Hello everybody, and welcome back. Did you all have a lovely Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Drunken Depressive Blackout? Did Santa bring you the perfect gift, such as booze and gift cards, or did you wind up with something far less desirable, like crabs or a subpoena? Me, I was busy packing on a few more pounds because I still have two pairs of jeans left that fit me, and apparently my body's intention is to eventually become a "before" picture and wear nothing but sweatpants. Okay, I'll admit it: I've been doing some depression eating since the finale, but can you blame me?...

...especially after everything this non-clapping dickbag put us through?...

...Yes, tonight is the highly-touted, heavily promoted and ultimately boring-ass Top Chef Reunion show. I'm not complaining (unfairly), I'm just trying to set reasonable expectations here, people... these are the equivalent of the hated "clip-show" your favorite sitcoms used to trot-out whenever their writers would have a dry spell... and for this reason Reunion shows are notoriously difficult to recap. I'd be lying if I said I wasn't a tad nervous writing this, I've seen people get a little het up over this situation in the not-too-distant past. That being said, I'm gonna do my best (and also give a quick shout-out back to Leia LaBiblia who knows all too well what I'm working with here) and see if we can't make some filet mignon (or at least a filling meatloaf) out of this cheap-grade ground beef after the jump...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef Reunion: 'Cuz This Is Filler, Filler Night" »

Posted by J-Mo at 8:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Hi 'Gasmii. *sigh* Where does the time go? It can't possibly be a full six months that we've been meeting here to talk about Top Chef in one form or another, can it? Have we really been sitting here for twenty-four weeks straight analyzing the challenges, arguing about our favorite chefs and generally talking trash about people we've never met? Okay, I guess I'm initiating most of the trash talking and judgmental behavior here, but I don't really think you can fully blame me. I quit smoking and then each ass cheek gained 20 pounds and now my poor office chair gives out a very audible groaning sigh every time I plop down to write another one of these recaps (I swear it almost sounds like "Ugh, you fat biiiiiitch"). But between the misunderstood vices, sex battles, patriotic soldiers, fussy Frenchmen, cowboy cookouts, deconstructed magicians, dinner parties, porky pinots, restaurant slaughter wars, vegetarian movie stars, casino circuses, culinary Olympics and crush parties, is it any wonder that we're all flirting with exhaustion?...

...DirtyBear looks like I feel: fuckin' fat & tired...

Okay, well, if I'm being honest, I look pretty fat & tired, too. You know, I've been pretty impressed with this season, it seems like they really put quite a bit of thought into the challenges and made the prizes worthwhile, and the talent pool has been far deeper than in any other season of this show.... which is why it was all the more disheartening to watch it all go to shit in the last episode. You're not going to believe some of the fuckery they pull after the jump...

...and this is what many of us will want to do to ourselves by the end...

Let's reiterate for a second what the three finalists are competing for: Food & Wine magazine feature, $100,000.00 in Macy's merch, $125,000.00 in cold hard erectile cash and title of Top Chef. Plus the opportunity to come back as a guest judge in the next several seasons of the show to be megabitchy and make other poor hopeful chefs feel like shit. Slight bit of pressure here.

At the Meritage Resort, the guys are all waking up and getting ready for the day, and DirtyBear's feeling good, he's really excited that he's one of the last three standing, and he's also feeling pretty confident since he's got the best record of all three (four QuickFire wins, five Elimination wins). You might think he's getting ready to be all braggy and boasty and cocky and Michael-esque, but you'd be wrong, because he immediately mentions that Big Volt is an excellent cook and has amazing technique, while he says Li'l Volt is "one of the single most creative people I've ever met in my entire life."...

...I'd agree, a hundred bucks says he's thinking about cutting one of those bagels in half and making a pair of eyeglasses out of them...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef Finale: Million Dollar Bear" »

Posted by J-Mo at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (46)

What's up, people? Are you all in the midst of your holiday craze yet? Last night I was outside putting my pretty sparkly lights up at 3:00am. Was I on meth? No, sillies, meth makes you skinny, therefore you can take one look at me and tell I don't touch the stuff. Plus, I still have all my own teeth. No, I just found it easier than doing it in the daylight and being forced to pretend not to notice my neighbors snickering at me as I gracelessly lumber around singing dirty Christmas carols under my breath (occasionally swearing) and trying to perform semi-butch tasks such as "moving the ladder" and "attaching hooks" and "electrocuting myself". The end result is that my house now looks like a gay casino (and still smells a little like burnt ozone and fried chest hair). To that end, I decided to present our Season Six Final Four chefs in a similar fashion...

