean the occasional lay and faked orgasm in exchange for some sort of shiny bauble because I'm fairly certain that she has a cash register in her chest where her heart should be.

I really wonder where they found millionaires who are so hard up they can't get gold-digging whores on their own? If I could actually bring myself to watch the show, it would only be with the secret hope that there would a crazy twist, in which after choosing her millionaire mate and professing her "love," it would be revealed that the guys were all hobos & bums rounded up from the local trainyard.

In other shows that I will never ever watch, I've pretty much taken a pass on all the other garbage that's on VH1 these days: Charm School, The T.O. Show, New York does a snuff film, whatever. I'm over it. I also really wish I'd never even seen the commercials for Fox's latest entry in reality dating freakshows, More to Love. I suppose it's a step up from The Littlest Groom. But blech, I can't even comment beyond that.

I don't normally read or comment on tabloid gossip and such, but since I'm already on a reality show rant, I have to say that it's been hard to avoid the whole Jon & Kate Plus 8 furor. I have to say, the whole thing makes me so sad. I used to really love that show with all the cute hapa kids. And even though they seemed to have their flaws as a couple, you used to get the sense that Jon & Kate did really love each other. But now...egad, what a train wreck, and not the good kind either.

Obviously those poor kids are going to suffer the most (especially the older girls), but I'm actually starting to feel pretty sorry for Kate. I don't care what kind of over-controlling shrew she was, it's a pretty douchebag move for Jon to be out gallavanting around with a series of 20-something girls just a few weeks after filing for divorce. I mean, have a little bit of respect for the mother of your children, man! Or if nothing else, think about how this is going to look to your kids, who get to see your asshole face on E! and Extra and hear about how you're smoking cigs on a yacht with Christian Audigier. Asshole. If this guy seriously ends up with his own reality show like I've been hearing, I'm going to have to firebomb the station that airs that garbage.

On the flip side, I have to confess my new guilty pleasure is Miami Social on Bravo. Yes, I know the people on it are all pathetically self-absorbed and obsessed with being hot and in (despite the fact that, let's face it, they're all kinda old to be considered either), but I can't help myself. It's the train wreck factor, but without any of the pretense of a contest or being "housewives" or whatever. My favorite has to be Michael, who seems so so lacking in self-awareness that it'd be sad if it weren't so funny. His whole "feud" with Ariel could not smack more of jealousy and sexual tension. I especially love how he thinks he so fabulous when he really looks just like every other short, balding gay guy I've ever met.

Three-fer

2009-06-11T23:14:00.004-05:00

Last night marked the real return of So You Think You Can Dance! Hooray! But then the stupid local news decided that the weather was newsworthy enough to preempt the first hour of the show. Boooo! I managed to catch most of the second half live, but then I had to dig around a bit today to find last night's episode online, so forgive the delay.

Anyways, it was your pretty standard first show with the top 20. Most of the dances were good, but not great, and the judges were pretty positive across the board (although they were pretty hard on Tony and Paris, neither of whom I thought deserved to make it to the top 20 anyways, so meh). I almost think it's like even though they clearly have their favorites, they don't want to tip the scales too much...yet. I sometimes wonder if Mary Murphy sits up at night and comes up with new and annoying ways to come up with "fake-out" praise. Like, "hmmm, how can I pretend to hate something and then turn around and reveal that I totally love it?" Ugh. And I also cannot STAND Adam Shankman. Besides the fact that he's a smarmy little sycophant, the amount of self-promotion he does for projects that he maybe shouldn't be so proud of...it's just disgusting.

And while I'm at it, can I also bitch a little bit about how disappointed I am that they seem to have watered down the genres so much the last couple seasons? I really like Tabitha and Napoleon, but most of what they choreograph really just does not scream "hip-hop" to me, especially that lite-rock shit. And even the ballroom/latin stuff has so many silly storylines and so much mugging that it's often unrecognizable. One of the things I always loved in the first few seasons was that they held people to these strict standards of fox trot, cha-cha, etc.

Anyways. Tony & Paris got sent home. Whatevs. I was certain from the start that Tony wouldn't make it past the first episode. And Paris always rubbed me the wrong way. Something about the beauty queen thing, I guess. I think so far, I'm rooting for Asuka, Jason and of course, Phillip.

Part 2 - Top Chef Masters! I've been crazy excited about this ever since I started seeing commercials a couple months ago. I absolutely LOVE the idea of getting top notch chefs in a competition together, although I'm a little bummed that it's more of a bracket-style setup rather than 20 crazy egos in one room. Last night's episode did not dissapoint, although I think it was almost a given that Hubert Keller would win. He was so clearly head and shoulders above the other guys.

I should also mention that I've looked at the bio page for the contestants on Bravo's website and it's a pretty interesting mix of people. There are a bunch of chefs who are pretty famous and/or have been guest judges on TC in the past, and then there are a bunch who seem a little bit like filler. I have to wonder how they cast the show and how they determined who was going to compete against whom in the first round. I mean, was there ever a chance we would have seen Keller, Bayless, and Dufresne on the same show? I doubt it. I also think it's interesting how there's a certain amount of cannibalization between Top Chef and Iron Chef America. It make sense from a certain standpoint since there are only so many top quality chefs who are also camera-ready. I wonder how execs at Bravo & Food Network feel about it though.

I'm impressed that they managed to get Gael Greene as a judge, although I'm not particularly a fan of the other two guys. The Saveur editor has a nice pedigree on paper, but on screen he's just annoying. And the other guy seems to want to be the next Toby, but isn't quite there either.

I do miss Tom Collichio though and I'm hoping he makes an appearance at some point. And the jury is still out on Kelly Choi. She's definitely more animated than Padma, who always seems like she's on a nice mellow Valium trip, but she occasionally makes this weird face that sorta bugs me - almost like she's smelled something foul. And couldn't they find someone who's NOT a stick-thin formal model?! I know, nitpicking. But I'm definitely looking forward to next week's episode, with Wylie Dufresne. Should be interesting.

Last, but not least, to complete this reality TV 3-fer, we have The Fashion Show. Yes, I'm still watching this train wreck. Like I've said before, it's all I've got until Project Runway comes back in August. I will say though, they do a great job with their challenges. I think they've all been very interesting and well, challenging, but without going into crazytown, like with the PR where they had to make clothes out of garbage.

In any case, I was sad that Angel got the boot tonight. She was one of the few people I actually sorta liked on the show, even though her clothes were kind of a disaster. But everyone else on that show is just such a catty, egotistical bitch that it's almost unbearable. I used to sort of like Reco, but his ego is way way out of control. As is Daniela's, who I despise with the burning fire of a thousand suns. There's something about know-it-all 23-year-olds that just totally chaps my ass.

I'm also beyond annoyed that Johnny is still there since not only is he phoning it in (and doing it poorly), but his whole "I can't sew" deal is getting way way WAY old. I was happy that Merlin won tonight though. He seemed like he was losing a little bit of his strut (as evidenced by the lack of jaunty hats of late) and I think it was a good confidence boost. I'm sure it'll totally go to his head and be totally annoying next week.

Oh and one last gripe: can I just say how freaking FURIOUS I was last week when everyone was bitching and moaning over having to work with "real" women? It's shit like that that makes me want to burn down department stores and join a nudist colony so I can hang out with old fat hippies. Ok, just had to get that out of my system.

Conan's back!

2009-06-02T06:47:00.002-05:00

I was very excited to watch Conan's new show for the first time last night. I think overall, he did great. Loved the opening segment with him running across the country! The Universal Studios tour bit was also pretty funny, but I'm biased because I've always loved it when Conan has done stuff like that. I also enjoyed his little tribute to his 1992 Taurus, which also happened to feature my college roommate, Kate Lee (she's the girl with the hose)!

He did seem a little jittery during the monologue, but I suppose most people would be. I was also happy to see Andy back, but a little disappointed that he was exiled to a little podium off of the main stage for the entire show. Will Ferrell was entertaining as always and I thought Pearl Jam was kinda just meh.

For those that missed it, here's the opening:

And I really wanted to post the bit with my friend, Kate, but unfortunately it's not up on Hulu (yet). I'll get it up when I can find it.

One week till Conesy

2009-05-26T12:41:00.002-05:00

I'm really really REALLY hoping that Conan stays true to his old wacky form when the new Tonight Show starts next week. But regardless, I'm happy that Andy will be back.

It ain't PR...

2009-05-14T00:46:00.004-05:00

Yes, this is a week late. I'm sure there have been a thousand other blog posts about it already, but I couldn't help but weigh in with my quick 2 cents on Bravo's blatant Project Runway knock-off, The Fashion Show. For those that have been living under a rock, after the obligatory litigation and settlement, Project Runway has flown the coop for Lifetime and the last season (filmed last winter) won't be airing until late summer. Booo....hisss...

In it's place, Bravo has come up with The Fashion Show, which pits 15 designers against one another for a cash prize, furnished as usual by one of their generous and shamelessly plugged sponsors.

So after one episode, the good: I love Isaac Mizrahi, always have. I think he's an excellent choice for host/judge. I also like the format, which involves a "quickfire" type challenge, as well as a live fashion show filled with industry types.

The meh: I'm not really sure who these "industry types" they have in the audience are. I'm guessing that people who have the time and inclination to participate in a show every week are going to be of dubious quality.

The bad: Kelly Rowland as co-host. I'm not really buying it. I don't care how many shows she's been front-row for, she just doesn't strike me as a fashion icon. I'm already wondering who they'll replace her with next season.

The ugly: No Tim Gunn. Yes, I know that's sorta obvious, but Tim Gunn as the mentor figure really has made the difference for Project Runway and without someone to play a similar role, I think TFS is going to struggle to provide valuable input for the contestants.

Of course, there is the requisite crazy cast of characters, and the clear winner of wackiest contestant goes to Merlin. Even his name is nutsoid. I mean, just look at him! And, as T pointed out while we watched, he takes jaunty hats to a whole new level. I think I'm going to start keeping a hat count. I think this first episode featured at LEAST 4 different hats, if not more.

So is it as good as Project Runway? Of course not. There's very little that is. But will I watch it and make do until the new season starts? Well what else is there to do?

Random vid

2009-04-17T14:39:00.002-05:00

I love this movie. If I even think about it, this song usually stays stuck in my head for weeks.

I miss Conesy

2009-03-03T22:57:00.006-06:00

Just for giggles, I decided to try to watch Jimmy Fallon last night. I've never been a huge fan of his (he's always been a little bit too smug with his own cuteness), but I figured, what the heck, why not? I made it through the opening monologue, and a couple bits, but fell asleep before the first guest, Robert DeNiro.

Here's a review from Yahoo that I think sums it up pretty nicely. I'm really hoping he finds his stride fast because as a night owl, I'm really going to miss having Conan around. Yeah yeah, he's still going to be on, but I'm just not sure it'll be the same.

Oh, I will say, I think it's pretty sweet and badass that Fallon got the Roots as his houseband. Although I have to wonder what the heck they're getting out of it?

As if to drive the point home though, Conan did this little bit for the opening of Jimmy's show. I like the crack about crappy guests. Hee.

Didn't quite see that one coming

2009-02-27T15:29:00.006-06:00

If anyone had told me at any point during this season that Hosea would win, I never would have believed it. But to his credit, he pulled it off when it mattered most, helped along a bit by the catastrophic collapse of Carla's judgment, and Stefan's ridiculous over-confidence.

Like with Richard last season, I honestly thought that the title was Stefan's to lose. And while I've previously found his attitude to be entertaining, in this case it was just off-putting. I was especially annoyed when, towards the end or the episode, he made some comment to the effect of how he deserved it because he's been on top so many times. Um, haven't they constantly hammered it home how it's NOT a cumulative contest, and you're only supposed to be judged on that week's competition? Not that the judges actually stick strictly to that rule themselves (um, Fabio's elimination anyone?) but still, whatever, dude.

I was much more disappointed in how Carla just seemed to let Casey take over her menu. It just seemed like a shocking lapse in judgment to decide to use a cooking technique that you have NEVER used before! Hello?! It's the finale! I mean, haven't you had 2 months to really think through what your menu is going to be? I was really rooting for Carla too and sad not just that she didn't win, but also to see her so disappointed in herself at Judge's Table.

As a sidenote, I'm also glad to see that Rocco managed to worm his way into the finale. Bleh. Was that really the best they could do? Especially after having Lidia Bastianich and Jacques Pepin just two episodes before?! I'm sorry, but Rocco sucks. And he has SO definitely had plastic surgery of some sort. Stop denying it man.

Anyways, I guess congratulations are due to Hosea. Good job flying low on the radar, firmly in the middle of the pack, and then staying steady while the other finalists collapsed. Lamest. Win. Ever.

Top Chef, the Oscars and Good-bye Conesy

2009-02-25T00:26:00.008-06:00

I haven't written anything about this season of Top Chef, but I thought I'd just weigh in with a few thoughts on that and other happenings this last week in TV.

I have to say, this season of TC has been pretty awesome. The number of really top-notch, world-class chefs that they've had as guest judges....it's unbelievable. I was initially irked by the fact that they started with 157 freaking chef-testants, but once they narrowed it down to 8 or so, it started to be more manageable. T and I have been loving Fabio. We think he clearly deserves his own show. So that being said, we were both more than a little crushed when he got eliminated. I really thought that Stefan deserved to go, but I suspect that they wanted to maintain the "asshole" factor for the finale (see: Lisa).

I also think that despite what they keep saying about it not being a cumulative competition, that's really impossible for them to maintain. Stefan has been crushing almost the whole season, and I've been saying for weeks now that it's pretty much his prize to lose. However, that being said, I think that Carla is definitely a dark horse. T said numerous times during the course of the last episode that if you'd told him 2 months ago that Big Bird (that's what he calls her) would be in the finale, he would've fallen down laughing. Who knew she would come on so strong at the end?

I also felt a little bad for Richard, who was kind of up against impossible odds to make it to the finale. But hopefully this comeback will shave some time off of the 10 years that he said it'll take him to get over being booted. Man, talk about taking it hard....

I'm annoyed that Hosea has made it this far. He's come across as mediocre through most of the show, and the whole "romance" with Leah...bleh. I'm rooting for Carla, but I think Stefan will win.

Briefly, about the Oscars:
I watched most of it on delay on my DVR and let me just say, that was definitely the way to go! I skipped most of the boring speeches (sorry, costume design and documentary short award winners) and got through the show quickly enough that I barely noticed that it went 30 minutes late. Although, even with the ability to skip most of the commercials, I still couldn't help but notice the 8,342 ads for JC Penney! What was up with that? And what happened to the ads overall? Didn't the Oscars used to have good ads? Didn't it used to be considered the "Superbowl for women?" The few commercials I did watch were all old, or just plain garbage.

I thought Hugh Jackman did a respectable job, even if some of the song-and-dance numbers were on the cheesy side, and I also thought the set design and production quality overall was quite lovely. I kinda dug the whole retro-glamour thing. I was excited that Kate Winslet finally got the win, even though I haven't seen The Reader. I've just always loved her though. And I was also very happy that Slumdog Millionaire ruled the evening. Even though I didn't see all the nominees for Best Picture, I did see that one, and it's an amazing film.

Last, but not least, I wanted to comment on Conan O'Brien's last week on Late Night. I've long been a big fan of Conan, and he really did not disappoint last week. He showed many, if not all, of my favorite bits (many of my friends and I still quote lines from the olde-timey baseball bit), and the chopping up of his set was priceless.

T and I have wondered more than once how watered down Conan's going to be when he goes to the Tonight Show, and I have to say, the speech he gave at the very end of his show last Friday night was a nice reassurance that he plans on staying exactly the same (here's a link to watch the last show). I really really hope that's true, since I particularly love his brand of zany nonsense. Oh, and that being said, I was surprised and delighted to see this story today. I was happy to see Andy on the last show, and I'm very curious to see how it'll be to have him back.

Now if only they would take that hack, Leno, off the air for good...

The opposite of a rant

2009-02-19T01:24:00.009-06:00

I know, I haven't posted anything on this blog for months and months. And the other one's been fairly neglected too. This whole taking care of a kid business interferes with blogging. And then there's my recently acquired Facebook addiction...but that's another post. In any case, I thought I'd post the rare positive rave, instead of rant.

T & I were in Chicago this past week (he was there for work, E & I tagged along to hang with my mom and visit friends). Our trip conveniently coincided with both Valentine's Day and our anniversary, so we decided to celebrate by going to a fancy schmancy dinner at a relatively new restaurant called L2O. Yes, I'm secretly a wannabe food critic, although probably lacking in proper credentials.

Anyways, here's the wrap-up. I meant to take pictures, but I got a little intimidated. Or, to be more accurate, I didn't want to make an ass of myself and seem like a total tourist. But I found a Flickr pool of pictures, as well as a wealth of info on the L2O blog, and I've included links where applicable. I'll probably insert more actual pictures when I'm feeling less lazy, but for now, you'll have to click. Sorry.

