The Next Food Network Star: Fourth Episode which I didn’t get the title of, oops.

Warning: T rated for mild profanity.

My dad doesn’t like to put up with crap.

Being an Professor that teaches Business Accounting, he should be getting respect. But he tells me stories of students who come to him and complain that they got bad grades and beg for good grades to get their degrees when they clearly didn’t study. My dad is a firm believer of hard work, and he’s sort of upset at the way I flittered my life away on video games and hate clerical work. When we were young, me and Dad argued a lot about my future. That’s how much he hates people who can’t walk the walk.

If he were on the selection committee of The Next Food Network Star this season and had witnessed Nipa’s outburst, he would have immediately gotten up and told Nipa Bhatt to leave and never return, and if he had been the guest judge on this episode, he would have done the same thing and added “I do not want you to expect to ever get famous off of cooking.”

Yeah, that’s the same way I feel after Nipa’s behavior this episode. I’m almost tempted to have a Sim looking like my father argue with and fight a Nipa-Sim, who would go sob into her hands.

First, let me describe this week’s challenges:

(1) For the mini-challenge, Tyler Florence asked each contestant to do a sixty-second instructional video on a food technique. Kelsey won this one and her video is showcased on the Food Network site. Jen lost it after being told not to apologize AGAIN.

(2) Kelsey also won the main challenge; Michael Symon(who I have finally come to grips with for winning the Next Iron Chef competition – I don’t think they’ll do that again, though) had each contestant plan two fish dishes. One would use a sweet ingredient. Then the dishes were to be served to 30 members of the Atlantic Coast Guard with a short presentation.

Now for my gripes:

(1) Jen, you need to withdraw from this challenge and go see a counselor immediately. I know I should be talking, having been forced to visit many many shrinks for my autism problem, but anyone who was teased as a child and still can’t get over confidence issues in adulthood expect in private needs therapy. Jen, I really would like to see your kid’s cooking show, but not if it means you have to apologize for things you can’t control. GET HELP.

(2) Nipa, I had a few issues about you, but I want to say I’m sorry about those issues – you tried really hard, but I knew you’d get eliminated because anyone who walks out two episodes should not be let back in. Also, if you can’t touch dead fish, how the hell were you able to make anything other than curried crap for Indian cuisine? I really wish you could have expressed your love of Indian foodfare, but not if you can’t handle dead fish, because India is 50% coastline and clearly has a great fishing trade. Did your parents never feed you fish, girl?

Ah, c’est la vie. I hope you can get over your fish-phobia before you die of old age.

(3) Lisa, I can’t believe you wore gucci shoes and a dress to an adventure where you clearly were handling food. My mom and my sisters would never ever wear high-heeled shoes while prepping food, as that is a sign of clear disaster. I admit I too had spilled my share of foods and gotten my shirt dirty, but any idiot who wears good clothes to food prep deserves to ruin them.

Other than that, your mess may have saved you for another week, as the judges were impressed by the non-divine goddess Lisa. If you can just keep that silly Lisa, you might get into the finalist vote! I’m rooting for you as a fellow Texan. 🙂

(4) Aaron, I’m sorry, man. I know how it feels to lose someone close to you when they run away from home and don’t come back. I had a gray kitten, Ash, who I let out to prowl and he didn’t return after a week. Thinking about it… it really hurts. It does. I’m scared to get another cat because I’m afraid I might lose it too. Having someone close run away from home is horrible, thinking about the fate they might suffer.

I’m 100% behind you, man. Even if you don’t win this, you shouldn’t be sad. Keep your chin up, and maybe Josh will see you on TV and regret his actions… if he’s still alive. *sob*

(5) Adam, I regret to say that there is no way you’re going to do well here. I’m betting you’re up next on the chopping block. Tripping and falling went out with the clown age, and that video you did was just horrible. If you can’t prep an artichoke, you need to learn.

I want to see an Alton Brown prodigy, not Bozo the Clown’s Crazy Cooking.

(6) Shane and Kelsey, you are doing better. Keep it up and you might be the two who get into the finalist vote. I’m backing you two!

