Again? Enough, already!

Well, it’s about time I started to pay attention to my blog site.  I need to clean up stuff, get down, and do the work of updating. You might be surprised by this update, and what I’m about to say.

I suggest you go to the Iron Chef category and read those articles.

Why?

Well…

At the time of this writing, it is now the birth of May 30. In two days, something I have witnessed twice before will happen again. Auditions were advertised during the last season, and I’m sure that the ten contestants about to humiliate themselves and cringe under the harsh judges before them and get eliminated were chosen from thousands of people. Prior contestants need not apply.

No, this isn’t the next season of “American Idol”, it is something far worse…

The Next Food Network Star.

(evil manic laughter and thunder sounds, please)

Yep, the next Food Network Star is about to begin again in its FOURTH SEASON. The commercials for it started earlier this month and now the trailers have come a-knockin’.

I didn’t see the very first season as I only started watching the Thanksgiving after it aired. I thought those bald Hardy Boys were regular stars. But then I saw the second season and decided it would be cool to watch.

I won’t bore you with the details. My favorite was eliminated immediately first, and all the other girls got eliminated, leaving me with a black guy who wanted to steal Paula Deen’s shtick and a bearded blondie who had three restaurants and had “Off the hook!” as its catchphrase. I voted for the latter and my votes counted, for that guy – Guy Fieri – won.

I didn’t expect him to be so popular that he became a permanent fixture and get two shows and appearences in other shows, including hanging with stars like Robert Irvine and Michael Chiellero! O_O

Then came Season 3, and I prayed that a woman would at least get into the top two. I avoided bias early, but leaned to the funky Rory because I found out she was a fellow Texan. In a surprise twist, Amy Finley, a girl who I liked but didn’t want to get close to and got eliminated in the final round, came back when the other finalist was caught red-handed for lying on his background papers. Tsk tsk, bad J.A.G.!

Well, it’s happening again, and I did get a glimpse of the ten people which will compete this time. I refused to read their names because I want to be intrigued in the premiere. However, I did get some glimpses at what happened during the taping:

1. A female contestant burnt something.
2. Bobby Flay tells someone that they are close to being eliminated. (“You are on very thin ice.”)
3. A lot of running around.

(For explanatory sake, the auditions were closed as the year ended and ten people were chosen from the millions of audition tapes, then the challenges were done and taped in early 2008. What we are seeing on TV isn’t live, it was done months ago!)

More importantly is what challenges will be thrown at the ten competitiors and the judges. Here is what I know will happen:

• The main judges will be Bob Tuschman and that woman whose name I can’t remember.
• Bobby Flay will be a judge in at least one of the day’s challenges.

Here is what I assume will happen based on prior experience:

• There will be guest judges amongst the Food Network celebs or other people.
• The whole adventure will be aired over two months.
• There will be a double-elimination or two to fit the schedule. (Season 3 had eleven contestants and there were two double-eliminations to narrow the field to fit into the eight weeks of challenges. Season 2 had only eight, and there was an elimination every week for comparison measures.)
• One of the challenges will be hosted by Amy Finley, who won last year’s competition(and I call shenanigans because she wouldn’t be there if J.A.G. had been honest and not lied on his resume, Amy was E-L-I-M-I-N-A-T-E-D and brought back because they needed someone to compete with Rory, they couldn’t skip the vote)
• Most of the other challenges will be hosted by celebs. Alton, Sandra, Tyler, and Giada hosted challenges in Season 2. Paula Deen, Duff Goldman, and Robert Irvine hosted challenges in Season 3.
• Rachael Ray will meet some of the contestants. (She tutored all of them in Season 2 and the final challenge in Season 3 was cooking on her namesake talk show.)
• The first challenge will be a simple one with no flair.
• There will be a lot of sweat, blood, and tears… oh, and culinary disasters.

I am planning on updating my blog daily with progress reports on the show’s episodes, starting June 2. I’m putting this post in the Iron Chef category, but I will make a new one for Food Network Star.

But now for a [RANT]…

Enough already, Food Network. I’m not saying you should forget about bringing in new talent, but you don’t need to do this for new talent. I noticed you have SEVEN new shows crowding into the weekend lineup(O’Nealy family, Danny Boon, that black DJ woman, and that woman doing “Chic and Easy”). Why do you need to add in some hack you made take stupid challenges which a lot of people are flaming you for? Guy Fieri is OK, he was a sleeper hit and became a regular Tyler or Alton, but what about Amy Finley, your last winner? You’re probably going to either shove her show to the graveyard shift or cancel it because you have no room! And dear God, if you cancel “The Gourment Next Door”, Amy’s going to cry, after all the manure you put her through in those episodes in early 2007!