I'll confess, we picked this place after seeing it on TV. But I figure that Anthony Bourdain and Eric Ripert probably know what they're talking about, so after seeing them rave on "No Reservations," I made one. The restaurant was located inside the Belden-Stratford building, a luxury hotel/apartment building in Lincoln Park. The space actually used to be another restaurant (Ambria) and there's another restaurant across the hall (Mon Ami Gabi). Interestingly, these are/were all Lettuce Entertain You restaurants.

When we pulled up to the valet parking, they actually already had our name down on the reservation list, so no ticket was needed. Same for the coat check. Nice touch. When we went into the restaurant itself, the entrance area was a bit dark, with dark wood columns, leading to a brightly lit tree-like decoration in glass, similar to but not exactly like these: http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2497682336/in/pool-759455@N23

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesleyk/2588613935/in/pool-759455@N23
I read somewhere that the glass case decoration changes weekly, but I'm not sure if that's true or not.

The decor was overall very modern. There was no formal hostess stand, but someone greeted us and showed us to the lounge to wait for our table (we were a bit early for our reservation).

The server for the lounge poured us some water (from their own custom logo'd bottles, of course) into pretty blue stemless Reidel glasses and gave us the cocktail menu. T and I choked a bit on the idea of ordering an $20 cocktail, but I guess it wasn't that outrageous given the setting. We did skip the caviar service though. Heh. I finally settled on a glass of Riesling and T went with a Hefeweizen beer. Both were very good and I think we could have both swapped drinks and been happy, which is odd to say since I'm not a beer-drinker, and he's not a wine-drinker.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/18805923@N00/2496918631/in/pool-759455@N23

Again, the setting was very ultra-modern. White leather furniture, white lucite table, frosted glass divider separating the dining room, very cool. When they showed us to our table, they had us leave all our drinks and brought them over for us after we were seated, which I always love. The dining room was not very big and mostly divided by these big 'screens' of thick wire that you could still see though. There were also private rooms which we saw later during a tour.

Before our menus came, we had two Amuse Bouche:

The first was a small piece of smoked salmon, covered with a salmon foam and served with a clear disc of salmon gelee placed at 12 o'clock on the rim of the plate. Everything was clear or white except for the fish itself, but it all still had very strong salmon flavors. Very savory.

The second was a mussel encased in a coconut curry gelee with green apple essence and tiny discs of cucumber & jalapeno. That one was fantastic. I especially liked how you could actually taste the jalapeno, but not the heat. I loved the little dish it came in too.

When we got our menus, we were told that there are a few options for dining. There was a four-course prix fixe menu, where you got to select from a number of options for each course (Raw, Warm, Main and Dessert). Then there was a six-course "tete-a-tete" menu where each course focused on just two ingredients with very simple preparations. Then there was the twelve-course tasting menu that just listed the main ingredient for each course, but you could see some of the descriptions since some appeared in the prix-fixe option as well. After a short discussion, T and I decided we didn't want to mess with choosing and worry that we'd picked the wrong things, so we went for the tasting menu. Hey, you only live once, right?

Raw

1st course: Shimaaji (mackerel), served with baby radishes & thinly sliced daikon(I think?), red miso and soy salt, dehydrated from their own homemade soy sauce

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064111590/in/pool-759455@N23

Very light and clean-tasting. The shimaaji was white-fleshed and tasted nothing like the mackerel you normally get at sushi restaurants.

2nd course: Tuna Tartare, served as a grid of cubes with various sauces in gelee form and lightly drizzled with olive oil. Similar, but not exact pic:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lesleyk/2589457822/in/pool-759455@N23

I can't remember what was in all of the sauces except that one was black squid ink, which was suprisingly tasty. This was one of my least favorite dishes though. I thought the tuna on it's own was bland and the olive oil was overwhelming. After eating this, I felt like my mouth was coated in oil and had a hard time getting the taste out.

3rd (I think - may have been the 4th): Homemade tofu, in a white ginger-miso sauce, topped with thinly sliced scallions and flakes of something akin to bonito (can't remember what it was called).
http://www.flickr.com/photos/lstolpman/3243899109/in/pool-759455@N23

The texture of the tofu was outstanding - so silky it was like pudding, and the sauce was also very very tasty. But I thought the scallion was just a bit overpowering and the fish flakes didn't taste like anything to me, but they did add nice texture.

Oh, at this point, I should also mention the bread. They had the most wonderful selection of in-house baked breads, all miniature, and all absolutely amazing. I'm sure I'm forgetting a few, but there was a mini-baguette, a crusty wheat roll, mini rosemary croissant (my fave), a square milk bread whose name I can't remember (but it was T's fave), a kalamata olive roll, a caramelized onion roll, and then slices of some other bread (rye, maybe?) I didn't try. These were served with a small dome of homemade, lightly-salted butter, also to-die for. I told T at one point that I could have spent the whole evening eating croissants and butter and been pretty happy. They came around and refilled as we pleased and we probably got a little piggy with bread, but it was SO good.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/lstolpman/3244686370/in/pool-759455@N23

4th - I'm not sure if this still falls under raw or was a transition to the "Warm" menu: Cold-smoked Escolar (I think, can't quite remember the name of the fish and I'm sort of relying on Flickr descriptions), served with thinly sliced hearts of palm and crystal ice lettuce. Our server recommended that we roll it up and eat everything together.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064111590/in/pool-759455@N23

This dish was also excellent. The fish was very tender and you could definitely taste the smoke. I thought the texture was almost akin to lobster. Although I didn't like having to use my hands to tear up the lettuce and roll the fish up. I preferred to just pick the whole thing up with chopsticks and shove it into my mouth. I know, I'm a class act.

Warm

5th course: Kampachi with served over tapioca pearls and and drizzled tableside with an yuzu sauce.

This dish was more than just warm, it was hot (as was the plate it was served on, which I love), and it was probably my favorite dish of the night. I wanted very badly to lick the sauce off the plate, but I had to settle for using my spoon to scoop up as much as possible. The fish was cooked absolutely perfectly.

6th (I think): Arctic Char poached in a champagne butter sauce, accompanied by a square of zucchini emulsion, topped with a thin sheet of gelee and squares of zucchini skin arranged on top:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063291189/in/pool-759455@N23

There were also dots of a basil pesto on the plate. This dish was also to-die-for. A close second for fave of the evening.

7th: Lobster dumplings served over a lobster broth and topped with black trumpet mushrooms.

Similar pic, but not quite what we had:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063295885/in/pool-759455@N23

Simply amazing. The texture of the dumpling was much softer than you'd expect for a normal dumpling, almost gelatinous, but totally smooth and creamy, and SO lobster-y. T kept asking me how they did this - distilled so much lobster flavor into one small globe - and I have no idea. I think this was one of his favorites of the night.

Main

8th: Black (Striped?) Bass topped with brioche toast, sitting on a bed of shredded daikon and something else, surrounded by saffron-infused mussels with red-veined sorrel, served with an orangey shellfish(?) bouillon/sauce, poured tableside.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064128532/in/pool-759455@N23

I loved the bass and the brioche toast, but I did not care for the mussels. I thought they were a bit overkill and took away from the fish. I actually gave the last couple on my plate to T. Then again, I'm generally not a giant fan of mussels. I'll eat them, but they're low on my list of seafood. I thought the sauce was a bit bitter as well, but it did sort of grow on me. T liked this dish quite a bit and thought I was being too nit-picky.

9th: Slow-braised Pork Belly, seared before serving to crisp up the skin, served with a black truffle sauce and yukon gold potatoes 3 ways - a thin sheet & a cylinder that had a bit of creamy mashed potato in the center:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064142360/in/pool-759455@N23

This is they type of dish that I would normally never order since it's so much pure fat, but I have to confess, I'm a convert. It was very flavorful, and the crispiness of the skin provided just the right textural counterpart to the fat. I wanted to take a bath in the sauce.

10th: Shabu Shabu - Slices of Medai fish, trumpet mushroom, napa cabbage, and a shizo leaf, that we dipped in hot kombu broth, served with a white ponzu dipping sauce.

This was nice, but didn't knock my socks off. The fish was very good, sushi-grade but better cooked than raw, but I wish we could have actually drank the broth at the end. I didn't care much for the dipping sauce either. I will say, the presentation was gorgeous.

Dessert

Chocolate Soy - basically explained as a soy paste, almost akin to tofu, that was infused with chocolate and then sprinkled on top with chocolate salt. This had the look and texture of a truffle and was so chocolatey good. I never in a million years would have guessed there was soy in it.

Floating Island - a take on the traditional "Isle Flotant" dessert (that I made in cooking school, ha!) but with a limoncello cloud, a pistachio sauce and a pistachio crisp.

http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3063311371/in/pool-759455@N23

This is not my favorite kind of dessert, but it was good. I think T liked it better than I did.

Exotic Fruit Consumme - Mango Sorbet topped with lemongrass marshmallows, passionfruit seeds & mint, sitting on brunoised pineapple, mango and passionfruit, and a passionfruit consomme, poured tableside.

I did not care for this dessert at all. It was easily my least favorite dish of the evening. I thought there were way too many flavors, components and textures and it was overall too tart. The lemongrass marshmallows didn't taste like much (I could detext a hint of lemongrass), and I thought the texture they added when you ate everything together was icky.

At this point, I thought we were done. We'd long since lost count of courses and assumed that 3 desserts were about it. But I'll confess that all evening, I'd been seeing these gorgeous, PERFECT souffles coming out all evening and was secretly bummed that we weren't going to get one since I think they were on the prix-fixe menu. But then imagine my suprise when we each got one!

Praline Souffle - with Frangelico base and rum sauce.

To. Die. For. This was sooooo good. But by the time it came, we were already pretty full. And for EACH of us to eat our own not small souffle was kind of crazy. I struggled to finish mine, and only because T pushed me to do it, saying I'd regret wasting it.

At this point, I thought I was going to burst. T and I started making jokes about how we wouldn't have to pull through the drive-thru after all. And then our server told us that while technically, that was the last course, there was still a Mignardises. *groan* She actually offered to wrap them up for us, but after convincing us that they were just two very small bites, we went with it.

Served together: Macaroon cookie sandwich with salty caramel filling and a Canelé Bordeaux cake. Here's a pic of the latter, which is kind of a custardy cake covered with beeswax to give the outside a crunchy texture.

I'm normally not a huge fan of macaroons, but this was like a heavenly little pillow, filled with caramel goodness. Despite being stuffed, I probably could have eaten another... or six. The canelé was good also, but I just couldn't finish it. Honestly, I was a bit OD'd on soft custard-y textured things after the souffle.

After dinner, we got to take a tour of the kitchen. Of course, it was now about midnight and service had long since officially ended, so most of the staff were cleaning. I was a little bit sad that we didn't get to see it in action, but it was still amazing. The kitchen was HUGE, I believe they said slightly more than half the space of the entire restaurant, which is crazy. It was amazingly clean, which I imagine it is even at the height of service, and there were separate stations for everything, as well as lots of cool machines to make all the various components. There was even a separate fish kitchen where I guess the chef himself breaks down the fish that is flown in every other day from Japan. Crazy. Here's a link to a pic from someone else's Flickr, just to give you an idea:
http://www.flickr.com/photos/apocope/3064166838/in/set-72157610262028662/

So this was definitely the meal of a lifetime...but I'm already thinking about how/when we can go back. I'll also add that despite the fact that this place was insanely high-end, our server was fantastically warm and friendly. I never felt like she was looking down her noses at us, especially when we decided to forego wine and drank water the rest of the evening after we finished our pre-dinner drinks. And it goes without saying that the service was overall impeccable. Beautiful table service, presentation, all-new appropriate silverware for every course; we never had to ask for a thing. An amazing meal, in every sense.

Argh.

2008-10-11T20:13:00.021-05:00

So. I'm at my mom's house this week. And she while she does have cable, she does NOT get Bravo. *sigh*

I thought I'd be able to watch this week's Project Runway online, but no such luck. The most recent episode they have up is the LL Cool J one. Jerks. And on top of that, I was trying really hard to NOT know who was kicked off before seeing the episode, but the first thing I see on Bravo's website? "Watch Jerell's last words!" Double jerks.

So no recap or comments this week. It'll have to save my vitriol for the finale. Instead, since my suspense is already ruined, I'll link to a recap by people infinitely funnier than me at Best Week Ever (the photo up top is also "courtesy" of them). And I'll also reiterate how much I HATE Kenley with the burning fire of a thousand suns. She sucks. I'd kiss Wendy Pepper before I'd shake Kenley's hand.

By the way, I must also add that my mom's computer is on Vista, which totally f'ing BLOWS. IE has crashed no less than 2 dozen times while I've been trying to post this. Grrr.

Unbelievable

2008-10-02T00:16:00.003-05:00

So once again, Kenley squeaks through. Ugh, ugh, UGH!! I think tonight's episode really demonstrated every reason why she sucks.
Excuses for why she didn't win last week? Check.
Whining about how she's so misunderstood? Check.
Bagging on everyone else to make herself look better? Check.
Backtalk to Tim and the judges? Check.
Overconfidence? Check.

I think from the very first scene of the show, it was clear that she's finally on the downswing. Because yes, it's all Leanne's fault that you lost last week. She just couldn't sell your crappy white girl imitation version of hip hop. And then she wonders why no one likes her. Whatever. It wouldn't have anything to do with the fact that you've been a raging bitch all season, openly laughing at other designers' work and belittling anyone who dares to criticize you.

I think it's pretty telling when all the other designers openly hate one person. Normally, you'd figure they spend so much time together and that in most cases, the "villain" is more a victim of editing. But the evil glee that Jerell, Korto and Leanne all took in Kenley forgetting her tulle and then purposely NOT giving her their extra...hilarious! I laughed my freaking butt off.

I'm glad the judges FINALLY commented on Kenley's bad attitude too. I almost have to wonder if the fact that they have so little interaction with her has blinded them to her ongoing suckitude. I loved it too that Jerell called her out. Pure awesome.

I stand by my previous statements that Kenley sucks worse than the Pepper. At least Wendy Pepper knew that she was outclassed from a talent standpoint.

In any case, it was another sort of lackluster set of performances this week. I wasn't really over the moon about any of the dresses, so I'm really curious to see how their collections turn out (and no, I have NOT looked at any of the spoiler pics from Fashion Week) in next week's show, which I will probably have to find a way to watch online, since I'll be at my mom's house and she doesn't get Bravo. Grr.

I'm still picking Jerell and Korto as the two front-runners, with Jerell having the slight edge. I think Leanne is a bit of the dark horse since she seems to be a bit inconsistent, and also has trouble with some of her editing choices. I refuse to even entertain the notion of Kenley winning.

Speechless

2008-09-24T22:03:00.000-05:00

hate. kenley. so. much.

I'm so enraged by tonight's show, I can barely speak. Suede's outfit wasn't great, but Kenley's was god-awful. I can't even talk about this. I'm going to have to write more when I've calmed down.

True Blah

2008-09-24T14:17:00.007-05:00

I normally love vampire stories, so I was kind of excited to watch the new HBO series, True Blood. And the fact that it's produced by Alan Ball was also a plus for me since I loved Six Feet Under (that last episode still makes me cry every time). T & I tivo'd the first episode a few weeks back and have just caught up with the three eps that have aired so far. And so far, the verdict is...meh.

The premise is intriguing: vampires "come out of the closet" and try to become a part of mainstream society; there's several mentions of a 'vampires' rights amendment' or something of the sort, which I assume is a nod to the civil rights movement. But the fact that the bulk of the show revolves around a backwater town in rural Louisiana gets very old, very fast. I may have a high tolerance for cheesy vampire shit, but I definitely do NOT have a high tolerance for cheesy southern accents.

I'm not going to go into tremendous detail here. I'll just say that the first episode had a lot of promise, but I've spent every one since waiting for something big to happen, some revelation or connection between all the pieces. And it still hasn't. I only have so much patience for a new show, even an HBO one. All the characters just seem so trite and two-dimensional: the sassy black girlfriend, the shallow womanizing brother, the doting grandmother. The murder-mystery seems somewhat predictible, and there's not enough of the revelations of backstory or mythology surrounding the vampires (or even the main character's psychic abilities) that are what I personally find most fascinating. As I watched each episode, I found myself mentally comparing it to Anne Rice or Buffy, and all in all, it's sorely lacking. But of course, like the sucker I am (no pun intended), I'll probably still watch it.

Speaking of lameness, I'm also already feeling kind of over Entourage. I think they jumped the shark with the whole Medellin storyline (although, check out the trailer on the "official" Medellin website - it's sweet). It just dragged on way too long, and the fallout of it being a bomb is just plain boring.

The initial appeal of the show, at least to me, was that it was pretty light-hearted. Kind of a fun insiders' look at young Hollywood and how ridiculous the lifestyle is. But now I feel like it's starting to take itself a little too seriously, especially after all the comparisons of it being the male equivalent of Sex and the City. So they're going to try and build Vince up to be some sort of serious actor. Bah. This is one of those times that I wish I could hit fast-forward on the tivo and jump ahead like, 3 episodes to when it gets good again.

