Bearly There: A Friday-Light Tribute to Tom Colicchio, Howie Kleinberg, Joey Paulino & Dale Levitski

Va-Va-Bardeen: The Hawtness Makes a Fleeting Return

We admit, possums, that, being suckers for romance, we rather enjoyed the HoJo reunion of sorts this week (since all celebrity couples must have a revolting blended nickname, our math went like this: Howie + Joey = HoJo). As Miss XaXa put it, it was so Like Water for Chocolate, Howie sending out raw meat to his little NooYawk bear, since they couldn't actually be together anymore.

(Confidential to Joey in the black muumuu: Joey, possum, you may be taking the Eye-talian thing a bit far. Just because Sicilian widows dress all in black doesn't mean you have to. And black may be slimming, but, oy, horizontal stripes, possum, are not your friends.)

(And, well, isn't that Sara Nguyen? And what is she wearing? Why, it's high heels and a very low-cut top. Fancy that.)

But what thrilled and tortured us most this week was the fleeting return of Lia Bardeen looking, well, hot. Once you go straight, Lia, you never go back, eh? (We're speaking of her hair, of course, possums.) But oh, why so brief a look at her, Bravo? Why not lingering close-ups of her in her black haltertop as she ate, er, tuna tartare? Oh wait, never mind. She ate at the other restaurant; the close-ups would have been of her spitting out.

Still, Bravo, work with us. How about a little bonus footage--a hair-toss here, a burst of laughter there--in the slow motion so beloved of 1970's shampoo ads?

Howie & Joey: Can This Bearriage Be Saved?

It always starts with something small, doesn't it, possums?

On last week's episode, we thrilled when Sara Mair wanted to buy tricolor fusilli for the Bertolli challenge, and Howie had a mini (queeny) meltdown about how it was the "cheesiest, corniest" pasta that you would see "on buffet tables" in "every schlock house" in the country. Meow!

So what did Howie's Bear life-partner, Joey, insist on for his team? Why, tricolor fusilli, of course. That's when we knew this bearriage was in trouble.

(Naturally, Joey's teammate, Hung, wanted penne (yes, there's a cheap and easy bisexual joke in there about how "pene" is Italian for "penis," and yes, "penne" means "feathers," and let's not forget pájaros and The Birdcage, but we're too lazy to flesh it out).

Oh, and while we're at it, we were disheartened that italianissimo Joey couldn't even pronounce orecchiete, which he rendered as "oh-reh-CLEH-tee." Tsk, tsk, Giuseppe.

And since we're digressing, we must mention Miss XaXa's chortle when she heard 5'6" Howie saying, "It's a no-brainer for me that shrimp is the way to go, because everybody loves shrimp." Well, at least we know Joey does.)

We shuddered as we imagined the scenes that would take place when Howie & Joey invited Andrew & Aaron and Rob & Peter and Tom & Tony for Sunday brunch at their place and Joey insisted on serving pasta salad made with tricolor fusilli. Possums, the Fiesta Ware (Joey's, of course) would fly. And that would be part of the argument, too, Fiesta Ware vs. simple, sober plates from Armani Casa. Oh, and the doilies Joey would insist on for the couches ("But Howie, Pooh Bear, we can't have you sweatin' into the velour")! And Joey wanting to stay home and watch Beaches one more time while Howie wanted to go out and see The Bourne Ultimatum, or stay home but watch UFC death matches. It's too, too tragic to contemplate.

Has it really come to an end?

Our pals Doug and Maddy at the Miami Herald's Top Chef blog bring us the scoop. Maddy, who interviewed Joey, found him in a heartbreaking condition, "drinking a Gatorade and smoking a Newport." So that's what grief tastes like, Gatorade and Newports--why didn't The English Patient tell us this?

Maddy then discovered that Joey and Howie have not spoken at all and Joey asked for Howie's email address. Indeed, Joey, who lives in New York, didn't even know that Howie was in New York too! The outrage! Howie, of course, was consorting with Alfred Portale, the man Joey himself likened to Michelangelo, and we all know about Michelangelo, don't we?















