Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Psychic Lesbian Unable to Predict Her Own Demise

Not a Damned Thing About Eve

Eve, Eve, little Miss Eve….

Oh, whom are we kidding, possums? Even channeling Miss Bette Davis, we just don’t have it in us to be cruel about the fact that Eve Aronoff was pykagged. Not even the thought of her grating accent and her klutziness can rouse us to cruelty; it would be like kicking a cat. That must mean we have some shred of conscience, empathy, humanity left, doesn’t it? Doesn’t it?

Bottom line: she had no business being on Top Chef. Her true place is back in dear Ann Arbor, or as a minor character in a Woody Allen film, one of the funny ones. That Eve should be sent home on a “Battle of the Sexes” episode where the women lose is just a touch too right.

Unkindest Krewe Cut of All Means Zweet Dreams for Last of the Mohawkians

After Being Whole-Fried and Turned into Tacos by the Judges, Eugene Villiatora and Melissa Harrison Are Sent to Sleep with the Fishes

New York Has One Less Mugger

And Then There Were 13: Bad News, Bear

The Real World: New York—Bravo Shows Hellish Vision of Limbo as a Halfway House for the PYKAGged and the Dispossessed

Possums, we have just come from Bravo’s website, where we saw the most terrifying neologism since “extraordinary rendition,” namely, “sequester house.” Don’t it sound all Patriot Act?

It indeed turns out to be scary. It’s the house where those who have “gone down on apples,” cooked gummy noodles, or were done in by ostrich eggs are imprisoned while the rest of the competition goes on. It’s done presumably to prevent leaks and spoilers about the results of the competition. If a TwinkleGay leaves home to be on Top Chef and returns a few days later, well, you know what’s happened, don’t you?

And starting this week, Bravo will show scenes online from this house of horrors (for sample, click the vid above).

As you may have gathered, we’re all for deconstructionism, but this is a terrible idea. When Lauren was sent packing on that ferry, like Barbra Streisand in Funny Girl, having just been reunited with, and cruelly separated from, erstwhile best friend, TwinkleGay Patrick, well, who didn’t shed a secret, glycerine tear at the tragedy? After all, what’s a hag without her fag, a fruit fly without her fruit?

But though Padma rained on her parade, Lauren discovers at the sequester house that she is one of the luckiest people in the world (i.e., people who need gay people). And really, where’s the fun in that? Who needs the uplift?

The dead should stay dead, the PYKAGged PYKAGged to the end. We want the poignancy, the cruelty, the reality-tv bloodlust sated by the Padma-wielded whims of fate. We want real battle casualties, not Civil War reenactments where they get up from the battlefield to have lunch.

And so, unless this is going to turn into Big Brother (unlikely, though Bravo's Raggaydy Andy Cohen is a huge fan), with hot tub orgies and the like, we want none of this. We don't want reality-show revenants sitting around, drinking beer and contractually prohibited from doing the horizontal mambo. What's the good in that? We reserve the right to change our minds, but for the time being, this doesn’t look good.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Jill Gets Jacked

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Padma’s Quantum of Solace to First Pykagged Cheftestant: “There’s a fairy waiting for you”

Antonia Lofaso: Wilo Weep for Me

SPYKAG!

Culinary Boner Goes Down

Like Maria and Marta Von Trapp, Self-Avowed “Metrosexual’s” Favorite Color Is Pink*

That, at least, is what we learnt, possums, from the video audition Ryan submitted to Bravo’s casting people, apparently at Bravo’s request (and which Ryan posted on his MySpace page). In the video, entitled “The Ryan Scott Experience,” Ryan makes the following promise:

Everything that I’m about is what you’re going to see. The time that I get off, which is minimal, that’s when I eat pizza, that’s when I get my nails done. It’s no joke, it’s no front. This is the man that you guys were intrigued by, and this is the man you’re gonna get to see.

So go ahead, possums. Take a few minutes and have yourself a giggle; we’ll see you on the other side of The. Ryan. Scott. Experience. (If you can't see the video on the screen, click here.)