What year is this?

2008-09-18T17:33:00.002-05:00

So, in case you've never noticed, I am Asian. Chinese, to be specific. My parents are actually from Taiwan, but I was born here in the U.S. As a child, I never ever had a single doll that looked anything like me. If I could find one that had brown hair, it was a banner day. Now I know that 30-odd years ago, it was simply not possible to find Asian-American dolls. But you'd think that we've come a long way since I was a kid, right? Well....I'm starting to feel not so sure about that.

For instance, the toys pictured up top. Those are real toys, currently for sale on Oompa.com, under the title of "Asian Family." I mean, seriously? Those border on freaking caricature. Who is buying those for their kid's dollhouse? Not me, that's for damn sure. And then I found these dolls, which might be even more horrifying, if that's possible.

So now that I have a daughter of my own, I've been on the search for some Asian dolls for her to play with. Let me tell you, the pickings are SLIM. For one thing, don't even bother looking in a brick and mortar store. At least, not here in Texas, and definitely not at any of the major chain stores. I've focused the bulk of my search online. The results I've found have varied from comical to downright horrifying. Let's take a gander, shall we?

The first doll that usually comes up in a search is this Corelle one. Corelle dolls are (I'm told) very high quality and expensive - I think they're French, if that means anything. This one's name is "Yang," (rolling my eyes) and in all honestly, she's not that bad. But I just don't find her to be very cute. Her hair is awful, and she looks like she's frowning, which I think is weird.

Corolle also makes another Asian doll, known as "Choquette Kim," although she's not listed on the Corolle website. Except for the black hair and slightly less peachy skin tone, she looks just like all the other dolls in the same line - meaning, she has big old round-y eyes. I think this is my biggest peeve: when they take a white/Caucasian baby doll, add some black hair and call it good. Grr.

Then we start to get into some of the weirder stuff, the ones that really bug me. For instance, the other type of doll that comes up a lot when you google search for "Asian dolls" are white dolls dressed in "traditional Asian" clothing. Like this one, which looks like some sort of Asian version of a Precious Moments figurine. Barf.

Last, but not least, there are the cloth dolls where they usually just draw a nice slanty line for the eyes, like this one. Also a bit of a peeve. I mean, I know my eyes aren't super round, but they aren't freaking little tiny slits either.

So there are a few dolls that I do like. This website called the Children's Factory actually has a pretty wide selection of ethnic dolls. Here are some of my faves.

But I'm super picky, so there's still things about each of the above dolls that I don't quite like. Although, I probably will buy the potty doll when we get ready to potty train. I finally ended up buying this pattern so I could make a doll myself. Here's the finished end product.

Not perfect, but I'm pretty happy with it for now.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention, we do already have one doll that I'm pretty happy with. It's the American Girl Bitty Baby with light skin, dark hair, and almond eyes. She's not super Asian-looking, but she does have almond eyes that are not outrageously slanty, so I'm satisfied. However, I would never pay that much for a doll, especially for a very small child. I'm way too much of a cheapskate. My sister-in-law loves American Girl dolls and bought it for E when she was born.

And then there were five...

2008-09-18T15:02:00.003-05:00

OK, first off, a little rant:
I am so. freaking. sick. of Kenley! Ugh!!!! I don't think I've hated a Project Runway contestant this much since...Wendy Pepper. That's saying something. I mean, one of the first things they show her saying on last night's episode is how Tim Gunn just doesn't "get" her and she's not going to listen to him.

OK, how many freaking times do I have to say it? ALWAYS LISTEN TO TIM GUNN! The man is right about 99.8% of the time! And if you don't care what he or the judges think, then why bother being on this show? I hate hate hate people who think they know more than the judges. Or refuse to accept constructive criticism in order to grow and learn. Yes, I'm talking to you, Miss "I don't pay attention to other collections." Um, OK, that makes sense. Because you know, if you're so freaking smart, then why aren't you the editor of a major fashion magazine or the head of a multi-million dollar fashion empire? I'm not a huge fan of Michael Kors only because he's not to my personal taste, but I will admit that the man does know what he's doing.

T gave a perfect description of Kenley during one commercial break. He said that she's like the girl you meet at a party that seems really cool. She's all cute and hip with her vintage Bettie Page hair and clothes. But then you get to be friends with her and after a month or two, you realize that she just plain sucks. She's a bitch who has nothing else going for her but her surface appeal and her ability to bag on everything and everyone around her. (Ok, I embellished his words for that last sentence, but it's true.) When she busted out laughing on the runway at the judges' comments about Joe, I wanted to reach through the screen and smack her. I mean, seriously, show a little respect and self-control.

And this show has reflected that perfectly. After the first episode, both T and I really liked her, thought she was talented and cute. But the allure quickly faded as we realized that she's sort of a self-important bitch. And Jerel hit the nail on the head when he pointed out that she really only has the one look that she just keeps shuffling out there over and over and over again. In fact, Jerel has pointed that out about more than one contestant, and guess what? All the other ones are gone. After seeing the previews for next week, I cackled with evil glee at the thought of Kenley possibly finally getting her comeuppance.

Overall, I thought last night's was a good show. I love makeovers! I thought Jerel's look was amazing. He totally deserved his win. I don't think anyone else had a chance. Korto's look was cool. I was kinda surprised that she managed to pull off the burlap jacket. It was looking pretty dicey there for a while. Everyone else was...meh. Suede's and Joe's outfits were both pretty horrifying. As soon as Joe started talking about doing a suit from menswear fabric, my heart sank for him. I mean, I know he's not the most trendy hipster guy on the show, but sheesh man, a blue skirt suit? For a graphic designer? Really? He was doomed from the start. But Suede gave him a run for the money with his awful crazy ugly jacket. Anyone else notice how the much the references to himself in the third person have subsided now that he's on the chopping block?

So I think the top 3 are pretty clear. Jerel, Korto and Leanne. Although I'm sure Kenley will find a way to sneak in there, especially if they end up sending 4 instead of 3 to Bryant Park. I don't think Suede stands a chance. And Joe should have been happy to make it as far as he did. Yes, you're straight. Dude, we get it.

Fashion Week was actually last week, and I know all of the final 6 showed collections. I've refrained from reading much more than that because I want to preserve the suspense till I watch the finale.

teehee

2008-09-12T16:15:00.001-05:00

I'm not usually a big fan of Jimmy Kimmel, and I rarely watch his show, but a friend posted this on the mom's board I'm on and it's too funny not to share.

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

Color me unimpressed

2008-09-11T14:26:00.004-05:00

Am I the only one who is a bit disappointed in Project Runway this season? Like, maybe they decided to cast for drama instead of talent? I swear, I am SO sick of listening to contestants bitch and moan about how misunderstood they are. Ugh! The last two weeks of whining have just made me so irritable. In fact, I was beyond disgusted to have to even look at Keith's face again last night. That guy sucks beyond belief. I can't believe they brought all those people back. I never really get it when they do stuff like that. I mean, you have all these people who've been booted, some of whom have GOT to still be bitter (ahem, Keith), and they have zero incentive for helping their partner! I would probably say screw you and take a nap too.

Also, is anyone else starting to hate Kenley as much as I do? I really liked her after the first episode or two, but man is she irritating now! Between the annoyingly fake laugh and the general overconfidence and refusal to accept criticism, she's fallen far and fast in my book. And I've hated the last few outfits she's made too. Last week, I was stunned when she ended up in the top two. And last night...blech.

I was also a little surprised that Jerel won last night. I didn't care much for his outfit. I guess I'm just not in sync with the judges this season. I was glad to see Blayne go, and a little surprised that Suede escaped the axe. I liked Terri, but I have to admit that after one of the other contestants pointed out that she was sort of a one-trick pony, the charm started to wear off.

So now we're finally down to a more interesting and manageable six contestants. Again, not hugely impressed with any of them. I do like Leanne quite a bit after she got over her early missteps (and ditched the fugly glasses). And Jerel, while inconsistent, seems to be a pretty solid contender as well. But everyone else...meh.

The Cho Show

2008-08-24T15:28:00.006-05:00

Late last night I caught what I think was the first episode of Margaret Cho's new show on VH1. I remember reading a while back that she was going to have a show, but frankly, I kind of abandoned VH1's whole "celebreality" lineup a few months ago and forgot all about it. I'm normally all for trashy tv, but I've had more than my fill of Bret Michaels, "New York," rehab and whatever other dreck they've been throwing on.

I've always been a huge fan of Margaret Cho, even during and after her awful awful sitcom, but I kind of stopped hearing about her for a while. I think there was a rehab stint or something? Anyways, next time I saw her, she's all super svelte and has all these crazy tats! (If you want to see a crazy and slightly disturbing picture, check out the link in #3 on this site, found through Pajiba)

But I was pleasantly surprised by The Cho Show. It reminds me a little bit of Kathy Griffin's Bravo show, but not quite so desperate or mean-spirited. Not that I don't like My Life on the D List, but it gets a little old. Cho's show is a little bit over the top as well (her personal assistant is a glammed-out little person, she considers going to an awards show in body paint only), but then I would expect no less. And somehow, Cho is just generally less grating on my nerves. I also really like actually seeing her interact with her parents since I always wondered how accepting they were of her performances, among other things. But it's kind of tender to see that while they clearly think she's nutty, they just kind of roll with it, even when she makes fun of them and threatens to put them in a home.

I'm adding a season pass to my DVR. I believe new eps are on Thursday nights, but of course VH1 also reruns them ad nauseum.

Where to begin

2008-07-30T21:34:00.004-05:00

I keep meaning to write about the new season of Project Runway, but it's almost too overwhelming during these early episodes. I can't remember anyone's name, especially now that they start with 16 contestants! But now that we're down to a sort of reasonable number, I'm going to do my best. Although I will preface with saying that I was sort of bummed that the Asian guy was the first one "Auf'd." Why is it always the Asian dude that turns out to be embarrassing? Dammit.

So we're only 3 episodes in, there are already 3 people I cannot stand. I'm sure it won't take rocket science to figure out who they are.

#1. Guy who keeps referring to himself in the third person. I'm sorry, was there EVER a point in time when this was considered funny or cool? T pointed out that despite the idiocy of it, it does effectively draw attention to yourself. So congratulations Suede, you win the prize for having having an asinine schtick to match your asinine name. I could almost over look it if he were 17, but he's freaking 37! I'm all the more pained by the fact that he appears to actually be talented, so we may have to endure this for a while. Bleh.

#2. Old chick who thinks she's still rockin.' From the first episode, she's done nothing but whine. Her cause is also hurt by the fact that she is annoying just to look at. What the heck is up with the dots of eyeliner under her eyes? Scary.

#3. Guy who thinks it's clever to add "licious" to everything. Um, yeah, not funny. It's not even original dude. Just sad, really.

Onto tonight's episode. Was I the only one who was shocked/horrified by the outcome? I honestly thought that Kenley's outfit was hideous. I mean, I guess it was well-made, but the colors made my head hurt. I wasn't a big fan of Terri's either, but I guess the whole 80s aesthetic is in now. I can't believe that Leanne didn't win though. Hers was so gorgeous!

I was also pretty surprised that Emily was eliminated. Her dress was definitely not great, but it wasn't nearly as hideous as Jennifer or Keith's! I'm usually pretty good at calling it on who's going to be booted, and I was way off this time.

So the frontrunners so far seem to be Kenley, Kelli and (sigh) Suede. The talent (and ego) levels seem to be very high again this season, so I suppose anything can happen.

Oh, one last thing. What the hell happened to Sandra Bernhard's face? She looked like she was so botoxed that she could barely manage a smile. Bleah!

Gotta love Sesame Street

2008-07-18T15:44:00.004-05:00

I will say that one nice thing about having a kid is getting back in touch with some of the things that I loved as a child. Like most people in my age group, I have very fond memories of watching Sesame Street. E is still a little young to really understand it (or any TV, for that matter), but we watch it together on occasion. It's changed quite a bit over the years (Elmo seems to have taken over), but every so often there's still some really good gems in there. I've never been a huge REM fan, but I had to giggle when I saw this the other day:

And this one, I didn't see this when it aired, but it was on Pajiba today and I couldn't resist:

Last, but not least, I have to add this gem that T sent me a while back. I honestly cannot believe that they let him jam out with like, a 10-piece band, but they did and it is the pinnacle of awesomeness:

Just noticed this

2008-07-15T14:32:00.002-05:00

From Yahoo Most Popular - because you know, that's where all the hard-hitting news is:
I guess Jessica is out due to injury and Comfort is back in.

It'll be interesting to see what happens this week now, especially since I never thought Jessica was that strong a performer anyways. But I also doubt that Comfort will make the most of her reprieve.

No big surprises

2008-07-11T17:42:00.003-05:00

It's taken me a while to catch up since we were out of town all last week, but I ended up watching last week's and this week's SYTYCD pretty much back to back. It's all starting to get a bit predictable now. After we watched last week's, where Kourtni & Matt were eliminated (meh - good riddance, tall freaks), I immediately turned to T and said, "Buh-bye Comfort & Thayne" because it was so SO obvious that they were going to be cut next. I mean, they were decent, but let's face it, they were also just both way out of their league compared to the remaining 10, some on a level of talent, but others on a charisma/personality level.

But all that being said, I have to say, it's starting to irk me how the judges really stump more for some couples over others. More than a few times this season, I've thought that a dance was really kind of sucky and tired, but then the judges come out fawning all over how wonderful it is. I hate to sound like one of those lame-o conspiracy types, but it really does seem odd how certain couples would just get hammered every week no matter how good the routine seemed to my amateur eyes.

Also, am I the only one who wants to punch Mary Murphy in the face? I know being loud and annoying is like, her schtick, but damn, she's really taking it to a whole new level this year. And since when did the "hot tamale train" become some sort of marketable catch phrase. It cracks me up when she shakes her head, all sad and serious, and says, "I'm sorry, I just can't put you on the train this week." It's not frickin' Sophie's Choice woman. I feel like the Queen Bee chick from Mean Girls and saying "Stop saying 'fetch!' It's just not going to happen!" No one is going to be buying "Hot Tamale Train" t-shirts, Mary Murphy. Just give it up. It was only moderately funny for one season. Now it's just sad.

Total side note, but how scary has her eye makeup has been the past couple weeks? In case you missed it, she's had this crazy shimmery white eyeliner all around her eyes. T said she looked like an alien. I wish I could find a picture.

But to get back to the top 10 remaining, I think Will is the obvious favorite, especially considering how much the judges kiss his ass. Jessica has clearly been riding his coattails, and once they switch to individual voting, I bet she'll sink like a rock. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if she's off next week. Also, has anyone else noticed how all the remaining girls are all perky & cute, girl-next-door types? Hmmm...suspicious.

For the girls, I think Chelsie is the frontrunner. I like Courtney a lot too, but I don't think she's as strong a dancer. I think she benefits a lot from good chemistry with Gev. For some reason Katee rubs me the wrong way, so I'm having a hard time rooting for her, even though as a rule, I always root for the Asians. ;) Still, her Bollywood routine this week was pretty awesome.

Boys: I'm still rooting for Twitch, but he's starting to be a little too cheesy for me. I've always really liked Mark, but I don't think he can win the whole thing. The quirkiness that attracts me probably repels too many others. And I'll admit, Will's crazy six-pack did make a strong impression the last couple weeks. If they keep having him dance shirtless, he's a cinch for the female vote (ooh, wish I had a pic of that too).

nerds

2008-07-07T11:13:00.002-05:00

Um, no man or woman needs to go there

2008-06-30T19:54:00.003-05:00

A little backstory: T grew up in Iowa, not far from a town called Riverside that has dubbed itself the "future birthplace of James T. Kirk." Yeah, like from Star Trek. Long story short, once a year they have a festival called Trek Fest. T claims that he's attended before, and that the highlight of the festival is the demolition derby, where you can "see guys dressed as Klingons and rednecks in the same place while watching cars smash into each other!"

I've never been to any kind of sci-fi or comic book convention, but I find the idea of it appealing, mostly because I think the people-watching end of it would be highly entertaining. So after years of listening to his hype about this place, it so happened that we're going to be in Iowa when this year's Trek Fest was happening. Unfortunately, we arrived too late to catch the demolition derby, but we thought it might be a kick to check it out the next night anyways. This year's fest was supposed to feature a visit from Walter Koenig, better known as Checkov! Exciting...I guess.

Well, my first tipoff that it was going to suck should have been when both T's brother and sister refused to come along. They were like, "Really? Why do you want to go there?" After some cajoling (as well as more jokes about Klingons from T), we finally convinced them to come. His sister was suckered in by the promise of a funnel cake, and his brother mainly just wanted to see the looks of disappointment on our faces once we saw how sucky it was. And boy, was it sucky.