Enough said. Le’ts just hope next week is a little better for all enough… oh, and no more Hollywood dancing, please. 😦

Fraulein bosch devau? (trans: Oh ****, I’m doomed)

In the words of the great Shamus from Twenty Sided: “I have now acquired the tool through which I may orchestrate my own undoing. Behold, and despair:”

(Of course, it would have had more impact had I done this post two days ago… oh well. 🙂

Actually, I had an old copy of The Sims 2, but I have to get rid of it because Sims 2 Deluxe’s special Nightlife expansion is already hard-coded into the disk with its copy, so the two disks aren’t compatible.)

What in the name of all that is Arceus inspired me to go and risk my sanity with these Silly People? (Fraggle Rock reference, iirc) Well, several threads popped up on a place I like to frequent, the Let’s Play forum of the Something Awful Forums. (I recommend it to people who like video games, but don’t want to play them.)

These threads were play-throughs of The Sims 2, where the author asked people to contribute characters to the Sim Families that the author would make, and then the author would catalog what happened during the days of Sim Life. Well, they were really funny.

After I had to reinstall the game, I decided to ditch the families I had made. Somehow, I discovered a trick to getting a male Sim laid/engaged that is so ridiculously easy I’m surprised that none of the hardcore fans thought of it first… they probably did, but didn’t dare use it because it was “cheating” on the par of the cheat codes that Maxis itself put in the game as debug codes. The families I had ditched included two spectacled guys who had proposed marriage to dream women, including a man called “Ratchet”(yeah, the real Ratchet would probably bash my skull to pieces with his Omniwrench for making his human counterpart a sap) after using the “cheat” to get them to seduce the girls.

I started a “goon house” and watched two females and three males randomly generated from a fiction generator(not the Randomize function of the game itself, mind you) set fire to the kitchen and mope and gripe. Then I decided to create a storyline character, so I created a male in my image(50% in my image, and it has my real first name) and, after two Sim weeks, he had already made out passionately with two blonde women and gotten both to max relationship levels. I ended up having the Sim propose to the cooler woman, and then had him abducted by martians. (Sadly, the game didn’t get him pregnant – yeah, you read that right – and I had to cheat him into bearing a child.)

Chris, my Sim, now has had an affair, is almost ready to marry a sexy blonde with green glasses, has joined a couple of clubs, and is now nursing a baby alien boy.

The sick thing about it all is that I’m living through this Sim. I guess it’s an appropriate game for me, one where you can live out crazy romantic adventures with sexy women, seduce them(I saw the hot tub WooHoo cutscene, the engagement cutscene[thrice, see above], the alien abduction cutscene, and the baby birth scene[when Chris birthed his new son C.J. Max – thankfully the game is careful not to show actual birthing or I would get even more disgusted at being addicted to this) and even get pregnant as a guy, something many fanfiction writers love to do to male video game characters.

This must make me the craziest, nuttiest loser on the face of the god-green Earth. Pray for my dear corrupted soul, ladies and gents. Pray for it! 😦

You…In A Morphing Jar: Episode 3

(Now I get to use Yu-Gi-Oh puns! Yahoo! ^_^)
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Yep, it’s the third episode! I apologize for putting Episode 2’s blog up just so close to this one, but I was really upset by Nipa’s tantrum, it reminded me of when I threw a fit when I couldn’t get what I wanted. I was a really bad baby back then at the tender age of 25… <_<
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(Also, I accidently dropped a juice glass and it shattered in a million shards, then I accidently stepped on the glass, so I might have lacerated my foot, so I apologize if I’m late with this one too. Also, blame Will Wright and his evil software, The Sims 2. LOLZ!)

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Anyways, there were two challenges again. The first(which the judges called a mini-challenge, so I’ll do that too) was to make a dish from the most culinary inert foodstuff in the universe: potatoes.

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My thoughts:

• Jen uttered the dreaded “uhm.” I’ve been in speech classes, and the teacher always bashes me for using “uhm” so often. You can’t expect to get respect if you stammer and don’t have a speech impediment.
• Lisa stopped at 45 seconds and stalled for time. That was not smart. If the command was to spend a minute talking, you talk for a minute about the food, about your life, and what have you. I’ve had similar problems, which is yet another reason I won’t apply for a future Season of this show.