Is it any wonder that, as Maddy reports, Joey may be turning into one of the Ungay?

First, Joey suggests, he may have tried sexually harassing Padma Lakshmi: "Padma is Padma. She is beautiful. And I said that on a few occasions. I'm not afraid to speak my mind. That's me - I'm very open. If you hold back, you're gonna tear your insides apart."

And now? The coup de grâce! "I just started dating a wonderful girl. She's in the insurance business." Madonna, ma come mai?!

First of all, this proves, if proof were needed, that straight women have lower, or at least different, standards than the Gays. Secondly, insurance business? Aren't these people supposed to know about risks?

But wait. Hope is not entirely lost. Joey "still ha[s]n't opened that bottle of red that Howie got from Maria Frumkin for winning the elimination challenge."















He hasn't opened the bottle. Doesn't that tell you everything, possums? It's as if that bottle held not delightfully rotten Argentinean grapes, but a message, a liquid billet doux. Insurance girls, Alfred Portale and Padma Lakshmi be damned. We still believe in love.

Joey Paulino Confirms All Those Rumors About Padma Lakshmi Being Stone....

From New York Magazine's interview with Joey Paulino:

"Did any of the guys try flirting with Padma?

Everybody did me [sic], including myself. We tried to get her to laugh but she’s stone-cold. She’s great, but she’s a hard judge to please."

Arrivederci, Moaner, and Ridi, Pickle-accio: Joey Pickles Gets Canned in Vlasic Operatic Combo of Passion and Low IQF

Possums, we're not sure that Puccini, Leoncavallo, or Scorsese could have done any better.

Yes, possums, last night Joey "Pickles" Paulino was pykagged and sent home, thus bringing to a tragic end the verismo opera that has been the ursine, culinary Brokeback Mountain of our jaded media age.

(On the plus side, maybe now he can get that huge mole on his neck checked out; indeed, if he doesn't wince at the irony, perhaps he could just get it frozen off. We could swear it's been growing, and since the first episode we have been concerned that it might start eating his face or talking to him, like the pimple in that disturbing episode of Family Guy that we've never been able to forget.)

But back to the tragedy.

So much of opera is about Fate and its vagaries, and in our day and age there is perhaps no better symbol of the fickleness of Fate than the Top Chef knife block. It can spell success--the equivalent of drawing the Sword in the Stone--or lead to racking, manly sobs.

Which is exactly what it did this time around, as the cheftestants (term used courtesy of Television Without Pity) drew knives to determine who their team mates would be in the Elimination Challenge: to create a Mediterranean-style, easily reheatable frozen meal.

In an operetta, or in a novel by Gordon Merrick (Barbara Cartland for the Gays), the knives would have decreed that Bear life partners Joey and Howie (the debate as to whether it should be Kleinberg-Paulino or Paulino-Kleinberg has yet to be resolved) be on the same team.

Indeed, no one appeared to recognize this more clearly than guest chef Rocco DiSpirito, who wisely observed that Joey needed "to be pounded" (!!!). And, as Howie amply demonstrated, he's definitely the man for that. Imagine, then, Howie's distress at being paired with a woman, and Joey's disorienting grief at losing Howie to a woman and being stuck with a shifty bisexual for a team mate. As anyone who has ever lived through this will tell you, it always ends in tears.

Gone was the possibility of Joey singing to Howie, “Sì, mi chiamano Joey,” and of Howie taking Joey’s hand after an hour of packing frozen pasta and singing, “Che gelida manina! Se la lasci riscaldar.”

Instead of Baz Luhrmann, we got Cavalleria Topcheftiana, a tragic tale of deplorable misogynist fury, smoking, family (plane tickets to Italy promised to la mamma and la sorella), hubris, cosmetic procedures, polo shirts, and meatballs (the latter four also being prominent themes in the Jeffrey Chodorow-underwitten production of Roccopera!).

