Betty Fraser: The 'Rack' is Stacked and Packed

Or, as Siskel & Ebert used to say, perhaps in reference to Betty "Spice Rack" Fraser's battery of keyhole tops and decollete blouses, the balcony is closed.

As happy as we were to be 'name-checked,' albeit indirectly, in her Sirius interview with Larry Flick yesterday (and we thought that the fact she was going to be interviewed at all was an indication that she would be sent packing that very night), we were quite dissatisfied with one aspect of the interview. Larry Flick never asked, and we never found out the answer to, the question we have been brooding on for ages: Does she crunch or does she munch? With her combination of stevedore and 'bar wench' (her words, ladies), we thought she would make a wonderful addition to the cast of The L Word, but, aLas, we wiLL never know.

Though she is gone, her influence will live on, as was evident last night. When, at the fixtures store and with the largest crowd possible (for purposes of maximum impact), Sam Talbot went all Sicilian on Marcel's ass (see? we told you he was Keyser Soze), the one thing that struck us and had us a-cackle was his use of the word "gnat" to describe Marcel.

Let's see, where had we heard that before? Oh yes, from Spice Rack herself during the TGIFriday's challenge in the fire station. Let's face it, whatever his virtues, Sammy the Sicilian isn't nearly clever enough to come up with "gnat." If we remember aright, during his last attempt at shit-stirring, trying to get fellow Sicilian Frankie the Bull to beat Marcel so badly his own mother wouldn't recognize him, the best ole Sammy could come up with was "kid," i.e., "if that kid was my room mate, etc." So next time you hear the word "gnat" being thrown at Marcel, remember the Spice Rack.

Mia Gaines-Alt: And I Am Telling You I AM Going

Ah, Christmas in July.

Or August, actually, since that is when, according to Lee Anne Wong's Bravo blog, the episode was filmed. But we'll get to that in a second.

Having read so much about the episode before we sank into the Louis XV settee last night, we were expecting A Very Special Episode of Top Chef, something like a cross between an ABC afterschool special and Survivor: Race War or whatever the latest installment was called.

We were also prepared to write a couple of sober little essays on Diversity in the Kitchen and Diversity on Reality TV, quoting Anthony Bourdain to leaven them a bit (and goodness knows you may still see them, as we have a couple of weeks' worth of posting to fill before the next new episode).

But, really, not so much. To the extent race was involved in the episode, it was in a Terry McMillan, Fitty vs. Oprah sort of context.

Of course, we have more than a passing interest in Mia Gaines-Alt, since Miss XaXa visited her Oakdale restaurant, Feed the People!, earlier this month. We had seen hints of her temper on previous episodes (we have never quite forgotten that I'm-gonna-git-ya look she gave Ilan on their first day), but even we were unprepared for when she went all Angela Bassett-in-Waiting to Exhale on Cliff's ass, and we think some of it was justified.

At that point, we were priming ourselves for a martial-arts type of thing, something like Bride with the White Hair, where Mia used her dreads to decapitate Cliff for his effrontery in showing disrespect to a strong Black woman. When, after Mia recounted how she had to sell crack as a child to survive, Cliff rolled his eyes and asked, "Are you done being a martyr yet?" (what an asshole!) we gripped the edge of the Louis XV settee, waiting for the Spirit of Oprah to appear, strike him dumb and accuse him of dating white women (oh wait, isn't Oprah the one being pelted with metaphorical Oreos by 50 Cent and Ludacris?)

Alas, it was not to be. And anyway, it's not as if Mia couldn't have taken care of him single-handedly; she is one fierce woman. And when she fell on her sword and did her version of "And I Am Telling You I Am Going" and left the show, we half-expected, half-wanted her to do the Angela Bassett thing, throwing a lit match behind her and strutting fiercely toward the camera. Alas, that was not to be, either.














Perhaps we should back up a moment, for the benefit of those who, like us yesterday, have not seen the episode. The Quickfire Challenge, to make a drink using Bailey's, won immunity for Cliff. For the Elimination Challenge, the eight cheftestants were divided into two teams and then had to cater a "red carpet" event, a "holiday party" for Los Angeles Magazine. In August.

(Yes, and it was just as phony and bogus as it sounds. We didn't see a single person on the episode even remotely worthy of a red carpet. Not so much as a reality show castoff, 80s sitcom has-been or Hollywood starlet in terms of celebrity. Well, there was a funny chap in an eye-scarring orange shirt who looked awfully like a fat Lance Bass, but since there was no Reichen Lemkuhl, even though there were cameras around, we doubt it was the real Lance.

And we were particularly put off by the fakery of Betty "Spice Rack" Fraser wishing a guest a "Merry Christmas!" No, Bill O'Reilly, don't get worked up; it's not the war on Christmas, it's the war on Christmas in August. Or Mia telling another guest that the strawberries were wonderful, and it's great how California is the only place you can grow strawberries in the winter. Yes, we grow strawberries in the winter, but the ones you were purveying were wonderful precisely because it was the middle of summer. But we digress.)

The guest judge was Chef Lee Hefter of Spago Beverly Hills. The Orange Team--Spice Rack, Ilan, Marcel, and Sam--won the challenge, and as leader, Sam was the individual winner. The Black Team--Cliff, Mike, Elia, and Mia--was on the chopping block (well, not Cliff, since he had immunity), and Elia as the leader was about to be kicked off, but at the last minute, as Padma was opening her mouth to deliver the fateful, affectless words, Mia took herself out of the competition in order to save Elia.

