I returned to work after what turned out to be one of the nicest vacations enjoyed during my years as a post-college adult. After two weeks in which I’d put in nearly 60 miles of running and gotten to do fun things like take my daughter to her first major league baseball game, it was time to return to my regularly scheduled life. There was a slight pep in my step and a renewed sense of eagerness to contribute. The good will lasted for minutes and I basked in the confidence of a great tan and plenty of sleep. Walking into the boss’s office, our tiny bullpen of activity, I heard a coworker say breathlessly over my shoulder “Thank God you’re back.” So went the vacation high. A person can take scant pleasure in being needed when the rest of the staff falls all over themselves for several weeks at a time. Such is life. I’m glad to have work and can’t wait to see where it leads. What I doubt, however, is that my particular company will join the 1% of U.S. employers who offer unlimited paid vacation time. Yes, I said it. There is a national move to at least look at giving people as much time as they need and paying them for it.

National Public Radio, who is out ahead of these stories much of the time lately, ran a Jennifer Ludden story for All Things Considered yesterday (Unlimited Vacation Time Not A Dream For Some, 8/12/10) on the concept of businesses giving employees all the time off they needed. This leads the mind to wander, even before reading the piece which details small business vacation concepts as well as the policy in place for a decade at Netflix.  For instance, I could easily imagine just buying season sports tickets traveling around with a ball club like some Deadhead. Maybe I could just take Perillo tours and go around the world repeating “It’s me, Mario Perillo, enjoying the wonders of Italy. Better yet, I could just have a headache. How many times have I fought off a migraine for six hours in an effort to keep going? Too many to count over the past 15 years. Ah, but the reality is that there is no such thing as the unlimited vacation unless one is wealthy enough not to need actual employment. For starters, the practice only works in white-collar professions. If your job involves anything that has to perpetually be kept operating, any shift work, unlimited vacation isn’t practical. I’d hope that ambulance companies never adopt the practice. If all the dedicated men and women at the sewage treatment plant go on unlimited paid leave, we’re in for deep trouble.

In the end, maybe a hybrid form of unlimited leave will become common place. What I’ve learned when family members have been seriously ill, or watched co-workers struggle with the same personal crisis, is that it’s heartbreaking (and unproductive) to be trying to work when a person should be at the side of a loved one. Hopefully someday the American workplace will be one in which employers don’t have to roll their eyes every time a worker needs a few days to recharge after putting in hours faithfully and without hesitation. Just like the shorter work week, this idea will slip away. If lottery winner horror stories have taught us anything, it’s that work is the safest place to be. Onward and Upward.

