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Good morning. My name is Joshua David Stein. Please join me in a discussion of the most important (reality television competitive culinary) show of our time (between 10 and 11 pm on Wednesdays), Bravo's Top Chef Like a bunch of drunken bums we've stumbled into Week Two of Season Five, full of giddy apprehension, eager to feel and having to pee. What would await us? What could possibly surprise us? Why is Padma still single? Has Tom lost weight? Why does Gail Simmons looks like a train wreck? Soon enough, the annoying shhhhhSHHHHHP knife sound signaled that all our questions would be answered.
From the outset, the episode looked pretty good. The quickfire challenge was hot dogs. I, who at this point was actually quite drunk, had just eaten the Chang Dog and the Wylie Dog at PDT (the former, a bacon-wrapped hot dog with kimchi, the latter a "deep-fried Crif Dog wiener nestled against a baton of WD-50 deep-fried mayo with tomato molasses and freeze-dried onions") so was already juiced for wieners. Instead of pimping out the quickfire like some James Lipton-like mac to Oscar Mayer, the segment featured Angelina D'Angelo, an independent Queens hot dog cart purveyor. The hot dogs were okay. Fake Italian Fabio I think won? (Maybe it was the little tattooed blonde lesbian.) Lex Luthor made a stab at a world dog that fell flat. You like that, Thomas Friedman, you jealous ignoble Ionic fifth columnist?
[OH! Before I forget: Did anyone catch that weird mini-segment hidden inside a commercial break where Leah, the lady from Centro, clearly wants to hump Hoseah "Far Side" Rosenberg? She says something like, "I am into relationships. I'm boy-crazy!" and then she is cuddling with him on the sofa and being coquettish? "I want to sit here!" she says. The moment lasted all of thirty seconds then went straight back to some Housewives commercial. Transmission screw up or uncanny foreshadowing of love to come?]
Anyway, ever onwards. Those sadistic and cynical Top Chef producers are, let's admit it, sometimes genius. Their ability to milk, nourish and capture human misery rivals Dante's formulations of contrapasso in the Inferno. In this week's episode, the contestants had to cook for the 50 failed contestant/chefs, the people who didn't even make it on to Top Chef. Needless to say, they were all—save one or two—vindictive anal worms. It was like when corrupt cops go to jail. One upside: The chefs worked out of the restaurant Craft which Chef Tom Colicchio owns so the man was in the kitchen, expediting. It is always a pleasure to see actual cheffery happening on the show. He's no-nonsense, exacting and demanding and at the same time level-headed, doesn't yell and is well-organized.
So dishes and mistakes were made by the dozen. At the end of the day, Gail Simmons looked bad but made up for it by calling Jersey housewife Arianne Aryan. Aryan, for her part, totally blew it with her "cherry surprise" (Trust me, I've had a lot better cherry surprises—some courtesy of James Lipton!). It was so sweet even Padma (as seen above) expectorated the sweet load from her mouth into her napkin. It takes a lot to laugh, a train to cry, and one overly-sweet bite to make Padma spit. Strangely, it wasn't Aryan who went back to Jerz but rather it was the female Stephen Malkmus who was sent packing back to B-more [(Do you want to see her in a bikini? Click here) Maybe there'll be a sixth season of the Wire and it'll be about illegal kitchens and she can have a second career. Here's to hoping.]
To sum up: I'm really excited for this season. I think it'll be great. It is already pretty wonderful. It's true, I despise Toby Young who replaces Ted Allen as judge and everything that he does. He'll be cruel and witty because that's what he does and he'll do it for the camera and without the slightest thought that what he says actually has consequences for the contestants, so deep is his narcissism. But Padma will be there to be drunk and cute and slurry and Tom is always there to slice through the bullshit with his limpid eyes. As far as the contestants go, Emile from Ratatouille, the guy with the horrendous facial hair, might actually be sweet. Fabio and Stefan actually seem to be in love. Urkel—though to be fair, she more closely resembles Where's Waldo?—is crazy town and God Bless Her for it. And shorty-wanna-hump Leah is so clingy that one wonders if she was brought to us by the makers of Glad. All in all, the ingredients are there for a well seasoned season. Let's just hope Bravo doesn't fuck it up too much.