We did love the Judges' Table duet, as beautiful as the one in Bizet's Les pêcheurs de perles, about who's more-Italian-than-thou. Here are some of the lyrics:

Tom: Truffles aren't Mediterranean!
Rocco: Oh yes they are! I'm not your bitch, bitch.
Tom: Oh yes you are! And truffles are not Mediterranean because I say they're not. And what I say goes, because I have many successful restaurants and you're just a blow-dried, tinted, Botoxed, gay-skinny has-been.
Rocco: Well, if you were expecting me to be Padma and parrot everything you say, you've got another thing coming. And I may be blow-dried, but at least I have hair. And truffles are, too, Mediterranean. Anyway, Mr. Mediterranean, aren't you from New Jersey, and isn't your name Tom? I at least kept my ethnic name.
Tom: That's about all you kept, and now you sell tv dinners, and pose on tv with a blank cardboard cut-out that might as well stand for your soul and your reputation. And seriously, an online cooking show? And showing your face on an NBC affiliate after what happened with The Restaurant? Wow. No dignity, man. Oh, and I repeat, truffles are not Mediterranean, even though the most famous ones come from Italy and Italy is a Mediterranean country, because I said so, and I'm Tom Colicchio, and no one contradicts me on my own show.

Trust us--in Italian, with all those vowels and all that music, and the voices blending, it's lovely, swooning stuff.

Yet all the loveliness was for naught. Hung was unable to give Joey the pounding he so desperately needed, as a result of which nothing was Individually Quick Frozen, and Joey was out and separated from his bear. Attired by the genius costume designer in the suddenly poignant "Italia" shirt, Joey sobbed and promised (threatened?) that this wasn't the last we'd hear of him, the kind of verbal rose bouquet that usually comes wrapped in a restraining order.

Not surprisingly, Joey tells New York Magazine, with that heartbreaking admixture of candor and circumlocution, "I became emotional because I was going to miss a lot of people."

Just reading that, we hear the plangent chords of Gustavo Santaolalla's Oscar-winning guitar score in our heads, and we envision an "Italia" shirt snugly encased inside a sweat-stained (and we mean sweat-stained) chef's coat smelling of pork and hung on the door of the walk-in at the Café des Artistes.

Sorry, possums, we made ourselves all verklempt there for a second.

At any rate, just be careful, Joey, possum. To paraphrase the great Italian philosopher M. Ciccone, you're frozen out when your heart's too open.

Tom Colicchio Forced to Bear the Male Gays; Andrew Sullivan and Laura Mulvey to Be Held Accountable

Well, possums, as no doubt he's been often told, Andrew Sullivan has a lot to answer for.

The National Post, a Canadian newspaper, makes the self-described bear and "conservative" gay columnist responsible for giving bears "an aura of credibility and ma[king] them feel a little less marginal." (Heck, we'll even go so far as to blame him for the appearance of bear porn on Conan O'Brien.)

And last week's edition of "Watch What Happens" certainly proves the increasingly mainstream aspect of being a bear, as a visibly mortified Tom Colicchio was informed by a viewer from Guerneville, California--though we can hardly believe it was the first time--that he is "an icon in the bear community."

(This is the equivalent of being told by a resident of Amsterdam that you are an icon of legalized pot and prostitution; in other words, they know from bears in Guerneville.) Not that we're surprised; we've been calling Tom Colicchio a bear for a long time.

There was knowing laughter in the studio after the question, and no laughter more knowing than that of Ilan Hall. So Ilan knows the definition of a heretofore marginalized segment of the gay community? Well, color us and Lalalina gobsmacked.

Despite showing umpteen inches' worth of Tom Selleck-lite chest hair, and despite being the New York-resident, Sarah Jessica Parker-befriendin', Hairspray-watchin', Madonna-lovin', Diana Ross-worshippin', Kathy Griffin-greenlightin' cheerleader of the gayest network on television, Bravo VP Raggaydy Andy Cohen, sporting an expression that said, "Bear? Qu'est-ce que c'est?" turned it over to Ted Allen, much as President Bush might turn to dominatrix-boot-wearing Condolezzie Rice and say, "Hey, Condi, this here question's about Eye-ran and nukular disarmament, so why dontcha take it."