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(This post is completely infested with spoilers) Top Chef’s annual prom night episode, Restaurant Wars, aired this week and by its end one confident, creative chef was sent schlumphing off toward home while several of his dullard colleagues stayed to cook another day. No, (big sigh), the idea of Kenny Gilbert being sent packing while Alex and Amanda remain on the show is sad and wrong. Yes, (bigger shrug), the reality of lesser chefs in real life (and on Top Chef) keeping their jobs while more talented people are booted off the line happens all of the time. Kenny made bad choices and dared to anger the food deities by being over-reaching, while carrying his teammates by their belt loops. Meanwhile, his lesser competition ducked and covered enough to get by. Quickfire Challenge: This week’s opener was an already classic match that’s appeared over the last couple of seasons, the blindfolded team relay. The chef’s drew knives and were picked by two of the cheftestants for either team red or blue. Each team used four chefs, three of which remained blindfolded and silent as their teammates took ten minute intervals to prepare a dish from assembled ingredients. The initial chefs were careful to lay out their ingredients and organize prep in a way that would signal to each team member following in the relay the nature of the dish being prepared. Team Red (Tiffany, Ed, Alex, Angelo) had problems, although Tiffany had laid out the preparations in a way that illustrated exactly the direction the plate should take. Alex followed her and goofed around with fish, seasoning it early and ruined the dish. Team Blue (Kelly, Kenny, Amanda, Kevin) calmly followed one another through the steps and made a pleasing shrimp and angel hair dish. The Blues were smart enough to do little things like prep the starches before the quick cooking seafood proteins and watch how the dish was seasoned. The guest judge for this Quickfire was House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D. California). Speaker Pelosi judged in that oddly diplomatic fashion. Instead of telling the chefs they were a bunch of punks and asking for a T-Bone cooked Pittsburgh style and a jug of Mad Dog, she carefully considered the two dishes and noted the over-saltiness of Team Red’s Roasted Snapper. She praised the Blue group’s shrimp and seemed reminded of home, where as a child she used to wrestle circus performers by the Bay. Shortly after Speaker Pelosi waved goodbye, the chefs were informed that the blue and red teams would stay together for Restaurant Wars. Elimination Challenge: Team Blue looked strong going in. Kelly was assigned front of the house duties, as well as responsibility for two dishes. Kenny took the Executive Chef’s role. They worked well together and looked like the winner all along. Ah, but America is built on the backs of jackasses. The Red’s were motley, but Angleo, Tiffany and Ed had the spark of an idea. Keep Alex in the front of the house and away from the food. The material he did lay hands on was a mess, leaving pin bones and scales in Tiffany’s fish and over-trimming beef. He was minimized and the two other guy’s produced “his” dish. Meanwhile, in the restaurant, Alex tried hard to lose the challenge. He treated his wait staff horribly and was generally a Richard Cranium. When the judges came to dine at the restaurant, cheesily named EVOO, Alex fumbled through the menu and mostly ignored them. This with famed New York Times hatchet wielding critic Frank Bruni dining with Padma, Tom and Gail. The food saved EVOO. Angelo’s Confit of Tomato Soup w/Summer Squash and Ed’s Slow Baked Turbot were enough to carry the day. Team Blue, and their restaurant 2121, had warm service with lots of customer attention thanks to Kelly. Their calm demeanor didn’t carry over to the food. Kelly’s corn soup and crab salad was bland, and the ice cream accompanying her flourless chocolate ganache cake was underwhelming. Amanda had trouble maintaining temps for grass-fed beef on a wood fire grill, but her sauce was tasty. Kevin produced a colorful, pleasing Halibut, but the judges felt he could have done more. Kenny made a what amounted to a muddled beet salad and a big hunk of fried goat cheese over rhubarb salad. Despite protests from Kevin and Kenny that Alex did nothing, Kenny got the ax and Ed got a ginormous bottle of wine. Top Chef Restaurant Wars Season 7 proved that it’s not how you treat people, or one’s integrity. It’s who works the hardest to cover up mistakes as a team and the basic quality of a team’s food. Be a jerk as long as you’re a righteous jerk.  Hopefully that only works on Top Chef.

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I imagine that Sandy Larson of Sioux Falls, South Dakota is a rather nondescript male in his late 50′s. He keeps himself fit, but not too fit. What remains of Larson’s horseshoe of light brown hair is neatly trimmed and not combed over. He wears a Sioux Falls Canaries hat or a gimme cap from one of the seed corn companies on the weekends to make sure that his partially bald pate doesn’t burn. He is tall, but not so tall that he’d stand out in a stranger’s memory. Larson’s profile on Match.com pairs him with mostly unremarkable, fit (but not too fit, because of the amount of potlucks and ball games one attends in Sioux Falls), tall (but not so tall you’d remember them) women in their 30′s. Sandy’s wife knows nothing of his Match.com profile. Nothing remarkable at all about Larson, except one detail about the 9:00 to 5:00 job ‘he’s’ held since at least the 1980′s. He manages customer service for Citibank’s customer service center in Sioux Falls. The details of his/her/it’s life, may have been imagined, but Larson exists on some level. A quick check of correspondence in regards to your Citibank credit card account disputes from the last 20 years and you’ll probably find the auto-signed signature of one S. Larson.

In an entirely pointless, yet amusing story for the Wall Street Journal (Mystery Writer: Does Citibank’s S. Larson Really Exist? WSJ, 8/6/10) writer Barry Newman attempts to track down the individual who has become the financial world’s Smoking Man. The story starts with questions by Citibank account holder and Daggle blogger/author Danny Sulivan. Mr. Sullivan has been able to turn up nothing through search engine queries about the person who signs every customer service resolution letter from Citibank, other than this individual is ageless, genderless and in a god-like way has no career beginning or end. Comments left at Daggle by Citibank employees attest that Larson is a real person and many are friends with the supposed South Dakota resident. Yet no amount of attempts by writers or customers can find this person. Employees of Citibank commented that this may be a case of a random employee’s name chosen to fill in the letters and that this would be an untenable position for a real person to hold, because of the anger S. Larson instills in customers. irate card holders have mailed in dead rats, apparently.

