Top Chef - Season 4 - Episode 1

A new Top Chef! Hooray!

OK, a few quick notes:

1) I have no idea why I like this show, but I love it. I mean, let us count the ways, shall we? I am not a foodie, I barely go out to restaurants, ever (and when I do it's for $6 Mexican), and I am pretty tragically close to cooking-challenged. At home, entertaining for only myself and my spider plants, I basically make the same three meals over and over (and - ahem - one of them is a salad). But I am serious: if Javier Bardem were standing there threatening my life with that scuba-tank gun thingy of his, I probably still wouldn't even be able to boil a pot of water. And then I would be dead.

So, my point is I really like the show.

2) Let me be the first one to cast a nice big Shirley Jackson Lottery stone and say that I am really kind of glad that Minna was the first to go. It could have something to do with my being the second-most-insecure person on the planet, but - and I know I cannot speak for you - but I really wanted to see the most insecure person go down. Not that it was joyful for me, but still she had to go. It's so sad: I should be sympathetic, but I think it's some weird instinct for weeding out the weak.

You know, I watched the coolest documentary over the weekend, The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, and these birds were - at the risk of sounding positively Californian - just awesome. They paired up and chose mates, and cared for each other, and cleaned each other, and had all these little sixth-grade fights and then got back together again. It was very sweet. Sweet, that is, until one of them got old and lame, and then all the others ganged up on him and tried to peck the sick little parrot to bits.

So, I guess that's kind of how I felt watching Minna. It's not fair, or nice, but there it is. I blame some strange fucked-up evolutionary wiring. I mean if these cute little parrots do it, then I'm basically in the clear.

3) I also love the soothing sultry Padma. I mean, after watching a whole Runway season of the dead-eyed Heidi with her pigeon English baby-talk, and the I-Can't-Believe-You're-on-TV-and-You-Don't-Use-a-Leave-in Nina, I am so ready for Padma. She is so expressive with her eyes, and dark and soulful, like some desert sheik-ess. She has this incredible warm heart and does not seem at all like those cerebral ice-sculpture judges on Runway. Maybe it's just me, projecting again, but I don't get the impression that she enjoys cutting you off at the knees on national television. And, to top it off, she's got that cool and crazy scar that invites all kinds of mystery: Was she in a knife fight? Was she attacked by a shark? Did she survive a tragic tumble into a glacial crevasse?! No, no, don't tell me; I don't want to know! It would ruin the mystique!