Ted Allen's natural modesty and low-key charm gave way almost to maiden-aunt frisson in his role as Secretary of State the Obvious, as in "My understanding of the bear community, which is extremely limited." Goodness gracious, as if one might call him Goldilocks if his understanding of bears were anything but extremely limited. Why so afraid of the bears, Bravo queer guys? Your honeypots are undoubtedly safe.

Ted did go on to define bears as "gay men who appreciate…muscular, strong, really masculine, burly men. So apparently, the burly gay men of America find you delicious, Tom." (Just one thing: except for the burly part--gay men being by and large horribly vicious body fascists--Ted's definition would seem to make every gay man in America, and Hung Huynh, a bear.)

Judging by Tom's giggly, uncomfortable reaction, maybe Colicchio's the bear they're all afraid of. We found it particularly delicious, if that's the term, that on a show so heavily based on objectifying Padma Lakshmi, the male gaze should have turned the tables and its red-hot rays on Colicchio himself. Is it any wonder Tom was voted the sexiest judge by the viewers, beating both Padma and that Tit-anic Iceberg, Gail Simmons? (That's not meant as a slam against Gail; we are huge fans of buxom women with a touch of frost.) In other words, the audience for Top Chef must include an awful lot of women and gays.

Now, let's flesh out, as it were, Ted Allen's definition. The Los Angeles Times defines bears as "burly guys who identify with a masculine style and who shun the popular image of homosexual guys as smooth, hairless, Calvin-Klein-ish blond young men," and records the Linnaean ingenuity of the homosexualist when it comes to men:

"Thin bears are called 'otters.' Younger guys are 'cubs,' East Asian guys are 'panda bears,' and gray-haired gents are 'polar bears.' For aficionados of the bear physique, the ideal male body is that of Tony Soprano (especially in the show's recent seasons, when the mob boss puts on weight)."

The National Post adds that: "A Wolf is simply a more aggressive version of an Otter. As for a Chaser, he's a guy who definitely isn't a Bear, but loves Bears."

And so with that handy taxonomy in our back pocket, let us take a look at Top Chef.

Why, the set of "Watch What Happens" was o'errun with bears. In addition to daddy bear Tom, there were Big Gay Dave from Season 1, aka Peroxide Bear, Cry-Bear, or Care(Too Much) Bear, and Michael "Beer Bong" Midgley ("Bear Bong"?) from Season 2. Ilan and Raggaydy Andy (Jews with chest hair! Who knew?) could at least qualify as otters.

Season 3 has Joey Paulino aka Joey Pickles the Eyetalian Tantrum-Throwing Bear™, Howie Kleinberg (Sweaty Bear), and Dale Levitski (he of the tantalizingly shiver-inducing "caveman hands," who claims not to have gotten the gay shopping gene). And let's not forget Norman Van Aken.

Season 2 had Frank Terzoli (originally dubbed the Bambino Bear), an older model of the Eyetalian Tantrum-Throwing Bear™ (discontinued after it threatened to beat a Cabbage Patch Doll so severely that its own mother wouldn't recognize the resulting slaw), as well as Bear Bong, Cliff Crooks (whom we dubbed Valrhona Bear oh-so-long-ago), and Lychee Bear Otto Borsich, a gentle breed. In terms of judges, just off the top of our heads, we remember Lee Hefter, Raphael Lunetta, Wylie Dufresne, and Ming Tsai.

So, you see, possums, we think we've made our point. Bravo is Lipton, and train wrecks, and bears, oh my!

Allora, Tommy, just accept the fact that you're a great, big hunk of bear meat. And don't worry. After all, like lobster, bear meat is supposed to be very low in cholesterol.

Long Island Tease: Ilan Hall's Mother's Employer Would Have You Believe Geography Is Destiny

Listen up, possums.

Newsday, the Long Island, New York, newspaper that employs Ilan Hall's mother, has a little civic-pride theory: In order to win Top Chef, you have to be from Long Island.