Even by small-town carnival/festival standards, it was sad. I'll chalk some of it to the time of day we arrived (around 8pm), but there were hardly any people there: no one riding the rides, and maybe a dozen people tops near the mainstage, where they were charging $5 to get close enough to watch some anemic rock band perform. I had my camera and really wanted to take pictures, but quite frankly, I was intimidated. My sister-in-law and I split a funnel cake and a friend Snickers bar and then we all got the hell out of there. There's a river casino nearby, so we all went to check that out instead. We didn't stay there long either, but on our way out, we caught sight of a hand-painted sign for the Trek Fest that caused T to make a dramatic U-turn and pull over so he could get out and take a picture. Of course, I don't have my camera download cable with me, and there's no way a description could do the sign justice, so you'll have to bear with me till I get home. Let's just say, it was completely ridiculous and apropos of the situation.

Cuteness

2008-06-25T18:29:00.004-05:00

It's nice to see that there are a few kids' show that doesn't make me want to jab hot needles into my eyes. Classical Baby on HBO Family is a big favorite in our house - way less annoying than Baby Einstein. In fact, it's so soothing that it sometimes makes me all drowsy and doze-y when E watches it. Hee-hee.

The newest hit around here is Jack's Big Music Show on Noggin. Another mommy-friend had mentioned it to me a few times, but E didn't seem interested in it until recently. As the title implies, it revolves around music, with a trio of puppets as the main characters, and then guest performances by real musicians. I thought I'd share this one since it's super catchy and cute and has been stuck in my head for over a week now.

Woefully behind

2008-06-25T17:00:00.004-05:00

I know that I have yet to say much about this season of So You Think You Can Dance, but I only finally just got caught up via DVR a few days ago. Besides, no one is super invested in any one guy/gal just yet anyways. We need a couple more episodes for that. I will say though that I was disappointed that Rayven got knocked out in Week 1. I kinda dug her and she had a nice backstory too. And I was really happy to see Susie go last week. I dubbed her "Stripperella" as soon as I saw her in the audition phase. Let me just say, if she's really 24 or 25...well, then I guess I am too. She is a very...worn...looking 25, to put it nicely. T used a much less kind phrase which I won't repeat here. But we already know about Nigel's penchant for blondes, especially ones with big boobs.

Other than that, I also wanted to comment on the fact that the judging this year seems incredibly biased. I don't know why they have it out for Courtney and Gev, but man, are they harsh on them or what?! Also, yes, we get it, Will is an amazing GENIUS. Sheesh. Debbie Allen's not on anymore, stop kissing his ass. Also, there have been so many numbers that I thought were mediocre, but the judges raved about and vice versa. I have to say, makes me a bit suspicious.

There's also been more than a few routines that I already have to call bullshit on. First off, what's up with all the lame-ass hip hop routines? What happened to all the hard core stuff? Are we doomed to see an umbrella routine every week from now until the end of time to appeal to the middle-aged yuppies and their teeny-bopper children and sell tickets to the tour? Blech.

My faves so far are Twitch (of course) and Chelsea. Note that I favor those who have normal names, spelled in a normal manner. Adding extraneous E's and random silent H's to your name only makes me want to punch you in the face (yeah, I'm talking to you, Kherrington, Kourtni & Katee). Looking forward to tonight's show. Hopefully, I'll have a chance to watch it live for a change.

My new guilty pleasure

2008-06-13T15:08:00.006-05:00

I think my reality guilty pleasure for this summer has got to be Celebrity Circus. When I first heard about it, I thought, "Eh, they're bringing back Circus of the Stars. Big whup." But then I saw a commercial in which Christopher Knight (aka Peter Brady) fell on his face while trying to roll in one of those giant metal wheels. Hilarious. And yes, I do now know that he broke his arm in that fall, and yes, it's still mostly funny.

For those of you that missed it, it's pretty much what you would think it is, except it has the nice added element of competition that seems to be a requirement for any reality show these days. It features 7 "celebrities," each performing a different act for a panel of judges and America's love.

I missed the breakdown of how the scoring and call-in stuff combines, but I'm going to assume it's similar to Dancing with the Stars. And much like DwtS, there's also a panel of circus "experts" that has a nice guy, a crazy Italian, and a saucy Brit. As we watched it, T once again lamented his inability to pull of a fakey British accent so he could be a judge on one of these shows.

The cast is pretty much your standard mix of former child stars, athlete(s) and over-the-hill celebrities looking to milk a few last drops of fame, and some of which have been on the reality circuit before. However, all that being said, I have to say, most of the stuff they had to do looked pretty hard. And safety wire or not, it definitely looked at least a little bit dangerous. I'll note though that T remained unconvinced, saying that he thought the "safety" wire was really suspending them in some cases and making it easier. Whatever.

Of the 7, right now I'd say my picks are: Antonio Sabato Jr., who still looks pretty hot even though he's got to be kind of old now (ETA: ok, I just looked him up on IMDB and he's only 36), and did a good job of making his little flying scarf dealie look easy. Also, Janet Evans gets my vote just by sheer fact of having the most rock-hard abs I've ever seen, especially considering she had a baby 18 months ago. Um yeah, I have a 15-month old and let me tell you, I don't look anything like that.

Oh, and how could I forget? The show is hosted by none other than Joey Fat-one. Glad to see another DwtS alum finding work. Joey has managed to parlay his dancing into quite the little reality career between this, the Singing Bee show that was on last year, and another dancing show he's co-hosting with Mel B. that's coming out on TLC soon. This leads me to wonder, how can I get on Dancing with the Stars? I could use a cush reality hosting job.

All is right with the world

2008-06-12T22:39:00.003-05:00

Congratulations to Stephanie, the hometown winner! Lisa can suck it. That is all.

shameless plug

2008-06-11T01:53:00.002-05:00

I'm up way too late and bored, but not quite ready for bed, so I thought I'd mention this Bzz Agent thing I just started doing. Basically, it's a program where you sign up to be a part of marketing campaigns and talk about the stuff the send you. I don't get any money for it, just free stuff. And the "Bzz" doesn't necessarily have to suck up and be glowing, if you know what I mean.

However, that being said, I recently got on my first campaign, which was for these Back to Nature brand nuts and trail mixes. I got a box with a bunch of snack packs in it, and I have to say, they were quite yummy. I liked that the nuts were roasted without extra oil, so they weren't super greasy, and they were lightly salted, but not drowning in salt. Yum!

Words fail me.

2008-06-05T13:54:00.002-05:00

I thought that I'd have more to say after sleeping on it, but Lisa making it to the final three...I still can't believe it. She is so awful. I told my sister-in-law last night that I hope she's like Wendy Pepper in season one of Project Runway; she clearly didn't deserve to be in the finals based on talent and everyone knew it, including the judges, who dismissed her pretty quickly.

If Richard or Stephanie don't win this, then there is something seriously wrong with this show.

On a somewhat unrelated note, I saw a commercial for Hell's Kitchen last night and thought, "oh yeah, is this show still on?" I still don't really get the timing of when they started this season. It's usually a summer show, and I know Fox was probably hurting for new content after the strike ended, but I don't think I've watched even one full episode, so I couldn't care less now that they're down to the final five. I know Top Chef is on cable, but why in the world would they go up against it? It only makes their show look all the more pathetic. If they'd used even the tiniest bit of common sense, they would've started Hell's Kitchen NOW. I probably would've watched it. I'd feel dirty about it, but I would've have watched anyways just to get my fix of cooking and crappy reality.

And no, I won't be watching the Next Food Network Star. That show is beyond awful. The whole debacle last season with the guy who lied about his resume...lame.

Really?

2008-05-29T15:30:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-29T09:07:00.002-05:00

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!!!

2008-05-21T22:41:00.002-05:00

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

2008-05-17T13:41:00.003-05:00

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

2008-05-13T10:22:00.003-05:00

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!

2008-05-08T10:33:00.006-05:00

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

2008-05-07T16:18:00.004-05:00

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!

Oh VH1, is this really where you want to go?

2008-04-30T16:16:00.003-05:00

I used to love VH1's "Celebreality" lineup. Celebrity Fit Club, Flavor of Love, the Surreal Life...they all used to be excellent guilty pleasure viewing. But I think I have to give up. I watched about 10 minutes of "CelebraCadabra" the other day. Yes, the name was pretty confusing to me to at first. My first thought was that it had something to do with cadavers. But no, it's actually yet another group of half-assed D-list washed up has-beens competing in a reality show to become, wait for it...magicians. Yes. I don't think I need say any more.

This, combined with the atrocity that is "I Know My Kid is a Star" and Flavor of Love 17 or whatever version they're on now, it's all just too much. I like manufactured drama, but this is just taking it too far.

In fact, since the writers' strike ended and all the scripted shows have come back, I can't say that there's anything I'm over the moon about. A lot of my usual favorites have ranged from being a bit lackluster to downright disappointing. Two big examples? How I Met Your Mother and The Office. HIMYM used to consistently make me laugh, but lately, it's just kind of meh. I think all the stuntcasting is starting to overshadow the plot (as a sidenote, I was really happy to hear NPH speak out about this). And the recent Barney slept with Robin plotline is just plain dumb. I'm also getting really sick of the drawn out tease of who is the "mother" and the up and down of Ted & Robin. It's like they wrote themselves into a corner from day one. No one really wants to see another Ross & Rachel.

The Office, on the other hand, has just veered off into being out and out weird. Their first episode back was set almost entirely in Jan & Michael's condo, which seemed like an odd choice to me. I mean, it's funny once in a while when they go on "field trips" but I think the show is at its funniest when it revolves around The Office. However, that being said, I did think it was kind of funny all the stuff that came to light about Jan & Michael's relationship, even if it was only funny in that painfully awkward way that I normally hate.

The only show that I've been genuinely still looking forward to each week is 30 Rock. This is easily the craziest show on TV, but in a good way. I think they've done a really good job of keeping it zany. I loved it last week when Liz sold out and went corporate. Although, where's Jenna? She's barely been on the last few episodes.

Looking forward to more Top Chef tonight. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that one of the Idiot twins bites it.

Top Chef recap

2008-04-23T23:42:00.005-05:00

I've been too busy to post my thoughts on Top Chef lately (although, in a nut shell, good riddance to Zoi and Ryan, even though Nikki clearly deserved to get the hatchet last week). Besides being out of town last week, T & I have also gotten sucked into Battlestar Galactica lately...but that's for another post. So since T is usually full of pithy remarks while we watch the show, I thought I'd put him to work as a guest blogger. Enjoy.

T here – I felt the need to ring in on the topic of tonight’s episode of Top Chef. I was making some snide comments during the show and M put me to the task of writing for one of her several blogs. I won’t even get into the fact that my wife has so many blogs that she has to subcontract out the blogging labor. Let’s get right to the show.

At this point on the show, we can now separate the chaff from the wheat and it is becoming clear who the front runners are. The chefs definitely in the lead are Male Mohawk, Dale, and Stephanie (curly haired Chicago chick). On the bottom are Skinny Brunette, Antonia, The Kiwi and Eyebrow Ring. Somewhere in the middle are the Two Guys That Look Exactly The Same (But One Wears A Hat) and Lesbian Mohawk.

The quick fire challenge is to make dessert. Every year they do this at some point on the show. Every year half the chefs bitch about the fact they never make dessert. This year a few actually figured out they should show up for this reality TV show with at least one good dessert recipe. And surprise! the chefs that did not do well on the challenge were the same ones bitching about now pastry has nothing to do with being a chef. My patience for the complainers on this show is wearing thin.

Male Mohawk wins the challenge with one of the several chocolate and banana dishes. Mostly nothing too exciting was created in the quick fire, but he won with ingenuity of making bananas look like scallops. He also is kind enough to tell the folks at home that he is witty. He then pats himself the back and kisses himself in the mirror. How am I so goddamn sweet?!? Man that Mohawk is looking good! So again he has immunity. He is not going anywhere and a virtual lock for the final four right now.

Then of course the “fun” event comes up and the chefs have no idea they are walking into a trap. This is reality TV! There is no escape from the cameras, there is no relaxing. Somehow this has escaped them all and they are worried about what blazer to wear to look fly at Second City . The hatted Bearded Retard Twin probably took 20 minutes picking out his “on the town” headwear.

Surprise! Those audience members yelling out stuff are designing your dish to improvise! I was astounded that the chefs were not yelling out ingredients themselves….tofu and Polish Sausage aren’t exactly the most exciting of things to cook for an elimination challenge. Why didn’t you yell out something? Wake up!

They draw numbers and end up in teams. The most predictable yet fascinating outcome here is the Retard Twins pairing up so they can rub their red beards together when no one is looking. Dale and Male Mohawk are paired up and probably the strongest team, then Stephanie and Female Mohawk might be next. The other teams are Antonia and Eyebrow Ring (doomed) and Skinny Brunette and The Kiwi (unimpressive).

The Retard Twins clearly offer the most comedy value. They decide to make squash soup for “Yellow Vanilla Love”. The Hatted Twin has been talking about squash soup for what seems like weeks. They think they are each pretty cool and maybe their counterpart Twin might be 2nd coolest of the group in their minds. This show started with two lesbians, but these guys seem to be pretty gay for each other. They are very proud of themselves and their squash soup, despite not having any food processors to get through the disk (improv! you crazy Top Chef producers). I’d like to thank Bravo for not showing these guys making out in the back room and telling each other how awesome each other is.

Dale and Male Mohawk are the front runners, despite having the toughest draw with “Perplexed Green Tofu”. They are so clearly the most creative and skilled chefs on the show it isn’t even funny. They have this nutso idea of making the tofu taste like beef, which sounded insane and risky but these guys are the only ones that could possibly pull it off. The tasting table clearly loved it.

Stephanie and Female Mohawk get into the “Sexy Orange Asparagus” which sounded like a fun dish and they really worked hard to make it look phallic and had fun with it. Seemed like they worked hard on the dish, but it was pretty busy. Their delivery of the dish went over well but Colicchio clearly hated it. Trouble.

The most amazing thing of this challenge was that Antonia and Eyebrow turned “Magenta Drunken Polish Sausage” and ended up serving fish with chorizo over purple potatoes. It drives me insane when people completely ignore the rules of the challenge and make whatever they want and then claim that they are an artist, or in the case of this challenge look at how they improv’ed! I will ignore the rules! I am creative! I will ignore Polish Sausage! I will bring out tequila shots for myself but not the judges! These guys are idiots and are trying very hard to make America hate them.

The Kiwi and the Skinny Chick made something; I don’t remember what it was and it seemed like they were largely edited out. Clearly in the middle of the pack. I want to like The Kiwi due to the afro and the accent (and the fact that I know a Kiwi that has both of these attributes as well and is one of the craziest guys I have ever met) but he seems like kind of a dumbass.

The winners were Dale and MaleHawk and the Soup Twins. No major surprise there except for the hatted Twin was now on chapeau #6 while he bared his soul about how his mother said the mark of a good chef was being able to make a simple soup….didn’t the judges say the exact same thing an episode or two ago? What a kiss ass. I can’t wait to see the fedora he rolls out next week. Dale wins the challenge, and rightfully so. He’s solid and also a virtual lock for the top three or four.

Steph and LezHawk, along with Antonia and BrowRing are the losers. The only really talent in the bottom four this week is Steph so me and M are hoping that she doesn’t get cut in some bullshit way like Tre last season. I figure there is no way the Fish for Sausage team doesn’t lose but I was wrong and LezHawk gets cut. Slight surprise, but she clearly wasn’t going to make it much farther than this anyway. She went on to say that chefs need to “give 1000%” which I find so disgusting that I’m very happy she is gone. I am an admitted math nerd and hate it whenever someone says they have to give more than 100%, but more than the mathematical reason, and the fact that it is freakin’ impossible to give more than “all”, it just makes people sound so stupid. On par with mixed metaphors or saying things like “it’s a mute point”, “irregardless” or saying “literally” for emphasis. No reason for it. These people are what is wrong with America . Good riddance.

Thanks for letting me vent and occupy space on M’s blog. We’re huge Top Chef fans and while this season doesn’t seem as strong as last, the drama levels do seem pretty high. I hope y’all enjoyed my commentary. Don’t look for me on the crafty blog as the most creative thing I can make is an egg sandwich. Peace out! -T

Ok, I have to add a few comments. First off, I have about an equal amount of hatred as T for Richard and the Idiot Twins. I enjoyed Hung's cockiness last season, but Richard is just over the top with his smug, "I'm so clever" attitude. Also, I fail to understand how making bananas look like sea scallops can be considered inspired. Let's see, cut banana into rounds...done.

And the other two...I'm not sure I even want to get started. Hat Twin is annoying because of the ever-changing hat rotation. His personality isn't exactly winning him points either. The digs at the lesbians seem to be a little unnecessary too. The other Idiot Twin is so freaking twitchy I can barely watch him. I swear, he's tweaking on speed.

I'm also endlessly annoyed when the cheftestants complain and make assumptions about how this or that can't possibly taste good, or that the judges are simply WRONG in their opinions. I'm sorry, but no one's paying you for your opinion. And while I think that Ted Allen's culinary qualifications are a bit dubious, he's still probably more qualified than you.