I really wanted to see Amy get aired at 4:00 PM on weekdays, but I know you can’t afford to kick Ina Garten or Sandra Lee off your network or move them to your HD channel. <_> Don’t get me wrong, Food Network; I’m going to laugh and cry with your ten contestants as eight of them are told to go home and the last two are voted on, leaving a clear winner with some cute winner ceremony where the other guys come back to celebrate… but to be honest, I won’t get to see the said winner’s show because it’ll air on the timeslot I go to freakin’ church for mass! >_<

Please, don’t ask for more tapes, because I don’t want a Season 5! I won’t begrudge you if the request commercial shows up while you’re airing this season, but enough is enough. 😦

[END RANT]

Happy Holidays From Kitchen Stadium!!!

Well, to make up for the quick post I made about Heroes, I ended up delaying the next posts until now. In a couple of days, I’ll put up a post about the episode about Episode 10 of Heroes, which should be very exciting.

But enough about that, time to focus on the semi-real world of Iron Chef America. ^_^

First was newbie Iron Chef Symon’s battle in the big KS, and his opponent was as bald as he was, a black guy called Richard Moore. The “secret ingredient” was a similar theme to the one with the farmer’s market produce, only this time, it was all the ingredients for a traditional Thanksgiving meal – Turkey, cranberries, and sweet potatoes.

After seeing Symon win his first battle(losing in your first battle as an Iron Chef would make you look stupid), I have made peace with the decision of the three guest judges. Michael Symon doesn’t have the looks, but he’s got the skillz, and that’s all that matters in KS. Not only that, his Thanksgiving innovations are quite nice.

What surprised me in this week’s KS battle wasn’t the fact that Paula Deen was competing alongside my favorite Iron Chef forever(Hear that? It’s the sound of all nine layers of the Netherworld freezing over and Satan giving sleigh rides – call out to my good friend Brian Corvello for that quote) or that it was a dessert battle(even when a pastry chef competed, he was ordered to make savory dishes with chocolate and coconut – but then again, the original Iron Chef had a dessert battle, I think), but the fact that TYLER FLORENCE WAS IN KITCHEN STADIUM!

You see, I had seen Tyler a few times in my early days with FN, watching his show Food 911, which was a nice show. But I gave it up after new shows got the spotlight and I had stopped watching Tyler Florence, even though he was popular. The fact that a TV chef which I watched as much as Guy Fieri or Ina Garten(almost never) set foot in Kitchen Stadium was shocking.

Of course, I should be shocked that another chef I never watched, the infamous Robert Irvine, was there, but it made sense – if anyone could survive Kitchen Stadium’s timed battle, it was him. After all, he was a master of time management and crazy situations. I had seen a few of his Dinner: Impossible episodes. However, Rob was freaking out and Paula was playfully egging him on with trash talk. She also stole kisses from Tyler, but being the way she is(a 70-year old playful flirt with the boys and men), I was not surprised.

Cat and Paula won(the day Paula Deen gets beaten in a cook-off is the day homestyle cooking dies ^_^) and it was nice to see how processed Velveeta managed to make its way into fudge and still get the judges’ approval. I would have laughed at seeing that female judge(forgot the name, it was something-Faye) mock a faint after the last tasting.

EDIT: Sorry, I remembered what I really was shocked at…Mario was still on the show! It’s official, everyone, don’t let anyone say otherwise: Iron Chef America has FIVE Iron Chefs now!

The Next Iron Chef?!

In March of 2007, when Food Network aired the second season of their reality series “The Next Food Network Star”(I had missed the first season in 2005 because my introduction to FN was in November 2005, way after the first season had finished – in fact, I didn’t even know about the first season until the second season aired!), I made a mistake. I latched onto the cute Asian girl, Jess Dang, and rooted for her. When she got axed in the first elimination and started crying about it, part of me died that day.

“Okay,” I told myself, “so you lost the cute Asian girl…maybe that nice Beth will win!”

 As if. She was axed in the second elimination, and her fellow girls were axed in future episodes.

By the time the final elimation axed the Carissa Seward and left me with two fat men(Reggie Southerland and Guy Fieri), I did everything in my power to insure that the “sassy” Southern negro didn’t win, voting for Guy in both of the computer I have access to. Needless to say, Guy won. No offense to Reggie, but if he won, then the Food Network would have lost my respect. Luckily, Guy’s “badnik” attitude and macho looks won him the spot.