Or, perhaps more defensibly, Long Island is the cradle of top chefs, as opposed to suburban ennui, caricatured accents, Rosie O'Donnell, and higher incidences of cancer.

The newspaper notes that Long Island is "two-for-two" as regards Top Chef wins, "what with Harold Dieterle of West Babylon and Ilan Hall of Great Neck" having taken the title in the first and second seasons, respectively (and don't they sound like knights?).

Those Long Island towns certainly seem to have great names, so we were a tad disappointed when informed that Joey Paulino--who, by Newsday's logic, should rightfully be the next Top Chef winner--hails not from the hamlet of No Neck, but, rather, from some place called Franklin Square.

We suppose, then, that it doesn't look good for Hung Huynh of Pittsfield, Massachusetts, where, aptly enough, Moby-Dick was written.

My Doppelgänger, Myself: Brave Howie Kleinberg Reveals His Ontological Crisis on the "Top Chef" Set

Sure, possums, both these men are red, gruff, overweight, temperamental, insecure, and possessed of regional accents and farcically outmoded notions of masculinity, but if you look closely, there are differences: one is slightly taller and has hair.

These are small details, but they are important, as cheftestant Howie Kleinberg will tell you. He has courageously broken his silence to discuss his painful struggle with a problem that has beset philosophers, Prague-based Jewish novelists, drag queens, science fiction visionaries and gay couples alike: nothing less than the nature of existence. As the bastard love child of Carrie Bradshaw and Jean-Paul Sartre might have put it, Who are we (in fact, are we?) when others can't tell us apart? Or, why do gay couples in long-term relationships always end up looking like twins?

As Howie told the folks at mediaVillage.com, it was thanks to Casey Thompson that his "relationship [with Joey Paulino] ... moved on to a level where we got the BS out of the way." However, "[a]bsolutely Joey and I butt heads,...because we have a lot in common... But we are not the same person." (emphasis added).

And why would it be necessary to stress this? Well, because "many of the contestants would actually confuse the two [Joey and Howie] when talking about one of them."

Take a moment, possums, to ponder the import of this. If people who lived with you for several weeks can't tell you apart from your vociferous Doppelgänger, what hope is there for you? When things have reached that point, when your life has turned into a paella whipped up by Philip K. Dick and Andrew Sullivan, it's time to abandon the leather bars and beer busts, and move to the suburbs with a pair of chocolate Labs, therein to restore a crumbling Victorian and hold barbecues for the other sets of burly twins.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Freudians, Start Your Engines, Part II

Talk about message in a bottle. (We also love Howie's O-face.)

Like Joey Paulino, Micah Edelstein Likes It When People Come in Their Mouths

Oh, settle down, possums, and hear us out.

We had barely recovered our gastrointestinal equilibrium after Joey Pickle's statement on Wednesday's episode that his Quickfire dish was like "an orgasm in your mouth" when we came across an article on Fauxmicah in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.

Discussing her "Tuscan Sushi Revisited," the oh-so-pretentiously-named-that-our-intestinal-cilia-wince-at-the-mere-suggestion-of-Frances-Mayes dish Fauxmicah made for the first Quickfire Challenge, the article states, "It's an example of what she describes as mouth orgasm. 'It is something my clients refer to as the, 'Oh, oh my God, that's good!' reaction they have when they eat my food,' she says."

Well, there goes our gastrointestinal equilibrium again.

Amuse-Biatch Now Pronounces Them Howie & Joey

It seems to us, possums, that rarely has one of Bravo's cross-promotional ideas worked out so well.

All night long, Bravo has been showing film clips and Jessica Biel's rack to promote the new flick I Now Pronounce You Chuck & Larry, which--would you believe it?!--is being released by Universal, as in NBC Universal, corporate parent of wayward, gay corporate child Bravo. That's putting the sin in synergy.