The second challenge was to make a brand of their own food product and pitch it to fifty people who shop at speciality food stores. As a surprise guest, the Divine Goddess of All That Is Brand Names and Fine Living(Martha Stewart) tried out the product as well as the judges.

My thoughts:

• Nipa did something stupid again – she stole all the cayenne pepper to make her two- ingredient seasoned sugar, leaving Aaron out in the cold. Maybe it did Aaron good, because he was able to impress The Branding Goddess with his salad dressing by using a dried jalapeno powder instead.
• Jeffery and Nipa did very poorly. While seasoning blend is probably what I’d go for if I had to do that sort of challenge, I wouldn’t try to make something any layman could make. I’d kick it up a notch with all sorts of stuff. If Nipa had put some garam masala or ground grains of paradise in her seasoning, she might have done better.
• Kelsey, girl, don’t get upset! You had no idea that the Divine Mistress of Brand Names was going to be trying your product. I probably would have done the same mistake, serving her finger food that was beneath her.

Afterthoughts:

• MY GOD, WOMEN REALLY ARE EMO!!! CAN THE WATERWORKS ALREADY! I’m not being sexist, but Lisa, Kelsey, and Jen(after the elimination) turned on the eye faucets. I know Kelsey was upset because she was told her personality was grating, but suck it up, girl! Nobody’s going to respect you if you bawl like that. Lisa had every right to cry, though; if I had met Alton Brown and he was judging my efforts, I’d be acting like a fanboy too.
• Jeffery was the third casuality; in other words, the third person eliminated. I am not being mean to the blacks, in fact I felt a little pity for Jeffery. He tried his hardest, he did much better than anyone else. He didn’t break down or walk out or act up, but they kicked him out! I’m blaming Kevin and Cory for his elimination because he was cursed with their bad luck. Of course, it could also be that he, like Cory, was not suited to life behind a camera. Regardless, we will miss him and his fine spectacles.
• Lisa once again redeems herself by winning the branding challenge.
• After reading the first comment on Bob’s blog, I have only one thing to say about that person – judge not lest ye be judged yourself! So what if Martha got busted for fraud or you think she’s a snooty snob? I never judge people based on their past actions, and her “arrogance” is only in your mind, man.

Who Got Eliminated?: Jeffery

My Predictions: One of the girls is getting eliminated next, no doubt about it. Nipa’s climbing back up, back her tantrum has really made it hard to escape elimination next time unless she pulls a miracle out of her @$$. Jen is also not doing very well, she’s still not emoting enough… and I like her idea of a show that teaches kid-friendly cooking. Guy’s great, but I can’t think of any way to make his cocktails for kids.

What I might put up on YouTube next, if it weren’t for the threat of a lawsuit: A Martha Stewart Sim dying in a kitchen fire or being eaten by a killer fly swarm, just to appease you Martha Stewart haters. 😀

Yeah, I’m back in the Solana Galaxy – shoot me with your worst! (Ratchet and Clank)

I had thought I had gotten over the craziness of that Lombax and his little robot friend when I got bored of “Up Your Arsenal.” The third game wasn’t as exciting… until Volcano Style played through the old Ratchet and Clank and I decided to buy the series again. My first purchase was a PSP game called “Ratchet and Clank: Size Matters.”

Apart from the hilariously bad sexuality inneundo used in the title – for those of you who are curious as to what “size matters” means, go watch those stupid “male enhancement” commercials that pop up on TV – and several horrible glitches(one of them which made it impossible to advance to the next planet), the game was pretty good. I’ll probably be uploading videos of it to Youtube when I get the PS2 port of that game.

Anyways, I then repurchased the original games(including a bugged version of Going Commando which has sound problems on one cutscene and repeats another later on) and went through them all, including the dreaded Up Your Arsenal… which I found better than the last two games because there were no FREAKING RACES YOU HAD TO GO THROUGH! (Size Matters has another set of races which require a lot of practice to complete them all – jerkwads!) Oh, and the Plasma Whip is freaking awesome, but then, I did watch the latest Indiana Jones movie.