 When the next season aired this summer, I kept my bias down and tried to be neutral. As people got eliminated, there was an incident where a young woman called Amy Finley was having a bad time and it looked like she was going to be eliminated. She began crying and telling the judges “Eliminate me, I deserve it” but in the end she recovered and found she was still in. At the final elimination, the judges picked J.A.G., a black-Latino with Guy’s macho attitude, over Amy and she was axed…and then J.A.G. came clean and dropped out of the competition in a twist of fate, because he had faked some of his background. Bad move, Jason, bad move! So Amy came back and I voted for Amy on one computer(because my mom liked her a lot), and guess what…she won! The girl who was struggling and almost got axed came back and won it!

So, where am I going with this?

Well, as of this writing, I feel a little like Food Network decided to revoke their 2nd season results, axe Guy and bring back Reggie as their Season 2 winner of “The Next Food Network Star(TNFNS).”

Recently, Food Network’s famous show “Iron Chef America”, had a turnover. Mario Batali has left the stage, and they hosted a reality series to recruit a new one, putting eight famous chefs through tests to see who had the “right stuff.”

This show, called obviously “The Next Iron Chef”, had the same drama that last season’s “The Next Food Network Star” had to the nth degree. I was upset when the only two female contestants got axed in the beginning, but Traci De Jardins and Jill Davie needed to be more creative.

I was rooting for John Besh, who lives in New Orleans…which is a city I hope to visit some day. Maybe I’ll try out the food in Besh’s place and, if a miracle occurs, meet the man myself and shake his hand. He’s a warrior(in both senses – he was a Marine) and personally, a hero to me.

Besh made it to the top.

He didn’t win.

Who won? Some knock-off of Duff Goldman, the Ace of Cakes. A shinytop with a goatee.

I am not starting my first true blog post with a rant about how Besh was far better and sexier than Michael Symon will ever be. I may have back when I was a Food Network newbie, if this show had aired during the time of “The Next Food Network Star.” But I’ve grown mature a bit in the two years since then, or at least I’d like to think so.

I know now that my current thoughts are of bias – I’m prejudiced against bald men. When Nathan Lyon was eliminated in Season 2 of TNFNS, I smiled. When Patrick Rolfe was axed in the beginning of the current season of that show, I said “meh, good riddance.”

It’s not that I hate bald guys, it’s just that hair makes a person look nice. Women are never shown bald because they look like aliens and guys who are bald remind me of evil people like Mr. Evil from the Austin Powers movies. (My mom watched the first movie and I ended up watching a bit of it.)

Duff Goldman is an okay bald guy because he’s badnik and designs cakes. Nothing more oxymoronic has ever existed. ^_^

So, how will I survive the future of Iron Chef America now that Duff Goldman’s twin brother is wearing the smock(not the old one, a new one designed by a mother-daughter team and which will be made by Mark Ecko)? Well…

It’s gonna be hard. Very hard. Now that Batali is no longer in the Food Network or on ICA, I’ll miss his cute comments, but Symon has shown entertainment potential(which I think is why Besh was rejected – he was playful, but at the final battle, he was heaving and a man of few words). Symon’s first battle will be the Sunday after this post is posted, and though I won’t record it on VHS, and while it will be hard to hear Alton say Symon’s name in the Iron Chef sound-off at the beginning of the show at first, I will adapt and survive, as I did when Tina Woods and Laura Foy went off the air after G4TV.com was cancelled and vanished from the annals of human memory.

I will not, however, bemoan this situation. Cat Cora is my favorite Iron Chef, and when she said about Symon’s second dish “This roxx!”, I knew that Symon had it by a landslide. Besh may have tried to make a risky swordfish desert, but it didn’t have the fishy taste that is mandatory for an Iron Chef dish and therefore it killed him. I respect the verdict.

Still, I’m sure people will be lamenting the fact that instead of “Bobby Flay, Masaharu Morimoto, Cat Cora, and Michael Symon”, it should have been “Bobby Flay, Masaharu Morimoto, Cat Cora, and John Besh” until some mysterious virus wipes out 93% of the population and people are too busy surviving on K-9 rations to watch TV anymore.

 (Whoops, sorry, a Heroes reference got leaked into this post, my bad.)

EDIT: I read Ruhlman’s blog and he said that he waited for the Iron Chefs to vote, and he also said that the other judges(Knowlton and Arapaia) were upset he sided with Symon. Donatella also lost it and got on the Iron Chefs’ backs. It is nice to see that a judge can sometimes get too emo about a decision.