Larson is like Ms. Digg, the voice you call before putting fence posts in the  yard. Just a name, a faceless corporate cover so that humans are treated as mechanically as possible. I agree with Newman’s assessment that it would be nice for there to actually be a real S. Larson handling complaints. Like Santa Claus, the Easter Bunny and Batman, human dignity from a credit card company would be too much to ask.

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Last week I posted here about a new internet entertainment that has become an established meme, the I Write Like website which analyzes a sample of writing and draws a comparison to a famous literary figures. In that post I submitted several Spatula posts only to draw comparisons between science fiction writers and other bloggers. I also submitted smut literature written by amateurs and IWL compared the works to J.D. Salinger. All good fun, but not very succinct literary criticism. IWL was pretty much worn out for me after an afternoon of loading it with nonsense. Earlier this week, Clark at The Wakefield Doctrine commented that he had fed his own blog into Typealyzer (http://typealyzer.com) which purportedly uses the Myers-Briggs Personality Type Indicator to determine the personality traits of any blog author. Now, I’m an author who gloms onto any idea available, so I immediately had Typealyzer process the Spatula…and got an illustration of a hooker with a champagne flute. That about sums up my personality, as I’ve suspected for years. First, a little explanation of the standard Myers-Briggs Test.

Chances are, you’ve probably taken the MBPTI. It’s been formally administered by employers and educators since the early 1960′s, growing out of development by its authors for women entering the workforce as early as World War II. Myers and Briggs used the concept of personality types posited by Carl Jung in 1921. Here’s how it works in layman’s terms. There are four sets of personality dichotomies which are : Extroversion / Introversion, Sensing/ Intuition, Thinking/Feeling, and Judgment/Perception. Each person has some combination of one of each pair that makes them work and interact with others in the way they do. For instance, according to Typealyzer and based on the writing contained on this blog, I am an ESFP. Below is a paste-up of the results (not authorized in any way by the administrators at Typealyzer):

The analysis indicates that the author of http://spatulainthewilderness.net is of the type:

ESFP – The Performers

The entertaining and friendly type. They are especially attuned to pleasure and beauty and like to fill their surroundings with soft fabrics, bright colors and sweet smells. They live in the present moment and don´t like to plan ahead – they are always in risk of exhausting themselves.

The enjoy work that makes them able to help other people in a concrete and visible way. They tend to avoid conflicts and rarely initiate confrontation – qualities that can make it hard for them in management positions.

–The first sentence made me laugh. I may be entertaining, but for all the wrong reasons. As for friendly, my wife would attest that I’m a COB (Cranky Old Bastard). According to the cheesy clip art illustration, I like to entertain men. unequivocably no.  The second part is right. I do like soft things. After growing up sleeping in beds that generations of grandmothers died in,  and wearing corduroy, I enjoy comfort. As for bright colors, us hicks love shiny stuff. As a cook I make a lot of brown foods, and color is always appreciated. I do plan ahead, but there is a tendency not to deliberate. Skipping to my management potential, that’s got me worried. I may be a non-supervisory burger flipper forevvvver.

As part of ongoing efforts into ascertaining the validity of these sites, I entered several extremely smutty URL’s into the Typealyzer engine. They came back as very artistic and empathetic. Not really art… . I also entered Perez Hilton and got that he’s a socializer. You know, this thing is not totally off the mark. Try it at http://typealyzer.com

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Spoilers. Lots Of Them. Nine episodes into Top Chef’s Washington D.C. season and the show is at what usually signals a crossroads. The next episode will feature the seasonal Restaurant War, a battle waged between two groups of four chefs in which each party sets up and establishes a functioning restaurant for an evening. The Restaurant Wars gimmick has been copied by other shows, most notably an entire series developed using the concept on Food Network. The reason for the success of this has something to do with the idea of seeing the cheftestants out of their rarified Bravo bubble and actually swimming/sinking with their own restaurant. I’m jumping way ahead, though. The chef’s still had this week’s stressful challenges to deal with, including preparation of an Ethiopian inspired dish and an embassy dinner. They also had to avoid chef Alex Reznik as he skidded around the kitchen like a maniac, and steer clear of Angelo’s plastic wrap on the toilet. A glance at this show may have reminded viewers of junior high home economics classes, but that diminishes the culinary skills of teenagers. Many of them cook acceptable rice, after all.