...minus the fried chest hair part...

Besides, we all know that DirtyBear and Bitter Jen don't have any chest hair. In any case, we've almost reached the end of our journey here on Top Chef, and tonight's episode finds us no longer in pretty sparkly Las Vegas (*snif*) because we've moved to the hoity-toity-ass Napa Valley. And I know I promised you guys I wouldn't post any more pictures of giant gaping anuses, but that was before I found out that fucking Michael Chiarello (a.k.a. Smirky McSmugMug) is appearing on this episode. Nevertheless, let's check out the changes on everyone after the jump!...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Let's Crush Someone's Dreams!" »

Posted by J-Mo at 8:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (22)

Hey 'Gasmii, I'm finally back. I can't apologize enough for the delays on this recap. As you may recall, the BF and I headed to Los Angeles last weekend where we ate some fine foods (Flipit and I shared a plate of deep-fried mac'n'cheese balls at Hamburger Mary's on Santa Monica Blvd and giggled and talked trash about the upcoming American Music Awards), tasted some weird drinks (Diet Pomegranate 7-Up With Natural Anti-Oxidant... that was thanks to my Vegan BFF Erick) and took in some culture (we saw the movie "Precious" and I'm afraid the shocked-and-horrified gay-inhale that I let out in the deadly-silent theatre when Mariah-Carey-in-no-makeup first appeared on-screen caused several people around me to glare in my direction). *sigh* So much fun. However, because the theme of my life is often "No good time goes unpunished.", is it any wonder that I became violently ill upon returning home? Or maybe it was this picture that WaffleBoy forwarded to me...

...of Sexist Pigshit's playful attempts to fistfuck Fat Kid...

Without going into the TMI-arena, let's just say that for the next four days bad things were coming out of every end of my body and I was unable to see, smell or taste anything remotely made of (or related to) food. At least I got out of having to vacuum the house for Thanksgiving. In any event, I was very lucky that there was no new episode of Top Chef this past week, so I still have time to catch you all up on the doings of our remaining cheftestants, which basically boiled down to them competing in their own version of the Culinary Special Olympics. Let's hold hands (mine are clean and disinfected now) and take the jump!...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Welcome to Bo-Cooze Duh Whore" »

Posted by J-Mo at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (25)

Hi guys'n'gals'n'tranzys, and welcome back to our regularly scheduled season of clowns. I never thought I would miss these people so much until they were taken away from me and I had to look at five seasons worth of douchebitchery... not to mention watching Fabio in his apparent audition to become The Next Bertolli Chef™. It's the only thing I can think of to explain the inconsistency of his accent. As far as his hosting/interviewing skills are concerned, well, I don't think Larry King has anything to worry about. Or Jerry Springer for that matter. So, I think we all agree it was all a big snoozy sludgefest, and I don't blame you guys for feeling cheated, too. I did my best to dress it up and make it pretty, but as we all know, you can put a wig and lipstick on a turd, and somehow you still end up with Carrie Prejean...

...or a fat cocky smacktalking little fucker who still mooches off of Mommy & Daddy and styles his hair after a toilet bowl brush...

Whoa, do I sound annoyed? I guess I am a little, because there's a lot of stuff that made me scream "ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME??!??!" at my TV in this episode of Top Chef, and most of those AYFKM moments are thanks to either Fat Kid, Bitter Jen, or 80's Hooker. Still, it was a little bit like coming home to see them all again, so grab a big bowl of pureéd popcorn (???) and join me after the jump...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Fat Kid Goes To The Circus" »

Posted by J-Mo at 12:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (34)

Welcome everyone! Do you like reunions? I don't mean the heart-wrenching, soul-twisting, tear-jerking kind that you find in the movies where some long-separated pair of lovers is brought back together after years of hardships and suffering and they have just enough time to have sex once before one of them is killed either in a senseless flossing accident or by choking to death on Pez. No, I'm talking about real life reunions where everyone sits around lying about how great their jobs are and pretending they're still in love with their spouses and attempting to hide their fat by not exhaling. Oh, you don't like those kind, either? Well, that's too bad, because we've got an hour of that shit to slog through tonight. However, we do get a few juicy tidbits thrown our way, one in the form of Carla "Beaker" Hall...