So, I plan on pre-ordering the newest PSP R&C game, Secret Agent Clank, which focuses on the robotic Clank as he plays out his super secret agent role to clear his Lombax buddy’s name and bail him from jail. I am going to preorder because I get a free Clank figurine to display on my computer. ^_^

Starmie On The Go: Again, Why Do They Keep DOING THIS?!?

Sorry about not posting until now, but I didn’t feel like updating for a few days. I’ll try to put up something faster next week, it’s just… last Sunday’s episode was so… depressing.

The only part I liked was when Robert Irvine came in at three in the morning and woke everyone up by banging a pot, like he did in the episode (sorry, I don’t remember the name of that episode where Robert made the fraternity brothers cook a meal for the college faculty, but it was funny how he banged the pot to wake them up).

Yes, Robert was today’s guest judge and challenge host, so I knew he was going to give them a “Dinner: Impossible” challenge. But the first challenge was pretty surprising:

Challenge #1: Trivia Race – Go to three speciality shops(a butchet, a baker, and a cheese-maker) and answer a trivia question. Get it right, you get to choose one of three of their product for the main challenge. Get it wrong, and someone has to do food prep.

The nine survivors were split into three equal-member teams:

Blue Team: Lisa, Nipa, and Shane

Green Team: Kelsey, Jeffery, and Kevin

Grey Team: Aaron, Jenny, and Adam

I’m not going to explain everything that happen, but here is some advice to a group that bunks together, if you decide to do something like this:

To the players: Don’t dilly-dally like Nipa did, or else you will be way behind and find it almost impossible to get into the lead. Also, make sure you get your team-mate’s opinion before you answer the question because they might have some insight which could save your bacon – no pun intended.

To the people who host the challenge: Don’t try to confuse your players. Make sure they have an idea of how smart they are in the culinary department.

Needless to say, this is the first time I actually saw real live(or un-alive) headcheese. I asked my dad over dinner about it, and he chuckled when I said he would have recognized that gray ugly slab at once. <_<

Anyways, Team Grey got to the main challenge first while Team Green lagged in last place. Each of the teams ended up with the following foodstuffs:

Team Blue: Day-old Baguettes, Danish Bleu Cheese, and Lamb

Team Green: Raisin bread(I can’t pronounce the name of that bread!), Buffalo Mozarella, and Duck Breast

Team Grey: Brioche(sweet bread), Ricotta, & Beef

Main Challenge: Using the three ingredients you have gotten from the first challenge, create three dishes for a train-side brunch for thirty people and the judges in a certain amount of time.

Again, time management and poor plate distribution killed Kelsey’s team, as they were unable to put an even amount of food on each plate, and the judges got less food than the others.

Adam had the bright(read, as brilliant as Captain Qwark) idea to make sunny-side up eggs, which got him a lot of flak from Aaron. Adam tried as hard as he could to make it work, but it failed and the eggs got undercooked to the point of “did you just crack this egg on the bread and serve it salmonella-style?”

Finally, Nipa’s dish was far too spicy for human consumption.

Now for some afterthoughts:

1. Nipa didn’t walk out as I had thought. She just cracked under the pressure of the judges and ran off to lick her wounds. I’m reminded of myself in a way – unable to handle harsh critics, one runs away and hides, wondering if they did the smart thing by entering this stupid contest. Unfortunately, she came to her senses and threw herself on the judges’ feet, begging for forgiveness. Unfortunately for her, a lot of people outside the contest griped and groaned about that behavior. It makes sense: If I had done something like that in front of a group of harsh judges, I probably would have cut my losses and dropped out instead of begging to stay. 😦
2. Kevin, Mr. Love-Food Doctor, was the second unlucky loser who got axed. Call me a prudish old-fashioned unromantic if you want, but I really don’t think you should be making out in the kitchen. Sorry, Kevin, but if you wanted to get guys and girls to cook together while stealing kisses from each other, you REALLY should have shown that you wanted to do this. I agree with Bob Tuschman, Kevin looked more like the typical man who girls don’t like; instead of making a sexy romantic meal for a girl and flirting, he would rather be parked on his couch playing Halo 3 online with his gaming buddies. I could probably do a better “Romance in the Kitchen” TV show better than you, and all I know about romance is from fanfiction and video games! Moral of the story: You may talk the talk, but you have to walk the walk. Nobody will miss Kevin’s CPOV.
3. Finally, Lisa redeemed herself by making a killer French Toast from the stale baguettes. She clearly did her Good Eats homework, and knew that stale bread makes a tastier French Bread than fresh bread(which explains why Jenny’s French Bread was panned, making French Bread from brioche is a bad idea); she also cleaned up her presentation and cut her CPOV to something that the layman can nibble on and like.
4. Wait, this is the final part: If I were Aaron, I would have done the same entrance and then pointed out Adam’s “scheme” to make him look bad. Adam, you jerkwad – first raw eggs and now doing a politically-incorrect skit; that’s going to hurt you. 😦

All in all, I have to say that Lisa’s pulled herself out of the dangerous territory of immediate elimination, Nipa’s now teetering on the edge of getting sent home, Adam in a jerkwad(and I thought he could be Alton’s successor!), Aaron rocks, Kelsey could be Rachael Ray’s successor, and the two Js(Jenny and Jeffery) are fading into the background(which is bad news, remember Patrick and Vivien from the last season?). As for Shane? Well, he’s still having trouble getting his food cooked properly, but if he gets his act together, he could be in all the way. 🙂

Who Got Eliminated: Kevin

Predictions for next week:

• Well, I don’t have any, but I know Nipa’s going to probably be eliminated soon, due to her outburst. She got put on warning from Bob, which is never a good thing. I think he didn’t like how Nipa was acting like Amy did last season.
• I predict someone is going to be weeping in their hands. geez, people, stop crying all the time; the judges are not going to be bribed by sympathy acts.

NEXT WEEK: Martha Stewart, the Divine Goddess of Home Living, appears to take part in a challenge!

What’s coming: Episode 2

First off, an error I wanted to point out in my first post on this whole thing, before anyone calls me on it:

After reading Amy Finley’s interview, she said that she had decided to make her show a (gasp!) one-season wonder. She told the interviewer that she decided that she wasn’t really capable of bringing “The Gourmet Next Door” into more than one season, because she had too many life issues(what with spending a year in France, then coming back to put her son through elementary school) to continue doing a cooking show. She even refused offers to do a new show!

I guess one of two things:

(1) She might take up the offer of a cooking show when she’s in middle age, after her son moves out and she has more time to devote to a TV career. She’s probably employable by Hollywood now that she’s been seen on the Food Network… or…

(2) She’s never going into TV again, preferring to stick with maybe a cookbook or web site to hide her face. After the tantrum she threw on TNFN3, I’m surprised she’s not hiding under a fedora so nobody recognizes her as “the crybaby woman.” If it were me, I’d change my sex and identity to hide the shame. (No offense to Amy Finley, everyone; if I had been in that hot seat, I would have gotten miserably and weepy too, and I’m a guy!)

(3) Or maybe she feels ashamed that she won on a technicality and hoped that FN decides to talk to J.A.G. and work out a deal so he can have cameos in other shows, so he can redeem his stupid mistake on lying on his resume. Who knows?

Needless to say, FN probably decided to shelve the episodes of “The Gourmet Next Door” they taped and forget about them, sort of like how Japan is trying to forget about Porygon and its evolved forms to make up for the shame of that seizure incident, and fear that any episode with Porygon-2 or Porygon-Z is going to have a hate mail swarm against them because they’re evolved from “the seizure Pokemon.”

Anyways, what was I going to say about this season? Oh yes, I think Nipa’s going to actually pull off a drop-out after she breaks down, and runs to the airport with tears before the FN guys can catch her. Or at least, she’ll drop out and the judges may not have to do a double-elimination. Whatever that means for the future of the reality show, I dunno.