In the film, Kevin James (finally living up to his billing as the King of Queens) and Adam Sandler play two rough-and-tumble, average-Joe firefighters who pretend to be domestic partners in order to get benefits, so right away you know this is a fairy tale, in more ways than one, because, naturally, everywhere in this great nation of ours the Gays in their domestic partnerships get more benefits than straight married couples.

And what do we have tonight? Why, it's another couple of rough-and-tumble, average-Joe guys with thick accents coming together in a loving partnership. In true telenovela fashion, Joey Pickles and Howie Kleinberg, the two characters who started out bickering, ended up sharing love over a bottle of wine.

But it's more than a marriage of regional accents for the girth & mirth set. Indeed, despite their earlier clashes and savage animal exhortations to "be a fucking man," a cri de coeur and cri de cul that Jean Genet and Andrew Sullivan would have understood all too well, Joey Pickles ("Or is it Joey Gherkins?" Miss XaXa had wondered earlier) and Howie have everything it takes to make it as a successful gay couple: versatility.

First Joey was on top, with an "orgasm in your mouth" (hey, it's ok to do that if you're domestic partners), and then Howie was on top, doing what he likes to do best: pork. If that ain't beautiful versatility, we don't know what is. As Harold Dieterle put it on his blog (and Harold knows from loud, burly gays, having roomed with Big Gay Dave during Season One): "There was huge love and a lot of man-hugging going on."

Mazel tov, you two!

Breaking Bravo Product-Placement News: Howie Kleinberg and Joey Paulino to Serve as New Spokesmen for Ex-Lax

JOEY BEFORE EX-LAX











JOEY AFTER EX-LAX












HOWIE BEFORE EX-LAX














HOWIE AFTER EX-LAX

Bravo's Big Picture: The Birdcage

Except that, as Miss XaXa pointed out, with Tom Colicchio and Norman Van Aken in the picture, it ought to be called The Bear Cage.










"Well," we reminded Miss XaXa, "Lady Rushdie does seem to have a thing for bears."

Did somebody say bears?










"Forget The Bear Cage. With these two, bear pit is more like it."

"Well, Bravo's Big Picture has been The Untouchables of late. Maybe we ought to call these two The Unbearables."

"Considering that tonight's the hot tub episode," said Miss XaXa, "I sure hope they're called the Unbare-ables. There are some things I just don't need to see, and floating manboobs are on that list."

"You don't have to worry," we reassured Miss XaXa. "It looks like Casey's bazooms are the ones doing all the floating."

And then, being constitutionally incapable of leaving well enough alone, we went a pun too far. "With Sandee, and Padma, and Tom and Joey and Howie, couldn't we call this episode, Lesbian and Tamil and Bears, Oh My?"

Miss XaXa did not deign to respond.

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.

Welcome to Meowmi: Part I

Possums, as we pointed out last season, from an audience standpoint, Anthony Bourdain is a great Top Chef judge, since he is entertaining and can out-quip and out-bitch just about anyone. From a blogger’s standpoint, however, episodes featuring Anthony Bourdain are difficult, since he is entertaining and can out-quip and out-bitch just about anyone.

Nonetheless, we’ll do our Amuse-Biatch best with the leavings as we turn to the premiere episode of Season 3.

To the sounds of what the closed captioning helpfully identifies as “Latin music,” we get the Miami signifiers of turquoise waters and bronzed bodies on the beach, and we’re off to meet the cheftestants at the Miami airport.

First up is Sara Mair, who informs us that she is a “chef/fromagier.” Actually, possum, you would be a “fromagère,” but never mind. We so love cheese, and the chic of the puffy sleeves on your jacket, that we’re willing to overlook anything at this point. Blessed are the cheese-makers indeed.

Next up is tremulous, toothsome Clay Bowen, son of the Mississippi clay. There’s something very 19th century about him, a touch of The Red Badge of Courage underneath the incongruous guayabera he is sporting. He thinks he can win the competition, ole Clay does. “I feel the South hasn’t really been represented on Top Chef much.” Oh, Clay, possum, wasn’t that what General Lee said right before the Battle of Antietam, er, Sharpsburg? Score another point for Bravo Foreshadowing™.

