Ah, the Jowly Green Giant, possums. He's tall, 's got one ball, and wants it all, and our pal Lesley at Eater LA finally
caught up with him to find out whether he's just a mellow beach boy or really a Machiavellian mastermind.
We've always been of the belief that
CJ Jacobson's whole "
ungay,
laid-back, blond volleyball player from behind the Orange Curtain with the peculiar syntax" persona is merely a smokescreen.
Remember how he was always there as a one-man,
monorchid Greek chorus of disapproval and moral rectitude (
Sandee didn't
barbecue, Dale used
mashed potatoes)? And remember how last week at Judges' Table he agreed with Andrea Strong about everything, saying she was on-point about Brian's sweating, etc., and this week told the judges that
Tre's bread pudding was boring?
Hmmmmm. Possums, let us not forget the
Huffington Past. Yes indeed, he worked as a personal chef for
Arianna Huffington (who certainly knows from
ungay by now, and ought to have a little talk with Diane Von
Furstenberg). Need we say more?
Lesley manages to get deep,
John from Cincinnati quotes such as,
"You can only judge yourself when times are tough, you know?" but the Jowly Green Giant denies any master plan to cast
Tre Wilcox as the executive chef in order to get him kicked off. He also is tickled by the idea that people think he has a "dynamic...character." And then he goes all
biatch and condescending on the remaining contestants:
Casey and Brian are coming around, and Dale is surprising me also."Coming around"? "Surprising"? Meow! Well, it must be easy to
condescend when one is so tall.
Still, when
Tre's crawfish fell awry,
CJ wasn't there to pick it up. And guest judge Geoffrey
Zakarian can't quite overlook that.
Talking to our pal Maddy at
The Miami Herald,
Zakarian had a few choice words for him:
"He had the ability to help out and decided not to. You need someone to watch your team if you're not firing on all pistons, had a fight with your wife or you're hung over, which doesn't happen often. I don't think CJ is a leader. He wouldn't help you over the wall. He'd jump over and say, Call me when you get here. His lobster salad was something you'd throw together at your house in the summertime. You have to be really careful when you dress something, keep tasting it. And if it's too salty, throw it out. It's like he just thought, Well, everybody likes lobster, so I'll do this."Alas, even our boy Dale didn't escape the Jungle Red-sporting claws of the attired-like-a-yachting-French-gigolo-in-a-stripey-top
Zakarian:
"You should always try to dress better than the patrons. I have a real problem with sweating, too. Get a grip. "Well, we've always thought sweating and getting a grip were incompatible, but no doubt we had a different context in mind. (Wrestling, of course.)
At any rate, we've had Howie sweating, Brian sweating, and now Dale sweating. Perhaps it's time to bring on Right Guard or Degree as a
Top Chef sponsor.
(Miss
XaXa, of course, has the last word. Reminding us of the adage that "horses sweat, men perspire, and ladies glisten," she wondered which category Howie, Dale and Brian would fall into.)
