Ride a Cowboy, Save an Elk: Most Shocking "Top Chef" Shocker of All Time?

You know, possums, sometimes we think the good Lord is toying with us. After all, being such wicked souls, how can we possibly deserve the occasional blessings and boons that come our way? Maybe there's something to Calvinist predetermination after all?

Or perhaps we ought to turn to personal touchstone The Sound of Music (you know you've grown up and gone gay when Maria stops becoming your favorite character, you begin shamefully lusting after Rolf, and then decide you want Uncle Max and Baroness Elsa as your real parents): Somewhere in our youth or childhood, we must have done something good.

What is the cause of our musings? you may ask. Well, it's this Gothamist interview sent to us by faithful possum Jess.

During last week's episode, Brian MFMalarkey revealed that he had grown up on a ranch and had been a cowboy (and, indeed, his wife's MySpace page, before it was made private, expressed a general interest in Cowboys, and who can blame her?). Dale Levitski revealed that he had slept with a few cowboys.

But, notwithstanding the Bravo prohibition on elk loins ever meeting seafood sausage, are those two revelations connected? Has MFMalarkey become MMalarkey? Tantalizing, unanswered, and unanswerable questions left in our mind as we read this:

Dale

When the show was in New York, you were stopped over in Newark, NJ -- how did you entertain yourselves for the night?
Brian and I entertained ourselves in the hotel room together.

[!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! That's the sound of us getting the Top Chef slash-fiction vapors.]

Compare with this:

Hung

When the show was in New York, you were stopped over in Newark, NJ -- how did you entertain yourselves for the night?
I read the Bible.

Casey

When the show was in New York, you were stopped over in Newark, NJ -- how did you entertain yourselves for the night?
Sara and I shared a room and at first we thought would read the bible but then we saw the book about the hotel we were staying in and I read that to Sara.

Not to put too fine a point on it, possums, but if we had our druthers, we'd take chaps over chapter and verse, and the Giddyup Society over the Gideon Society. What say you?

First Reaction: Cuisine de Grand-mère and Not So Grand Mair

Well, possums, as anyone who's ever seen The Triplets of Belleville will tell you, having a French grandmother can make all the difference of the world. One must never underestimate Mamie dearest.

And Casey Thompson's Mamie certainly came through for her, inspiring Casey's chicken dish, even if the name (and the pronunciation, ouch!) were a bit of a coq-up. And even though tough old birds* faulted her for not using a tough old bird, we don't fall in that camp. As some of you may have discovered at some point in your lives, possums, coq is occasionally difficult to come by, no matter how much vin is involved.

But you know, there is one thing that gave us pause and made us uneasy, namely, the condemnation by all and sundry of Hung Huynh as being a technical wizard but lacking soul. Perhaps we just have sensitive noses, but we detected the whiff of (perhaps unconscious?) racial stereotypes of Asians as emotionless automatons. We thought immediately of an article by classical music critic Alex Ross that we read in The New Yorker in April:

In the classical-music world of ten or fifteen years ago, you heard intermittent murmurs of unease about the number of Asian performers who were showing up on the rolls of conservatories, in the ranks of orchestras, and on concert stages. The oft-repeated criticism was that these players showed great technical dexterity but lacked the mysteries of “depth” and “soul.” Such talk had an unsavory taste....

As does the talk about Hung lacking "heart" and "soul." Well, he is bisexual, so undoubtedly the heartless part is correct. But the rest of it does smack of something unattractive, even if it's not sinister. It's a way of dismissing those who are better than you: what I do may be a mess, but at least it's got heart. "Heart," whatever the schmaltzy term means, seems to be of paramount importance in our country. Emotional truth trumps all else, and cannot be questioned. Laziness, idiocy, lack of skill, and lack of competence can all be forgiven and covered up with "heart," with "gut instinct," which is why we're asked to elect the candidate we'd most like to have a beer with, and to "trust" our leaders, especially when they have "gut instincts" and can look into the "hearts" of Russian tyrants.