The Quickfire Challenge: The chefs were asked by host Padma Lakshmi and guest judge chef Marcus Samuelson to create dishes inspired by Ethiopian cuisine using ingredients provided in the kitchen. Along with traditional spices the chefs also had proteins such as goat, chicken, lamb and beef tongue. The challenge brought me back to those fuzzy college days and reminded me of my roommates from Eritrea, which borders Ethiopia. Many nights I came into our place to find smoke as the guys were trying replicate chick peas stews from home. Still, when they got things right, the flavor combinations their foods imparted were unbeatable.  The same principle applied in this challenge. Tiffany Derry won despite admitting to a lack of knowledge of Ethiopian cuisine. Her beef goulash w/currants, poached egg and red peppers was hearty and satisfying. Angelo produced a more authentic Dora Wat chicken dish, but in the end Tiffany add the spark of newness and inventive style (using what she had to work with) that Samuelson was looking for. Kenny didn’t factor in this challenge, or much at all this episode, and he’s up against it (the wall, the fan, whatever euphemism you can think of). He continues to put out duos and trios of variations on whichever dish he’s asked to produce. Simplify and cook one dish properly.

Elimination Challenge: With a day to shop and prepare, the chefs were asked to produce 100 portions of a dish inspired by one of nine foreign embassies in Washington. The chefs drew knives for the order in which they would pick from Brazil, Mexico, Spain, Italy, France, India, China, Japan and Thailand. Amanda, who styles herself a French Cook in the tradition of…a hot mess, drew France. She came up with Beef Bourguignon and it came out dry enough that she surmised the solution would be to cut the meat into bite sized cubes. Mr. Peabody (Alex) drew Spain and declared that having been there he could execute braised Veal Cheeks. Sure, I’ve been to Ponderosa, so I can make a funny tasting rib eye, as long as we’re cooking from vacation memories. He ended up in the bottom three, along with Stephen Hopcraft who drew Brazil. Stephen made a not so passable Chimichurri over so-so cooked flank steak. He could have skated away, but he re-fired rice for service at the event and it was gummy and broken. Tiffany, who won immunity in the Quickfire and could have phoned it in did a flavorful chicken Tamale and won. Kelly did an authentic Carpaccio. They kept it simple and flavorful and beat the boys.

Stephen’s rice faux pas could happen to any chef. I could go all Bubba and describe my rice disasters (burned it, over-boiled it, under-cooked it, turned it blue). This is where the pans meet the road on Top Chef and all the gritty details count. May Stephen have better luck with starches (and toilets) back home.

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I am not a man known for brevity. Most aspects of my life are documented in exhaustive (unwanted) detail. Having been on vacation for the last few days has only made the situation worse, as I have time to put every thought and sneeze here, or on Facebook. Well…I’m not completely on vacation. My employer has me flipping burgers at home and then waiting for the courier to pick them up. Which reminds me that I need to get back to the stove. What I can say about my life in the ether of social media relationships is that I probably wouldn’t use Facebook to tell friends about life with my  secret wife. Ah, but this was not the case with John France of Cleveland, Ohio.

Mr. France married his wife Linda in a lavish 2005 ceremony off the Amalfi coast. The couple had two children and then France married a second wife several years later. Wife #2 and her friends posted pictures of her fairy tale wedding and pictures of herself with France’s kids on Facebook. The original Mrs. France, variously identified as Linda, Megan, or Wow! You Poor Thing, began to suspect her husband wasn’t on the up and up when he called her from a business trip to China, even though his passport was still at home. The more Mrs. France searched, the more photos of her husband’s other family life surfaced. After an attempt to take him back and live normally, she has filed for divorce. It’s been reported recently that social networking messages and accounts are used in nearly 80% of divorce cases. This case, however is extreme. As usual, I’m full of less than concise thoughts on the subject, such as:

• The ‘Major Nelson’ alibi might have worked better. I’m not condoning France’s actions, but c’mon. China? He should have told his wives he was an astronaut. One can imagine that on I Dream of Jeannie Major Nelson was telling loyal Jeannie that he was in space when he was partying. Same principle applies here. China is a little close for comfort. Always go someplace where there aren’t any passports or tan lines.
• What kind of guy wants to go through all of those weddings? The ceremonies were lovely, too. After going through the first one, most men wouldn’t want to even have a Ramada shotgun affair. At France’s age and having just done it, it might have made more sense for the other bride to show up with a minister at the first tee, before a round of golf. “What? You want to get hitched? Great. We’ll let everybody play through, but make this quick.”
• John France had a casual disregard for the whole affair that makes him look like the laziest husband ever. He might have asked his new bride not to post wedding photos on Facebook or register at Target. Sadly, he probably had more work than any husband wants. Two yards to mow, double the dishes to wash, two times the comments every time he left socks on the floor. Heaven forbid that static cling caused the other wife’s nylons to stick to his pants.

