Project Runway Canada, Not Really My Thing

(We'll return to Top Chef soon.)

So, courtesy of Blogging Project Runway, I got a chance to see the first episode of Project Runway Canada. I'm afraid I haven't bothered watching episode 2.

Okay, in full disclosure, I must admit, I'm not a fan of Iman. Her accent drives me nuts... she's been living in the U.S. (well, with time in England) for 30 years and she still has an accent I find difficult to understand, and I'm sorry if that makes me petty but I don't enjoy listening to her. And, honestly, I don't find her nearly as attractive as others seem to. I know high cheekbones are usually associated with beauty, but hers just don't seem to fit her basic face shape. (On the other hand, at least unlike some models she looks like she eats regularly; she's got a great shape with nice curves and doesn't remind me a skellington as way too many models do these days, and considering her age she looks damn good.)

So, I admit I was a bit predisposed to not enjoy her as a hostess, but really, I don't feel she stacks up to Heidi Klum. Yes, Heidi was a bit awkward in Season 1 of Project Runway. Yes, Heidi's accent was more pronounced then. Yes, given some time, Iman could very well become more polished at it just like Heidi did (by season 3, Heidi was rocking the hostessing like nobody's business, after all). But I still think Heidi's delivery of the stock lines was better even in Season 1... and the lines themselves were a lot better. (That latter may not be Iman's fault in the slightest, though.)

So, there's that.

Then there's their mentor. Brian Bailey may be a really nice guy (there was certainly some evidence of it) but he just is not Tim Gunn. Now, again, I have some bias here: I love Tim Gunn to death in his role on PR, as I've said already. Obviously, it would take someone pretty amazing to come off well in any comparison to him. But... really, Bailey just doesn't do it for me in any way. Again, maybe it's because it's early days. Maybe he'll settle down a lot and turn into a lovable (if obviously far more blunt) mentor in his own right.

I'm afraid I just don't really care enough to find out, though.

Maybe with a season under their belts to polish it up and iron out the wrinkles in the lines they'll start putting out a show I'd like. I mean, first seasons are often awkward, and I didn't see the first season of PR until after I'd seen the second (though I actually like Season 1 better in most ways so I'm not sure that would've mattered). But really, from the judges to the contestants to the clothes themselves I wasn't terribly impressed overall, so I'm not likely to give this one too much more attention for now. If it makes it to a second season, maybe I'll give it another look. (Continue reading...)

Top Chef Contestants Overview: Season 2

My rundown of Season 2's chefs (contains elimination spoilers).

Contestants in Order of Elimination

Chef: Suyai ("Soo-jye") Steinhauer
Personality: She seemed nice, but we didn't get to see her very long.
Cooking: Not enough to be able to tell.
Stand-out moments: Being gleeful about flambé.
Elimination notes: Her nerves got the better of her, which is a shame, but understandable.

Chef: Otto Borsich
Personality: A little weird, but in a nice way.
Cooking: Gone too soon to stand out in any way for me.
Stand-out moments: Lychee-gate (see below).
Elimination notes: Self-eliminated as the combination of the possibly-stolen lychees and his absence while returning them hurt his team.

Chef: Emily Sprissler
Personality: Came off a bit bitchy.
Cooking: Nothing memorable, really.
Stand-out moments: Bitching about having to serve ice cream to kids. Hear my eyes rolling? They are rolling.
Elimination notes: Eliminated for salting her dish into inedibility. Also, honestly, how surf-and-turf is a childhood classic, I don't know.

Chef: Marisa Churchill
Personality: Bland, despite the sex-kitten attempt.
Cooking: Well, you could tell she's a pastry chef.
Stand-out moments: "This is what happens when pastry chefs handle sharp knives."
Elimination notes: Eliminated with teammate Josie for some not-so-great-looking "palate cleansers". Honestly I give her props for having the balls to try to expand herself from "pastry chef" to "top chef", but I didn't really think she'd win.

