Reality TV: Top Chef, The Bachelor, and American Idol

I don’t watch a lot of TV, but I have a predilection towards so-called “reality TV.” I think “unscripted” is a better term, although even that term is too kind for some shows.

The fifth season of Top Chef ended this week, and although I love the show, I was disappointed with the season overall. I thought this was a relatively weak group of chefs compared to previous seasons, and many of the stronger chefs fizzled, burnt out, or otherwise had issues. My two favorites from the cast were Carla Hall, who came in third, and Fabio Viviani, who came in fourth. Both had strong, vivid personalities and distinctive cooking styles. In a more realistic environment, where they can think about menus, test recipes before serving them, and work out the kinks if something isn’t perfect, I imagine them to be beyond excellent. I would love to eat their cooking! So a “hootie-hoo” to Carla and a “grazie” to Fabio for making the season more entertaining and giving me someone to care about. I’m already looking forward to the next iteration of Top Chef.

By contrast, we have the complete and utter mess known as The Bachelor. One would expect that a so-called reality TV show would keep to its premise about 90% of the time, but in this case, one would be wrong. The level of manipulation on this show is so deep, it makes you wonder why they don’t just hire actors — except they have done that, with mixed results. Anyway, this latest season has sunk to new depths. Fortunately, Reality Steve explains it all to you. If you want to see the sordid underside of “reality” TV, Steve will lift up the rock and show you all the dirty, squirming vermin. This show is as much about romance as a kitten is about quantum physics.

Then there’s American Idol. I don’t care what is or isn’t manipulated on that show. I keep it on mute most of the time, except when there’s singing by someone who’s competent or better. Then I wait for them to release their music after the show. One former contestant with a new CD is Melinda Doolittle. Remember her? Back-up singer with a big voice and an overly-humble attitude? I don’t know about the attitude, but she’s still got the big voice. Her soul and R&B CD, Coming Back to You, is great! I’m listening to it right now, and I love it. I took the chance and bought the whole CD instead of doing individual downloads, and I’m glad I did because I would choose to download 11 of the 13 selections. If you want to download some sample cuts, my favorites are Walkin’ Blues, If I’m Not in Love, and Dust My Broom. Enjoy!

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of People of the Book, by Geraldine Brooks

I was so happy and excited when this book came out in paperback! I couldn’t wait to get to the bookstore and buy it. Brooks’ Year of Wonders, which I reviewed a few months ago, is one of the best books I’ve ever read, and People of the Book had received great reviews.

You know where this is going, don’t you? Disappointed reviewer finds herself skimming sections, keeps waiting for the magic to appear, ends up deciding to give book a mediocre review? Yeah, that’s what happened.

Somewhere along the line, said reviewer has to tell what the book is actually about before trashing it. Okay, then: Hanna, a book conservationist from Australia, gets called in to work with a rare Jewish text called a “haggadah” that’s been found in Bosnia after surviving hundreds of years in the hands of different people. Hanna’s mother is surrealistically awful, but Hanna herself is a nice, normal person. As Hanna researches the debris and stains she finds in the book, we are given the stories of the people responsible for all this detritus. And there’s a plot twist involving Hanna, and another involving Momzilla, and then it ends.

As you might have gathered, I don’t like one-dimensional villains. (The attempt at giving the momster a second dimension didn’t work.) I also thought the short stories of the people who’d had the book previously didn’t always work. Sometimes I wanted more and was left hanging, sometimes I was appalled at the violence and had to skim. Yes, if you’re going to write accurately about the Spanish Inquisition, you need some ugliness, but I don’t want to read about it in gory detail. And it wasn’t just that section. Furthermore, Brooks’ research was showing a lot when she wrote about the book conservation; it just didn’t blend in well. Then there’s Hanna herself, who seems both too normal for having had the terrible mother, and too flat to be the protagonist. Bottom line: this book just didn’t work for me, and I’m not recommending it.

As for animals, there were Persian cats that came to no harm, a dutiful donkey that served some rebels in WWII, and a few odds and ends. So the book is SAFE from an animal lover’s perspective, although the violence will likely be off-putting to those for whom that matters. Read Year of Wonders instead.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Dear American Airlines, by Jonathan Miles

This very short (180 pages) book starts off as a letter of complaint from one Bennie Ford, who is angry at American Airlines for keeping him from attending his daughter’s wedding. In my experience, this kind of thing could happen on almost any airline, and right now American is on the very short list of airlines I don’t actively hate, but the point of the story is more how Bennie has messed up his life. He squandered his talents, he drank too much, he ruined relationships, and he doesn’t actually know the daughter whose wedding he’s likely to miss.

What I liked about the book was the free-flowing anger and regret Bennie writes about as he slowly comes to grips with the fact that yet another milestone event has been ruined even though he did everything right this time. Poor Bennie, he can’t win for losing. It’s not what I’d call a great book, but I do recommend it for the sheer emotionality and honesty.

Is this book safe for animal lovers? Well, Bennie very existence results from compassion shown for a possum. But there are three nasty little images elsewhere in the book. I doubt they’ll give you nightmares, so I will declare this book MOSTLY SAFE for animal lovers.

Happy Link Day

Okay, so we’re supposed to support the economy by spending, but we’re also supposed to save more, and we’re supposed to do this when we’re all in danger of losing income. David Leonhardt of The New York Times kindly explains how. I am now the proud owner of a brand new seltzer maker.