Through his attorney’s, France has since stated that he was never married to his first wife. Mentioning that to her at some point between the coastal Italian wedding ceremony, bearing his children and the divorce might have been at least courteous.  It certainly is a weird time to be a man.

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This past weekend I found myself taking care of a small child. Most children are small as babies, so his size wasn’t a total surprise. The one TV channel that the baby found mildly interesting (or had the least urge to cry at while watching) was running a marathon of all three Back To The Future films. BTTF told the story of Marty McFly, a 35 year-old high school student from the year 1985. The original movie was one of a host of such pictures released during that era in which young people were shown engaged in various activities. Hollywood has since realized that kids are smarter than that. Teen wolves may have deep conversations with vampire loving classmates, but they aren’t interested in playing basketball. So, in the story, young McFly and his mentor Dr. Emmet Brown travel in a DeLorean automobile with an internal time machine to the year 1955. Marty helps his parents get together, thus ensuring his own future. Awww.  The film was a fun way of looking at the 50′s through the prism of events moviegoers were familiar with in the 1980′s. BTTF made a boatload of money and that led the studio to produce two sequels concurrently. Back To The Future II, released in the fall of 1989, imagines soon to be 40-year old high schooler McFly travelling to 2015 in order to save his children from ruin. As I watched the BTTF sequel for the first time in many years, I couldn’t help but laugh at how wrong writer/director Robert Zemeckis and his partner Robert Gale predicted the future. In Back To The Future II, which takes place just about five years from now, the vision of the future is pretty quaint. Maybe it’s shortsightedness on the part of Zemeckis, or a prediction of retro-fashion, but the future is just the 80′s redux. The self sizing clothes that characters sport is the same oversized, chunky stuff I was wearing as an unhip high school sophomore. When Marty dons the self-lacing Nike’s, all I could think about was how much I loved my puffy, orange and white Adidas Run DMC kicks. Throughout the film, Marty wears the trusty mom jeans. The future looked baggy from the vantage point of 1989. Many bloggers have commented before me on some of the mind bogglingly dull “didn’t see that one coming” ideas in BTTF II. Newspapers are still huge in 2015. This is a cinematic gimmick to illustrate the confusing nature of time travel. The middle-aged boy traveller must turn to USA Today to see where he has landed. He also has to use a pay phone. The last time I tried to use a pay phone was six years ago at some country gas station after my car broke down. It was the middle of the night and a helpful guy in a pickup whispered out his window “That phone don’t work boy…”.
The future turned out slightly weirder than Back To The Future II. We still haven’t got flying cars. The Cubs still haven’t won the World Series in our lifetime. Lasik surgery is a reality, as is the Jumbotron. Our president is an African-American and by 2015 may very well be a woman (not the current President, although nobody could say they saw that coming). Michael Jackson may still be dead in 2015, and more than likely so will Walt Disney and Ted Williams. Doc’s digital camera/binocular device is now cumbersome and should contain a phone with thousands of applications. Meanwhile, the Corning company has quietly ressurected a 1962 concept dubbed “Gorilla Glass.” Virtually unbreakable, the revived technology may lead to frameless TV’s and scratch resistant mobile devices. So, at least Star Trek IV’s concept of a super glass substance is here in the future. I’m so glad the future didn’t turn out like Marty McFly’s life.