...who's giving Casey five seconds to 'pologize before she opens up a can of hootie-hoo on her ass...

Oh yes, tonight is the first ever Top Chef Reunion Dinner and all of our favorites are here to show that they have spent the last few years learning absolutely nothing about how to act when appearing on reailty TV show. And because the denizens of Bravo just won't let various douchetastic versions of the fauxhawk die, I'm calling on Beaker's spirit guides Ronda and Juanita to help me pull a little Paranormal Activity on them after the jump...

We begin tonight's show by meeting our host Fabio...

...thankfully not this one...

Although, wasn't it hysterical that time that Jesus sent a bird to whop him in the face and remind him to be a little less of a dickbag? At least, that's what's going through the blonde's mind. No, instead we are treated to the other Fabio (which is a phrase I never ever ever thought would exist in my lifetime) who claims that Bravo just up and asked him to host "a deenair partee" at Social Nightclub in Hollywood...

..."Doan hade mee becozz Ai estole fan favoreet fromm Beekair!"...

That's right, I said it, he totally did! There's no way he really beat out Carla for fan favorite, right? I mean, you hear a helluva lot more "Hootie hoo!" going on out there than you do "Monkey ass een a clowna shale!" In any event, he garbles that tonight we're going to see himself plus eleven of the "moss beelovvd chef fromm season pasta". Really?!? Funny how the editors immediately make a huge liar of him...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef Reunion Dinner: Just Like High School, Only With Worse Hairstyling" »

Posted by J-Mo at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments (14)

Hello and greetings and Happy Post-Halloween! I hope all of you had a great time, wore some fun costumes, and had some tasty candy. As many of you may be aware, Halloween = Gay Christmas so naturally I was in the middle of a great big gay bar party out in Scottsdale that puts on a huge show every year, and after we finished our PussyCat Dolls performance (where the pants on my costume kept threatening to fall down onstage) we were turned loose to get drunk make merry for the rest of the evening. I saw so many interesting things that I doubt you'd see anywhere else, such as a giant inflatable penis costume, or Balloon Boy and a Sarah Palin drag-queen getting into a fistfight, or the real kicker of the night, which was a guy in a black cowboy sex angel costume (I don't know how else to describe it) who started peeing on the ground directly behind me when I was sitting on the curb. Luckily I was able to grab one of the testicles of the inflatable penis costume and protect myself...

...looks like Scar's Halloween costume was "Kelly Garrett" from Charlie's Angels...

She looks rather uneasy in that picture, doesn't she? I wonder if one of those dishes she's glaring at so mistrustfully reminds her of wrinkly old writerdick (or maybe someone peed on the ground near her, too)? Either way, on tonight's episode of Top Chef we discover that Bravo is taking "going green" to the extreme and recycling the old "Celebrity Vegetarian Challenge" from this past season of Top Chef Masters, only instead of wacky Meg-Ryan-wannabe and horrible folk singer Zooey Deschanel we're stuck with serious Julia-Roberts-wannabe and the woman some feel is responsible for the destruction of the Star Wars saga, Natalie Portman. Initially I was kinda pissed, because I used all my best Vegetarian jokes in the TCM recap several weeks ago, but in all actuality this turned out to be one of my favorite episodes evah. Find out why after the jump!...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Vegeterrorism" »

Posted by J-Mo at 10:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (50)

Welcome back to Las Vegas ye faithful culinarians! I think Scar once said there were something like 70 million billion trillion hillion skillion restaurants in Sin City, and I bet all of them are hurting right now. Let's face it, there are only so many ways to make "Cheap Beef & Tiny Skrimps" sound classy before you're stuck putting Value Meal numbers next to items on your menu and installing a Drive-Thru for your Lazy Fat Asses On Rascals™ traffic. Tough times are here, and everybody's hunkering down, tightening their belts, and holding their hand out to the government for some free cash because who knew building a restaurant with heated tablecloths and solid-platinum electronic forks might not be the best idea?...

