Long pig!

Mmmm, barbeque (link added because to get the joke, you have to know that the Carib Indians gave the English language both the word "cannibal" and the word "barbeque", and... well, you should draw your own conclusions there).

Sad about Ed Bradley.

Top Chef was fantastic last night. I need to catch up on two weeks of blogs at the site. Mike: Even more than his attitude (which does kind of suck), his plating and presentation skills really suck. However great his cooking may or may not be, he works and acts like a line cook at Denny's. Betty: I'm disappointed, though somewhat sympathetic, but lots of other people have covered the relevant questions of Cookiegate. Sam: If you're going to call people on perceived cheating, call them on it. Better yet, call them on it before your neck is on the block. Same goes for Mia.

Lee Anne said early on in her blog that she was brought in after the third episode, to help on the production side. S (who read the blogs last night) was saying that apparently the reason she was brought in was to help clarify the rules to the players. I'm betting it was this very incident that prompted that decision.

Off to read the TC blogs...

I bet S is right.

Well, I know what METALLICAR is -- I asked what Skeet's car is -- to me - a non car-loving person - it looks very similar.

Sadly, I only clicked past Jericho last night, and thus did not get a good look. I will agree that, like Metallicar, it was black and squarish from the front, with a square windshield and a low roof. But that describes the Galaxie Tommy linked as much as it does an Impala.

Tommy, why weren't you watching??

Top Chef: The Quickfire was fun -- it's always interesting to see how creative a chef can be, and I think most of them really outdid themselves (and were lucky there was a vending machine with some helthy items in it). Mike, on the other hand, is pissing me off. Bored now. You have no business in this competition.

The elimination challenge was interesting -- but as much as I like Sam and Cliff and ... whoever else was on their team... turkey meatballs? Come on. Frank and Betty got the challenge in one, at least when it came to designing a menu a kid would love.

As far as the issue of cheating goes, I don't think Betty added the sugar to give her team the upper hand -- if the cookies had turned out right the first day, I don't think she would have messed with them. That said, the eleventh hour accusations are so tasteless. And Sam's "I'm not that guy" comment was absurd. Um, you *are* that guy, since you brought it up. And if it's true, it certainly means Betty shouldn't be the only one penalized, since she wasn't using olive oil in those cookies. Still, I was shocked that they didn't eliminate anyone.

That said, even I know you can't mess with proportion and ingredients when baking, and that meringues are supposed to sit in the oven overnight.

I love my Great Big Dramatic Cooking Show.

Dagnabbit, why did I come to work today instead of staying home where I could have watched Top Chef??

If you try to go to the YouTube link Steph posted, you now get this message:

This video has been removed at the request of copyright owner Cable News Network LP, LLLP because its content was used without permission

interesante.

I wonder how the copyright enforcement will work out now that Google has bought Youtube. I seem to recall reading that some content producers were allowing their stuff to be put up, on purposee.

Speaking of content, I have now watched online TV from CBS, ABC, Fox, and NBC. CBS totally wins. Even though their player doesn't always initialise right on my system, when it does, there's a fullscreen option. And now that they don't show the same ad all the way through, less eye-stabby. Fox sucks, because I can't watch it on my Mac, and on the PC it's less than pretty. ABC is second, quality-wise, though it did seem like there were a lot of ads--but they win for ad content, since they only make you watch 30s of each one (which I didn't realise the first time in), and all the ads other than the first one seemed to be interactive. Way to take advantage of the medium. NBC was just okay.

I'm totally fine with watching The Unit on the web. No issues at all. For ABC and NBC I'd just watch what I missed, not intend to watch it that way from the start. Stuff from Fox? I'd rather torrent, if I need to see it. But the other three networks have kinda taken that need away from me, and now that BBCA does On Demand, that's lessened too.

Good work, guys!

Snerk. On Harold's TC blog, he talks about "getting the shakes" when they went walking over to the vending machines for last night's Quickfire. He said he flashed back to shopping at the convenience store last season.