We had actually been impressed with Miss Elia Aboumrad's maturity in accepting responsibility for her team's failure and the consequent dismissal from the competition. But we were even more impressed with Mia's decision In retrospect it makes sense on some level, as the groundwork was laid in the beach episode, when it was the three women who made the top dishes, and had discussions about what it was like to be a woman in professional kitchens, and how they hoped a woman would make it to the finals.














As Tom Colicchio pointed out to her, she didn't seem like a quitter. So just why did Mia quit?

We suspect it was a debilitating bout of homesickness, pangs of self-doubt, a moment of lucid self-awareness, a large dose of altruism, a spoonful of sisters-are-doing-it-for-themselves. That's quite a cocktail, even without the Bailey's.

Of course, the biggest question of all is why this debate had to take place at all. Of the three people up for elimination, Michael "Beer Bong" Midgley is clearly the least talented (and we're being charitable). We were especially delighted when he informed the judges that his task during the catering challenge was to run back and forth between the mobile kitchen and the food station, because not once did we see him run. At most, he shuffled.

At any rate, shouldn't he have been the one to go? Everyone, himself included, recognizes that he is not chef material, much less Top Chef material. (Although, a perverse sentiment would suggest he might do well on a channel like Spike, or Food Network for NASCAR viewers, where he could cook without intimidating the viewers. After all, isn't that the secret to Rachael Ray's success? Well, that, and the perkiness pact she entered into with Satan; they spat in their hands and shook on the deal. Oh wait, that was her loogie-loving lawyer-cum-consort.)

So how has Beer Bong done it? How has he escaped the Padma-wielded guillotine so many times? It may be that, as one reader suggested, it's not Sam, but Beer Bong, who is the real Keyser Söze. After what happened Wednesday night, and the way he has managed to hold on all this time, we are more than willing to believe it.

Flower Power

Ask and ye shall receive. That is why we love our fabulous, wicked, gleaming-eyed readers.

Thanks to one of you, here is the picture of Sam Talbot in the flowered shirt. Definitely Keyser Söze, and thanks to the open collar and the necklace, even gayer than Kevin Spacey (and that's really saying something when you're up against Mr. I-Lost-My-Wallet-While-Jogging-at-an-Ungodly-Hour-in-a-London-Park-Notorious-for-Cruising-But-I'm-Not-Really-Gay-Despite-Wearing-a-White-Dinner-Jacket-and-Taking-My-Mother-to-the-Oscars).

And Anonymous, even though Beer Bong is your favorite, you do not have bad taste. Quite the contrary. After all, you are reading Amuse-Biatch, so how could you possibly have bad taste? In fact, you are a gorgeous, graceful, stylish individual, and thanks to you, somewhere, a little blogger cherub just got its wings.

Toad in a Hole: Sam I Am Keyser Söze

We were intrigued by the Gals' provocative post at Top Chef 2. They Cook, We Dish on Sam Talbot as Jack Sparrow, since we had also been having cinema-related thoughts about Sam. Only we had a completely different movie in mind.

For a few weeks now, the combination of Sam's greasy hair, brown-flowered shirt, odd, pseudo-gimpy (for lack of a more politically correct word) affect when speaking, and slyly treacherous behavior all the while appearing to be harmless, have been reminding us of someone we'd seen.

Then someone mentioned a Baudelaire quote, and we had it.

Of course! Sam Talbot was Keyser Söze, the devilishly treacherous mastermind played by Kevin Spacey in The Usual Suspects. They even have the exact same flowered shirt in shades of brown (we tried to get a photo, but we're useless at things like screen caps and the like, so if you've got a photo of Sam during the on-camera interviews in that shirt, please e-mail us and we promise we'll say nice things about you and how well you dress).

Sam originally came on the show as "the hot diabetic." (However, hotness in this case decidedly seems to be more in the eye of the beheld than in the eye of the beholder, and we find it increasingly difficult to control our urge to wash his greasy hair.) He was the harmless, Yankee-sounding Carolina boy, the Bono wannabe, the greasy, emo chef-boy in a culinary version The Outsiders. (May Coppola and Matt Dillon forgive us.)

But then the Keyser Söze began to come out. He threw the cat among the pigeons by launching accusations of cheating and squeeze bottles of olive oil without substantiation. He then tried the most Keyser Söze move of all, trying to eliminate a rival by having him killed by a drunk hothead with DeNiro delusions, i.e., inciting El Bully to go after Marcel for having moved his toiletries. (We found that super manly, by the way, threatening grievous bodily harm because your make-up bag got moved).

The episodes have become a fascinating game of Watch Sammy Run His Mouth.The attempted slurs against our beloved Miss Elia Aboumrad in this last episode were particularly amusing. He tried to get her in trouble for having used frozen waffles in her winning dish (interesting that he didn't go after his henchman, El Bully, for having used pre-made pie crusts). Now let's take a look at Sam's own dish. Ignore the cat-sick and the strawberry in the middle, and what do you have? Why, it's a bagel. And we certainly didn't see Sammy making any bagels on the beach. In other words, a very Keyser Söze move.

The quote from The Usual Suspects that jogged our memory was, "The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist." And it seems to us that the greatest trick Sam Talbot ever pulled was convincing us that he was harmless fun. However, it's clear that Sam I Am Keyser Söze has his eye on the ball. As he told The Boston Globe about being on Top Chef, "I have the mind of a chef and the soul of a chef. It's also a great way to win $100,000. HA! "

Somewhere on the streets of San Pedro, Kevin Spacey is straightening his limp.