Fauxhawks and Doves: Interseasonal Bitchfight of the Oddly Coiffed

Well, possums, "Meeeeeow!" is all we have to say about the blogwar between Season 3 finalist Dale Levitski and Season 4 presumed finalist Richard Blais.

From Dale's blog:

I staged [interned] at Trio under Grant [Achatz] for a few days before the flip of my reign ….
And what I saw changed my life.
It was a beef dish.
I stood next to a pole in the kitchen and watched in awe as an army of cooks (most of which I can now call friends) executed a miracle.
20 components on one plate that was nothing short of a symphony.
Beef three ways, ingredients that blew your mind, but made the most basic sense.
In an understatement as a chef: humbling.
One thing stuck out for me. (This was 4 years ago ....)
The smoke.
Smoked beef tounge, presented as pristine as could be under a smoke-filled glass. Unveiled by the server at the table.
Unleashing an epiphany for the diner and any witness alike.
Perfection.
What you, Richard, have ATTEMPTED to do, hack a presentation, TWICE!, was bastardize and mock a moving moment for me as a chef.
I understand the drive you have.
The Need you have.
The Skill you have.
The Love you have.
BUT.
Did you really Think for a MOMENT that filling a Sysco-wrapped plate full of gadget-filled smoke would prove to the world that you are a good chef?
That it would impress?
That ANY diner would say, ”When I peeled the PLASTIC WRAP off my plate I was blown away?!"
You have done it Twice!!!!!!!!!
F*** you, Chef.
I have seen this presentation done to perfection. The only person you are fooling is yourself.
I CHEERED when your “tool” broke, as I watched the panic of you team ….
Serves you right for shitting on MY epiphany ….
The fact that you won should be YOUR epiphany ....
You don’t need the gimmick ….
There is no need to jerk yourself off with gadgets ….
You won.
You deserved it. For the most part …
I hope you learned your lesson.
You are good.
Cut the crap.
Love, Dale.
P.S. The hair I will take as a “compliment?” … but also a hack job ….


From Richard's response on Bravo's Burning Questions blog:

Bravotv.com: Anything else?
Hmmm ... Well I'd like to address Mr. Dale Levitski, a guy I have never met, and who has never tasted my food, or worked with me. I'd write a response to some of his comments but I'd rather not extend his fifteen minutes any longer. I just think some of his words have been in pretty poor taste, especially coming from a previous contestant who should have an understanding of the show. I can take it, but when my family reads that stuff, and it's not from Joe Blogger, c'mon ....

Well, possums, never let it be said that Dale blows smoke up anyone's derriere.

Amuse-Biatch Presents the Tragedy of Christopher Ciccone

Possums, we know full well that everyone is tired of forked-tongued decorator Christopher Ciccone, and we had determined to do no more posts about him, but over the weekend we were having a bitch through Rupert Everett's autobiography, Red Carpets and Other Banana Skins, and we came across an irresistible passage that may help to explain the fact and tragedy of Christopher Ciccone, or how he went from this:

("Oh my God," said Miss XaXa, "he looks like Debbie Gibson threw up all over him." "Well," we reminded her, "as Madonna's back-up dancer he necessarily had to be an electric youth.") to this:

As our story begins, Rupert Everett is attending Donatella Versace's New Year's Eve party in Miami:

"Dessert was being served. A cluster of divas, some of them stars, others not, sat around Donatella at a corner table in the courtyard. The party moved fast around us, the table was a rock, and waves of fruits de mer crashed against it, swelling our numbers from eight to twelve, and then to sixteen. Chairs peeled off in all directions in a swastika for intimate asides over cigarettes and crossed legs, but the undertow on this particular stretch of bitch was strong and soon, they had been swept back out to sea by the acid tongue of Madonna's brother Christopher Ciccone, the glum monosyllabic reply of Guy Ritchie, or the polite but firm dismissal of Gwyneth Paltrow. Madonna smiled graciously to all and sundry, secure in the knowledge that someone else would do the dirty work, and give any unwanted jellyfish 'the old heave-ho.'....

Gwyneth had been flirting with Guy Oseary, the child prodigy who ran Madonna's record company, but that liaison was another thin strand that Gwyneth cut with the brisk cheer of a dignitary opening a new wing of a hospital. 'I name this ship...Over.' It had snapped before the party even began. Actually, she was as thick as thieves with Christopher, and after midnight the two of them danced like whirling dervishes until they wound up slumped and feverish on Donatella's garden couch.