But we digress, possums, and we'd better stop ranting before we find ourselves unwittingly quoting Ayn Rand, who is not our cup of tea (though she is a good deal of camp fun, especially the movie adaptation she wrote of The Fountainhead, starring Patricia Neal and Gary Cooper, a phallic pneumatic drill, Miss Neal's pneumatic breasts, and a beautiful and no doubt unintended homoerotic subtextual love affair between Gary Cooper and Raymond Massey).

*We kid, possums. We have the utmost respect for André Soltner and the rest of the FCI panel. Just read David Kamp’s The United States of Arugula to get a sense of the watershed importance of Soltner’s restaurant, Lutèce.

Madge of Dishonor: Gay Cheftestant and Bisexual Villain Bitchslapped by Undercover Brother

Oh the homo-anity, possums!

As Andy Towle is reporting, on this week's episode the cheftestants had to deal with both an undercover blogger and an undercover brother.

Yes, possums, the pudgy queen who complained that Sara Mair's lamb tasted like metal and who euthanized a vanilla candle with a napkin on the floor is none other than Madonna's brother, Christopher Ciccone. Evidently, the awful doesn't fall far from the tree.

Not that we're complaining, mind you. If nothing else, this was a priceless exchange:

Man Living Perennially in Bitch-Goddess Sister's Shadow: If that's a vegetable medley, I'm a monkey.
Dale Levitski: I will let Miss Sara know.

It's like dialogue from a lost Samuel Beckett play, Waiting for Risotto, as rewritten by All About Eve-era Joseph L. Mankiewicz.

Our only disappointment? That the Ciccone monkey got nowhere near Hung Huynh's oft-invoked ape.

Sara N. Wrap: The Ghost of Cleavage Past

Possums, as we’ve pointed out before, on Top Chef the meek never inherit the earth. Neither, it seems, do the chic.

And so Sara Nguyen, the math genius who was blissfully unaware that Scotch bonnet peppers are hot, was sent home in her black low-cut top (presumably chosen by “gay boyfriend” Dale Levitski, who raided her closet before they went out, and who dismissed one blouse, if we heard correctly, as too “frumpy”).















Of course, the choice of blouse turned out to be a tragic one. Not that this came as a surprise to us. Sara, possum, gay boyfriend or not, never, and we mean never ever, take fashion advice from a Gay who wears manpris. It’s the blinding leading the bland, and it never turns out well.

Sara N. (and Sweet Potato Queen Casey Thompson) made much of the horrors of having to compete unexpectedly, in the midst of a celebration, and in high heels and low-cut tops.

This struck us as rather funny when we remembered this season’s very first episode, in which the cheftestants were forced to compete (unexpectedly!) in a Quickfire Challenge in the middle of a celebratory cocktail party at Gianni Versace’s mansion. And what was Sarah wearing?
















Why, isn’t that a low-cut top? And wait, if you look at the picture below, isn’t Sara N. wearing heels? (And Casey’s all turned out and purty, too, and in heels, though not showing as much cleavage). Dear, dear.















As much as we believe that bazooms and burning bras are feminist issues, we can’t help remembering how different Sara Mair’s attitude was. Lord love her for her courage in going braless on her baked Bries (ooze though they might, Miss XaXa suggested they nonetheless looked more like goat cheese crottins), but Lord love her even more for procuring a shirt to put those Babybels back in their cellar, where they belong, and getting down to work.

In the end, though, we predict a bright future for Sara Nguyen. Pourquoi? Well, because, as she tells Grub Street, “[Dale Levitski] keeps on asking me to move to Chicago to work with him when this is all done.”
















Possums, we smell sitcom gold: Will & Grace meets Kitchen Confidential meets All-American Girl (which, as Margaret Cho bitterly—and justifiably—complained, the network wanted to call Wok on the Wild Side). Our proposed title: Nguyendy City. Just remember, we’ll be expecting a cut of the profits, or at least an executive producer credit. You heard it here first.

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.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Freudians, Start Your Engines (Though It Was Sara Mair Who Made a Cigar)

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.