We came across this gem even before the current season of Top Chef started airing, and we had been waiting until the perfect moment, and well, now that Ryan has been pykkagged, there is no more perfect moment, so we might as well get it out of our system now. What we found particularly fascinating about the video was the way in which Ryan courted sexual confusion and ambiguity, beginning with getting his nails done.

And there was this:

















And this:
















And especially this:

















And, of course, this:














Sorry, wrong video. So, possums, metrosexual? “Metrosexual”? Confused? Pandering to Bravo’s core audiences? Only his hairdresser knows for sure.

*As you may remember, possums, in The Sound of Music, when Fräulein Maria, as yet un-Trapped, first meets the children whose governess she is to be, the following exchange takes place

Marta: I’m Marta, and I’m going to be seven on Tuesday, and I’d like a pink parasol.
Maria: Well, pink’s my favorite color, too.

Moctezuma’s Revenge: Limp Asshat Gets the Hopfinger

Possums, we feel both a migraine and a rant coming on, but for the time being we will limit ourselves to contrasting Erik Hopfinger’s illogical, condescending, paternalistic, patronizing, and quasi-racist statement (which we will break down later, have no fear) with excerpts from Richard Condon’s (yes, as in The Manchurian Candidate and Prizzi’s Honor) The Mexican Stove, a cookbook published in 1973 (just a year after Diana Kennedy’s seminal The Cuisines of Mexico), and which has one of the greatest subtitles of any culinary book, “Sensual and Evocative Notes on the World’s Oldest Cuisine Together with Matchless Methods for Cooking and Eating Such Timelessness and Including the Oldest Surviving Evolved Recipe for Cooked Food of Any Cooking System of Any of the Ancient Civilizations of the World and the Greatest All-Purpose Sauce in History.”

Erik Hopfinger:

“Mexican food is about the people, and it’s about the streets, and it’s a soulful kind of a thing, and to put fine dining in it, it just, it just kind of bugs me….I don’t think fine dining and Mexican go together, so [Rick Bayless] can go screw himself.”

Richard Condon:

“…in the instance of the most exalted food ever to appear in the Western Hemisphere, the food whose raw materials became the parents of all European cooking, it becomes evident, when the glorious plunge is taken, that to cook and eat Mexican food is to celebrate sensuality in every great chamber of this textured, perfumed, delicious, beautiful and memorable gastronomic antiquity.

Mexican food is an aphrodisiac which excites the passion for living. It courts, seduces, ravishes, then cherishes all five senses (as well as the sense of most worthy accomplishment) by treating each as if it existed alone, as if all satisfaction were dependent upon this one sense, while it orchestrates all five into complex permutations of sensation….

In terms of fuel into energy, chemicals, lubricants, and stimulants, Mexican food is incomparable because it is lighter, more natural, less fatty, and least 11° warmer inside. Furthermore, as a producer of joy and well-being only Chinese cuisine can surpass it and only the French can equal it….

[E]ach dish prepared under Mexican food systems is multileveled and richly dimensional. It is thermally rich. It is scented. Its grasp of glossal tactility is uncanny and exciting as it composes dishes of food to relate the textures of the rough, the slippery, the chewy, and the unctuous simultaneously while it contrasts the hot, the bland, and the piquant with sweet, sour, and salt tastes and as it relates the readily combined flavors of meat, fruit, and vegetables with an astonishing range of sauces. However, because it is high cooking, it takes a considerable amount of time to prepare….

There are yahoos who would disagree that there are only three basic, wholly developed systems of cooking in the world: the Indian/Chinese, the Mexican, and the French, and that all other cooking systems evolved from these or are dependent on these….

Then what is a ‘cuisine’? If a cannibal boils a missionary and his wife, that is not cuisine. But if he adds a touch of oregano and two onions, he has made step one.”

