Bourdain vs. Food TV
I found this posting over at Ruhlman.com where Anthony Bourdain was doing some guest blogging. Written as only Bourdain can, check out Tony's take on Giada & Rachel Ray:
As most everyone knows, I cannot stand Rachel Ray. At first I would try and watch her on mute. Even without sound, I could figure out how to throw sausage, peppers and onion in a pan and feed myself silly in thirty minutes...or 23 minutes if you TIVO through the commericals for her personal knife collection. I was also devastated when she won on ICA. In fact, I am still in disbelief. For a nice succinct view of this battle, check here (scroll down).
GIADA: What’s going on here!? Giada can actually cook! She was robbed in her bout versus Rachael Ray on ICA. ROBBED! And Food Net seems more interested in her enormous head (big head equals big ratings. Really!) and her cleavage--than the fact that she’s likeable, knows what she’s doing in an Italian kitchen--and makes food you’d actually want to eat. The new high concept Weekend Getaway show is a horrible, tired re-cap of the cheap-ass “Best Of” and “40 Dollar a Day” formula. Send host to empty restaurant. Watch them make crappy food for her. Have her take a few lonely, awkward stabs at the plate, then feign enjoyment with appropriately orgasmic eye-closing and moaning..Before spitting it out and rushing to the trailer. Send her to Italy and let her cook. She’s good at it.
RACHAEL: Complain all you want. It’s like railing against the pounding surf. She only grows stronger and more powerful. Her ear-shattering tones louder and louder. We KNOW she can’t cook. She shrewdly tells us so. So...what is she selling us? Really? She’s selling us satisfaction, the smug reassurance that mediocrity is quite enough. She’s a friendly, familiar face who appears regularly on our screens to tell us that “Even your dumb, lazy ass can cook this!” Wallowing in your own crapulence on your Cheeto-littered couch you watch her and think, “Hell…I could do that. I ain’t gonna…but I could--if I wanted! Now where’s my damn jug a Diet Pepsi?” Where the saintly Julia Child sought to raise expectations, to enlighten us, make us better--teach us--and in fact, did, Rachael uses her strange and terrible powers to narcotize her public with her hypnotic mantra of Yummo and Evoo and Sammys. “You’re doing just fine. You don’t even have to chop an onion--you can buy it already chopped. Aspire to nothing…Just sit there. Have another Triscuit…Sleep….sleep….”
As most everyone knows, I cannot stand Rachel Ray. At first I would try and watch her on mute. Even without sound, I could figure out how to throw sausage, peppers and onion in a pan and feed myself silly in thirty minutes...or 23 minutes if you TIVO through the commericals for her personal knife collection. I was also devastated when she won on ICA. In fact, I am still in disbelief. For a nice succinct view of this battle, check here (scroll down).
Mike Lang