Misanthropaea

Shaka Zulu: Celebrity Knock-Off 4

Have I ever mentioned anywhere here, at any time recently, or in the past, or ever, that I have a deep and enduring love of nerdy women?

I anxiously await this to debut on Cooking Channel…

Shaka Zulu, by the way, was a multi-part mini-series made around 1986 for South African television. It was also a phrase I heard shouted nearly ten thousand times by Coolio as Food Network’s ridiculous car crash of a programme Who Wants To Be the Next Worst 24-Hour Restaurant Celebrity Battle Cook Star droned endlessly along in the background as I read my anthropology textbook.

Coolio didn’t win, I guess.

Anyway, have I ever mentioned that I love nerdy women?

Moose Boosh: Celebrity Knock-Off 3

I was reading for an anthropology exam most of the evening and realised, at just a few minutes before 10pm, that Finding Bigfoot was about to start. Yes, that’s how I roll, if you haven’t figured that one out by now. Without thinking, I grabbed the remote and switched on the television just in time to witness Taylor Dayne expressing confusion over a little something she called ‘Moosh boosh.’

  ‘A little welcoming bite,’ Rachael Ray clarified.

‘A small, all-encompassing, one bite appetiser,’ Guy elaborated, as though ‘A little welcoming bite’ wasn’t clarification enough.

‘Huh,’ I said, punching in the numbers for Animal Planet.  ‘You learn something new every day. And yet I still hate this fucking programme.’

Discovering that amuse-bouche is another term for hors d’oeuvres or ‘a small, all-encompassing, one bite appetiser’ was fascinating in the same way I find it fascinating that Food Network haven’t shelved this Worst Celebrity Cook atrocity yet.  But I did find rather a strangely arousing  picture of Giada gently gripping and tugging a firm shaft of pasta…

Proofreadng 101-B

Attempted internet memes about the checking of spelling, grammar, or punctuation are often much more effective when someone actually checks the spelling, grammar, or punctuation of their meme before they send it out into the cold, harsh world… 

Instalebrity

Because I don’t tend to watch TV Guide Channel at all – as in ever – unless it’s entirely by accident, I happily had very little idea there was such a programme as TV’s Biggest Blunders, much less TV’s Biggest Blunders 2, which apparently was broadcast back in September of 2011. So naturally it came as quite a shock to me a few days ago that I’d inadvertently punched in the wrong numbers on my remote and tuned in this channel completely by mistake thinking it was something else.

Even more shocking than stumbling blindly upon TV’s Biggest Blunders 2 was seeing the face of Rachel Coleman, bestowed with the title of ‘Pop Culture Blogger,’ staring back at me through her Fearless Fly glasses. Though at least one of you three may recall, please bear with me whilst I explain: back in, I believe, January of 2010 – or two years ago for those of you playing along at home – our young Rachel was a contestant on series 1 of Food Network’s Worst Cooks in America where she was then described as a ‘Marketing Website Editor’ hailing from Brooklyn, New York, and whom, toiling under the spikey white-bleached tutelage of Chef Anne Burrell, not only went from ‘kitchen zero to kitchen hero’ as winner of the competition but also claimed a prize of $25,000 for her trouble.

A teary-eyed and devastated Jenny Cross, my hoped-for choice for the win, went off empty-handed to become a spokesmodel for Cupcake Provocateur. Her mentor, Chef Beau MacMillan, went on not to be on the follow-up series and also not the winner of series 4 of The Next I-ron Chef just a few weeks ago.

I suppose what shocked me most was wondering just how Rachel had got the status of Knowledgeable Television Authority™ when, as far as I could tell, she’d only been on a programme about bad home cooks a couple of years before. I have no desire at all to begrudge someone their fifteen minutes but this sudden relative stardom seems to me as inexplicable as just how Mo Rocca and Brad Goreski are famous for being geeky and wearing comically large glasses. Is this all it takes? Is celebrity status (oh yes, yes I went there, I used it in it’s correct form) now only just a matter of being nerdy and wearing  goofy-looking clothes and a giant pair of glasses? Is it simply following in the well-travelled path of Woody Allen circa 1970 and cashing in on playing the neurotic intellectual? How do these Instalebrities (my coinage, thank you) with no discernable genesis just magically appear?

It also gives me pause to wonder about the constant internet rumours calling into question the veracity of many Food Network ‘contestants’ and whether the network is, in fact, staging more of their ‘reality’ programmes and populating them with actors to portray the helpless and hapless competitors as a means of heightening the drama and grabbing desperately for increased ratings. I’m not suggesting Rachel was a plant  – not at all – I simply find the whole ‘suddenly famous’ thing strangely convenient and completely mindboggling…

Celebrity Knock-Off 2

The opening salvo of Film Critic Roger Ebert’s review of Michael Bay’s 2001 epic Pearl Harbor  insisted that it was ‘a two-hour movie squeezed into three hours’ proving that once again Einstein was right in determining that time is relative. And to some extent, this echoes my exact feelings on having struggled through at least part of the second episode of Food Network’s woefully unwatchable Worst Celebrity Cooks in America Star, which felt strangely like a 30 minute programme pointlessly dragged out for an hour. One excruciating and unbelievably long hour. After last week, I did not actively seek out this monstrosity. Rather, the Food Network was merely the channel playing in the background as I went about other things waiting for the first of three special 20th anniversary episodes of Absolutely Fabulous.