Chef: Josie Smithe-Malave
Personality: Loud, cheerful, slightly braying.
Cooking: I'm forced to admit I barely remember what she cooked.
Stand-out moments: Her laugh, which was, erm, memorable.
Elimination notes: Eliminated with teammate Marisa for what I also could call a "questionable intermezzo". Sort of a pity, I'd like to have seen what else she could do, provided she didn't laugh anymore.

Chef: Carlos Fernandez
Personality: Seemed like a really nice guy overall
Cooking: Seemed oddly uninspired considering what he went on to do.
Stand-out moments: Sitting around not doing anything besides salad.
Elimination notes: Eliminated for pretty much just sitting around not doing anything besides salad. Now has his own web show, Miami Spice, on which he does more complex dishes in less time... go fig.

Chef: Frank Terzoli
Personality: Macho, prone to bullying.
Cooking: Sloppy, venturing into strange.
Stand-out moments: Threatening Marcel with a beating.
Elimination notes: Shoulda gone when he did the insane Alice in Wonderland thing, IMO, but his poor showing at the beach breakfast got him instead. Also, goodbye bully!

Chef: Mia Gaines-Alt
Personality: Tough lady with a hard past, and it showed, but maybe a little too by design.
Cooking: Sounded really good overall, clearly influenced by Southern styles.
Stand-out moments: Cooking despite being sick; giving up her place for someone else.
Elimination notes: For all that I don't like that she backstabbed people a couple times, I have to give her serious credit for volunteering to go home rather than let Elia—who she considered more talented—be eliminated. If she hadn't left, she might've made it to the finals.

Chef: Betty Fraser
Personality: I thought she was gonna be another Cynthia, but she turned into a screeching harridan instead.
Cooking: Sloppy presentation, comfort-food style, a little one-note.
Stand-out moments: Screeching at Marcel like a harridan. Many times.
Elimination notes: Went home for sloppy, sloppy glasses of boring soup, and aren't we glad?

Chef: Michael Midgely
Personality: Like, um, dude, were, like, you on, like, drugs?
Cooking: Not hugely inventive or particularly notable, but obviously not bad, either.
Stand-out moments: Painkillers improving his focus. Seriously.
Elimination notes: After taking both the Quickfire and Elimination in round 9 with some really good-sounding food, he got sent home the next episode, which seems kinda harsh. I was saying it would be funny if he made it to the top, but it was not to be.

Chef: Cliff Crooks
Personality: Often quiet, but had a temper.
Cooking: Good stuff, most of the time.
Stand-out moments: The Case of the Shaved Head
Elimination notes: Cliff was not eliminated; he was disqualified for breaking the "no aggressive contact" rule. (See commentary below.)

Chef: Elia Aboumrad
Personality: Dedicated and driven, but later showed a petty streak.
Cooking: I really found her ideas to be either serious hits or serious misses, but note that some of what I thought sounded bad was regarded as good.
Stand-out moments: Chocolate facial meltdown; The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: I would have far rather her in the final episode than Ilan, but from what I saw it was fair... the food wasn't bad, it just wasn't what they were looking for.

Chef: Sam Talbot
Personality: Another quiet one, though we saw him snap a few times.
Cooking: Overall, he was decidedly a serious contender for the win.
Stand-out moments: Stupidly bitching out Marcel; not helping Marcel in The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: Definitely should've gone into the finals rather than Ilan; he was robbed. Yes, I'm picking on Ilan. Deal.

Chef: Marcel Vigneron
Personality: Geeky undersocialized annoying little brother type.
Cooking: Not as freaky as you'd expect from a self-proclaimed "molecular gastronomist"; actually interesting and tasty-sounding.
Stand-out moments: Standing up to Betty; rapping on the roof.
Elimination notes: Personally I'd much rather he'd won than Ilan, and it wasn't just because I detest Ilan, but also because I thought his menu, flaws and all, was far more inventive.