Nicole Richie's Brave Attempt at Undercover Eating Comes to an End

Last week, she was Rachel Dratch. This week, she was Nicole Richie, but mostly, Valerie Bolon was all done.

Put a Fork in the Road in Him, He's Done: Manuel Treviño Told to Hit the Camino

Eater has the scoop: Apparently, Manuel “Memo” Treviño has been told by his employer at the New York City restaurant Dos Caminos (two roads or paths) to pack his knives and go.

The employer's official response is the usual shitcanning boilerplate that Memo has “left...to pursue other opportunities.” ¡Cómo no!

Well, Memo, possum, as good as Dos Caminos may have been to you, you couldn't possibly spend the rest of your life at a crossroads. Now you won't have to wonder about the Camino not taken.

What's Repast Is Repast, and We Shall See Her Nimma (Well, Except Perhaps on the Reunion Show)

CJ Jacobson's Defense to Being Jacked by the Not-So-Giant Broccolini Stalks: Bravo Made Me Do It!

It's certainly one of the most interesting defenses we've seen so far, possums, and it goes something like this:

CJ was voted off because his desiccated, burnt, mint-oil-slicked broccolini was, in Tom Colicchio's opinion, the worst dish of Top Chef's three seasons. So, one wonders, why did CJ serve it in the first place?

CJ tells Grub Street that the broccolini were overcooked

"and looked bad, so I didn’t want to send them out. I said, 'I’m not sending these out.' But they said, 'You have to send them out.'

Who did?
I can’t tell you specifically. But it was production. I said, 'I lose if I send these out,' and I did. In retrospect I should have said, 'Screw you,' but I did send it out so it is my fault."

CJ tells our pal Lesley at Eater LA a similar story:

"I didn't want to put the broccolini out but I was told I had to. It would've been an OK dish if it was cooked propertly. Those ovens are really fast. They get up to 400 degrees right away, and it's a convection oven, so it overcooked and burnt the broccolini. I don't know what would've happened if I didn't put it out."

It smells like a minty, potentially successful duress defense to us. Shouldn't Justice Colicchio have been apprised of this fact before imposing the tear-jerking sentence of death by pykagging?

Unpack Your Knives and Go Off: Howie Kleinberg a Knife-Throwing Maniac? Say It Ain't So

Possums, we're shocked--shocked!--that meek-as-a-lamb Howie Kleinberg may have thrown the mother of all Top Chef fits.

Our pal Josh at Grub Street has spoken to an on-set source who says that, after being pykagged, Howie went, but he didn't exactly pack his knives. Rather, according to Josh's source, "after walking off the set, Howie hurled his knives in a room full of crew members before storming out to a parking lot."

Fortunately, though, crew-member carpaccio was not on the menu. Come on, Raggaydy Andy--on the next "Watch What Happens" special, show us Howie the Homicidal's magnificent knife-throwing skills.

Is Casey “Beaver Boots” Thompson the “Top Chef” Typhoid Mary?

That was the question on our mind, possums, as we watched this week's episode.

In part it was prompted by our sighting of Casey's greatest and worst legacy, Lia Bardeen (the woman Colette might have named and imagined). As soon as Casey taught her how to straighten out (her hair) and made her into a "friend for life," boom! Lia was pykagged.

And this week Casey announced that she and Tre had become like "brother" and sister, and boom! Tre was pykagged.

If twice is a coincidence and three times a trend, we'll just have to wait until next week for confirmation. Just be careful, Dale; don't change hags in midstream, or it may cost you dearly.

However, there was one more reason we were focused on Casey during this week's episode. On her MySpace page, ole Beaver Boots says the people she would like to meet are "Bill Clinton and Madonna. Hopefully one day, Jesus."

We have to say, she's not doing too badly when it comes to her goals. This week she met Madonna's brother, and isn't that almost as good? And judging by the photos on her MySpace page and by the city she lives in, it looks like she might already know somebody named Jesús. That only leaves Clinton, and with her looks and television exposure, that shouldn't be too hard.