Spranda Factory

Top Chef has long been one of the best shows on television and Season 6 was without a doubt the best one yet.  Season 7 however has been colossally shitty.  Making matters worse, the Facebook fan page for the show pours salt on this festering wound by relentlessly polluting my news feed with stupid questions.  To try and capture what’s wrong with this season of Top Chef, I have gone ahead and answered 13 of these inane questions posted by the Bravo social media knuckleheads.  Let’s dance…

• Q:  What did you think about the premiere? Do you already have your favorites?
• A:  What did I think?  I thought the premiere was a fucking joke.  How dare you serve us such an incompetent band of worthless clowns on the heels of Top Chef 6?  The top 10 finishers from last season could straight-up own the best of these fools on Season 7.  Just an Epic Fail on the part of the producers in charge of casting the show.

• Q:  Is Angelo too cocky for his own good or is his bragging justified?
• A:  Thanks for trying to serve me this helping of made-up Bravo drama bullshit.  I’ll pass.  Instead of focusing on food and culinary skill, Bravo is trying to turn this into The Real Housewives in chefs’ whites.  For the record, I would support the cast of The Real Housewives of (Disgraced Metropolis X) being issued 12 inch chefs knives.

• Q:  What was your favorite lunch at school?
• A:  Stupid question.  School lunch sucked ass.

• Q:  Were you happy with the judges’ decision last night?  Do you think things should have gone differently?
• A:  How the hell should I know?  Unlike previous seasons where you actually show us the details of the judges’ deliberations, we hardly see a damn thing this time.  You have to log on to Bravo’s Top Chef website to get the real talk about the food.  Hey geniuses, WE CAN’T RECOGNIZE WHAT IS GOOD AND WHAT IS BAD IF YOU DO NOT HAVE YOUR JUDGES TALKING ABOUT IT IN SOME MEASURE OF DETAIL.  I would much rather watch the judges discussing what worked and what didn’t than watch these talentless fucks strut around their apartment and posture for one another.

• Q:  Want a backstage tour of the Top Chef 7 set?
• A:  No

• Q:  Should Top Chef contestants be skilled in pastries?
• A:  I’d settle for Top Chef contestants that are skilled in cooking.

• Q:  Double Elimination tonight. Who do you think the doomed duo is going to be?
• A:  That’s an easy one.  My girlfriend and I, who will sit down to suffer through another hour of this train wreck, clinging to the vain hope that the focus will at some point shift from made-up drama to the food.

• Q:  We loved seeing Mike Isabella and Bryan Voltaggio on last week’s episode, it got us thinking, “What are our favorite cheftestants from last season doing now?”
• A:  Shaking their heads in disgust someplace.

• Q:  We can all agree that presentation is important. What makes the best plates ‘pop’ visually?
• A:  That’s it…focus on the visuals since no one actually talks about food on the show anymore.

• Q:  We’re starting to think this season’s chefs are the cockiest yet. Take a look and let us know if you agree!
• A:  I think that this season’s production team is the cockiest yet if they expect the food-loving audience of Top Chef to enjoy this steaming cauldron of shit.  Is it too much to ask to show Tom Colicchio speaking more than 10 words in 60 minutes of television?

• Q:  What’s the craziest ingredient you’ve ever tackled? Anything as exotic as these Quickfire challenge ingredients?
• A:  I once cooked a ’69 Camaro on the side of the 405.  It tasted like gasoline, burned rubber and other manly things…things that have no place in this season of Top Chef.

• Q:  The Pea Puree Controversy of 2010 continues… Do you think Alex took Ed’s dish?
• A:  If there is an idiot who would steal peas, surely they would be on this season of Top Chef.

• Q:  Do you ever hear the judges’ comments and think, “Way harsh, Tai!” Uh, so do we. Take a look at this season’s cattiest critiques so far:
• A:  “Cattiest” critiques?  Just about everything that makes this season of Top Chef suck can be summed up in this post.  It’s Bravo’s idiot Housewife-crazed executive team trying to turn Top Chef into every other mindless shitfest that pits one vacant over-privileged media whore against another.  I mean, seriously.  What the fuck is this?  If I ever so much as think, “Way harsh, Tai (who or what the fuck is Tai anyway?),” I pray that someone loves me enough to strike me down with a blunt object.

That’s all I can stomach for now…and you can spare me your “If you don’t like it then don’t watch it” talk.  This is nothing but tough love from a pissed off fan and foodie.  If you like watching people bitch at one another and fight over nonsense there are countless options on television to meet your…taste.  Let’s leave this quality show alone.  Here’s hoping that as the cast is trimmed down that they will have no choice but to shift the focus back to the food.

No doubt, the most offensive part of summer vacation when you’re a kid is the month of August when those god forsaken back to school ads start to run. “Hey kids. You know all that fun you’re having right now? Well just a quick reminder that all that shit is about to come to an end…in 4 weeks.” Thanks assholes. Thanks for dangling that sword over my head for the entire month of August.  The worst part about these ads is that they inevitably depict a bunch of happy-ass kids acting like going back to school is the best thing since pony parties and banana splits.  And how much back to school shopping do you really need to do?  Use your backpack from last year, swipe a notebook and a pencil from your folks and you’re good to go.

If ever there was a group of professionals begging to be outsourced, it’s in-house IT Techs.  It’s like there’s a mandatory elective course in “Bitchy and Difficult 101″ in the curriculum of every computer science program in America.  Tell me the most difficult person you work with at your company isn’t your IT guy and I’ll slap you in the nuts for being a dirty liar.  Every time you ask one of these knuckleheads to lift a finger they act like you just asked them to unclog a shitty toilet.  Hey asshole, if you had set the computer up right in the first place, maybe you wouldn’t have to be called away from your busy schedule of forwarding obscene video clips and trading bootleg software to come fix my shit.  And yes, I already tried restarting.  Save that stupid question for those in the office born before 1960.