Chef: Ilan Hall
Personality: Butthead. I liked him at first, but really? Butthead.
Cooking: One-note. Sorry, but seriously, get another style besides Spanish and put down the Saffron. Yes, it was obviously often good, but seriously.
Stand-out moments: The Case of the Shaved Head.
Elimination notes: Alas, he wasn't eliminated. Second winner of Top Chef.

Overall impressions

This season was full of a lot of very petty and immature people. Two particular things stand out the most.

The Case of the Shaved Head (and why I mention things in relation to Marcel a lot)

Here's what you should know: I didn't really like Marcel that much, but while at first I wanted to just smack him for being another Stephen, it turned out to be more complex than that. Marcel's problem is that he's a geek, and like many geeks, most of his socialization skills are only practiced through talking about what he likes, and therefore are a little lacking. He's also got that "annoying little brother" vibe. If he were a little younger he'd probably get more slack but he needs to grow out of it.

So, I can understand how he rubs so many people the wrong way, but the hand, it was gotten out of considerably, to the point where people were reacting badly to him not being annoying. A lot of people really lost a lot of my respect for how they treated Marcel, and I was pretty sympathetic to him even though I do think he needs to mature some before he's good company.

Then came the episode that Cliff was disqualified for: the Case of the Head Shaving. Apparently, Ilan and Elia decided it'd be fun to shave their heads, and somehow that turned into the idea that it'd be fun to forcibly shave Marcel's admittedly-ridiculous hair off. Cliff made the mistake of holding him down—see what I mean about that "little brother" vibe? I think that Cliff realized he'd gone too far even before he had the sit-down with Colicchio, and in all fairness to him he took his disqualification gracefully and offered what I think was a sincere apology to Marcel (who was in turn reasonably cool about the incident; I think he just wanted everyone to shut up about it so he could get back to cooking).

I seem to recall Colicchio wanted to send them all home (Sam should've intervened and didn't) and was vetoed by the producers.

Aiming for the Middle and Possible Cheating

This was the rest of what bugged me about this season. Overall, as the judges repeatedly pointed out, it seemed like a lot of people weren't cooking to win, but rather cooking to not lose. In addition, there was the possible cheating in the Camp Glucose episode, and some hints that there may've been more of that going on in other episodes. I was not impressed with the dedication of many of the contestants, and if they were cheating on top of it? Bad, bad mojo.

Speaking of cheating, I love that Elia accused Marcel of cheating but couldn't name a single instance. In fact Elia was really the person who disappointed me the most. At first she sort-of-stuck-up for Marcel, who she knew before the show; she admitted he could be annoying but didn't think he was as bad as people made out. Somewhere along the line, though—possibly after her crisis of motivation in the Thanksgiving episode—she stopped playing the cooking game and started playing the Hate Marcel game. When she was involved in the stupid head-shaving incident, I lost all respect for her, but she took it even lower when she made unbackable claims of cheating. At one point I would've been happy if she won, but not after that.

By the end, despite Marcel's annoyance factor, he was the only one I wanted to win. Ilan didn't deserve the win in my opinion, and his head has only been swollen by it. And I was really hoping they'd get a better bunch for Season 3. Luckily, they did, something I'll be posting about soon.
(Continue reading...)

y 1 donut lyk ch4tspk n bad grammer

I mentioned a few posts ago that I really despise chatspeak, but I want now to go into a bit more detail about why.

Here's the thing: web forums, bulletin boards, blog posts, and blog comments are all written media, and therefore to get your point across in them, you have to at least put together basic sentences and paragraphs. So why do so many people not seem to believe this?


Chatspeak... I don't even like it in chat, to be honest, but at least if it's confined there, I sort of understand the point. If you're trying to keep up with a realtime conversation or you really do have a limited number of characters you can put per message, abbreviations make sense. But that only works for a sentence or two; anything beyond that is too much and delves into "skip this mess" territory for me.

Needless to say, this means I skip a lot of posts in certain busy forums (*cough*World of Warcraft*cough*).

