Amuse-Biatch Heterosexual Monday: Casey Thompson Gets “Horny” While Playing Peekaboob on the Beach

Oh, don’t mind the headline, possums. Season 3 finalist Casey Thompson, pictured here on a recent jaunt to the beach in the Hamptons, is, as we know all too well, nothing if not a good sport. Says she: “Hey, give a girl a break! I haven’t had a beach vacation in years…; it was a really fun time. As for the tattoo, we all had some college moments we would like to forget…”

Amuse-Biatch Heterosexual Monday: Season 5 Guest Judge Dayana Mendoza Universally Acknowledged to Give Padma Lakshmi a Run for Her Bikini'd Money

Ah, possums, another beauty queen, another nekkid pic scandal. Only this time she looks to be a Top Chef guest judge as well. Imagine that. After all this time, another occupant at Judges' Table with a portfolio of "arty" black and white shots!

So, this is the newly crowned Miss Universe, Dayana (pronounced, à l’américaine, “Diana”) Mendoza, who recently filmed an episode of the upcoming season of Top Chef in which the cheftestants had to cook for an AIDS charity benefit. You will no doubt be relieved to discover that the "arty" photographs, discovered after her coronation, will not cost Dayana her rhinestone crown, though they are sure to win her many a loyal subject in the Top Chef audience.

So Sayeth Lady Rushdie

Possums, it is once again time for "So Sayeth Lady Rushdie," our occasional feature highlighting the surprisingly wise pronouncements of that bikini'd Oracle of Delphi, Padma, Lady Rushdie. Without further ado, let Her Ladyship speak:

"Why do you need more books?"
The London Sunday Times, March 11, 2007

Answer given by Lady Rushdie, owner of 250 pairs of shoes, to a question by her husband, Sir Salman, about why she needed so many shoes.

"But I do have a weakness for mistletoe. I keep it up practically until Easter!"
YOU Magazine, December 19, 2004

















And speaking of keeping it up, our favorite quote of the week: "Very nice sausage," Lady Rushdie's reaction to Brian Malarkey's barbecue dish.

As Miss XaXa said, dangerously skirting stereotypes, "Chino Latino?!? Brian, honey, you should have called it the Dirk Diggler." And then, turning to us, "She loves the sausage and shoes?! My God, I've been all wrong about her."

(Straight male and lesbian readers of this blog, please feel free to thank us for the photo of the Tamil temptress.)

Elia Aboumrad Bikini Shot. At Last.

Google Perv, don't say we never did anything for you. It took us over 12 weeks, but here, at long last, is your hoped-for, longed-for, KY'd-for Elia Aboumrad Bikini Shot. Enjoy.

(Ok, so it's a one-piece, but Jesus, be grateful.)

Gridskipper Leaves Skid Marks on "Top Chef" Locations

Bad-boy travel blog Gridskipper has a snarky guide to the Los Angeles locations used on this season of Top Chef, which it damns with the faintest of faint praise as "about food, it's shot in locations all over LA, and the people on it are slightly less obnoxious" than the people on The Amazing Race. Oh, and they repurposed one of our favorite Padma Lakshmi lingerie shots as a graphic.

Stirring stuff, isn't it? However, we think that Frank "El Bully" Terzoli and Betty "Spice Rack" Fraser would take umbrage at the notion that there are more obnoxious reality show contestants than they.

Amuse-Biatch Uncovers Evidence of a Padma Lakshmi Cover-Up

Yes, we admit, we are now making steak tartare out of the dead horse.

But really, how could we resist, when the week's two most hotly debated topics in the inner sanctum of the television alcove at Withering Depths come together like this?

Take a look at Padma Lakshmi Rushdie in the flesh-colored (sandalwood? café au lait? Earl-Grey-and-cream?) bikini, and tell us, Why didn't she appear on the broadcast episode like this?

Raggaydy Andy of Bravo approved the top, and it was used, so why not the bottom? (If you're playing along at home, insert easy joke here. Speaking of which, before this, we hadn't really noticed the bits and bobs hanging from her cleavage, and Miss XaXa couldn't resist the "Padma's serving curry with the fringe on top" joke, but we tsk-tsked in her direction.)

Instead, as we have noted, Padma threw on a denim mini, a shearling vest, a cardigan, and Ugg boots. Don't try to tell us it was because she was cold. Padma herself goes on ad nauseam in her blog about how they filmed during a Biblical heat wave in L.A. Even if she had suffered from the teensy morning chill of what we know as "June gloom" (weathermen in California rhyme as badly as the Beatniks), why would she appear in this picture, sans cardigan, sans mini, and avec poofter? It's not just her outfit that's out there; the truth is, too.

Confidential to Marcel: Standing next to a woman, even a near-naked woman, will not make you straight. Heterosexuality is not contagious, or airborne (though it may be in the air), nor is it passed through osmosis. Further, posting pictures of yourself standing next to a near-naked woman isn't particularly effective in convincing people that you're straight (we tried that at 'varsity, but it didn't fool our room-mates either).

Which brings us to the rhetorical question of the day. Why is it that Padma's pose is exactly 3.7 times more butch than Marcel's? There is a similar wanton exposure of the belly button (albeit with a treasure trail) and aggressive thrust of the belly, but the just-so opening of the chef's coat, the low-slung pants, the "you go, girl" hands on hips, the meringue-peaked, wind-tossed tresses, and the coyly extended left ankle suggest an intimate familiarity on Marcel's part with the advice and instruction of Tyra Banks and Miss J from America's Next Top Brady-Bunch Has-Been War Bride. He is clearly ready for the Cook's Illustrated Swimsuit Edition.