And this is what I don't like about living in Texas...

2008-04-21T18:18:00.002-05:00

I turned on the air conditioning today for the first time this year, and I don't see it going off again for a while. I was really really hoping to make it to at least May, but well...I caved. It was just too humid today for me to deal. Last year, we turned on the a/c in April and it stayed on through at least September and part of October even. Argh.

I actually just got back from California (Bay Area) and I have to say, I sooooo wish we could live there instead.

A Top Chef Birthday

2008-03-12T23:14:00.004-05:00

One episode in and I'm already hooked! Although I'll confess, I'm a little bit predisposed to like any show set in Chicago and seeing the montage of the city in the beginning made me miss living in a real city all the more.

It's always hard to pick out favorites this early in the game. There's just too many people for them to focus on more than 2-3, and they obviously skew the "story" quite a bit. About 10 minutes into the show, I turned to T and said, I bet Nimma's out. For one thing, it's never a good sign when someone decides the first night that they're going to bed when everyone else is drinking champagne because they're "not here to make friends." I had a feeling she was going to be the weepy isolationist and I wasn't too far off.

Then, the first quickfire. First of all, I was a little disappointed by the quickfire. Making a deep dish pizza was a little lame; yeah, you're at Uno's, could you be more predictable? And on the scale of difficulty, pizza ranks pretty low. I mean, last year, they had to make dishes out of the buffet without knives! Despite the ease, some of the cheftestants managed to find a way to screw it up. Good gravy people, even if you've never eaten a deep dish pizza in your life, you had to know not to fill the whole damn pan with dough! Come on! You have had pizza before, right?

Nimma popped up again (in a bad way) with her underseasoned pizza. OK, I'm going to kick into culinary school food snob mode here for a moment. Underseasoning your food is like, THE lamest, most amateur rookie mistake there is. It is something that is pounded into your head over and over and over again in cooking school. At my school, underseasoning a dish was a major loss of points. I also just went and looked at her bio, and she went to the freaking CIA! She definitely should've known better. Then she had to go and overcompensate by OVERseasoning her dish in the Elimination Challenge. All I could do was shake my head. Again, amateur time. And that cauliflower flan thing....egad. Even if that part had turned out, her dish looked and sounded sooooo boring. A shame, because there's a million things you could do with shrimp scampi.

I've also got to freak out momentarily over the two people who ended up having to make souffles. Ok, again, basic stuff if you have been to culinary school! Not to mention that if I knew I was going on this show, I would have spent weeks memorizing and practicing baking any and everything I could think of. Time and again, people have gotten slammed for tanking a simple dessert. A souffle is really not that complicated for people operating at this level of the game, and the guy who dumped all the crap on top of his souffle? I was speechless.

As far as the cheftestants go, so far, T has a soft spot for the Kiwi, but I think it's only because he reminds T of his friend from New Zealand (aptly nicknamed, Kiwi). That guy, I think his name is Spike? He already annoys the crap out of me. When he said "Padma was like, Casa, m*f*s!" I could only turn to T, slack-jawed. I am also thoroughly over anyone who is into "molecular gastronomy." Seriously people, move on. Ferran Adria has. So should you.

The only guy I like so far is Erik, and that's only because if he wins, he wants to take the money and open a hut on the beach in Hawaii. Sweet.

Oh, and last but not least, I have to comment that the fact that Anthony Bourdain and Rocco DiSpirito were on the same judging panel together cracked me up to no end! If you have no idea what I'm talking about, go back and read some of Bourdain's blogs from last season. He is waaaay harsh on Rocco (and deservedly so after that whole debacle with The Restaurant). It's hilarious. I'm really hoping that he blogs again this season.

I'm already looking forward to next week!

Christian's collection was, say it with me now...

2008-03-10T11:00:00.006-05:00

FIERCE!

Totally not my style at all, so even if I was skinny enough to wear any of it, I probably wouldn't, but then again, who's to say what I'd wear if I were skinny enough? But I digress. So Christian was the big winner of this season's Project Runway, and despite the fact that he's a cocky little bastard, he totally deserved it. I thought his collection was really cohesive and just enough 'out there,' if that makes any sense. Rami's collection was good too, but I think some of it was just a little off the mark. But that woven dress was AMAZING. I wish I had the body to wear that! And maybe someplace to wear it too.

Now we just have the long countdown till the next season begins (insert single tear here). Although it helps a little that Top Chef starts this week, and in my hometown, no less! Woohoo!

The cow says...

2008-03-05T16:19:00.006-06:00

In case it's not already obvious, I spend a lot of time around kids and kids' stuff these days. I don't post much about it because I know how old it can get to hear someone go on and on about every little darling thing their baby genius does when you don't have kids yourself. But every so often, I come across something that is worth mentioning.

Today, I had to take E to the doctor (for what turned out to be just a cold - but that's a whole other story), and while we were waiting in the exam room, we dug through the small bin of crappy toys that they keep around. Normally, I wouldn't really let her play with stuff that's probably got some latent plague germs festering on it, but she was pretty unhappy about being there and honestly, I'm just not that much of a germophobe to where I was willing to put my foot down.

The toy that E seemed to focus on was some kind of old See n' Say. For those of you who aren't around kids much, yes, they still make See n' Says, although they are a little bit different from the ones we had as kids (I had the alphabet one above when I was little). Most of the newfangled ones have a lever to pull now, instead of a string. And they are also a lot smaller. No, really, they are. It doesn't just seem that way because we're bigger. Some of them have a little flap that flips back and forth to change things up, but they are otherwise pretty much the same. The one pictured at right is what we currently have, purchased for a whopping $1 from another mom.

This particular toy that E found today was totally different though from your standard See n' Say. It was shaped like a house and had a series of wide buttons in a circle which I think are supposed to light up when you push them. I have to assume here because there were no batteries in it. So anyways, the odd thing about this toy was what was on the buttons. Some of them were pretty standard: kitten, dog, bird. But then there were four with pictures of kids on them. One was of a little boy in a suit and glasses talking on a cellphone. Heh? Then there was a picture of a little girl, also in some sort of suit, carrying a boombox. What? I'm dying to know what they "say" when you push the button. The other kids were in more "kid-like" clothes and doing things like, licking a lollipop.

I figure that toy's probably been kicking around the doctor's office for years, so I'm sure they don't make it anymore. Still, I did a Google search, hoping to find a picture of it somewhere, but no such luck. I did however find this interesting little article on How See n' Says Work, just in case any of you are curious.

RIP Rice cooker

2008-03-04T10:47:00.006-06:00

My rice cooker died last week. Actually, to be more precise, it went out in a literal blaze of glory. T was outside grilling Korean short ribs for dinner and the rice cooker timer had popped and was happily keeping our rice all nice and warm when it suddenly started popping and sparking like an insano indoor fireworks display. I make light, but it was actually a little scary. I'll admit, I screamed a little when it first started, but otherwise was just frozen by fright.

Turns out, the cord, which was admittedly not in the best condition was a teeny bit wet. OK, so it was a really frayed and chewed up looking cord sitting in a very small puddle of water. Shoot me. So all told, we're actually really lucky that it wasn't much much worse, and also that nothing else caught fire, like the cloth stand mixer cover just a few inches away.

I'm so bummed though as I've had that rice cooker forever. I actually swiped it from my parents' house when I went away to college, so it's got to be at least 15 years old...although eek, now that I think about it, probably more than 20! Gosh, I'm old. Now I have to decide whether to replace it with one of the shiny new expensive Japanese models that most people swear makes perfect rice (but nothing else) or stick to the old school and get a replica of what I had. I haven't priced them out yet, but I'm leaning towards replica. I'll have to checkout the selection at the local Chinese grocery stores.

Oh, and despite the drama, the rice inside the cooker was just fine. There's a little char mark on the counter though.

Now I just feel dirty

2008-03-03T10:55:00.003-06:00

A little sidenote: I know that I often post on shows days after they originally aired, but sometimes that's how it goes when you have a baby. Thank god for Tivo. I finally watched last week's episode of Celebrity Rehab last night. Like I mentioned in a previous entry, I don't really feel good about admitting that I watch this show. For a while, I could sort of argue that it actually provides a service, giving outsiders insight into what rehab is really like, what drives people to use and become addicts. But now, after last night's show...I'm not so sure.

Last week's episode was titled "Graduation," which was a little bit odd to me because it led up to but did not include the graduation. In fact, by the title alone, I assumed it was the last episode, but it's not. Anyways, the main focus of this and (partially) the last episode was pushing the celebs into going to a "sober living" program after graduation. And here's where I start to feel dirty because I'm sorry, from what I can tell, these people seem nowhere near being ready to go back out into the real world, even "sober living," which I'm assuming is a euphemism for halfway house. To me, it seems to border very precariously on professionally irresponsible to release them, especially the ones who still won't admit they have a real problem! This is when I start to really wonder about the artifice of the whole show. Why was the program only 18 days? Is that a standard course of treatment (for some reason, 28 days seems to be a common number in my head), or is that just what they decided they up front would be an adequate amount of shooting time? I'll give VH1 and Dr. Drew a small small amount of kudos for at least managing to provide them with 3 months of the sober living program, all paid for, but it still doesn't seem right to me. Especially since it seems like everyone is looking for excuses not to go, even though it's going to be gratis (again).

This show makes me sad. Sad for the people on it, sad for the people not on it, sad for America. But I've committed this much time to it, so I may as well see it to the end. Thank goodness there's only one episode left.

Did he just say what I thought he said?

2008-02-28T11:15:00.002-06:00

HUMAN hair? If you could see me now, you'd know that I am shivering in disgust. Don't get me wrong, I liked Chris a lot and was really rooting for him to make it into the top 3. In fact, I was a little surprised that he didn't win Fan Favorite. But his collection....I can only sadly shake my head. From what I saw in Entertainment Weekly last week, I was already a little nervous by how "Goth girl" it looked. Although, I will say that it looked better on last night's show than I thought. But overall, I think Rami deserved his win.

Now I'm just annoyed that I have to wait yet another week for the actual finale! How much longer can they drag this thing out?! I think it's probably going to be a dead heat between Rami and Christian.

Return of the Hat - well, sorta

2008-02-22T17:00:00.006-06:00

I have to applaud Bravo for luring me in with their evil programming tactics. I hate that they sneak in a reunion show the week BEFORE the finale! It drives me absolutely nuts. I mean, first off, reunion shows are usually lame. And everything has usually already been decided and done, so they're super anti-climactic, so I don't usually make it a point to watch them.

But now that I'm all juiced up for the big finale of Project Runway, OF COURSE I'm going to freaking watch their lame reunion show! Unsurprisingly, it provided little to no new insight into the show. Yes, some of the behind the scenes/outtakes stuff was funny: I liked that Michael Kors couldn't stop laughing at the WWE Divas, although it does make me wonder if any of them were waiting by his car to pummel him afterwards. I also enjoyed the contestants' impersonations of Heidi.

But overall, the whole show was edited in such a strange manner! Like, when Carmen got all upset at being singled out for her crappy menswear outfit and was like, "Thanks, Heidi!" I kinda wished that they would've shown if Heidi or anyone else responded, or at least rolled their eyes, because come on, it really was crap.

And what would the reunion show have been without a montage of Ricky crying? I only wonder why they didn't ask him more about the ugly hats. Because seriously, I really want to know, what is the deal? I mean, Christian's hair is crazy, but I can kinda dig it in a way. It's like his quirky thing. And it doesn't really look bad, just different. The hats though....bleh.

I will also say that at least they had Heidi and Tim hosting instead of that lame tool that hosts the other Bravo reunion shows. I don't know his name, but if you know who I'm talking about, then you'll also know that he sucks.

So going into next week's finale, I think the front-runners are Christian and Rami. A minor spoiler here, but Entertainment Weekly published some pictures from their Fashion Week shows (and I'm sure there's pics all over the internet too) and I'd say those looked like the two strongest collections.

It made me sad to see that they made poor Sweet P do one too, ostensibly to avoid spoiling who the top 3 or 4 finalists were at the time. Her collection actually wasn't bad, but it seems like it'd be really sucky to have to do all that work while knowing that you have no shot at winning. At least she got to show in Bryant Park though. I guess that's something.

I cannot get this out of my head!

2008-02-21T16:16:00.000-06:00

A week or two ago, I walked in on T while he was watching Tenacious D and the Pick of Destiny on HBO. I made fun of him for his lame taste in movies, but I have to admit, I've caught it on cable a few times since, and it's really grown on me. It's funny, in a dumb way. But for the past 3-4 days now, I've had the song from the climactic finale stuck in my head on an endless loop. So I thought I'd share my pain.

We are old and lame.

2008-02-10T23:40:00.001-06:00

This is what T and I said to each other the other night after watching that new dance show on MTV. The one with the long name somehow involving Randy Jackson (even though he didn't even appear on the show). America's Most Bestest Top Dancers or something like that.

Anyways, the premise is fairly straightforward: they held auditions around the country and chose a dance crew to represent various cities and now they're battling it out for a cash prize. Sort of like You Got Served but without bothering to insert the lame plotline to hold it together. It was actually relatively enjoyable, but at one point, we realized that we not watched MTV in months, if not years, and therefore had no idea what half the commercials were about. We saw a commercial for a new dating show with some Italian dude (who had the fakest accent I've ever heard) called "That's Amore." It looked so god-awful. And the whole time, we were like, who the !&#@ is this guy?! But the true crystallizing moment was when they announced the musical guest: Flow Rider(?) singing his hit(?) single "Low" (??!!!). I have never heard of him, or that song. Yeah, we're old and lame.

But the show itself was fairly entertaining, even if it was a little unnecessarily drawn out. I mean, why bother separating people into brackets and then declare one safe in each bracket safe when ultimately, everyone except for one team is going on to the next round? And some of the crews were just sooooo lame (yeah, I'm talking to you "Femme 5").

Oh, one other major annoyance that I have to point out: Shane Sparks says "y'all" in pretty much every sentence that comes out of his mouth. Seriously. If there were a drinking game for this, you'd be in the hospital with alcohol poisoning after the first 20 minutes. I'm telling the truth y'all.

Goodbye Ugly Hats

2008-02-08T11:50:00.000-06:00

All you Project Runway fans know what I'm talking about. It's about freaking time!!

Even besides the ugly hats, and the incessant weeping at the drop of a hat, Ricky's designs were just never that good, and his execution through the first half of the show were horrendous! I can't believe he outlasted Kit. Blech.

So now, I'd say I'm rooting for Sweet P, even though she's clearly in over her head, and Christian, who is annoying but entertaining, and not to mention, pretty damn talented. Although I also really like Chris, and was happy to see him score a win.

I'm also starting to get excited for the new season of Top Chef! Woohoo!

Yeesh

2008-01-18T09:48:00.002-06:00

I think I've sunk to a new reality television low. I started watching Celebrity Rehab on VH1 last week. Oh. My. God. I think this show is too much, even for me. I forced T to watch with me, and we spent the whole hour squirming in discomfort. But of course, like the car wreck gapers that we are, we could not look away.

For those of you with better moral fiber than myself who don't know what the hell I'm talking about, this is yet another VH1 show where they take disparate washed up "celebrities" and throw them together in manufactured wacky scenarios. Usually, hilarity ensues -- see previous seasons of "The Surreal Life" or "Celebrity Fit Club."

Well, this time, they decided to skip the hilarity and just focus on the really ugly substance abuse side. And man, is it ugly. A quick rundown of the cast, in order of, more or less, most memorable:

Jeff Conway, who had to leave Celebrity Fit Club to go into rehab a few seasons ago, is the most flaming hot mess I've ever seen. It's not even funny anymore. Just really really sad. I don't think they even know how many different drugs he's on.

Mary Carey, porn star and former CA gubernatorial candidate. I think she's mostly a drunk, although judging from how she flipped out when they took away her pornos and dildos, I'd say maybe a sex addiction issue too.

Jamiee Foxworth, also known as the little girl from Family Matters who later did some porn. She's probably one of the more interesting to me because her addiction is to marijuana. It's not often that you really hear about people deciding they have a true problem with how much they smoke, especially since it's such a low-key drug. But apparently, she smokes almost constantly - like an ounce a week.

Chyna, the former wrestler. Honestly, I'm not sure what the hell she's there for, other than publicity. I mean, maybe she has a drinking problem? But it certainly doesn't seem on par with any of the others there.

Brigitte Nielsen, better known as the former Mrs. Sylvester Stallone, and former flame of Flava Flav. Now, if you've ever seen Surreal Life or Strange Love, you know that SHE has a drinking problem.

Daniel Baldwin, the oft-forgotten Baldwin brother. He's also had a fairly well-documented history of drug/alcohol problems. I think he got arrested last year for stealing a car? Something kind of crazy like that. Oddly enough, he's the only one on this show who's already sober and trying to maintain it.

