Amuse-Biatch “Choked Up” Photoessay: The Disconnect Between Actions and Words

Well, to be fair to Fabio, possums, it does look as though he’s choking something, rather than someone, so on that level, maybe the t-shirt is actually accurate.

Still, he did do a lot of choking during this episode, n’est-ce pas?

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Padma Lakshmi Does Her Best with Wardrobe Choices to Make Sure That It *Is* Jacques Pépin’s Last Meal

No wonder the poor man kept looking to his left.

It reminds us of a terrible joke one of our high school teachers told us from his Mormon missionary days in France, and that Jacques might know: Pourquoi un soutien-gorge est-il comme le paradis? Parce que les seins y sont. (Why is a bra like Paradise? Because that’s where the breasts are.). It turns on the fact that the French word for saints, “saints” is pronounced very much like the French word for breasts, “seins.”

Anyway, Padma, for God’s sake, the man is 73. Oh wait, never mind, that’s her target age range.

Still, you’ll have to fight Carla, since she and Jacques are like this.

Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: cLEAHvage

Exhibit 37 for the case that Leah Cohen is a victim of editorial sexism. Exhibits for the opposite case to be presented soon.

A Scarlet Letter from Amuse-Biatch

Possums,

We won’t get into the reasons for our absence of the past week, mostly because in spite of all recent, firsthand evidence to the contrary, we refuse to accept that we inhabit a world in which illness and mortality have any more purchase than they do in a Pedro Almodóvar film. Into the bubble of the blogger’s basement no shafts of reality must be allowed to make their way, nor shall they.

Instead, let us agree to a version in which our silence was that of the well of loneliness, the soundless scream of the daughters of Bilitis, at the pykagging of our Sapphic mini-Fergie, Miz Jamie Lauren. Fortunately for us, though, our Uranian grief was assuaged by the sweet, sweet balm of the Christian Bale freakout remix on constant replay.

After all, which of the world’s ills can’t be cured by a good house beat? As a straight (that’s what he said) friend told us many years ago, being a good gay is about “dancing through the pain.” Mind you, this was in the context of the Hex Hector remix of Toni Braxton’s “Unbreak My Heart,” but the principle is the same.

And so, yes, the loss of Jamie was rather difficult, all the more so because it seemed so unavoidable and so very just under the circumstances. In the wake of Jamie’s exit, we wondered whether it was possible to feel simultaneous boredom and despair—despair at her departure, and boredom at the prospect of a final that doesn’t include her—as one feeling would seem to negate the other.

Oh, fickle, fickle gays!

We could not possibly have anticipated just how good and entertaining last night’s episode would be, and we had to laugh at the pleasure of watching the show cheerfully violate its own stated principles about it being a one-challenge-at-a-time, what-have-you-done-for-me-lately competition.

Had that principle been followed, Stefan Richter would and should have been sent packing for the undistinguished (and undistinguishable) spinach and the salmon that was unanimously deemed to be overcooked, an unpardonable sin on a season that has been so much about “respecting the protein,” and on an episode that was preceded by the hazelnut-and-butter-accented presence of the St. John the Baptist of fish cookery, Le Bernardin’s Eric Ripert (come to think of it, his accent is more the equivalent of Nutella eaten out of the jar with one’s finger, but we digress). What is a thinned hollandaise sauce in comparison to that?

Surely on the scales of PYKAG justice, Leah’s sin of a thin hollandaise sauce was outweighed by the greater, audience-perceived sins of weakness, whininess and immorality (about which more later). We declared ourselves fans of Stefan from the outset, so we would have been grieved to see him go, but it also would have made a satisfying kind of narrative sense for him to have gone out now—hubris, Icarus, the Finland vs. Sweden thing, etc. Instead, the show opted for a more timeless kind of American narrative—Hester Prynne is pilloried to satisfy public morality while the bald, stolid, chin-merkin’d Dimmesdale (and how dim indeed) is allowed to continue in a halo of xenophobic, phallocentric (tiny shrimp!, eel!) anxiety and insecurity to battle the European savant Chillingworth (we haven’t quite worked out all the details, but give us time). How will it all turn out?

Amuse-Biatch Iconography: Someone at Bravo Was an Art History Major or a Fan of “The Da Vinci Code”

Amuse-Biatch Heterosexual Monday: In Honor of the Super Bowl, Padma Lakshmi Shows Off Where on Her End Zone a Field Goal Goes

Amuse-Biatch “Hootie We Can Believe In” Endorsement: Carla Hall for Fan Favorite

Possums, you know what to do. Head on over to the Bravo website, and vote to get this woman a $10,000 check.

Why Can’t They Ever Be This Natural on “Top Chef”?

Blind, Hairy-Palmed Amuse-Biatch Fails to See Why Jeff McInnis Thinks Bravo Objectified Him

Yes, possums, we know he told People:

I think the show used me as some kind of sex object. Every single show that I’ve ever seen, they have me with my shirt off in the beginning — which is kind of strange. I don’t run around the house naked half the time like they portrayed me. It seems like a camera was always following me around trying to find me whenever I’m taking my clothes off to change in the morning or at night. So, to be used like that is always fun.

But, having looked at the evidence, we just don’t see it.

Stefan Richter Wins the Super Bowl of Trash Talk: “Latin Chick” Camille Becerra Is “So Fucking Bitter”

Well, possums, we can’t say we blame the Season 5 contestants (and Tom Colicchio) for questioning the “All-Star” bona fides of the past seasons’ representatives who showed up for the asinine Super Bowl-themed episode.

After all, the only thing the “challengers” have in common was residence in New York, where the show was filming. (Spike Mendelsohn, who has opened a burger joint in D.C., splits his time between the capital and New York, and the ACELA ride surely posed no problem to a man who would crawl on his hands and knees over broken glass to attend the opening of an envelope if there were a camera within 10 feet.)

And yet, we had no idea Herr Richter was quite so adept at smack talk (as demonstrated in this video). Of Miguel Morales: “He is a banquet assistant chef. And he warms up 85 plates at one time in the oven.” Ooh, burn.

But the whole Camille thing has us puzzled. Bitter? How came he to this conclusion?

Ok, so her restaurant was gutted by fire, and she’s sporting East L.A. homegirl bangs, but is that enough evidence from which to deduce that she’s bitter?