Amuse-Biatch Plays Consigliere to Joey Pickles

As you ought to know by now, possums, Amuse-Biatch tries, whenever possible, to be of service to the cheftestants. And it is in that spirit that we write today.

Based on the teaser clips of what’s to come “on this season of Top Chef,” it certainly looks as if “aggressive” Joey Pickles needs the most help, what with that damned “Italia” shirt, the profanity, the threats, the debased Damon Runyon poetry of taunts about being a man.

Granted, Joey is no Frank Terzoli—we haven’t heard any threats to beat a cheftestant so badly his own mother won’t recognize him—and we haven’t seen any clippers being pulled out.

Still, you know, we worry, especially since the vibe, the unspoken message, we get from the interaction between Joey Pickles and Howard Kleinberg is, “This show ain’t big enough for two short, fat, ethnic, hypermasculine guys with regional accents.”

But Joey, possum, before you do anything rash (such as beating us up for calling you “possum”), consider this. When we heard, after the threat-and-Clippergate bonanza of Season 2, that Top Chef was moving to Miami, we snarkily speculated that the assault and battery laws must be more lenient in Florida than in California.

Turns out we were wrong. To wit:

Chapter 784.011 of the Florida statutes defines an assault as “an intentional, unlawful threat by word or act to do violence to the person of another, coupled with an apparent ability to do so, and doing some act which creates a well-founded fear in such other person that such violence is imminent.” Chapter 784.03 defines battery as occurring when a person “[a]ctually and intentionally touches or strikes another person against the will of the other.”

By contrast, California Penal Code section 240 defines assault as “an unlawful attempt, coupled with a present ability, to commit a violent injury on the person of another,” and Section 242 defines battery as “any willful and unlawful use of force or violence upon the person of another.”

The Florida standard is a lot easier to meet. For battery, all you need is intentional touching of a person against her will, whereas California requires force or violence.

So watch yourself, Joey Pickles. Watch yourself, possum, er, buddyboy.