After that, there are a few more people that I'm not all that familiar with. One is some tatted up singer of a pseudo-punky rock band with a heroin/oxycontin problem. And another is a former American Idol contestant (sorry, that's one of the few shows I just never got into) who got into alcohol and I think cocaine.

Oh, and I almost forgot. The ringmaster of this circus is Dr. Drew, from Loveline. I have to say though, I'm sorta impressed by Dr. Drew. I kinda thought that this was another limelight grubbing venture, where he would breeze in and check on everyone here and there. But so far, through the first two episodes, it seems like he's been there the whole time and taken a really active role, especially with Jeff Conway's detox.

Ugh, okay, there's a lot more I could say about this show, but I'm starting to feel dirty. I'll just leave with a few more thoughts - mainly I'm surprised that these people are so willing to air this stuff out in public. It's one thing to have a well-known drug/alcohol problem. It's another to let the whole world see your DT shakes. Regardless of whether they're doing it for the money, exposure, or to genuinely help themselves and others, I will say that showing this to little kids would be a pretty solid anti-drug PSA.

The Travellator!

2008-01-07T16:31:00.000-06:00

I've been meaning to post for some time on the whole writer's strike thing and how I'm pretty sure that it's going to bring on reality show armageddon. I mean, Clash of the Choirs? Really? Great googly moogly.

I have to confess though, that I was secretly looking looking forward to the return of American Gladiators. I mean, ok, even at its prime, it was terribly cheese-tastic. And I think it was only ever moderately popular as a syndicated series, so I kind of wondered at the logic behind bringing it back. But after watching a chunk of last night's premiere, I have to say it's pretty entertaining. I think they really did a good job of updating it to make it more "x-treme" but keeping enough of the cheese so that you feel slightly less shame in watching it.

Two hours was a bit much for me, and really, I only watched about the middle half hour (we forgot it was on till and tuned in around 8:30). Mostly, I just wanted to see what they came up with for the Gladiators, and I was not disappointed. Shiny/skimpy costumes? Check. Ridiculous names? Check. Oh, and not to get off track here, but there was one guy - I think his name was Titan - who I swear to god looked like he was made out of wax. Way creepier than any of the "scary" characters, although, the Wolf dude was definitely a close second. I also couldn't help but crack up at the signs that people in the audience were holding up for the "favorites." Are we really supposed to believe that some 42 year-old guy spent a day in his garage lovingly crafting a sign for some Gladiator he's never seen before? It was really pushing the limit for me as far as suspension of disbelief.

The absolute funniest moment for me though was when the two women challengers had to go through the obstacle course. I honestly thought that one or both of them was going to die before they made it through. I mean, it was much longer than I thought it'd be, but to watch them, you would've thought that they were running a marathon through the Sahara Desert! The best part was towards the end, when there was a steep conveyor belt they had to climb up, referred to as the "Travellator." T and I about fell off the couch laughing at the name. It's both terrible and brilliant at the same time. I could see the warped logic behind it: it's kind of like an escalator, but you have to travel against the flow...what about Travellator?!

Even funnier than the name was the fact that one of the challengers was in the lead by a longshot until she reached this thing. Then she struggled and fell off of it about three times before finally making it almost to the top...and just hanging there. I know, it's mean to laugh at someone else's suffering, but if you'd seen it, you would've laughed too.

Oh, I also need to add that a few of the challenges in the Eliminator seemed oddly reminiscent...Ninja Warrior anyone?

Days like this

2008-01-07T15:20:00.000-06:00

Are exactly why we live in Texas. It has been in the 70s since Saturday. Pretty much the opposite of Thundersnow. I just went and returned all the crazy warm clothing that I got guilted into buying while in Chicago, and I was expecially excited that I could wear a short-sleeved t-shirt and not even a sweater. Not to rub it in for you folks in the midwest....but nyah nyah!

Thundersnow!

2007-12-23T16:16:00.000-06:00

Not to get hung up on the weather, but on Saturday we drove from Chicago to Iowa and we kept seeing warnings about a huge snowstorm that was supposed to hit NE Iowa that day. And apparently, not just any snowstorm, but one that the weatherpeople on the news had started referring to as "Thundersnow." Apparently it was coined because there was supposed to be a crazy snowstorm coming in where they were anticipating as much as an inch of snow an HOUR, accompanied of course by thunder and lightning. T found this new weather-related phrase to be absolutely hysterical. And while I admit that it sounded like kind of a crazy phenomenon, the phrase itself was probably only worth a couple laughs at best. During our 3-hour ride, I think he said it at least a few dozen times, usually followed by girly little giggles. I think I had to threaten his life to make his stop saying it, but even then, he still occasionally started laughing to himself, and I just knew that he was thinking about it.

Well, as predicted, later that afternoon the weather got really really nasty. Sleet, hail, snow, wind...blech. All the things that made me remember why we don't live here. It continued for several hours until, around 11pm, while I was nursing E, I saw a flash of lightning. And of course, a few seconds later, to my dismay, a rumble of thunder. I don't think there was ever any more thunder or lightning than that all night long. But just that one bit was enough to cause T to press his mouth to the door of E's room and loudly whisper "Thundersnow!"

I am a cold weather wuss

2007-12-17T15:18:00.001-06:00

It's amazing how, despite the fact that I grew up in Chicago, I acclimated very very quickly to the temperate Texas winters. So much so, that all of last week, as I tried to pack and get ready for our trip to the Midwest to spend the holidays with family, I was pretty much terrified by the weather forecasts. It gets really hard to remember what 20 degrees feel like, especially when just a couple weeks ago, we had a few days in the high 70s.

Well, I made it here, safe and sound and all I can say is...my fears were totally justified. As my mom was driving us from the airport back to her house, she said something like, "oh, you're really lucky because it's actually not that cold today. It's actually 30 degrees." I started laughing as I thought about how cold Dallas has felt lately at 40 degrees, and that's when I realized how wussified I had really become. When we lived in Austin, I used laugh at all the people who were bundled up in hats and scarves when it hit 50 degrees. I won't say I'm quite that bad, but I'm probably not far off.

Needless to say, I am completely lacking in enough warm clothing, and E is only slightly better off. Yesterday, I made a run to Target and probably looked like a crazy person as I loaded my cart up with long sleeve onesies, sweaters, and hats and scarves. Oddly enough though, they had a ton to choose from, much more than what I've seen in Dallas lately.

Ugly Christmas

2007-12-03T21:28:00.001-06:00

This is going to sound mean, but I don't care.

What is up with ugly Christmas decorations? I'm not talking about in the mall or anything, but people's front yards. Is this a recent trend that I missed the memo on? Is this everywhere, or just here in Texas? I was driving home the other night and I could not believe how many cheesy, tacky, just plain fugly displays were out there. When I was growing up, Christmas decorations seemed to be mostly limited to lights on your house and bushes. Occassionally, you'd see a yard full of plastic figures of Santa or Jesus or what have you, and sometimes those were even of the light-up variety, but I'd say they were definitely few and far between.

But nowadays, it seems like every other house has one of those giant inflatable light-up dealies, whether it's a giant Santa or maybe some kind of fakey snowglobe. I could probably overlook those if it weren't for the fact that usually, the same houses that have these tend to have one for EVERY freaking occassion. Is a giant, inflated, light-up bunny really a necessity for Easter? I don't think so. Do you need to have a giant turkey in your yard to help you celebrate Thanksgiving? Not so much.

And probably every 4th or 5th house has the weird painted wooden cut-outs. Now this, I cannot abide. There is one house in my neighborhood that has almost their entire lawn taken up by a freaking Precious Moments nativity. Yes, as in the cheesy figurines of big-eyed children which are, if you ask me, only a half step above the Love Is... cartoon characters.

I swear, I'm going to drive through my neighborhood later and take some pictures to post.

Finally!

2007-11-15T12:02:00.000-06:00

Project Runway is back! Yay! I've been waiting and waiting for it to start up again, and then of course, last night, I almost forgot that it was on! All I can say is thank god for tivo! We managed to start from the beginning around 20 after, and had totally caught up by the end. Looks like it's going to be a good season. Lots of catty personalities. About 30 seconds in, T declared that he could not stand Christian. I had to laugh. Not that T's homophobic or anything, but I think there's something about people who are so stereotypically "flaming" that really bothers him. Well, and Christian's ridiculous haircut and cocky attitude didn't really help matters.

It's still too early for me to pick a favorite just yet, but I think Rami has a lot of potential.

Why, Snoop, why?

2007-11-14T11:29:00.000-06:00

I've always been frank about my obsession with reality tv and my love of Flava Flav as a completely ridiculous reality tv "character" but I just saw an online ad for a new show featuring Snoop Dogg on E! Ugh. I am officially tired of the whole "I'm just a normal celebrity superstar, but here's my wacky homelife" format. Osbournes...ok, it was among the first and the first season was pretty entertaining. But now we have people like Gene Simmons jumping on the bandwagon, and even people of very marginal fame, like Aaron Spelling and Rod Stewart's kids or that Kardashian bimbo, getting their own shows.

Don't get me wrong. I love Snoop. I think he's great. I've always cracked up when he's turned up in a cameo in some random movie, like Starsky & Hutch. But I don't understand this trend of rappers turning themselves into these silly caricatures for the sake of longevity or "expanding their brand." It makes me think of that episode of Entourage where every agency pitching Vince did this montage of name brands ending with his name ("Microsoft. Disney. Coca-Cola. Vincent Chase). Case in point? The aforementioned ad featured a bumper sticker that said "My kid is the Shiznit." I know you can't rap forever, but is this really how you ultimately want to be remembered? What's next man, sitting next to Coolio in the center square?

Happy Halloween!

2007-10-31T14:12:00.001-05:00

I am going to stab the next person who rings my doorbell

2007-10-30T12:19:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I've had a good rant.

So after finally getting the baby down for a nap this morning, she'd been sleeping for maybe half an hour or so when the dog starts going crazy barking. I figured she was just barking at the garbage men or something, but a minute later, the doorbell rings and she really goes nutso. I open the door (because I can never hear the answer to 'who is it?' over all the barking), and it's a random man and woman, and the guy goes, "Is your mom home?" OK...seriously? What the..? I don't know if they thought they were trying to score brownie points or if they were just idiots. I'm leaning towards the latter. I think I must have scowled and said, "Um, NO!" because the guy was all, 'I'm sorry, I'm sorry, you just look so young." Now, I might be willing to delude myself for a moment and concede that I don't look 32, but I know I don't look under 20! My bullshit radar starts officially beeping.

At this point, if I were this guy, I think I would've realized that I f*#ked up bad enough that there's no way in hell I'd sell anything and just said, "Sorry to bother you ma'am, have a nice day" and left. But of course, no, this guy launched into his sorry spiel, asking me if I have any kids ("yeah, I have a baby that you just woke up, jackass"), what I'm going to be for Halloween ("we're going to be salesmen - yar yar yar!") and if I know some random neighbor down the street that he managed to con into buying his crap. Apparently, he's selling some sort of metal cleaner or polish and he proceeds to start polishing the door handle. Did I mention that the dog is still going apeshit in the background and the baby has started wailing as well? After about 15 seconds, I finally handed him back his little brochures and was like, "yeah, my baby is crying, I really don't have time for this" and closed the door.

We usually never get doorknockers, but in the last week or two, I've had some guy claiming to be a high school kid looking to raise money for his baseball team (he looked suspiciously old to be in high school), someone trying to sell me on joining some sort of produce co-op (money up front, of course), and a guy selling stock door-to door. I shit you not. What's next, Jehovah's witnesses? I swear to god, the next yahoo who rings my doorbell trying to hawk some sort of nonsense is really going to get it. We seriously need a "No Solicitors" sign, mainly for their protection.

ETA: I guess this doesn't bode well for Trick or Treaters....

Sad day

2007-10-30T10:34:00.000-05:00

I've been on Netflix since 2001 and always loved it and, never even considered switching to Blockbuster. But recently, I've had to face the sad truth that since we had the baby, we really haven't been watching our Netflix in any kind of timely manner. In fact, I think from the beginning of March up to July, we watched all of one movie, and even since then, we've only made it through maybe a half dozen or so. In fact, T's been after me for a while now about cancelling it outright and I kept refusing, but this week, I finally owned up to the fact that we're not exactly getting our money's worth.

Netflix did get a last minute reprieve though when Mee suggested something I hadn't even thought of: downgrading. Duh. I don't know why that didn't even occur to me. So I downgraded our Netflix account to just 1-at-a-time today. I'm still really kind of bummed out about it.

Anyways, just for giggles, I thought I'd list the movies we've had in the last 8 months:

Hot Fuzz - returned 10/30/07
Watched this just the other night. I thought it was really funny. Love Simon Pegg.
Knocked Up - returned 10/22/07
Saw this in the theater, but wanted to see it again
300 -returned 10/10/07
Also saw this in the theater (our first outing after E was born)
Stranger than Fiction - returned 09/20/07
Never made it through this one. T kept falling asleep and I couldn't stay interested so I sent it back half-watched.
Casino Royale - returned 09/20/07
Decent, but not spectacular. In fact, kind of disappointing after all the hype about being the 'best Bond yet.'
Smokin' Aces - returned 07/26/07
Meh. T was initially really excited for this one. We thought it would be a kind of fun, cheesy action flick, a la Crank. There was a lot of build-up, but it never quite paid off.
Babel - returned 07/19/07
Never watched it. It sat in our house for probably close to 6 months and we were just never in the mood to watch something so serious.
Battlestar Galactica: Season 1: Disc 3 (5-Disc Series) - returned 07/19/07
Another one that I had in the house for at least 6 months. I was really into the first two discs, and watched the first episode on this disc. But then I got busy and by the time I got back to it, I couldn't really remember what was going on. I may try again at a later date since I'm kind of a sci-fi nerd.
Children of Men - returned 07/19/07
Troy watched this back in March or April, but I only got through the first half hour before baby duties called and I never made it back. Then it sat around for a few months before I finally gave up. I've only heard good things though, so I'll probably rent it again down the road.
Accepted - returned 04/04/07
Very silly, but it was the perfect thing for us to watch when we were too exhausted to focus on anything else. I kind of have an odd affinity for Justin Long.

Chicken and Dumplings

2007-10-26T15:58:00.000-05:00

IMG_2591.JPG
Originally uploaded by craftyasiangirl

This is our dinner from Wednesday night. It's a really terrible picture and you're going to have to trust me that it looked and tasted much better in person. It's adapted from the recipe in The Best Recipes cookbook, which is one of my favorite cookbooks of all time. For those unfamiliar, it's put out by the same people who do the Cook's Illustrated magazine and America's Test Kitchen on PBS. They do tons of testing of variations of a recipe, looking for the "perfect" one. This is damn close.

My main complaint about this recipe is that it's completely from scratch, and thus, very time-consuming. This is one of the few times that I did indeed start with raw chicken parts and make stock, etc., but usually, I cheat big time and use a store-bought rotisserie chicken and some organic chicken broth.

I've been trying to incorporate more veggies into my cooking, so I added fresh green beans and frozen peas this time. I don't think T cared for them, but that's too bad. Oh, and one minor thing: I usually do the dumplings by rolling them out and cutting them into little rectangles, but I was too lazy this time and just took gobs of the dough and rolled them into little balls. I think I like the little rectangular pillows better as they cooked faster and more evenly.

blech

2007-10-19T14:37:00.000-05:00

I have a confession to make. Both T & I are obsessed with the McDonald's Monopoly game that is going on right now. In fact, I'm too embarassed to admit how many times we've eaten Mickey D's since the game started a couple weeks ago. Let's just say, way more than is healthy. Which leads me to the title above. I feel disgusting. I think I've totally OD'd on McDonalds. I actually hadn't been eating fast food at all lately, and now every time I drive past McDonalds when I'm even a little bit hungry, I think, hey maybe I should see if I can get some more pieces. It's a sickness, in more ways than one. The saddest part of all this is that while both T & I are equally fixated, we've never really gone there and eaten it together. We've both been stealthily hitting the drive-thru on our own during the course of the day. And we only discovered this when we both coughed up the treasure trove of pieces that had been hiding in our respective cars. I know, we're sad.

However, I will say that yesterday, for the first time ever in my entire life, I won something! And no, not a small fries or a $1 coupon at Toys R Us like a million other people already have won. I peeled the two pieces off my McMuffin yesterday morning and found both Baltic and Mediterranean Aves., which is worth $50! I think that might almost cover how much I've spent eating there. Once I fill out all the requisite paperwork and mail it in, I think I can expect my check sometime around February. I'm only sort of kidding.

So my winning has actually only exacerbated the obsession since now that we've one something, we really want to win more. After I emailed T that I won, he felt compelled to hit McD's for lunch, certain that he could outdo my paltry $50 (yes, we also have a somewhat unhealthy competitive aspect in our marriage). And I had to try again today, thinking that maybe I could have a lucky streak. I even got a Big Mac meal, even though I never eat Big Macs, because the sandwich box has pieces on it, and I supersized it for the extra pieces on the fries. Yes, insert comment about my sanity (or lack thereof) here.