As I occasionally strode past the television I would glance in on the stagnant action, mostly choosing to do so whenever Alyssa Campanella was featured, but soon found my attention wandering to thoughts of Michael Bay’s 2001 epic Pearl Harbor and big explodey things and wondering how this stink bomb could be improved by dramatic aerial battles or CGI dinosaurs or cats playing the keyboard or longer shots of Alyssa Campanella’s legs.

At one point, a group of recent graduates from various pastry schools were invited to taste and critique a series of desserts made by the celebrities.  One of the students, in reference to Taylor Dayne’s strawberry shortcake  said, ‘This cake feels like it grew out of soil, nice and fresh.’

‘Ooo, I love that description!’ exclaimed Rachael Ray, her cavernous mouth looking like an aircraft hangar on my 50-inch screen.

I walked out of the room.

Later, Alyssa Campanella and her legs were defeated in a gruelling ten minute salad cook-off against Summer Sanders who, despite having served nearly raw salmon in her dish (when a requirement of the challenge was to have one cooked element), had packed all sorts of other things into her salad and Guy Fieri thought that was ‘off the hook’ or some completely fucking stupid thing I couldn’t care less about since Alyssa Campanella got the shove.

In the meantime, here is a picture of Rachael Ray enjoying an ear of corn in rather an inappropriate and suggestive fashion…

Benefit Analysis

In continuing to seek a job which does not crush my will to live, I have applied quite a number of times to a local company whom I shall not name because they have simply annoyed me with their Wall of Silence but which might sound as though it could start with a ‘V’ sound and end with something similar to ‘era Bradley.’ After years of having struggled with alcoholism and being fired from every job he’d ever had, a long-time friend of mine got a position with this company the day after he walked out of rehab. And yet, with far more experience than he could ever hope to have, every application I have submitted has been resoundingly ignored and my telephone enquiries to their answerphone go unreturned.

Recently they posted a position for their e-commerce division which, amongst other basic duties, included proof-reading. I believe I am simply going to copy the image below (culled from a stop at Amazon.com the other day) and attach it to an email in lieu of a formal application…

Celebrity Knock-Off

Nearly sixteen years ago, the editor of Spite Magazine, Bradford Contemporary wrote, ‘I would rather be chained to a cheetah and dragged through a street of knives than listen to another Alanis Morissette song.’  Through a strange act of serendipity, this is precisely how I felt squirming uncomfortably as I tried to sit through Food Network’s foetid New Year’s treat called Rachael vs Guy: Celebrity Cook-Off. Not because it had any songs by Alanis Morissette in it but because watching it was like watching a value brand version of The Worst Cooks in America combined with all the worst bits of The Next Food Network Star – including the now infamous magical number of 150 hungry people – crammed together into one unpleasantly stale wad.

I don’t know if it was simply having two of the loudest and most obnoxious (and by far my least favourite) Food Network hosts on one programme for a full hour which made this thing so intolerable or if it was the bizarre cross-section of celebrities. I wouldn’t expect to see Anne Hathaway or George Clooney on something like this but – really? – Aaron Carter, Joey Fatone  and Coolio? Is Coolio even relevant any more? And poor Leslie Wunderman wearing a Botox and plastic Taylor Dayne mask might not be quite as gruesome as Donatella Versace but I often found myself wincing in anticipation of something going horribly wrong whenever she attempted to smile.

In sharp contrast to these Where Are They Now? pop stars and looking terribly out of place, Lou Diamond Phillips and Cheech Marin rounded out the 70s & 80s contingent, whilst sports announcer Summer Sanders (of whom I had never heard because I am blissfully ignorant of nearly all things sporting except for Amy Williams) and Alyssa Campanella, Miss USA 2011, brought us into this century allowing viewers under the age of 50 to have someone recognisable to cheer for.

I know that these celebrities are playing for charities and that’s all very wonderful and special and awfully commendable of them and everything, and I certainly don’t think badly of them for participating, but that harsh scraping sound of Food Network raking their sporks across the desolate bottom of a rapidly-shrinking Idea Barrel frequently caused me to walk out of the room, scream at the television, or just face-palm myself from sheer embarrassment. As such, chaining myself to the nearest readily available cheetah is preferable to any notion I may have temporarily entertained of re-capping this agonising and wretched programme.

But here is a picture of Sandra Lee holding her breasts.