Needless to say, the next episode sounds to be a disaster to all – the contestants will flub their dishes and nobody will escape harsh criticism. One dish will have undercooked food(eggs, this time) and another will be burned duck. Maybe the challenge was too hard, but Nipa breaks down and drops out, even though the judges were going to eliminate someone else. They decided to eliminate the other person(Lisa/Shane/or what have you) and that leaves us with seven people, allowing us to have only one person kicked out for the next five episodes and making a short season.

Whatever happens, it doesn’t seem to be very good for the contestants. I think the challenges in this season are a little TOO difficult. I know they need to weed out newbies, but I call shennagins. Maybe they realized what I did and decided not to do another season, so they’re being really ruthless to discourage anyone from sending in another tape. (Nah, I’m just too cynic.)

Either way, this doesn’t look to be a friendly season. 😦

Stay tuned next Monday or Tuesday for my take on what happens.

“I wasn’t eliminated, I was just looking for something called an Oran Berry!”

Well, ten little contestants all feeling fine, one went emo over food and then there were nine…

After last evening’s airing of the Food Network Star premiere, we had two challenges, both hosted by my patron saint, Alton Brown. (Because of this, he probably won’t show up again, unless they do another Iron Chef battle.)

First, to my surprise, was a non-cooking challenge. They didn’t cook anything. Instead, they had to speak a sentence to the camera describing their culinary point of view. (Seriously, there can’t be another season of this because they are running out of challenges to start with!)

Poor Cory froze like someone petrified by a Stone Saber, needing help to speak and stumbling over her words. It’s good she was eliminated, because she’s not ready for TV. Cracking jokes on the stage is much different from speaking to a mindless camera which is broadcasting to millions of people in the world.

Lisa was the opposite, really babbling haywire and Alton got on her back about it. Lisa, from a fellow Texan, here’s some advice… don’t say “I can deconstruct designer dining to the three Cs”, say “I can make fine dining a snap for you by three simple aspects.” You’re not speaking to elite intellectuals, you’re speaking to soccer moms and stay-at-home dads. Get a clue, girl. 😦

After watching the exit interviews, Cory took her expulsion very light-heartedly. In the main exit interview, she said “I’m not giving up my foodie life, but I’m taking a vacation.” Then with Adam Roberts, she said “Funny, they didn’t say I was eliminated, they just asked me to look for a rare ingredient”, which was a joke. Luckily, it was easily spotted a light year away. She’s “taking it with dignity”, in her own words.

Cory, you have some potential, but you just didn’t have the way to fuse fun with food service. Train some more and maybe you might get an offer from another TV station. Bon soir, mon ami.

About the episode itself, time management really killed some of the contestants and we had a few Jess Dangs in the second challenge. Shane was about to have a crying fit after feeling rotten for undercooked pork which was panned by Morimoto as being “unfit for human consumption.” It also killed Team Kelsey/Aaron because poor Mrs. Neely didn’t have a salmon sandwich.

Speaking of which… too much salmon! Geez, people, I know fish dishes are complex and simple, and salmon is cheap(I saw a slab for $2.50 at HEB), but leave the freakin’ fish that jumps up waterfalls to breed ALONE for once! If I were a fish that jumped waterfalls to breed, only to be netted and slain for food, I would start haunting you all because I’d think you wanted my freakin’ AUTOGRAPH with all those blasted dishes!!!

Likewise, poor Nipa(I’m guessing she’s Indian, and not the Navaho, get your history right!) was unable to make her suki bahji(curry potatoes) taste good because the stupid market was out of tumeric that day. 😦

However, we need not worry about not having a possible successor to Alton Brown, as Adam(or was it Kevin? I can’t tell) used a bottle of dairy, took a sip… and found out it was whipping cream. ^_^

Challenges:

1. A one-sentence speech about the contest’s C.P.O.V., w/ props as desired.
2. 10 minutes to design, 30 minutes to prep a meal for various Food Network celebs, including Morimoto and the Neelys.

Who was eliminated: Cory

Who might be next?: Lisa, if she doesn’t stop being bossy

Final thoughts: NO MORE SALMON DISHES, DARN IT!!! >_<