Good morning. My name is 
Team Rainbow: The real character of this team—other than young bottom and weird massager Patrick who was also a Palin and is now gone—is the bro-jock-gay Richard, a bearish version of Dale who worships Tom Colicchio in a way that almost certainly is creepy and wore a t-shirt that said, "Beer Pong." (Weirdly, that's 
The Obamas: This is the minority catch-all. Maybe post-op Carla Hall M-to-F is here. Latino Alex who thinks Indian and Latin cuisine are the same (WTF?!), also here. But the Obamas are really embodied by small tattooed Gene who never went to cooking school, never had Indian food, who grew up on a small rock in the middle of the Pacific Ocean and still managed to make damn good Indian curds and cheese [Note to Padma: Rein it in, woman! You were all sorts of up in Gene's shit.] Can we count on this baby-faced charming outsider? Yes We Can! A bit preemptive I know, but I'm calling Season Five for Gene.
The Palins: These are the sacrificial lambs led to the slaughter for the sake of ratings, people who have no business being in the spotlight. Yet watching them struggle and writhe and pee their pants and not know it and walk around soiled and sad is such an unfettered joy that we temporarily put aside sympathy for the much more rewarding schadenfreude. The poor mom from Montclaire, NJ, totally outclassed. The guy with the bizarre facial hair who made chicken salad and said Europe was his backyard but who is endearing like Emile from Ratatouille. Lauren, who went home after the quickfire to an empty bed since her husband is in Iraq but who still—though she knew it was only to long lonely nights she would return—couldn't come up with anything better than an apple salad with spinach and blue cheese and bacon. These people will be a riot while they last but they won't last long. And when they leave, a trail of gaffes and toilet paper stuck to their clogs in their wake, we'll feel a pang of regret, not only because we were less than kind but because we have no one to laugh at anymore. That is, until 2012 or next week. Whichever comes sooner.
image courtesy of Jim De Yonker / The CW
Yup, America's Next Top Model is making history again - last season, the show picked it's first 
Enrique Iglesias, who greeted fans at Tao (video 
We also caught the King of Las Vegas, Jeff Beacher with the usual beautiful arm candy, ANTM winner Jaslene Gonzalez (video 
Maxim hottie and Pineapple Express star Amber Heard giving us some "green steel" at Tao (video 
The next season of Bravo's drunken bus 'n throwing festival Top Chef will be in New York, and the contestants are already set up in their Williamsburg condo, 
Because everyone 
Our photogs overseas caught a glimpse of some of the newest cycle of America's Next Top Models in their "surprise location" -- whaddya think of the finalists?
Click through for more pix and to find out which overseas destination they're visiting this cycle!
It's Amsterdam, bitches!
That short one in front can't really be one of the models, could she?
The staff's early prediction is for the woman in white...or the Asian chick.
Who's yours?
Previously - Well, my first season recapping Top Chef is coming to a close. I was kinda bored for the most part. There's not much you can do over a burner. In a surprise move, the judges kept Lisa. Man, do the viewers hate that chick. Well, she does act like an ass most of the time. Top that off with that bad haircut and you have a target for all your venom. Oh, so Antonia went home and Richard won a car. I still think Stephanie and her Xanax prescription are going to make off with this whole thing.
Television networks, still reeling from strike-related ratings slips, have gone and broken the glass on their last-resort failsafe. They're 
Project Runway
Top Chef
America's Next Top Model
Well, in the end it goes to Cook in a landslide. I am surprised! I thought the squealing masses of girls and soft dulcet tones of Archie's "Imagine" repeat on Tuesday night would win over middle ground voters who might have found Cook to be too edgy. But no, in a 12 million vote landslide, our combovered pal from Kansas City tearily took the crown and Simon and company rejoiced. I guess 19 and the judges were behind Cook all along. Perhaps the over the top Archie plaudits were just a calculated bait and switch. Or maybe there's nothing so cynical about 
David Cook, American Idol Season 7
Kristi Yamaguchi, Dancing With the Stars, Season 6
Whitney Thompson, America's Next Top Model, Cycle 10
Christian Siriano, Project Runway, Season 4
The Rookies, Real World/Road Rules Challenge, "The Gauntlet III"
Last week we wondered loudly if this season of 
On Wednesday night's finale on the CW, Whitney Thompson became the first plus-size model to win the ANTM competition, a result met with tepid politically correct applause. But not from Gawker's readers: "Are you seriously not gonna say anything about the fact that some fat girl won ANTM over the one who got an excision?" one asks. "It's sooo unfair I don't even now why to make myself puke anymore!" Well, the outcome may indeed have been unfair. Some mean-spirited critics have noted that show creator and host 