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National Public Radio contributor April Fulton posted a blog for the network’s online health page Shots today about the findings of a study to be published in August’s American Journal of Clinical Nutrition showing that excess meat consumption leads to unwanted pounds (http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=128845262&sc=tw). The study shows that every 250 grams of meat added to a person’s diet over a five-year span leads to a gain of four pounds. Not so bad, unless you are adding that 250 gram portion at more than one meal or snack per day. Still…250 grams seems like a lot. Most people, especially when eating on the run, don’t convert grams to pounds. When I’m in McDonald’s I’m too worried about getting a box of Grimace Cookies to bother counting grams. 250 Grams of meat is 8.8 ounces, or well over half of a pound. Yeah, you’re pretty much guaranteed some weight gain if you eat a 1/2 pound of extra meat as part of your regular diet. Here are a few other ways to put the 250 gram number into perspective:

• The meat content of a Bic Mac, pre-cooking, is 90.8 grams, or 3.2. ounces (unless you managed to get one of the Monster Macs in Germany, which boasted 363 grams of beef, or over 3/4 of a pound).
• A 250 gram steak carries roughly 630 calories. While the consumer gets a full day’s supply of protein from the meal, nearly 40 grams is fat (in other words, 55% of the calories are from fat, and even though the protein number is 45%, the inequity is not enough to regularly eat blow-out portions of steak).
• Chicken isn’t the great hope, or a choice because it’s white meat. A half pound of any substance is still a half pound. 250 Grams comes out to (at least, depending on injected preservatives) 220 calories.
• Just for kicks: The equivalent amount of butter is over a cup (1.089 cups). This also comes out to 18 Tablespoons.

A decade ago when the low-carb diet revolution really began in earnest the emphasis was not on balance, but on high protein and low carbohydrate maintenance. It worked as long as you stuck to the diet.  Higher fat foods like sausage and Cheddar cheese were staples after decades of being considered dietary pariahs. The problem is not with the diet fad, but the fact that for many dieters it never led to a lifestyle. The timeliness of the meat consumption study comes in as more and more of us find ourselves still unable to banish belly fat forever. An extra 1/2 pound of meat daily is a seemingly obscene number, but we are meating ourselves to death, while not living in balance with our bodies and lifestyles. A portion of beef is between 1 ounce (the size of a matchbook) and 3 ounces (the size of a deck of cards). The portion size for a breast of chicken (skin removed) is also the deck of cards and 3 ounces. The NPR story notes that Americans consume 60 pound of chicken a piece each year, much in the form of nuggets and breaded, fried strips. 60 pounds is 960 ounces (or 27,216 grams) of chicken. In the end, lifestyle comes down to balance. Exercise and healthy, small meals throughout the day. Enough preaching from me. May your next meal be a great one! (Reprinted from sister site, The Smoking Spatula @ WordPress.com)

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When I was a boy (Uh Oh. Here we go again with another in Mel’s series of meandering memories) my grandfather ran a junkyard just east of the town where I was born. You probably didn’t need to know this, but it does explain quite a bit about me. Each visit to his dump was a bit of adventure and I remember the distinct smells of the place (rusting metal and cattle from the pasture across the road) and the sound the merchandise made as I rummaged through and over piles of stuff. I once took a girl there for family meet and greet. I was, after all, a stupid young man. Having a relative “in the business” meant lots of  freebies. One thing I became a connoisseur of was second-hand comic books. My grandparents gave me crates of them, dating back to the 1950′s and ’60′s. There were a few super hero titles in the stacks, but many were classic Harvey books (Ritchie Rich, Casper, Wendy). My favorites were the piles of macabre books and I learned to read with classic science-gone-wrong titles like Killdozer, Swamp Thing, and Ghost Rider. As if to keep me on the path of righteousness, there were always Evangelical comics mixed in, usually published by the Spire company. Generally they were biographies, such as the Billy Graham Story and (inexplicably) The Tom Landry Story. Many were condensed comic serial versions of full length books from Spire’s heyday (The Cross and The Switchblade, Burn Baby Burn, God’s Smuggler and The Hiding Place). I’m not ashamed to admit that I spent hours reading the biographical comics and still find myself reading mostly about the lives of famous individuals. The comics didn’t end up hurting me too much. No, it was when grandpa started giving me boxes of ’70′s Redbook and Good Housekeeping that I slid into the abyss. I started down the path of baking William Conrad’s favorite meatloaf and getting fondue tips from Dyan Cannon, then I began the life of an adolescent hoodlum.

