RIP Rice cooker

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

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?

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

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!

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.

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

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!