Elia Aboumrad Bikini Shot. No, Really and Truly This Time

Well, not quite. But almost. Come on, Mr. Google Perv, we're really doing our best for you here. We got her to the ocean, we got her to remove her chef's whites, and we even got her in the water. Maybe next time.

Really, you musn't be ungrateful. There was even that bonus performance of the newly discovered, long-feared-lost Martha Graham work, She Sells Sexual Harassment by the Seashore from a Sexually Ambiguous, Possibly Lycanthropic Fop.

In the meantime, Mr. Google Perv, feast your eyes on this: Miss Elia Aboumrad doing yoga, and demonstrating the pose known either as the Upward Dog or the Where-the-Sun-Don't-Shine Salutation. Note her perfectly manicured toenails, the just-so shade of nail polish (is it cranberry? Bordeaux? carmine?).

And the toe ring! As alluring, as erotic, as charged with wanton, sensual import as the anklet Barbara Stanwyck sported in Double Indemnity, or, better still, the pseudo-anklet Audrey Hepburn sported in Love in the Afternoon. We hope, Mr. Google Perv, that it will drive you, just as it did Gary Cooper, mad with jealousy and desire.

Leecketee-Speet: On the Couch with Elia Aboumrad

Elia, hon, we didn’t think we’d have to talk to you again so soon.

It was only two weeks ago that we sat you down, agua de jamaica in hand, because we were quite worried about you during that week’s episode, when Joker-lipped neurotic guest chef Michelle Bernstein criticized your kidney dish for tasting too much like kidneys, and you responded with Marcel-inspired eye-rolling and essentialist arguments about the nature of ingredients. While we understood your reaction, we were concerned that after spending too much time with Marcel, you were developing a little bit of a Jekyll-and-Hyde thing.

To tell you the truth, there was something else in that episode that really worried us, but we didn’t want to mention it, just in case we were wrong. What set off alarm bells was the portion of the Elimination Challenge where you and Carlitos were plating your desserts. You said that you didn’t really like to have people helping you because “too many hands freak me out.”

We immediately thought of that Roman Polanski movie, Repulsion, where Catherine Deneuve is left in her sister’s apartment and goes stark raving mad, walking around in her nightgown, and at one point hallucinating that she is walking through a hallway with rows of hands protruding from the walls and trying to catch her.

We thought to ourselves, Oh no, are we going to see our Elia in the next episode walking through the loft in her nightgown and going stark raving mad in heavily accented English?

Well, we weren’t far wrong, for on the Thanksgiving episode, we had to witness you doing the loca-motion. We understood why you were upset. Tom Colicchio did send you mixed signals during the Quickfire Challenge. He told you that the meat hash and the fruit salad were great and wonderful, and yet he named you one of the losers. (By the way, this combination of hash and fruit salad for Christmas—is this just your family, or this is a Lebanese thing, or a Mexico City thing? We always had tamales and champurrado for Christmas, but perhaps that’s just us.) And Cliff was one of the winners, even though you tasted his food and “speet eet out.”

Unlike others, we don’t think you were just whining. You strike us as far too tough-minded for that sort of thing. As Chef Colicchio so understandingly put it in his blog, you “couldn’t handle losing faith in someone [you] had respected.” That strikes us as rather touching, and we think it struck him the same way, and that he was flattered by it. You can only lose faith if you had it to begin with.

As we say, we understand, and are touched by it. But tell us, was it like when the PRI lost the elections in Mexico for the first time in 60 years? Was it that kind of devastating, upending loss of faith? Because we don’t know how else to explain the moment when you pulled a Deneuve.

You were standing in the kitchen, whisking melted chocolate (presumably to help that ungrateful bitch Spice Rack with her thankless pseudo-crèmes brûlées), and then you suddenly announced, as if you were about to storm the Bastille, “At my school, they taught us never to leeck the wheesk,” which you then proceeded to do.

We have to tell you, for a second there, we thought we had gone from the Deneuve of Repulsion to the Deneuve of Belle de Jour. (First of all, “licking the whisk”? We chose it, right then and there, as our favorite euphemism for certain acts inconceivable to Queen Victoria and legalized by the Supreme Court only three years ago, thus replacing our previous favorite euphemism, “tipping the velvet.”)

And then, as the madness took hold, you proceeded to smear your face with chocolate, and then did an art project in chocolate on your chef’s whites, as if Yves Klein had been raised in Hershey, Pennsylvania.

Do you realize, Elia, that an attractive woman with an accent smearing chocolate all over herself is the reason people went to artsy European films in the 60s? It’s a foodie’s Cinemax, softcore pure and simple, I Am Curious—Chocolate. Can you see why people are Googling “elia aboumrad bikini shot”?

We’re glad that you eventually sorted things out with Chef Colicchio and came to your senses, but Elia, really, we can’t let this happen again. Or if you’re going to pull another Deneuve, at least give the people what they want and wear a bikini while you are having your chocolate-smeared crisis of faith. ¿De acuerdo? It'll make our job a lot easier.

Elia Aboumrad Bikini Shot

NOT!

To the chaps (or fabulous lesbians) who have washed up on the frivolous, parterred shores of this blog after Googling "elia aboumrad bikini shot" (and you know who you are, bless your libidinous little hearts), this is the best we could do for you.

Note the way the steam rises over her heaving, nubile young bosom and that fabulous champignon-colored, asymmetrical-neckline top (sorry, Nabokovian pervs, we couldn't keep up the charade for more than a few words; we felt like David Gest kissing Liza, or Tom kissing Katie).
Note to Padma: this is how you do sexy and body-conscious without looking whorish in the kitchen. This, pace Raggaydy Andy, is how you "look as white-hot as possible while tasting and discussing food."