given recent rigors and distractions, i’m sad to report that only a media object with the ability to bring my ire to level Code Black Scarlet is going to get any airtime here. Milk-and-cookies/funtime/happyandorlight topics are just not going to play. Fortunately, a few participants in season 2 of bravo’s top chef have pushed me over the cliff, so it’s time to rage against the dying of the (gas stove) light.
Tom welcomes himself to the limit.
summary: top chef is a cooking-based competition reality show. so: rockstar, with food; project runway without heroin, teutonic lisping and with 2% less pretentiousness. it’s hostedit was hosted by Billy Joel’s eight or tenth wife (and is now hosted by Idon’tknowwho) but most importantly features celebrity chef/badass Tom Colicchio[1] (of Craft-restaurant fame) as head judge. Every episode, the contestants (who are allegedly cooking “pros” in some way shape or form but who routinely manage to burn water not let the souffle rise with sufficient airiness) have challenges (solo for immunity, in teams for the 2nd round) and there’s winners and losers. Someone goes home every episode, generally. It’s good fun — doubly so with a wine bottle in hand, quadruply so with a “double” in tum. Top Chef!
Kelley got me into the show late last season, at a time when there were probably only six competitors left. By then, much of the chafe had already failed to follow the core rule[2] and had boiled off into the stratosphere, and it was basically a speed trial / power grind to the finish. This season I got in at episode two, and I’m still neck-deep in the knuckleheads. And it’s depressing.
Take this all-American Reject, who I’ll call “the Reject”. 
I know people come in all sorts of IQ-related shapes and sizes, and God bless us all or whatever, right? There are truly brilliant people in the world, and there are people smart enough[3] to know they are idiots and are humbled by it. There’s a vast mass of people who are of average intelligence and don’t really have any innate sense of their own self-intelligence-awareness, and just sort of float through life without being overly offensive.
Then there are people who are so profoundly stupid that they have no idea they’re stupid. They have awareness of the concept of stupidity, but don’t think they’re that way. In fact, in the worst cases, they may think they’re of average intelligence. In the most tragic case, the fools may consider themselves clever or even smart.
The Reject is a dumb dumb-person, yet fooled-into-self-cagery.
Calling Reject a mongoloid would be an insult to mongoloids, not because of my bothering to use the analogy of “mongoloid” to “person of sub-average intelligence”, but because of this guy’s IQ in relation to the average mongoloid IQ would insult the mongoloid; that is to say, the mongoloid would look at the Reject and say (or more likely howl, via the mongoloid rage-attack): “doo, I’m na’ da’ dumb!”
In every episode I’ve seen, the Reject schleps around, whines about missing his family, and makes round after round of nauseating-looking (and tasting, per the judges) food. When the judges are in private quarters, they make comments to each other like “I just don’t get the sense [the Reject] is serious about this.” When Reject is on the spot, they’re all: “Are you serious about this show? No one kidnapped you to put you here, you know…”, and the Reject invariably acts shocked and somewhat offended. Like, what, my appetizer featuring a phallic-looking cheet-oh imbedded into a mashed up mess of bbq corn nuts wasn’t appetizing, wasn’t somehow legitimate?”
The Reject would have been voted off by now (the third or fourth episode), except a few other truly criminally insane individuals needed to burn off in the first few rounds… people with even less sympathy-building potential than the Reject. However, after one of reject’s friends was voted off in episode 3, Reject announced aloud, “…man… me and Colicchio are going to come to blows before this is all over.”
I’d like to step in, Deus Ex Machina-style, like Kant’s wisdom parting the cloudcover and waking whoever (Hume, maybe?) from his dogmatic slumbers. I want to share this moment of insight with the Reject, because I know he’s out there and I don’t think the Top Chef contestants live in the total black vault lockdown of American Idol stylings, so he can be reading this. And I implore you: Read this, Reject, because it may save your soul:
You are not going to come to blows with Tom Colicchio, Reject. He’s the star of the show Top Chef, the show you are on. Like a lot of celebrities / chefs (artists, basically), he’s maybe a little arrogant [4] because of his constant suggestion to use morels, but not excessively so. He’s written books; I know this, because I’ve bought them and read them. Someone else may have actually written the book, or he may have, but it doesn’t matter - because Colicchio’s name and image is on the cover. He has like two dozen restaurants around the world. He’s the hetero, chef-version Bob Mould.
You, in stark comparison, are a Reject. You sleep in late when you should be up and competing, can’t speak in complete sentences, mutter and babble, and have, by comparison, zero restaurants to your name. You repeatedly indicate that you don’t understand what the judges mean when they criticize you for not being serious. You are either being non-laughably insincere (5% chance) or you lack the necessary requirements (IQ higher than 35) to understand how far off course you are (95%). I should pity you, but I can’t — because you’re totally in my face.
Finally - you persist on the show (we’re now post episode 4) because someone (my next object of scorn for next time around) cheated last episode and got caught, and Tom (and I didn’t agree with this move, but it’s not my show either[5]) decided to send no one home that round.
Reject: your day is done, your hour has passed. There is no turning the boat around. Eject, Reject. Eject, Reject, Eject.
rds
[1] At least half the reason I like the show is Colicchio, who is cool and direct without being over the top. He’s cooking’s Bob Mould, and he looks it… just slightly less gay.
[2] DON’T GET ELIMINATED.
[3] My category.
[4] I don’t know that he is. Hey, I’m arrogant sometimes. Tom certainly isn’t compared to that nightmare on Hell’s Kitchen or that squeaking, sexless Muppet on the 30 Minute Meal.
[5] Were it, there would have been a minimum two ejections last week, perhaps more — for fun.
[images]
The passing of a great man, with a greatness defined equally by his failures and triumphs.