And this was the night that marked the beginning of the end for Christopher and Madonna. They had been inseparable through a trippy childhood in a huge family with a wicked stepmother, and she had taken him with her to the material world, where Christopher had provided a solid raft in the shark-infested waters. And for anyone who came into contact with Madonna, to know her at all you had to know him. The one was incomprehensible without the other. He was her dark side and she was his. People reeled in horror at the mention of his name, because he had a blunt aggressive manner, and he often looked as though he was laughing at you, particularly when he was drunk...But Guy [Ritchie] and Chris were from different planets, and in a way the one's success relied on the other not being there. Also Guy was not particularly comfortable with queens, and so, as the relationship between him and Madonna quickly deepened, it was a last call for a lot of the disco bunnies and club-mix queens that made up the fabric of Madonna's mantle. It was a surprise, because Madonna came out of the womb blowing a disco whistle, but a whole aspect of her life was about to be hit by the delete button."

There you have it: Christopher Ciccone too bitchy and gay for Madonna's husband.

As a bonus, here's Rupert's account of a master class in snubbery from that same party:

"...[S]hortly before midnight, Jennifer Lopez swept into the courtyard on the arm of Benny Medina, her new manager. Donatella got up and walked over to greet her while Gwyneth and Madonna gave two snorts of derision and noisily left the room. The men and Ingrid [Casares] were momentarily flummoxed but followed suit, leaving me and my hairdresser Jamie alone at the table. It could have been a moment from The Women....

Jennifer had given a rather startling interview a few weeks earlier, one of her best, as a matter of fact, where she had regally dished all and sundry, saying, among other things, that Madonna couldn't sing and that Gwyneth couldn't act. This broke an unwritten Hollywood law. Think it but never say it....

[E]veryone there at the party that night adored the drama. They were visibly shaking with the thrill of it, and so were the girls in question. They were like ducks during a rainstorm, preening, stretching their wings, shaking themselves and quacking. Jennifer sat with Benny, holding a beatific smile in place for longer than a porno star keeps an erection. Gwyneth and Madonna huddled around Donatella's garden couch like bullies from the upper sixth....Jamie and I locked ourselves into a bathroom with Donatella, a bodyguard at the door, and informed the rest of the world what was going on outside. We popped out briefly for midnight and then went back to the bunker like war journalists to phone in the latest explosion."

In the Midst of a Dissociative Fugue State, Raggaydy Andy Promises Bombs Over Fag-Hag and Wonders About the Size of Hung Huynh's Geoduck

Among our guilty, lowbrow pleasures--pork rinds, the movie Bring It On--we always like to save room for those occasions when Bravo blogger cum VP Raggaydy Andy enters one of his dissociative fugue states and starts talking to himself.

Fortunately for him, he is doing his muttering in Aspen, Colorado, while the Top Chef finale films, rather than wandering through the East Village shaking his fist.

(How do we know he's in Aspen? Call it an educated guess. Andy--well, one of the Andies (Andes?)--says it is 2:55 a.m., and he is "on the set of a hit Bravo reality show" and, as we mentioned yesterday, Top Chef is filming in Aspen right now. Besides, as Scooter Libby so famously wrote, Aspen is turning, and turning in clusters, because its roots are connected.)

The nice thing about these dissociative fugues of Andy's is that his filters are even less effective than usual. And so, we get to watch him play with himself in a game of word association. The most revealing (and not just in terms of being placed right next to each other):

HUNG: hung? LISA RINNA: sphincter

Well, maybe we're leaping to conclusions. After all, as Dr. Freud must have said, "Sometimes a dick next to a sphincter is just that." (We were going to go for a cheap Cheney-Bush joke, but we're feeling cheap enough this morning as it is.)

Andy also reveals that tonight's episode of Top Chef will feature tears (well, duh; after all, Casey Thompson's still in this, but maybe she'll be crying for herself tonight), and we "find out who is Dale's best galpal in the house" (ah, so maybe Casey will be crying because she's been out-faghagged; possum, we warned you about those highlights). In a fight between Casey Thompson and Sara Nguyen, though, our money's on Casey. That pseudo-Pucci scarf she's always wearing? We're convinced it's a garrote. And that smile? It's pure Kathleen Turner in Serial Mom. In other words, we can't wait.