GOTHIC Top Chef STORY

The year was 1979.  After a hard day's night of drinking, coke-snorting, dancing and whoring at Studio 54 and even trendier dens of iniquity, a young Manhattan party-girl woke up next to a donkey, fell out of bed and stumbled to the bathroom.  She looked in the mirror and came to a realization:

"Wow, I look like shit! I'd sell my soul if there was a way I could continue this lifestyle without it ravaging my face-and-body!".

The donkey, always the most opportunistic of equines and fallen angels, overheard her and smiled to himself. "This could turn out even better than my plans for that young Kenyan  student I talked into becoming a community activist".  Grrreherhahahahahahahahhaah, he laughed.

So, he strode into the bathroom where the party-girl was contemplating throwing up and asked:

"Tell me dear, are you familiar with "The Portrait of Dorian Gray" ?

She was, indeed. She'd read it while at student at Vassar College.  It's a story of a man who leads a dissolute lifestyle but never shows any ill-effect. Instead, a portrait of him becomes ravaged from his excesses. It dawns on her who the donkey really is, and she thinks she understands the Faustian bargain he's proposing. But it's slightly different.

"No my dear, there will be no portrait taking the punishment for your hard partying. You must choose an actual human being to undergo the hideous tranformation. Choose now! I'm a busy evil being!".

Is there anyone I despise enough to do that too? She asked herself. And then dual-memories entered her brain. One from her Vassar days. One from the previous night. Both involving the same lanky Mama's boy.

She'd taken a blow-off Easy "A" course called "A Feminist Perspective of Moby Dick".  When roll was called, the scrawny goober had said: "Wow dude, we like almost have the same like groovy far-out name. What a trip! Want to rebel against our parents and go someplace to make-love-not-war after class?"

She realized then and there why the skinny dweeb had decided to attend Vassar which then had a 95-5 Female-To-Male student ratio. And also realized he'd be the only 5% male to never manage to get laid and would flunk-out within a year.

She'd forgotten about him. He was very forgetable. But last night she'd seen him trying to get into studio 54 with a brother loser saying "But we are Twooooo Wild and Craaaaaazy Guys!" to the bouncer who spit on both of them.  He then recognized her and, to her horror, told her of his life post Vassar.  Told her he was a gourmet chef by day, and disco-stud by night. 

"He's flipping burgers somewhere", She'd thought. Accurately. "And still never gets laid". Again, accurately.

"Make your decision, human girl!" Satan thundered.

So, she did.

And to this day there's a Woman pushing 60 who haunts the trendiest clubs in Manhattan and South Beach. She looks like she's in her twenties in spite of a nightly ingestion of drugs that would kill the entire Baldwin and Lohan clans.  She knows she's going to spend eternity at the Foot of Satan's Fiery Throne, of course. Sometimes she cares about that. Mostly she does not.

Her name is Toni Borden. She has no idea what became of the boy who was an unwitting and rather witless part of her deal-with-the-devil. The boy with the similar name.  But she suspected he'd eventually landed a job on TV as a food critic saying things like " That Salmon dish tastes like a head shop" and sharing a smirk with that other "wild and craaaazy guy" Tom-Tom Collichio.

Probably at a network like Bravo where they'd be the only straight males. And still wouldn't get laid.

THE END.

Note: I know I promised my loyal readers a post about TOP CHEF but I'm finding last night's episode rather difficult to blog upon.  I will mention that the terms "no, she didn't", "really?",  "fadizzle shizzle", "Fail!", "Epic Fail", "the Gs respect me", and "keeping it real" were all heard as Bravo tries desperately to be hip by using long-discarded urban yute slang that was rather stupid to begin with.

As to the tops and bottoms:

If (possibly) straight Dale really made a broth that "tastes like breakfast" he deserved to win and succeeded in emulating part of Wylie DuFresne's style without using any techno-gadgets or weird ingredients.

White Tiffany, Gay Dale, Fabio and Steven all definately deserved to be on the chopping block.  Steven's dish actually LOOKED okay and the salmon was well-cooked but I'll take the judges word that the aroma and taste were badly off.  Gay Dale's dish was a freaking disaster and it amazes me that he actually made a finale previously. Dude is a hack.  Fabio was weirder than I remembered, made a crappy dish, was whiny, and has no chance to win.  His comment about Angelo "wearing his pants too tight for my taste" was odd, to say the least. Is that an Eyetalian euphemism?  White Tiffany basically just made a mistake with tools she was unfamiliar with and was smart about admitting that promptly.  I think she does have a small chance at winning some challenges and being a contender.

It seems that after badly failing to make Angelo the obligatory Top Chef "villian" last year, Bravo is trying that again with basically the same formula. I.E. Making it seem that when he helps other chefs, he's actually trying to sabotage them.

Overall, the challenges this year have been tired and lame, and there hasn't been near enough focus-on-the-food.  Hopefully, that will change.  The challenge where they had to duplicate the dish they were originally sent home for was especially stupid.

Methinks they foreshadowed Blais  being eliminated for being a poor leader somewhere down the line because they've solo-shot him 3x so far bragging about his leadership skills.