Speaking of New York, these old photographs of the city are amazing.

And it’s flu season. So, from Flu Wiki (because there’s a Wiki for everything these days), we have an instructive and slightly amusing video on how to prevent its spread.

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Sisterhood of Spies, by Elizabeth McIntosh

Here’s a helpful hint: If you and your lover are at a foreign embassy trying to break into a vault, take your clothes off and work naked. That way, any guard who barges in on you will leave quickly without being able to see what you are really up to. Of course, there’s no guarantee of success, but it did work once, as Elizabeth McIntosh notes in her book, Sisterhood of Spies.

Although sometimes reading like a catalogue of who did what, McIntosh loaded this book about the Office of Strategic Services — predecessor to the CIA — with many intriguing anecdotes similar to the one above. Despite the unfortunate tendency of the men in charge to treat many of the highly educated and multi-lingual OSS women as if they were inherently incapable of doing the work given to less intelligent, less gifted men, a fair number of women worked as researchers, agents, station managers, and propagandists. Along with McIntosh herself were Marlene Dietrich and the seemingly unflappable Julia Child, then still Julia McWilliams. More lethal to the enemy was “the limping lady,” a one-legged agent who disguised herself as a French peasant while organizing air drops, training agents, and sending radio dispatches to London. A woman fluent in Czech developed a strategy that led to hundreds of Czech soldiers defecting to the Allies. And on and on, in an amazing chronicle of the contributions made by OSS women during the Second World War. This is definitely on my “recommend” list.

Animal lovers have little to worry about when reading this book. There is the occasional sedative slipped to a guard dog and numerous pets, and the Limping Lady actually milked cows and herded goats as part of her cover. Because the events of this book occurred during a war, there are also dead and hungy livestock noted. But the latter are fleeting, and this book is therefore SAFE for animal lovers.

Two Dogs and A Cat

How can you not love Stump, the winner of the 2009 Westminster Dog Show? Like my cat Eddie, he’s old-ish and he’s been through a medical crisis. Here is a YouTube video I dug up this morning, showing highlights of the Best in Show competition:

I also like this piece from MSNBC  that I can’t upload as a video for some reason. But there’s a video.

From last year, since it is so very popular on this site, I’ll repeat Uno’s win from last year.

Finally, talking about old dogs and their medical conditions,  my cat Eddie has a lot in common with Stump, in that he almost died. I do get a lot of hits on this site looking for tube-feeding information. So here’s an update: Eddie is thriving! He’s even engaging in some architecture, which is a little weird. He likes to arrange his toys in lines and circles. He recently made a line of his non-catnip toys, and a circle of his catnip toys. He then slept in the circle. Here are some pictures:

Does the Dog Die? A Brief Review of Eating Heaven, by Jennie Shortridge

Who wouldn’t want an Uncle Benny in their life? He was warm, funny, generous, and attentive to his nieces when they were little girls, and he remains that way now that they’re adults. They needed someone like Uncle Benny in their lives when they were small, because their father was a grumpy, cold-fish sort, and their mother was self-absorbed and somewhat neglectful. So the Samuels girls continue to love Uncle Benny, and when he becomes terminally ill, food-writer Eleanor Samuels — the protagonist of Eating Heaven — moves into Uncle Benny’s home in order to care for him. Isn’t that nice? Except Uncle Benny isn’t really an uncle. He’s the man with whom their mom had a prolonged affair, or so the girls suspect.

The truth about Uncle Benny is a prominent and intriguing subplot in Jennie Shortridge’s story about Eleanor’s journey of self-discovery. And really, this book is about who we choose to love, why we choose to love them, and why we sometimes love people in spite of what we know about them. (I especially like that last part, because I’ve always thought the “in spite of” test was the best indicator of true love.)

I’m a new fan of Shortridge’s. I don’t know if she’s written anything else, but I’ll be looking into that. I thought her characters had great depth, her plotting was excellent despite a few too many coincidences, her sense of place vivid, etc. Having watched my father’s final days last May, I was particularly taken with her descriptions of dying — it was as if I’d given her a checklist of symptoms and behaviors that she then incorporated into a narrative. On another note, with Eleanor being a food writer who cooks quite a lot, there are some of “her” recipes at the end of the book. I like that — if your characters are going to keep going on and on about how great the spice cake is, give me the recipe for the spice cake!

So this book comes with a strong recommendation. As for animal lovers, there is an animal character, a cat named Buddy. Shortridge uses Buddy to amp up the tension a few times, but animal lovers shouldn’t worry about reading this book, which, in keeping with the purpose of this blog, I am declaring SAFE.

Craziness

I have a new magic formula for getting work: I complain about not having enough work. Seriously, today I called another friend who’s a writer, complained, hung up, and the phone rang before I set it down. I’ve been busy ever since. Sort of messes up my blogging schedule, though.

And that means I’m taking the easy way out today. Yes, it’s another YouTube-filled post.

This video of David Hasselhoff is amazing. Simply amazing. Plus it’s lots of fun and incredibly silly.

This was my favorite SuperBowl ad:

And of course there has to be something animal-oriented. How about this construction worker and his duck? What kind of a name is Frankie for a duck?