And then there’s Frank Terzoli. Oops, it’s actually Joey Paulino, decked out in a blue “Italia” soccer jersey. “You think he’s Italian?” we ask Miss XaXa, who is herself of Italian extraction. The question becomes even more rhetorical the minute he opens his mouth: “If I win the money, my mother gets it.” (To which Miss XaXa said, “But if you don’t win the money, whose mother's gonna get it?”) This is followed by the curiously related, “I’m the biggest, baddest motherfucker here.” Miss XaXa groaned, “Didn’t The Sopranos end last Sunday?”

Joey drives home the point by giving us a syllogism that would have made Descartes proud, “I’m from New York; I come to kick ass.” No, Joey, you come to perpetuate stereotypes about Italian-Americans on television. Judge Ted Allen told an interviewer that Joey earned the nickname, “Joey Pickles,” which is as good in its way as Paulie Walnuts (and not as pungent as Miss XaXa’s suggestion, “Joey No-Neck”), so Joey Pickles it is.

And here comes Dale Levitski, the beefy, fauxhawked, po-mo homo from Chicago. We’re quite certain about the “homo” part, but we have sketchier evidence for the “po-mo” part, mostly those mirrored aviator sunglasses, the epitome of 1970s gay clone culture. We’d have to confirm it with Edmund White (He Who Was There), but we think Dale is wearing them ironically, which is enough for “post-modern” status (though we have doubts about the Dickensian urchin outfit he wears in the kitchen later). Mostly, we’re just happy there’s a Gay on here.

And riding along we find Tre Wilcox of Dallas, who loses no time in telling us that he has “a tattoo on [his] body” (where else?) that says, “You gotta have passion.” (However, when see the inside of his forearm, the actual text of the tattoo is the broader, “Gotta have passion,” which is significant because that makes it more of a personal reminder, more a metaphysical Post-It to oneself than a broader injunction to the world at large.)

Now, we like Tre and, as the episode shows, he’s a talented chef, but we call “merde” on his tattoo, which looks like it was done with a ballpoint pen by a fifth grader. Not that we’re suggesting he should have gotten a rose on his ankle, but something better than an item on a grocery list of platitudes. Did the tribes of the South Pacific invent tattooing so that it could end up as the equivalent of those one-word motivational office posters, the ones that say “Teamwork” or “Perseverance” and illustrate the concept with dolphins or canoes? If you’re going to risk not being buried in a Jewish cemetery, shouldn’t it be for something really good?

There’s a rendez-vous at Casa Casuarina, the former home of Gianni Versace, also known as the Gays’ own School Book Depository. The cheftestants blithely, even callously, step across the spot where the man who put Elizabeth Hurley in safety pins (sob) was assassinated (sob) by gay serial killer Andrew Cunanan (sob). The least Raggaydy Andy and Bravo could do would be to spring for a commemorative plaque.

Most blithe is potential Great Gay Hope and Potentially Gay Asian Villain-in-the-Making Hung Huynh, who starts subverting stereotypes right away, declaring, “I am not Zen in the kitchen.” It’s like a PSA with the recommended daily amount of liberal guilt; it makes you think, Hmmm, did I automatically assume he would be Zen in the kitchen because he’s Asian?

Our consciousness felt immediately raised, especially when Hung announced that for about a year he has been labeled a “CPA,” or Certified Professional Asshole. “It’s only been a year?” asked Miss XaXa. “No wonder it seems so fake.”

We reminded Miss XaXa that he was, once again, subverting stereotypes about Asians being good at math, and that she ought to give him the benefit of the doubt, as perhaps he used to be an amateur asshole before, but is now being paid and has had his assholery certified, and if that isn’t the American dream, to get paid for what you do well, then what is?

Even our favorite new lesbian, Sandee Birdsong, who hails from Miss XaXa’s former stomping grounds on Saint Simons Island and who should know better, gaily traverses across Gianni-hallowed ground and into a reception area, where, as the closed captioning tells us, “soft jazz music” is playing and the other cheftestants await.