...well, because this is how people did financial planning...

Heh, it looks like Sexist Pigshit's so enamored with boobs that he's playing with his own. I bet his left nipple feels dirty and violated right now. Anyhow, tonight's episode of Top Chef is the much-hyped and long-awaited "Restaurant Wars", and not only do we have some fun teams, but we also get another Top Chef Masters alumnus in the mix along with several other surprises after the jump!...

Surprise #1...

...who knew Bitter Jen did cheesecake so well?...

Surprise #2 is that Sticky Wickett's telling us as the numbers dwindle that "the best chefs are remaining" and seems to be curiously including herself in that statement, even though last week she was nearly buttfucked in half by Cliffie Clavin for not really knowing how to make rillettes and she managed to make the editor of Food & Wine Magazine feel like she'd been handed a bowl of Little Friskies. I would say a healthy dose of "WTF am I gonna do to not suck?" would be in order instead of congratulating herself for having escaped yet another bullet.

Speaking of the dearly departed final member of Team Rainbow Season Six, DirtyBear says with Gay Ashlee gone that it has taken "a dynamic away from the house that we just really can't replace." Awww, look how cute he is! Everybody misses the funny gay guy, especially when they're left with the goddamned Volt Brothers bickering all the time. DirtyBear attempts to have a Moment Of Silence for Gay Ashlee...

...but finds it difficult to concentrate...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Our Mission Is To Be Revolting" »

Posted by J-Mo at 6:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (42)

Hello again foodie fans! I just got back from the wonderfully cold, windy and rainy city of Indianapolis where I was attending yet another drag queen pageant. This one is specially geared towards fat guys who like to wear pretty dresses and who strike terror in the hearts of late-night drive-thru employees everywhere. Over the course of the week I: a.) ate some deep fried pickles and squid (the squid was a little overcooked and therefore chewy and somewhat retch-inducing), b.) got lost about sixty times just trying to make it from the host bar to the hotel (downtown Indy is confusing) and c.) I saw a one-legged drag queen nearly win the entire thing when she plopped down into the splits and intentionally popped off her prosthetic limb! I am still kinda creeped out about that last thing, and I can't even believe I'm writing the words "one-legged drag queen" in a sentence...

...and even worse, I'm afraid when it happened I probably had the same expression on my face as Sexist Pigshit here...

...and because the IUPUI University Place Hotel doesn't get Bravo, I wasn't able to even watch this week's episode of Top Chef until I got home yesterday. And I must say, I was pissed when I finally did. For starters, we've got Gay Ashlee being a total tard, the Volts are at each other's throats, and Fat Kid proves once and for all that he's a complete asshat. Plus, the outcome of one of the challenges is gonna be super-annoying after the jump...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: It All Comes Back To Food & Whine" »

Posted by J-Mo at 5:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (27)

Buenos Tardyforthepartys, 'Gasmii! Praise Jesus there was no new episode last week, I was in waaaay too much horrible debilitating pain (and clouded by waaaay too many drugs) to make sense of a fucking Bullwinkle cartoon, much less a complex reality TV show (and let's not even talk about how much fun it was trying to sit upright). HOWEVER, I'm all healed up now (thanks for all the well-wishes, that was so super-sweet of everybody) and ready to take on this week's episode. Let's start by playing a game, shall we?...

...called "Guess Who Said That?"...

...If you caught this week's jam-packed episode of Top Chef then I'm sure you have a pretty good idea of the answer. If you didn't... well, Bravo will run it 94,263 more times to make sure you do. Also new this week: we get to hear someone vomit, the level of Hooker-Hatred gets cranked waaaay up, and the cheftestants host a delightful dinner party from hell! Why is it from hell? Take the jump and find out!...

Continue reading "Top Chef: Top Chef: Too Much Voltage Causes Blackouts" »

Posted by J-Mo at 2:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (23)