Thank God for India.  May all of our IT jobs end up on the polite, educated shores of our Indian allies.

You can go ahead and move this one right to the top of my list of “Least Favorite Sounds in the World,” dudes audibly straining over bowel-movements in public restrooms.  Jesus Christ guys, either keep that shit down or mix in some fiber.  We don’t need you broadcasting your constipation while we’re trying to have a nice quiet moment of relief in the john.  Have you no decency or shame?

Here in America, the mainstream news media is good for a few things.  Reporting the actual news in an intelligent and reasonable manner is not one of them.  However, when it comes to stirring the pot of full-blown hang-onto-your-ass, lock yourself in the basement hysteria, they wield a power ordinarily reserved for iron-fisted dictators.  The latest example of this bullshit fear-mongering is all of the carrying on about this swine flu.  Swine flu?  Give me a fucking break.  More people die in wood-chipper accidents each year than from the swine flu.  More people die from the regular flu each day than have died from the swine flu in the last week.  Put your hard-on back into your collective pants and mix in some real news.  Isn’t our economy still in the shitter?  Can we do something about these Harvard MBA cocksuckers who are still free after engineering this debacle?

The only thing more pathetic than the irresponsible response from the American news media has been the actions of a number of third world governments who have decided that they are going to exterminate all of their pigs.  Never mind the fact that you don’t catch swine flu from pigs.  Can’t we just ship these pigs to the starving people in the world?  You know, the people in those countries where millions of their people die from malaria each year.  I’m sure they’d be happy to take your pigs.  Dumbasses.

No pigs were harmed in the writing of this blog post.

One hell of a haircut.

Man, there is nothing better than a good makeover.  Check out this ad I found on the front page of MSN.com today.  These wizards took a fat, downtrodden-looking, white woman and turned her into a thin, happy, hip, black woman.  Fucking amazing!  America!  What a country!

Seriously…does anyone review these photos before these kunckleheads post them online?  Clearly the economic downturn has not claimed enough jobs yet.

Manhattan Beach – Flo Thompson of Redondo Beach was left in furious hysterics this morning when Hermosa Beach resident Sonny Kipgen dared to merge in front of her car.  The two’s unlikely meeting came via a detour on their regular route to work, which was shut down by police activity.  “I could see that cars were merging, so I got real close to the truck in front of me to make sure no one could get in, ” Flo explained, her jowels still quivering with rage.  “But when he kept rolling forward I had to stop.  What a fucking asshole!”

Kipgen laughed and danced a gleeful jig when asked to recount the story.  “Yeah I pulled in front of her.  We were merging.  God forbid one more car separate her from her destination.”  When Kipgen looked into his rear view mirror he saw Thompson, “pitching a fit.  Man, you would have thought that I just walked into her house and shit on her rug.  It was fucking hillarious!”

“He thought it was a big joke.  I could see him in his car laughing at me,” Thompson wailed.  “I don’t like cars getting in front of me!”

Kipgen seemed genuinely surprised at Thomson’s reaction.  “Man…all this over one car getting in front of you?  What is that…like two more seconds added to your commute?  Motherfuckers who don’t respect the zipper should take the bus.”

Yesterday I took my first sick day from work in over six years.  Today I took my second.  It’s remarkable how this rest thing actually works.  I’m feeling much better already.  Anyhow, they say you learn something new every day, and this holds true even when the entirety of that day is spent in bed watching television and napping.  Here’s what I learned:

• Idiots are still not getting their children vaccinated because they’re afraid that it causes autism.  Seriously people?  There is zero scientific evidence to support this claim.  Stop getting the responsible parents’ kids sick with your infected spawn’s nineteenth-century diseases just because you get your parenting advice from Jenny McCarthy.
• Michelle Obama touched the Queen of England.  This was apparently the most important thing that happened in the world today.  I guess that’s good news for our troops in the war zone.
• Former Denver Broncos quarterback Jay Cutler is a big fucking crybaby who doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut.  (I actually learned this over the course of the last few weeks but he was spewing more “poor me” bullshit yesterday so he makes the list.)
• Insomniacs usually cannot sleep because A) that “certain part” of their anatomy is too small, B) they’re experiencing financial trouble, C) they’re too fat.  I forgot how much I missed television at 4:00 am.
• Ron Burgundy…er…I mean Paul Moyer is leaving KNBC.  Read the first comment at the end of this LA Times story for my thoughts.
• The weird pinching feeling on my shoulder blade isn’t a tumor.  Ok, I had to sneak out to the doctor for this one.
• Staying home when you’re sick was way more fun when you were a kid.  Yet another reason I should invest in an X-Box.
• Facebook is more entertaining when you’re ignoring actual work.  When you stare at it all day it loses its luster…fast.
• Barack Obama is still the man.  Seriously, how nice was it to see our president talking with foreign leaders without feeling overcome by the douche-chills?
• I’m getting soft in my old age.  Sick days?  Man up and get back to work!

Can’t we all just agree that this “Blister in the Sun” by Violent Femmes should never, ever be played anywhere ever again?  This song is the musical equivalent of the presidency of George W. Bush, a stupid, witless exercise that for some inexplicable reason caught fire with the mouth-breathers.  I would round up every last copy of this shitty song and drop them all out the back of a cargo plane, into a volcano.  Existing MP3 files would be encoded with some kind of self-destruct feature that removed the file and replaced it with “Thunder Island” by Jay Ferguson.  The Violent Femmes would be ordered to become a Jay Ferguson cover band or face exile to Siberia.  Violent Femmes is no more.  Your band is now named…Indian Summer.  See you at the next wedding.