So, it's off to a good start. Here's to sharpened knives, people.

~~~~~

Backed into a Corner

So, today's the day after Superficial Tuesday. Let's just call it Whatever Wednesday. On the personal front, my back is still screaming in agony. I am starting to walk in a weird funny sideways way, like I'm inching across a slippery log spanning a ravine, all the while leaning to the right to avoid the poisonous adders in the hanging vines above me. Briefly, after a really great massage from my friend, I had the smallest road-flare of hope that it was getting better. But now, it has plummeted again into agony.

Speaking of agony, after watching all the of the returns on Tuesday, I am feeling very tempted to say "poor Obama," although I think I can hear the entire Pioneer Valley scoffing as I type this, choking on their hummus pitas and B-complex/spirulina smoothies.

I don't know what to think about what happened yesterday, Hillary taking three states to Obama's one. I mean, I think her negative campaigning worked, that's what I think. And that's what's kind of sad. Part of me admires her fightingness, her Hillary Swank Million Dollar Baby-ness, but part of me thinks that it's less of an underdog story and more of a Anakin-Skywalker-becomes-Darth-Vader story. The age old tale of power at any cost. The age old tale of best intentions, of thinking to oneself, "I'll do whatever I have to do to seize power (for the greater good), but once I get it - then I'll go back to the old me." Which never works.

Hillary, just spend the four bucks and go rent the Lord of the Rings.

Now I know Obama is not some kind of victimized saint. I am plenty well aware that Obama is a politician like any other. Although he is very good at making it seem entirely natural, I can still smell the false sincerity in his constantly magnanimous gestures and words to Hillary, always complimenting her, never taking the bait to fight. Although I have to say, fake or no, it was kind of refreshing to see a politician not take the lowest road. But, lately, as Obama has continued to just passively sit there - like the family St. Bernard being ear-tugged and punched by some bratty diapered two-year-old - I have really started to miss the Obama of a few weeks ago.

Remember that one? The one who gave all those great speeches? The one who rallied something in the pit of your stomach when you heard him talk? The one who stopped giving all those great speeches the moment people made a big stink about part of it being written by someone else? Well, I think he shouldn't have stopped. I think people liked him because of his speeches, not in spite of them. I think that's how he shines. And I also think it made him look that much more guilty to have stopped.

I don't think I am terribly rallied or excited by this new speechless version of Obama. When he sits there now, decidedly not speechifying, and not being combative or riled - well, it feels like listening to someone explain how your tax return works. There's this colorless, desaturated quality to his voice when he's just speaking like a regular person. I don't think we want a regular person: it is precisely because he tapped into this more-human-than-human quality that people ran - no, stampeded - to the polls, shoving the very young and the very old out of the way to get there. But now, it seems, there's not enough there there, as someone famously said. So, thank you, Obama, for this very calm and civil version of yourself but I, and the rest of the country, will take a pass. Move over Obama 2.0, we're more than ready for version 3.0.

Which brings us back to negative campaigning. Obama 3.0 has no choice. He is gonna have to go negative. Hillary's got him backed into a corner. I spoke earlier about Obama so far managing to avoid taking the low road, which I think he laudably has. But the game has changed now. He's going to have to do something different. Because, these last two weeks, Hillary not only has taken the lowest road, she has taken it in a dragster. And, ahem, guess who won the most states? Sadly, it seems it the negative campaigning that actually works, and Hillary knows this and is not afraid to use it. So now she has Obama backed backed into a corner, punching like an angry joey, and still Obama is not yet ready to take off the gloves.

...

Now it is early Thursday morning. Not much has changed in the last 24 hours, except that my back is still on strike. I dreamt last night that I accidentally set my friend's house on fire, although I don't know what that means. But I do think that Obama's house, figuratively speaking, is ever so slightly on fire. And that's the thing about a burning house: it's either on fire or it isn't, there's no such thing as house being a little bit on fire. So, Obama, once again, we appreciate your calmness and your attempt to maintain order, your willingness to walk calmly to the exit. But sometimes it is good to scream and to run, and to throw a few punches along the way. Sometimes it is called for. At the very least it is time, my friend, for the bucket brigade.

Although, you will understand that I cannot be of much help, what with my back and all.

~~~~~

Super(ficial) Tuesday

Hey there.

Well, today is the day. It's our latest Super Tuesday. It's either gonna be Shrillary or Obama. I kind of wish this was all decided several weeks ago, when I still kind of liked at least one of the candidates (guess which one). But unfortunately, as will happen, the more time you spend looking under the hood the more nervous you become about your purchase.

So now I'm in the place of starting to not like either one. Let's all hurry up and pick one of them and just hope for the best. I'm sure they will both be fine, that neither will drunkenly run this oil-tanker of a country into the rocky, egret-laden shores of the world. That's already been done by His Bushiness. No one can fuck things up the way he did, even if they tried. That guy had a talent.

But what I am really afraid of is that no one is perfect, that there really are no heroes, that behind the curtain of even the best speeches and promises is just another withered soul trying to win, just another politician pulling at the levers, trying to gauge the public response. I would love to have someone I believed in, who didn't come apart at the seams when you started tugging on them (like they were made in China and sold at Walmart), but maybe that person doesn't exist.

Maybe it's all an ideal, this grand illusion we have of an inspiring and perfect JFK-type leader. Even JFK had lots of dirt, behind the scenes. Maybe it's just me, but I would much rather have a guy with a healthy sex life (even if it is secret) so long as his policies put people first. Plus, at least they will be totally calm and relaxed while making important decisions. They won't be standing there, all repressed, channeling their unexpressed aggression into raids on Nicaragua, or whatever.

Anyway, today's the day...

Democracy - woo-hoo.

~~~~~