I think today's value meal did me in. The Big Mac was okay, mostly because I don't think I've eaten one in years, but I couldn't even bring myself to finish the fries. And then later, the smell of the stale fries in my car just about made me sick. I don't even care that there's still 10 days left, I'm done. Screw this game.

Net winnings (in descending order of value):

$50 cash

$10 in Toys R Us "bux"

(2) 20% Off coupons at Foot Locker

(2) coupons for free small coffee/soft drink

Coupon for free small fries

Coupon for free small McFlurry

50 points added to my cholesterol

1 bad case of indigestion

A lot of general disgust with my own behavior

ETA: I forgot to mention that I AM still playing the online game, which thankfully, only requires me to enter the codes on the already collected gamepieces. They only let you enter ten per day, so I have a good stockpile to keep me going for a while. I'm keeping my fingers crossed for one of the fat AmEx prepaid cards. I could really use a new iPod.

what's for dinner?

2007-10-18T22:14:00.000-05:00

(Not the best picture, but I didn't get a chance to take one of an individual plate.)

Tonight I made Chicken Stew with Onions, Tomatoes, and Dijon from the Simply Recipes site. I had to make a few adjustments to the original recipe since I didn't make it to the store to pick up all the ingredients, but it still turned out really great!

First off, I only used 2 1/2 yellow onions instead of the six red onions called for in the recipe. I also was too lazy to deal with roasting garlic, so I just chunked in about 6-8 whole cloves of garlic with the onions and let them kind of "roast" in the pan. I didn't really miss the extra onions (in fact, I think six would have been excessive), although I do think that using red onions instead of yellow would have added more sweetness. I probably also would've let the onions sweat for a bit longer before chunking everything else in, but I had a crying baby to contend with so there wasn't time today. Oh, I'm not much for measuring so I kind of eyeballed the wine and the dijon.

All in all though, it was a very easy recipe to throw together and I love that it's all done in one pot. I made it early in the afternoon, and turned off the heat and just let it sit on the stove till dinnertime. I waited to reduce the liquid and add the dijon till the last minute (after reheating) though because I was afraid the mustard might break if it boiled. Hmmm, what else to say? I cut up a whole chicken this time because that's what I happened to have on hand, but I will probably just do drums and thighs next time if I find them on sale. I served it over steamed rice.

It got good reviews all around, and both from Meighan, T and myself. In fact, T has declared that it should be added to the regular rotation, which is pretty high praise. I liked that it was tomato-y, but not in a 'red sauce' kind of way. And I also liked that there was a good amount of sauce to mix with the rice. To me, sauciness is a key component of any good comfort food. I was also initially worried that the mustard would be overwhelming, but it really wasn't. Definitely will be good when the weather gets colder.

a new topic?

2007-10-18T14:33:00.000-05:00

I know that there are tons of other people out there who do this, but I'm thinking about adding a food aspect to my blog. The only question is whether or not it'd be better served to be on here or the crafty one. I'm thinking that it'd probably mostly be a "what's for dinner" type of thing. I think the shame and embarrassment factor of having to admit we're eating a bucket of KFC or frozen chicken pucks will be good motivation to cook more and cook healthy. Also, I was recently inspired by a friend's cooking blog: http://nomorecreamofmushroom.blogspot.com/

Lately I've been thinking a lot (again) about how much I'd love to pursue the whole food stylist/photography thing. But I feel so far removed and out of the game. I'm thinking that maybe spending more time cooking and taking pictures of food might help alleviate some of that.

So first up will be tonight's dinner, which is Chicken Stew.

Wiiiiiiiii!

2007-10-16T11:54:00.000-05:00

Ever since T & I went to California this summer and played my cousin's Wii, we've been dying to get one. I was severely tempted to run out and buy one immediately after we got home, but T put the kibosh on that. Not that he didn't want one, but he just thought we should wait till Christmas. Christmas!! Which was at that point, almost 6 months away! I worked on him a bit, and he conceded that by Christmastime, they might be too hard to find, so we agreed that I would start looking around Halloween.

Inexplicably, last week, T and I were out running errands, and he announces that he thinks we should buy a Wii. Like right now. (I did find out later that there was much discussion about buying and playing Wii's on the message board T is on with his college buddies, so I'm assuming that fueled the sudden change of heart) In any case, I was excited to get the go-ahead to start searching for one.

Well, as it turns out, this is about the time that everyone else in Dallas has also decided to start their Christmas Wii search too. Seriously, these goddamn things are hard to find. I randomly stopped by at least 5-6 places last week (not exactly easy with a baby in tow), and they all looked at me like I was nutso when I asked if they had any. One guy laughed at me. Seriously, like, a 'you've got to be kidding' laugh. A few places gave me a heads up on new shipments coming in this week, so of course the nerd in me compiled a long list of every store in a 5 mile radius that might carry them. Long story short, I got one yesterday! When I called, the guy said the UPS man was walking in with them right now. He had three on his cart and there were two people already there waiting. Luckily, I was already out and about and managed to get over there pretty quickly (again, with an unhappy baby in tow -- am I a bad mommy?), and snag the last one. woohoo!

Of course, as soon as we got the baby to bed, we had to break it in. So far, T has topped me in golf and tennis (although it turned out I had an unfair disadvantage since the sensor was wonky and caused my Mii to not respond properly), but I edged him out in bowling and kicked his ass in baseball and boxing.

summer's end

2007-10-15T14:05:00.000-05:00

Yes, it's October, but here in Texas, summer is only just now finally coming to an end. And thank freaking god because I am so sick of 90+ degree weather. But alas, with the end of summer also comes the end of much of the delightfully craptacular summer reality television spectacles. Again, I know I'm a little late with this post (see the previous post for an explanation), but I still wanted to get my two cents in.

First up, Top Chef. Man, this is easily one of the best reality competitions out there. Forget Hell's Kitchen or Design Star or any of that other garbage. This show rocks. My only complaint is the blatant product placement. I think there should be a drinking game where you drink every time they mention the "Glad Family of Products." Or then again, maybe not. You'd probably have alcohol poisoning by the end of the show. Anyways, I'm really glad that Hung won. I know, he came across as kind of a dick, but hey guess what? A lot of real-life chefs are dicks, especially the good ones. I'm just happy to see an Asian brother win for a change. Hung almost makes up for the embarassment of Aaron, from Hell's Kitchen. That guy made me embarassed to be Asian. On a side note, Anthony Bourdain's blog for the show is fantastic. I would say that 90% of the time, he voiced everything I was thinking as I watched the show.

What else? Oh yeah, Rock of Love. After the first few episodes, I sorta lost interest. I mean, I can only watch so many hours of skanky white trash rocker chicks scheming and getting drunk. Meh. I still managed to watch a smattering of most episodes since it was on all the freaking time. Highlights? Crazy red-haired chick turns out to be a trustafarian. Stripper chick gets "Bret" tattoed on the back of her neck. Other stripper chick blows chunks at the dinner table and then tells Bret she loves him as she's puking into a toilet. Classy. The big finale comes down to (as usual) the crazy and/or skanky chick and the nice girl. And just like in the two seasons of Flavor of Love that preceded it, the guy chooses the nice girl, and they break up before the reunion show airs. Whatevs.

I'm just counting down to the new season of Project Runway.

it's been forever

2007-10-13T10:12:00.000-05:00

It's been a long time since I last posted, at least on this blog. I know, what's the point of a blog if you're only going to post like, once a month? I have to rely on my fail-safe excuse (baby), but this time it's for real. E spent the better part of September refusing to go to bed at night. At first we chalked it up to disruption from all the travel. But as the weeks passed, things got worse and worse. Finally, I had to do the unthinkable. I can't even believe that I'm telling people this, but I let her cry it out. In my own defense, we really did try a number of other options, before resigning ourselves to CIO, and the method that we ended up using (Sleepeasy Solution) was supposed to be more "gentle" than the Ferber and Weissbluth varieties. Still, I think I probably cried just as much as E did, especially the first night. But I have to admit that for the most part, it worked. I'm still not entirely sold on it since I still feel like it's mean, but I guess results don't lie. After implementing this new system for almost two weeks now (which also includes a more scheduled day and regular naps), I can really see a difference. E is definitely more well-rested and is starting to move forward developmentally too -- crawling!

OK, I'm digressing into baby fever. Long story short, baby is sleeping more, parents are sleeping more, it's a good thing. And if you've been keeping up at all with my other blog, then you'll realize just how well-rested I've been.

i'm tired

2007-09-05T17:02:00.000-05:00

I realized today that despite all attempts to pretend that I am Superwoman, I am not. I don't usually like to complain about motherhood or the baby, but today I am so worn down. I spent about half of our vacation last week sick with a terrible head cold, which is still lingering and refusing to completely go away. I haven't been sleeping well lately either, and this is compounded by the fact that E is no longer sleeping through the night. I'm not sure if it's a growth spurt or teething or just adjusting to being back home after so much travelling, but it's starting to take its toll on me. It's days like these that make me wish I was all gestapo about having her on a schedule. Time to revisit the baby books, I think.

a sad goodbye to yahoo

2007-08-23T15:57:00.000-05:00

I got the second in what I'm sure will be a series of patronizing emails today from Yahoo's "customer care." Long story short, they assume that I did something to delete some aspect of my account and they're treating me like a moron. So the switch to Gmail is now fully complete. I will likely still keep the Yahoo to use messenger and sign up for junk mail.

I have to say, for all my ranting, I'm actually oddly sad about having to abandon my yahoo account. This was pretty much the first email I ever had, outside of college.

ETA: For some reason I just saw this in my 'drafts' folder but it was never posted. Hmmm.

screw you maytag!

2007-08-22T00:16:00.001-05:00

OK, I will admit, this rant is technically about a year too late. But lately, I've been seeing this new series of Maytag commercials, you know, the ones with the younger, better-looking version of the Maytag repairman who still doesn't have anything to fix because Maytags are so reliable? Every time I see one of these commercials, I cannot refrain from screaming "F*#K YOU MAYTAG!" at the television. I think my neighbors think I have Tourettes. I can't help it though, those commercials infuriate me. I hate them with the intensity of a thousand burning suns. This is waaayyyy beyond the Bank One nonsense of several years ago. Maytags are complete garbage. Tell your friends. Spread the word.

So here's the story. Three years ago, when Troy first moved to Dallas, he rented a house which did not come with a refrigerator (apparently, this is common down here). I flew down to check out the place and help him get settled (I was still living in Chicago), and we went to buy a fridge from Home Depot. We bought what we thought was a nice, reasonably-priced side-by-side fridge, took it home that day and hooked it up ourselves. Troy loved this fridge. He loved the filtered water, he loved the icemaker, he loved it with an intensity that I didn't think was possible for him to feel towards a household appliance.

Flash-forward to two years later, we are now living in our own home, and I am about 5 months pregnant. I'd been hearing the fridge make this kind of weird buzzing noise, on and off. I mentioned it to Troy and suggested maybe getting someone to come out and take a look at it. He said that he thought it was just a minor thing and he'd take a look at it when he got a chance. Well, he finally got around to looking at it and realized that it was NOT minor, in fact, he thought it was probably something wrong with the compressor, which was running super hot. We resolved to call someone in to look at it first thing in the morning.

When I got up the next morning, the freezer was dead. When I opened the door, water from the ice bin poured out onto the floor. I started freaking out. I found a local service who sent someone to come take a look at it within the hour and he confirmed that the compressor was totally shot. OK, side note for those of you that don't know anything about refrigerators (and this used to include me), the compressor is like the main component of the fridge. It is what makes your fridge (and freezer) cold. Without it, you just have a big box with some fans and doors. Now, hello, this fridge was only two years old! What the hell kind of fridge breaks in two years?

The service guy was super nice and told me that the compressor should still be under warranty, and that if I called Maytag, they should come fix it for free. Just for kicks, I innocently ask him how much it would cost for him to fix the compressor. I figured if it wasn't too bad, maybe it'd be worth it to have it done on the spot. Well, you know how much it costs to have your compressor replaced? $500. I should add at this point that, brand new, the fridge only cost about $700.

I try to stay optimistic. I call Maytag, tell them my compressor is broken. First, they start by telling me that they cannot accept an outside diagnosis and need to have their own guy come and check it. Fine. I start calling the list of Authorized Maytag Repair places that they give me. Guess what? Most of them no longer service Maytags, and of those that do, NOT A SINGLE ONE SERVICES COMPRESSORS. This is a bad bad sign. This means that A) their refrigerators and compressors are such garbage that no one wants to waste their time on them and/or B) Maytag likely does not take very good care of their service contractors and no one wants to deal with them anymore, probably because they are not getting paid. I call Maytag back. They give me more names. The rep I talk to says that if none of those will come, then they will make an allowance for me to have my own person come out. I call the second list. None of those places service Maytag anymore either. I call Maytag AGAIN and ask about using a non-authorized repairman, like the previous person suggested. This rep basically accuses me of lying, saying that they would never authorize that under any circumstance and they can't believe that anyone would tell me that. I think I hung up on this person.

At this point, I am seriously freaking out. I have food melting and spoiling. Troy has come home from work with bags of ice and we're furiously trying to pack things into coolers. We cook and eat an absurd amount of random frozen food for lunch. There's talk of maybe just going out and buy a brand-new fridge, even though we can't really afford it. Pregnancy hormones are not helping my situation. Troy starts trolling Craigslist for used fridges.

Oh, but it gets worse. I call Maytag back for, I don't know, the fourth or fifth time and tell them that none of the places they gave me will service my fridge and what the hell am I supposed to do now? I don't say this to the rep on the phone, but frankly, I can't understand how their database can be so hopelessly out of date. Half the places I call say they quit Maytag over a year ago. The rep starts naming all these random town, asking me how far they are. Most of them are at least an hour away, which means that even if they do service Maytags, chances are I will never convince them to come all the way out here. This is getting totally ridiculous. So my last option is to have their own certified repairman come out. Supposedly, this is different because this is an independent guy who works directly for Maytag. The only hitch with this is that the first slot they have is in two weeks. Are they f*king serious? At this point, I'm about ready to burst into tears. They tell me that I can have a "rush" appointment for an extra $50. Fine. Whatever. Just send someone. I'll pay. I don't care anymore, I just want it fixed. The first 'rush' slot is in four days. What else can I do at this point? It gets better still. The phone rep tells me that this appointment is only for a diagnosis and he won't have any parts or be able to fix anything. "If the compressor is indeed broken, then he will order the part and make another appointment to return and complete the repair." And how long will that be? "Well, if the part is backordered, it may take up two weeks." I am both fumingly pissed off and openly weeping. I ask them, but what am I supposed to do? I aim for some sympathy. What would you do if you were in this situation? How do you expect anyone to live without a fridge for two weeks? I get nothing. Fine, so I kick into angry mode and I pretty much accuse them of stealing food from the mouth of my unborn child. But those m*therf**king bastards have me. There is absolutely nothing else I can do but accept my fate. For days, I can barely even tell anyone the story without almost crying.

Whew, I'm exhausted just thinking about this again. Long story short? We went without a fridge for almost two weeks. As much as I wanted to rip the repairman a new asshole when he finally showed up, I realized that he was not the one at fault. In fact, he was super nice and very apologetic about the whole situation. We did end up buying a small chest freezer from Home Depot and a used mini-fridge from a friend, in addition to borrowing a gigantic cooler from another friend. I still sort of think that we should have bought a new fridge, gotten the old one fixed by Maytag and then sold it, but Troy thought it would be bad for our karma to pass off the shitty fridge to someone else. My philosophy was that hey, it's got a brand new compressor, so it's almost like a new fridge, right? *sigh* Yes, I know, not really. Now every single little pop and buzz I hear makes me nervous that it's going to crap out again any day now. Stupid Maytag.

I should also mention that Troy also curses Maytag at every opportunity. In fact, if anything, he hates them even more than I do. He not only cusses out the commercials, but also anytime we pass a store (there's several in the Dallas area). There's even been talk of throwing a brick through the store window. I think he feels betrayed by the fridge. He loved that fridge and it let him down in the worst way possible.

stupid yahoo

2007-08-21T23:10:00.000-05:00

I've been using Yahoo mail for almost 10 years now. For some reason, when I first signed up for an account, I had an email address that was different from my actual login name. It's been long enough now that I can't quite remember the reason why. It was either because there was some sort of glitch that prevented me from using the same for both, or maybe after signing up for a login, I changed my mind about my email. I don't know. It's not that important. The point is, I've been using Yahoo mail for a long time. It is my primary email account and I rely on it for many things.

