ARGH

Bullwhorefuckshitballs. Come on. No way, no way is Hosea the Top Chef. And no, Bravo, I'm not buying the whole "sweet doofy Midwestern kid" bit--not when you gave Leah the temptress edit so that we'd still sympathize with Hosea (engaged guy and girl with a boyfriend--if cheating goes down, the engaged party is the one committing the greater sin). Screw Hosea. Stefan cooked circles around him the whole competition. Is Stefan a cocky jerk? Yes. But is he the better chef? Also yes.

This show has got to start taking past performance into account. At least in the finale, for chrissakes.

Oh, and what did Casey do? Did she gain weight? Change her makeup? Her face was--I don't get it. Maybe the newly tiny eyebrows. Girl was looking rough--which, for Casey, means "pretty pretty" instead of "pretty pretty pretty," but it was still a bit odd. Perhaps I'm revealing that I never cared for Casey much, but I just can't quite figure out what was so off about her tonight (besides, you know, all the terrible advice and continuation of the Casey Curse). What was off about her (aesthetically)?

The Greatest Tragedy of Our Lives

I am in mourning. Fabio Viviani, indisputably the best Top Chef cheftestant EVER, has been eliminated. My love for Fabio, you must understand, trumps even my adoration of Season 3's CJ. Fabio is gone, and Season 5 is officially much less interesting, and it will be a hard, hard slog forcing myself to care enough to watch the finale next week.

I have decided I will root for Carla, not because I don't find her annoying (I do), but because I want to see what kind of craziness she'll pull out the instant she wins. Alas, I can only dream, for I'll be damned if Stefan doesn't have this one in the bag, no matter how much Bravo tries to fool us with "Stefan is the VILLAIN!" editing. I wasn't fooled when they did it to Hung, and Stefan just gets too many hugs and kisses from all the cheftestants (except Hosea) to really be that bad a guy.

Hosea, of course, merits no doubt-benefiting, as his idiotic conduct has forever cheapened the classiness that allows me to put up with the technical "reality TV" distinction of Top Chef--though said cheapening isn't entirely his and Leah's fault. I'm looking at you, Diet Dr Pepper Quickfire Challenge. I'll concede that it is the nectar of the gods, but come ON.

I have bemoaned my Fabiolessness long enough here, but I can at least take solace in the likelihood of a TV show starring my favorite cheftestant. Amuse-Biatch reassures me that a Fabio TV project is pretty much an open secret in the Top Chef-verse, and, as AB so aptly points out, "Television was invented so that Fabio could go on it."

Bad Soundtrack

I was flipping through the upper channels on my boyfriend's cable (I was hoping that maybe he got The N back so that I could watch Degrassi.) I had to pause on FitTV on a show that the cable box insists is called simply Legs and Glutes. So I sat there for a minute and watched the happy exercisey people do bicycle crunches and lunges while "Linger" played in the background. A weird, synth-y workout "Linger."

Why would anyone want to tone their glutes to the Cranberries?

Hypothesis

He wanted to know "the deal with single women and babies."

So I said, "Okay. You know when you're six? You're watching Saturday morning cartoons and a commercial break comes. You sit there on the couch--we're 21 now, so this is pre-Tivo, and you have to watch the commercials--and you watch, like, eight of them, and you're just fine. Still stationary. But then the ninth one comes, and suddenly every fiber of your body is freaking out, and you're scrunching your knees up to your chest and rocking back and forth, eyes bugged out, grabbing the first person that passes, pointing and begging, 'NOW! I need one of those now. You don't even understand. I need one of those, and I need it RIGHT NOW.'"

And then he understood perfectly.

Totally Looks Like

(See? I'm hep to the crazes.)

It wasn't until after Jeff McInnis was eliminated from Top Chef that I finally, finally figured out who he reminded me of.


Jeff McInnis


Larry Birkhead

Credit and credit.

Reinforcing the Stereotype

18th-century Georgia was a very small place, which explains why, upon poking around in my genealogical records, I was able to find a woman I am related to at least nine different ways.