Amuse-Biatch Watches Morning Television at Gayhab As Ilan Hall Shows FOX His Coq

What Valentine's Day would be complete without our beloved, entirely heterosexual adjudged Top Chef winner, Ilan Hall, appearing on Fox's Republican-but-randy morning show? That's The Morning Show with Mike and Juliet, the guilty pleasure about which The New York Times television critic wrote:

He’s smarmy. She’s contrived. He leers at girls like an old stage ham. She talks about freezing her eggs and getting her breasts done. Together they’re Mike Jerrick and Juliet Huddy, Fox’s new morning pair, who use their unholy chemistry to pervert the breakfast hour on “The Morning Show With Mike and Juliet.” We owe these two a warm, warm welcome.

We know what morning shows look like on the networks accused by conservatives of liberal bias, but a morning show produced by Fox is more mysterious. Will it just be a last stop for “American Idol” rejects? Can we expect hair-care demos from Hannity and Colmes?

Surprise. In its more than three weeks on the air, “The Morning Show” has opted, above all, for creepy prurience.

And, well, Ilan's appearance did not disappoint. It was smarmy, and contrived, and creepy, and a little bit prurient. Ilan, sporting an increasingly porcupine-like "mulhawk" and apparently having ditched the multiple-wristwatch fad he blames on Suyai, appeared to teach ole Mike and Juliet how to make coq au vin. He sounded gayer than we've ever heard him before, but then our counselor here at Rainbow Springs Gayhab in the Hollywood Hills pointed out that we were spewing homophobic invective, and we felt mightily guilty for setting back our sobriety.

Fortunately, this being Fox, such unpleasant thoughts of gayness were not allowed to linger, and we were treated to a live appearance by... Ilan's girlfriend! Carolina! Yay!

Ok, that was our best Kermit the Frog impression. We have to sit down for a minute now.

And she talks! And she breathes! And wouldn't you know it, they conveniently started dating on Valentine's Day a year ago. Awwwww.

Watch for yourselves as perky blonde Juliet, relieved that no Frenchy-named, molenukewler gastrowhatchamacallit contestant took the prize, trills to Ilan, "Thank God you won! Thank God you won!"

Thrill as Ilan presents her with a gift, a framed picture of himself! Share our pain in gayhab as we struggle not to yell at the television, paraphrasing a Top Design contestant, "How can you argue with a narcissist?"! Delight in how quickly the girlfriend trope is trotted out! Wink virtuously as Carolina admits she's never had Ilan's coq, and Juliet invites her to sample it! Laugh "Rapturously," "Left Behind-edly," and no-land-for-peacefully as Ilan takes the sprinkling of kosher salt to remind the faithful base that he is Jewish, you know, like, from Israel! Shiver with naughty delight at Shriner-style ribaldry as Mike talks about chicken sucking up sauce! Sigh heteronormatively as Mike tries desperately to get Ilan married!

It's a belated valentine from us to you, possums.

Tom Colicchio: I Owe My Celebrity Chefdom to Cocaine!

Well, not really, but we can never resist parodying tabloid headlines.

This is what he really said in David Kamp's The United States of Arugula: How We Became a Gourmet Nation, which, with its dishy stories and Julia Child “stiff cock” anecdotes, quickly became our favorite food book of the year:

“I think chefs and restaurants became what they are today because when people finally woke up from the cocaine buzz of the eighties, they had to find another form of entertainment. The club scene was dying out, and restaurants became the new entertainment, the new opiate.”

The book also contains Chef Colicchio’s heartwarming reminiscences of being at a boozy meeting of Chefs from Hell, Unicyclists, and Acrobats—an informal club that also included superchef Thomas Keller among its members—“and laughing so much I actually threw up.”

But that’s not all. You’ll also find the answer to why Thomas Keller, who used to be Chef Colicchio’s boss at Rakel in New York City, will never be a guest judge on Top Chef—“Colicchio says he was ousted by Keller in a ‘You can’t fire me, I quit!’ situation, even though the two were good friends.”

And if you order in the next ten minutes, you’ll also be privy to Chef Colicchio’s admission that “the possibility of even a single failure ‘scares the hell out of me. I wake up every morning asking myself, “What the hell am I doing this for?” he says. “Do I need another restaurant? Do I need a restaurant in Dallas? Christ!” But at a certain point—I don’t know if you get addicted to the deal, but you start chasing these deals.’”

Revel as you watch Chef Colicchio bitchslap Alice Waters over a pig in Oregon! Marvel as you discover the genesis of Craftsteak! Ooh and aah at Chef Colicchio's comparisons of the 90s culinary scene to the Harlem Renaissance!

And as a special bonus, you’ll get an account of legendary New York Times food editor Craig Claiborne’s drunken dinner “at the starchy Cosmopolitan Club[, when] Claiborne, soused again, broke a lull in the conversation by suddenly blurting out, ‘When I die and they autopsy my brain, do you know what they’ll find?’ After a nervous silence, he answered his own question: ‘Pubic hair!’ Mrs. Catledge was not amused.”

Mrs. Catledge may not have been amused, but you certainly will—Order your copy today!

Julia Child's Heated Rhetoric Becomes Our Hot Quote of the Day

Julia Child has always been our kind of girl.

We just never knew how much.

Until this morning, when we came across a delightful snippet from David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula. Kamp cites a letter by Julia’s husband, Paul Child, who referred to her as “Julie.” The letter was written to Paul’s brother Charlie in 1949, from Paris, and describes Julia in the kitchen. And it contains a phrase that we have now sworn to use anytime we so much as get in the vicinity of a coffeepot or radiator. We feel certain you will do the same.

“The oven door opens and shuts so fast you hardly notice the deft thrust of a spoon as she dips into a casserole and up to her mouth for a taste-check…Now & again a flash of the non-cooking Julie lights up the scene briefly, as it did the day before yesterday when with her bare fingers, she snatched a set of cannellini [beans] out of the pot of boiling water with the cry, ‘Wow! These damn things are as hot as a stiff cock.’”