People often ask why it's such a problem that they're posting in chatspeak... and it's hard to answer that in a way that really gets the point across. One could point out it's harder to read, but that's countered with "but you know what I mean" (although, truthfully, I don't always). And in some people's opinions (yes, mine included), it's sloppy, which is usually countered with calling the person who claims that an elitist snob. But really, that's what it boils down to: it's far harder to parse and fully understand a paragraph laden with chatspeak and it does come across to many people as lazy because it is a shortcut. And there's a time and a place for shortcuts, but longer text communication is really not it.

But it's not just chatspeak that's the problem. Sometimes it's also just sheer bad grammar and spelling (often mixed with chatspeak, to boot). Now, I'm not expecting everyone to write completely perfect posts; people make mistakes, sometimes habitual ones, and that's fine. But when what you basically have is one long run-on paragraph after another (or worse, several paragraphs worth of stuff in one big one), with a significant number of poorly-spelled words (sometimes so bad that you can't figure out what they were supposed to be) and then mix in some completely bizarro grammar, it becomes pretty hard to really understand what the poster is trying to say.

Which is exactly the reason it's a problem.

Whether it's a discussion or debate or just a quick opinion, the only useful approach is to try to make it as clear as possible. That means wording, yes, but it also means using reasonably correct grammar, spelling, and (please!) punctuation, so that people don't have to struggle to find your meaning. If you look at your post later and realize even you're not sure what you were trying to say, you can be doubly sure that's true of your readers. And even if you do think what you're saying is clear, it can only be clearer for putting some effort into the writing.

(It's also worth pointing out that the Internet is, well, international, and non-native speakers of English (or your posting language of choice) are likely to have a harder time understanding chatspeak, parsing misspelled words, or figuring out the right way to read poor grammar.)

In short (too late!), if you truly want to have people read what you say, make it readable! (Continue reading...)

Top Chef Contestants Overview: Season 1

My rundown of Season 1's chefs (contains elimination spoilers).

Contestants in Order of Elimination

Chef: Kenneth Lee
Personality: Obnoxious jackass.
Cooking: What little we saw was sloppy.
Stand-out moments: Plate-flipping and primal knife-sharpening.
Elimination notes: He deserved it.

Chef: Brian Hill
Personality: Playa.
Cooking: Didn't stand out to me, really.
Stand-out moments: Admiring Candice's ass.
Elimination notes: Mushy carrots? Yeah, bye!

Chef: Cynthia Sestino
Personality: Tough-minded, no-nonsense older lady.
Cooking: A bit disorganized (which may've been circumstantial).
Stand-out moments: Mostly I remember her dealing with her dad's illness, rather than anything about her cooking.
Elimination notes: Went home voluntarily so she could be with her hospitalized dad.

Chef: Candice Kumai
Personality: Bubbly, young.
Cooking: A bit simple but some good ideas.
Stand-out moments: Her knock-down drag-out argument with Stephen.
Elimination notes: Eliminated for not realizing quiche won't stand up to microwaves. Her lack of experience got her, but that's easily curable with time; if she sticks with it, she'll probably be a pretty good chef.

Chef: Lisa Parks
Personality: Another no-nonsense lady, seemed generally focussed.
Cooking: Solid but maybe not spectacular.
Stand-out moments: Being the voice of reason in the kids' challenge.
Elimination notes: Between probably not being used to the time constraints and not having the restaurant experience I think it's not terribly surprising, but I was sad to see her go. I hope she kept cooking.

Chef: Andrea Berman
Personality: Seriously focussed on health-food advocacy, obviously passionate, seemed like a nice woman overall.
Cooking: Showcased her feelings about food, didn't compromise. Some of it was probably pretty tasty.
Stand-out moments: Repeated talks about bowel movements.
Elimination notes: Eliminated twice, once in episode 2, where it was too early to tell for sure how good she'd be, then again in episode 6. Probably a bit too focussed on the health food to make it to the end, but you gotta give her props for sticking to her ideals.