Anyways, for the past couple years (give or take a few months), we've had DSL service through AT&T, which is partnered with Yahoo. This allowed me to 'merge' my Yahoo with the AT&T service and gave me access to some of their premium services. I thought nothing of doing this when it was offered, and in fact, had done the same thing when we had DSL in Austin. Well, we recently switched to Verizon's new FIOS service (which, by the way, is super sweet) and cancelled the DSL. That was over a month ago now. The other day, I got a warning that I was no longer subscribed to AT&T and would have to unmerge my account. No biggie, right? Well, yesterday, Troy points out to me that my emails are coming from a different address now, my login name @yahoo. I think, hmm, that's odd, poke around my yahoo settings, and think well, no big deal. Then today, I discover that my original email address has been completely disabled and all emails sent to it are bouncing. What the hell?! I'm guessing that this stems from the 'unmerging' although I really can't figure out why they would do that. I'm still waiting for a response from yahoo's tech support.

In the meantime, my options were to use the login name email (which I hate because it's a random combination of numbers and letters that most would probably interpret as fake/spam), or to just change to something else entirely. Being the bitter and vindictive type that I am, willing to cut off my own nose to spite my face, I opted for the latter. So I got to spend the better part of my afternoon migrating to my shiny new Gmail account, entering contacts, emailing people to let them know I'd switched, and then changing everything else I've ever registered for as well. Ugh. What a pain in the ass!

And can I just say? Gmail is weird. I'm so used to the Yahoo mail format that I think it's really going to take me a while to get used to another format. I'm also annoyed because my name is common enough that I don't think I will ever be able to have an address of myname @whatever without having a long series of numbers after it. I guess I should be glad I married someone with an uncommon and unwieldy name.

On the plus side, I suppose I should mention that sending out a mass email to update contact info is always a nice excuse to get back in touch with people. I heard back from people that I hadn't talked to in a while, and it was really nice to reconnect.

summer reading

2007-08-21T11:46:00.000-05:00

Despite all my complaining about how I don't have any time because of the baby, blah, blah, blah, I've actually managed to read a few books (besides Harry Potter) this summer. Even before going to cooking school, I've always been obsessed by food, and I somewhat secretly would love to be a food writer myself (if not a food photographer or stylist). So I recently finished Heat by Bill Buford, and I'm also wrapping up The Man Who Ate Everything by Jeffrey Steingarten and The Nasty Bits by Anthony Bourdain. I know, it seems crazy that I've been alternating between reading three different books at once, but they are all non-fiction, and both Steingarten's and Bourdain's books are collections of shorter pieces that don't need to be read in any particular order.

You probably best know Jeffrey Steingarten as the occasional judge on Iron Chef America. He's the cranky old white guy who uses a lot of big words. He's otherwise known for being the food critic for Vogue. Anyways, Steingarten's book is actually 10 years old, but considered a "classic" in food writing. I happened to come across it at Half Price Books and thought, I'd give it a whirl. I'm actually not quite done with it yet, but so far, it's pretty good. I think he won me over in the first chapter, which was about how he became obsessed with baking the perfect loaf of bread, going so far as to order 50 lb. sacks of a certain kind of flour, freshly ground and directly from the mill. Sounds like something I would do, if I didn't know that Troy would freak out. The book has chapters covering all sorts of things that I'm sure were new and innovative at the time, but are kind of commonplace now. But I think that's what makes it kind of interesting since it really shows how far attitudes toward food (and particularly, dieting) have come in the last ten years. I think people nowadays are much more open-minded and interested in trying new and/or authentic things, even if they do seem weird or scary.

I have to confess, I am a huge fan of Anthony Bourdain. Kitchen Confidential is one of my all-time favorite books, and I re-read it at least once a year. The Nasty Bits is pretty much what the name implies: it's a collection of random odds and ends that he's written over the years for various magazines. Some of it is definitely repetitive, especially if you're already familiar with his general attitudes toward cooking and the restaurant business. Others are obviously newer and written during the time since he started doing his Travel Channel show, and I think those are the best pieces. I have to say, for an ex-junkie who was really only moderately successful as a chef, he's really hit the jackpot with his travel show. I wish I could convince someone to pay me to travel all over the world and eat. But I digress. Overall, I enjoyed the book, but again, that's because I thoroughly enjoy his aggressively overblown and self-important style. Oddly though, it ended with a short piece of fiction about a talented chef desperate for celebrity status to the detriment of all else. After reading Bourdain's hilarious Top Chef blog, I can't help but wonder if this character is modeled after Rocco DiSpirito.

Last, but not least, Heat, which is subtitled "An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany," was far and away one of the most enjoyable food-related books that I've read in a long time. I read it almost straight through (a rarity for me), and I was almost disappointed when it ended and I had to return it to the library. Heat is kind of starts out as kind of a cross between a biography of Mario Batali and an exploration of what drives people to become so passionate about food that they must share it with the public. But about halfway through, it turns more into a chronicle of the author's own transformation into one of those guys. I pretty much loved every aspect of this book, which is not surprising because again, the author had a certain obsessive quality that I can totally appreciate. For example, at one point, he became obsessed with finding the point in Italian history where people started making pasta with eggs instead of just flour and water. Not only did he scour through numerous medieval era cookbooks (in their original Italian, no less), but he even went so far as to contact Italian scholars and the head of the Pasta Museum (who knew there was such a thing?) trying to find the answer.

I also really liked getting to see another side of Batali other than the jovial, sanitized-for-television version that's on Food Network. Although, from what I could tell, that tv persona really isn't that different from his real life one except for maybe a little more exaggerated and a little less foul-mouthed. I'd say this book is definitely up there with Kitchen Confidential and Soul of a Chef by Michael Ruhlman. I'm going to be keeping my eye out for a used copy (or the paperback) and re-reading it soon.

yet another blog

2007-08-20T23:43:00.000-05:00

I went ahead and started a separate blog for all my crafty stuff: http://craftyasiangirl.blogspot.com/. I'm going to go ahead and move previous craft-related posts there and will probably just delete them from here eventually.

Wooooowww....

2007-08-20T12:23:00.001-05:00

I just saw that there's going to be a Flavor of Love 3. Now, don't get me wrong, because I love me some Flav, but even I think this may be taking it a bit far. I became totally obsessed with the first season of Flavor of Love, unable to look away like a bad trainwreck gaper. I even managed to drag Troy down with me into the morass. I mean, the sheer ridiculousness of watching women fight over a man wearing a viking helmet...awesome.

Second season: also highly entertaining, even though a lot of the girls seemed to much more conscious of their on-camera personae. I Love New York? Eh. Not so much. Granted, "New York" was easily the crazier than all the other b*tches on both seasons of FoL combined, and she made for some excellent drama, but I hated her. In fact, I hated her enough that I couldn't have cared less if she found true love or not. I still sort of watched her show, but somehow watching big burly grown-ass men cry like little girls was more than I could really handle. Where did they find these guys? I did take kind of a perverse glee in the fact that she got dumped at the end in the most humiliating and public manner possible. Heehee. I know, I'm going to hell. I also saw (during the commercials for the FoL3 casting special, of course) a commercial for I Love NY2, coming this October. I don't think I'm going to waste my time on this at all.

Oh, and I almost forgot about Charm School. *Sigh* Against my better judgment, I watched that one too. It was somewhat admirable in its premise of self-improvement. But really, c'mon. The only reason anyone was watching was to see more catfights. And since when is Mo'Nique, star of such hits as Phat Girlz, considered the arbiter of taste and class? But hey, kudos to VH1 for strip-mining the Flavor Flav franchise and extracting every single penny possible. On a side note, Comedy Central had a Roast of Flavor Flav last week that was actually pretty funny, if only for its relentless bashing of Carrot Top, who I didn't even realize was even still alive (wow, what happened to his face?).

So all of this got me thinking about just how much reality garbage is out there right now, especially on basic cable. I've realized that most of the shows come in one of two varieties: celebrity or competition. And I'm assuming that they're all rip-offs or iterations of some of the most successful versions, Project Runway and hmmm, I guess The Osbournes?

So now we have producers scrambling to dig up every half-ass quasi-celebrity has-been (preferably with a history of "outrageous" or "controversial" behavior, give them their own show, throw in as many obstacles as they can engineer, and then let the trainwreck unfold in front of the cameras. OR, they have some sort of competition to become the next "star" of the station's chosen genre, i.e Next Food Network Star or Design Star on HGTV. Just today, I stumbled across "Skating's Next Star" on WE. I kid you not. It's hosted by Kristi Yamaguchi (who I instantly lost almost all respect for) and predictably, features a gaggle of figure skating washouts who compete before a panel of skating celebrity judges (all Olympic medalists, no less). The prize is a moderate wad of cash, a feature article in some ice skating magazine, and management. I'll confess, being the junkie that I am, I watched a couple episodes. It was bad. Almost unwatchable, even for me.

Some of the other reality nonsense that is currently on (most of which I have only seen commercials for):

American Princess - a bunch of American women go to England and compete to earn some sort of princess-y title. I'm assuming that a lot of it involves etiquette and decorum. No, I'm not making this up.

The Two Coreys - Yes, that's right. Corey Haim living with Corey Feldman (and his new wife), trying to recapture their glory days.

Scott Baio is 45 and Single - fairly self-explanatory; Chachi trying to figure out out why he has commitment issues.

Mission: Man Band - A bunch of washed up dudes from 90s boy bands forms their own new 'supergroup,' again, trying to regain former glory. I watched one episode and one of the dudes is the guy from Color Me Badd who kind of looked like George Michael, except that he's gained like, 100 lbs. since then. I actually didn't recognize him and spent most of the episode trying to figure out who the hell he was.

The Pick-Up Artist - OK, this one, I watch and kind of enjoy. Granted, the main guy's name is "Mystery," (ridiculous) and he's usually wearing a giant fuzzy hat and/or goggles on his head (even more ridiculous), but the goal of helping a bunch of geeky guys build their confidence with women is actually kind of admirable. I was initially worried that they would basically be encouraging the geeks to be as amoral as possible, and crushing the ones that fail, but it actually seems to fairly positive so far.

I'm sure there are more. But my IQ has dropped enough points already this summer.

dance fever...actually, more like the dance sniffles

2007-08-17T09:10:00.000-05:00

The final ultimate farewell finale of So You Think You Can Dance was on last night and again, I can't say it was all that spectacular or exciting. In fact, this season as a whole was really kind of lackluster. Yes, yes, there were lots of this season's "favorite" numbers (more on that later). But there was also soooooo much ridiculous filler. I audibly groaned when I first turned the show on and realized that it another TWO HOUR droolfest.

So, first things first. Despite my prediction from the other night, Sabra came away the big winner. I was pretty surprised since she kinda had a weak showing on Wednesday, although again, I think it was not so much that she performed poorly and more that she fell victim to bad luck and bad choreography. More surprising to me though was that Lacey was the first one out. I really thought that she would be in the final two, along with either Sabra or Danny. Neil didn't really have a chance, in my opinion. He's got 12-year-old girl appeal, but that's about it. He oddly reminds me of Travis from last year, if only for the fact that he's short and got kind of spikey blond hair.

Last night's perfomances fell into three categories. Off the top of my head, in the "Oooohhh" category: Lacey & Danny's samba, Jesus & Sara's weird bag-lady routine, and Neil & Sabra's 'table' dance. In the "Meh" category: Pasha & Lauren's Skeleton dance (OK, so the entrance is cool, but it is otherwise only an okay routine), Jamie and Hok's bird thingy (what is it with Wade and his routines involving animals?), Neil and Lacey's Mia routine with the flowers (the one that made everyone all weepy), Sabra & Dominic's slow hip hop routine (where Shane ripped off his own routine from last year), Pasha & Sara's west coast swing, the Matrix-y group number (which I probably would've liked better if it didn't feature Lauren). And last, but not least the "Bah" category: the Lion King group routine, Neil & Sara's disco, Danny & Anya's fox trot (Anya kind of irks me).

I'm realizing as I write this that a lot of the dances fell into the Meh category. I don't know if that's just because they really were unspectacular, or if it has more to do with my overall lukewarm feelings toward the show this year. Last year's show just seemed to have more really memorable, show-stopping numbers that I was excited to see again. This year....not so much.

Other random thoughts: Cat's dress was especially heinous last night. Just because you're 8-feet tall does not mean you can wear all sorts of ruffly nonsense and pass it off as fashion. I did think it was cool that they brought back that awesome clogger guy and gave him a chance to perform on his own, as well as that little guy in the hat who popped. Also, the whole "Cat and Nigel dancing" joke was really really dumb. Not that I was dying to see it, but it was dumb to build it up and then have the payoff be a silly little web cartoon. Bah.

That about wraps it up. One last complaint. They announced the winner about 5 seconds before the show ended and then rolled credits. It would have been nice if they could've showed a little more of the happy celebration. I mean, I think they could've sacrificed 10 seconds out of the endless montages (or maybe even the whole Ryan Cabrera "I Will Remember" performance...yeesh).

reality roundup

2007-08-15T22:55:00.000-05:00

Let me just preface this whole thing by saying, yes, all these reality shows are crap and I don't care. I don't get out much and there's not much else to watch these days (especially in the summer). I'm a reality junkie. I admit it.

So Hell's Kitchen finally ended this week, and all I can really say is....meh. I think I stopped paying full attention to this show at least 4-5 weeks ago (probably when Top Chef started), and I'll confess that I only half-watched Monday's finale while I did about three other things. All the chef-testants this year were pretty weak (don't even get me started on Aaron), and I think T was the one who declared somewhere around Week 3 that, clearly Rock was the only one worth a damn and if he didn't win, then the whole show is fixed.

I do think it was kind of crap that Bonnie made it to the final two. If I had to watch that chick whine and cry one more time....ugh. This may sound mean, but the first time they mentioned that she was a "nanny/personal chef," I thought to myself, oh, so she's a babysitter who occasionally heats up some Chef Boyardee. How the heck did she get on this show?! I'm beginning to think that Gordon Ramsay has a soft spot for cute girls, especially if they've got a nice rack (*ahem* Virginia). But really, could that ending have been more anti-climactic? They did their best to play up the drama, like oooh, Rock's service was such a disaster, but I think it was fairly obvious from the start that Bonnie had no chance.

Preceding the HK finale, was the annoyingly long and drawn out results show for So You Think You Can Dance. Do results shows really need to be an hour long? Really? I understand the show makes money and there's a certain need for filler, but I'm getting really fed up with all the manufactured drama. I'm not going to say too much else about this show, since, obviously, it's been several days now and I'd rather talk about the finale. But I will say that it's about freaking time they got rid of Lauren. She waaaayyyy overstayed her welcome. And she didn't seem to be a very gracious loser either. I was sad to see Pasha go since he had some great performances last week, although really, I think that Neil and Danny were more deserving of being in the final four.

The finale for SYTYCD was on tonight, and again, I was kind of underwhelmed. It always baffles me when the dancers get criticized for how blah the routine was when the problem is obviously the lame choreography, in which they have no say. It's the same with criticizing their outfits. They're not the costume designers, leave them alone!

I was really expecting a lot more from the finale and instead, got a lame hip hop routine and an inexplicable dance about baby foxes? I didn't get that one at all. As soon as they showed the choreographer creeping around his studio with a scarf in his mouth, I knew we were in trouble. Also, I know the judges raved over it, but I was really disappointed by the Lindy routine. I love the Lindy Hop, and was expecting something much more spectacular. It seemed really stiff and choppy to me, especially all the lifts and twirls. Lacey looked like she tensed up going into each flip. And I really wish they would just retire the Broadway category. I don't understand why they're going to the trouble to come up with new routines for songs from from popular Broadway musicals that are famous for having their own style of choreography. It just sets them up for a bad comparison. I did kind of enjoy the boys' dance though. It was different, and not just in a weird for weird's sake way. Lacey and Danny's waltz was also very lovely.

In any case, going into tonight's show, I was fairly convinced that either Sabra or Lacey was going to take the crown, but after the way the came down on Sabra, I'm not so sure. Danny came on pretty strong, and his solo was amazing just in terms of sheer athletic ability. According to my sister-in-law, who is a hard-core fan, Danny was really unpopular with the fans early on, so I was a little surprised to see him in the final four, but now I think he might have a shot at taking it. Otherwise, I think it's going to be Lacey. I'm sure there'll be plenty more lame, weird and annoying dances in tomorrow's results finale. I am sincerely hoping that Cat Deely was joking about dancing with Nigel. Was there really some sort of groundswell demand for that? Bleh.

the lazy way out

2007-08-13T19:02:00.000-05:00

This is what it's come to, using pre-made templates. Yes, I know. I suck. But I'm going to go ahead and hide behind the excuse that I just had a baby and don't have time to do things from scratch anymore. Despite the fact that I finally took down the woefully outdated BitchyAsianGirl site (which I'm hoping to get back up one of these days), and most of my free time goes into updating Evelyn's site, I still have a lot of random thoughts rattling around in my head, so what better way to purge them than to post them here, for the world to see (or ignore)?

So what kind of self-important word vomit do I have to offer? Well, there's the obvious baby-related topics, although I'll save most of the bragging for the blog on Evelyn's site. But more likely, it'll be about whatever crafty nonsense I'm working on, my latest random obsession, bad reality television, what's for dinner....I don't know, whatever is keeping me up at night. I welcome any and all comments, positive and negative, as, at the very least, it lets me know that someone's actually reading this.