Top Chef idea

You know what I want to see? A spin-off of Top Chefs called "Home Cooks" or something.

You know how people who are really good home cooks sometimes are told they should open a restaurant? The purpose of the show would be to help someone do just that.

I'd want it structured more like TC Masters, with qualifying rounds and then "playoffs" and finals, and with a rating system like theirs as well. I'd also like to see some more generous time limits, or the addition of sous chefs or something else to acknowledge that home cooks aren't always the fastest preppers, and take the focus off of speed a bit in favor of letting them see what they could do. And the prize would presumably be both money to go towards opening a restaurant (or catering business, maybe) and the aid of someone who knows the ins and outs of opening restaurants to help them set up their place and hire the right people and such.

The challenges could be similar to what they do now, so long as they got the extra time or extra prep help I mentioned above. Plus I'd probably want to give them basic reference guides—not recipe books, exactly, but things like "this is what goes in basic sauces at these ratios" and "here's a basic white cake mix", and "here's a list of basic substitutions". A bit of a cheat sheet seems reasonable for people who don't spend as much time with cooking as professionals do.

Anyhow, I think that'd be interesting to see.

Glee-related babble

I'm not watching Glee, but I do read some recaps (done by TLo, aka "the Project Rungay boys" from the old name of their blog) and watch clips of songs I'm interested in. I'm gonna have to pry some money loose from the budget to buy a few of those clips. In particular, I definitely want the NPH "Dream On", and "Baby, It's Cold Outside" from the Christmas episode.

I swear that Chris Colfer sounds more like a girl than I do. :D It's just... I've always had a kinda low voice for a woman, and it's just gotten lower as I've gotten older. My singing voice is shot to hell lately anyhow—not that you'll ever hear it because it records like total crap, even if it sounds fine in person—but I seem to have fallen down into the tenor range, or some midpoint between tenor and alto, depending on how you measure.

Oh, there's one other song I know I want to get from the Glee soundtracks, but I hate to admit it because I typically tend to actively avoid any pop singer with a hype machine larger than Madonna's. But, I must admit, their cover of "Telephone" got stuck in my head pretty hard. I went and found the video for the original, so I've heard that now too, and I do kinda like it but I like the cover better for some reason (maybe because I saw it in context and the context was funny).

Well, that's one less show I'm watching again

Dear Nina Garcia and Michael Kors,

You have lost all credibility with me. Seriously.

I've been disagreeing with your choices for a while, sure. But this season, not only have I disagreed with you, I've started to wonder if you actually do have any real idea what's going on in the fashion world.

You just gave Gretchen the win over Mondo. And I'm pissed off about that, yes, but it's not just because I think Mondo is by far the better designer. It's also because of the bullshit that came out of your mouths in justifying it.

You see... I've been paying a lot more attention to the runway and the fashion world in general since I started watching this show, and you know what I haven't seen recently? Anything that looks much like the 70's aesthetic animal print stuff Gretchen did. In fact, I'm looking at Marie Claire's web site right now, and do you know what I am seeing? Clothes that look far more like what Mondo did than what Gretchen did. In fact, in specific, on the Fashion News page, I see one thing using almost the same pink and aqua I saw in Mondo's collection, and another using a black and white print.

Whose finger again is on the pulse of fashion trends?

Apparently not yours.

Sincerely,

Someone whose Thursday nights look to be staying free for the forseeable future.

Things I Learned From TV, Part 1

Got blue balls? There's an app for that!

A commercial advertising something called "Juicy TV", which appears to involve very large-breasted women, touted their service, which apparently includes an iPhone app. The statement above was not literally in the commercial, but it sure seemed to be the message.

Commercials with the sound off can be strange.

Based solely on the visuals, I believe that the message of a recent Snickers ad is this: When you are transformed into an old woman, just eat a Snickers bar! You'll soon be transformed back to your virile male self.

Sadly, the sound being on would probably confirm this was basically the message.

Things from bad movies are, well, bad.

Lesson for Saturday: if you try to hit ScaryDemonGuy with a car, and he jump/walks his way over it instead? Chances are, the same thing will happen when you put the car in reverse and try again.

I didn't catch the name of the movie, but the 10 minutes we saw was pretty bad.