Chef: Miguel Morales
Personality: Class clown.
Cooking: Not much stood out, but it seemed solid.
Stand-out moments: Chunk La Funk, Master of Junk Food.
Elimination notes: As was pointed out, he tended to avoid leadership roles. I imagine he makes a superb chef tournant, but as for Top Chef? He didn't quite seem motivated enough for that.

Chef: Stephen Asprinio
Personality: Self-involved avant garde snob
Cooking: Too frou-frou foam and art for me, though in fairness from comments I gather it was often good.
Stand-out moments: Arguing with Candice; boring diners at Restaurant Wars.
Elimination notes: "This is Top Chef, not Top Sommelier!" He needed to focus on cooking, and too often, he didn't.

Chef: Lee Anne Wong
Personality: Tough, strong, frank, cool.
Cooking: I wish I could've tasted most of her dishes (save the ones using ingredients I don't care for); they seemed to be superb overall.
Stand-out moments: Actually I can't think of one particular stand-out moment, but she was overall the chef I'd most like to meet personally.
Elimination notes: She was robbed. Seriously, she was my personal pick to go to the top and while I suppose I can't disagree that last dish was a little busy, I still think she should've gone to the finale.

Chef: Dave Martin
Personality: Frazzled, emotional.
Cooking: Solid and tasty if not exactly upscale. Tied with Lee Anne for "dishes I most wanted to taste regularly".
Stand-out moments: "I'm not your bitch, bitch." (Letting Tiffani know how he felt about her behavior towards him.)
Elimination notes: Even though technically he didn't follow the rules, I still think he was robbed, too, since clearly the dishes he did put out were considered better than Tiffani's.

Chef: Tiffani Faison
Personality: Bitch. But, let's be fair; after the season was over she seemed to get a lot better.
Cooking: I will give her this: she made some really good-looking and good-sounding food. Whatever her other flaws, she clearly can cook.
Stand-out moments: Lying about back-stabbing Miguel; interrupting everyone at the reunion.
Elimination notes: Sorry to say, I was glad she lost because I didn't like her, but if I'm being fair, she did take a lot of risks in that finale and obviously put out some quality food.

Chef: Harold Dieterle
Personality: Quiet, shy, occasionally snarky.
Cooking: Mostly seemed to be really good.
Stand-out moments: "I'm a chef, not a..." It was like Dr. McCoy, only a chef.
Not-eliminated notes: First winner of Top Chef, and clearly someone who deserved it, even if I still wish Lee Anne had won.

Overall impressions

The personalities were many and varied, a good mix overall. I think you're always going to get a few people who are bitchy, if for no other reason than competition tends to bring out people's bad sides; likewise, the arrogance was no surprise, since it takes a certain amount of arrogance to think you can win something like this. It was nice to see a mix of experience and lack thereof, though obviously the lack thereof was a significant handicap for people.

Stephen was definitely the person most people disliked the most, but he actually redeemed himself a bit with me when he apologized to Candice during the reunion. He's still a snob, but he seems to have tempered it a bit with a dose of reality.

Dave was someone I was glad to see in the top, in part because he wasn't about the upscale dining. I think he gets too emotional to really be great at running a kitchen, but he definitely found the right career to switch to in terms of skill and passion. It was terrific to see someone who re-invented himself go so far, and it was seeing that that made me think this was a show that really was more about the food (though subsequent seasons dented that feeling a bit).

Lee Anne remains my favorite chef from all three seasons, and I'm really tickled she went on to continue being involved with the show behind the scenes; she also writes one of my favorite blogs about the show. She also does a great weekly video on how to cook the winning dish, The Wong Way to Cook (link goes to Season 3's finale dish, so, uh, spoiler).

I think all the chefs were dedicated and passionate (yes, even the ones I didn't like), which was nice, because it was really what the show was supposed to be about. Too bad that didn't necessarily carry over to Season 2, which I'll be posting about shortly. (Continue reading...)