The New York Times, the paper that doesn’t resemble a comic book no matter which way you hold it, ran a story today by George Gene Gustines on the growing popularity of comic book publisher Blue Water Productions ( http://www.nytimes.com/2010/07/29/fashion/29comics.html?partner=rss&emc=rss ) The company has found success in publishing multiple lines of biographical comic featuring influential individuals and positive role models for young people. Many of the subjects I understand and would enjoy reading about. The Sarah Palin book would be wonderfully interesting and a refreshing antidote to her self-penned biography. What an action packed comic that would be as we turn pages and see her shooting animals from a helicopter, or fighting a giant salmon. Lady GaGa’s book doesn’t carry a lot of weight since her videos and live appearances are better than anything a comic artist could conceive. Lindsey Lohan would make a great comic heroine, especially as a rags-to riches-to-rags/ fight-the-man story (better yet, just rehash Steve Martin’s The Jerk as a comic book). In October, Blue Water plans to publish an Olivia Newton-John comic book. Big hair and all. At least the proceeds, if any, go to charity.

Darren Davis, Bluewater’s president, insists at the conclusion of the Times article that there will be no Heidi Montag-Pratt comic book, or biographies of other reality TV stars. Aw, C’mon! Jersey Shore’s Snooki is a walking cartoon herself. Tell me that the publishing world isn’t waiting for Snooki and The Situation to join other mutants with weird tans and misshapen torsos to fight New Jersey’s evil Governor Jon Corzine. Now that’s a comic book. You can purchase these wonderful (and mercifully short) bio-comics at your local Jo-Ann Fabrics store. No comment on that one.

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Abundant Spoilers Within. I skipped out on putting a Top Chef recap on the blog last week for various reasons. Well, okay, one reason. I find the cheftestants representing Season 7 of television’s most innovative culinary reality program detestable. On the last installment Tamesha went home after falling for the advice given by chef Angelo. His response was a shrug (“Gee, I really liked whatshername, but whadaya gonna do?”). This season’s chefs have a number of personal and kitchen habits that leave the viewer wondering how they’ve retained employment for this long. Kelly, the chef I really believe stands to win it all, has a penchant for crying. So, in fact does Andrea. I cry sometimes, too.  When I found Ford had stopped making the Crown Victoria I shed a tear. There is also the habit of saying “I haven’t shown the judges my food yet.” This is a line that is repeated every season and was again uttered by tonight’s ‘had to pack it’ chef. Really? Really Really? You had something like 16 challenges to show them your food. An annoying thing to say as you pack your knives, but nowhere near as reprehensible as stealing someone’s prep items. Theft is a habit that will come back to bite. So now, despite the draggy, obnoxious participants, Top Chef has got me watching thanks to theft drama. Here we go with the spoilertastic details on episode 8 from Washington D.C.

This week’s Quickfire Challenge was to make an appetizer that could be served on a toothpick.  Congressman Aaron Schock (R-Illinois) explained to the cast that because of undue influence by lobbyists, House and Senate members are only allowed to be offered as much free meal as one can fit on a toothpick. See? You can actually learn things from cooking shows. Now if only he’d explain how they have to suck free drinks out of a napkin. The cheftestants did their best to cram items onto tiny skewers and plastic swords. Angelo won the challenge with an old school appetizer that you can find in books from the 80′s and before. He hollowed thick cucumber slices into cups and filled them with spicy shrimp and chopped cashew. Things that work will always work. Congressman Schock was not fond of Ed’s tuna two ways on an umbrella or Kelly’s seared scallop and pickled watermelon rind. I appreciated the honorable Mr. Schock’s perma-grin and his resistance against the urge to shout at the chefs “Man! I hate this trash!”

For the Elimination Challenge the chefs drew knives for the right to cook salmon, swordfish, Porterhouse steaks, lamb or lobster at the Palm. Two chefs would cook each of the five choices. The setting was a power lunch at The Palm restaurant, a place with much history and no record of letting TV cooks into it’s kitchen. The judges were Senator Mark Warner (D-Virginia) a slate of NBC and MSNBC correspondents and hosts (Morning Joe’s Joe Scarborough and Mika Brzezinki, Daily Rundown’s Savannah Guthrie, Luke Russert and Kelly O’Donnell), chef Art Smith and John Depodesta. Now, for a man who is passionate about at least three things in life (liberal news shows, Top Chef and pictures of Audrina Patridge eating hamburgers) this should have been a dream episode. No. The whole show was dominated by Ed running back and forth looking for his English pea puree, which ended up under Alex’s salmon dish. Pilfering happens in kitchens, but out-and-out stealing someone’s prep and taking credit for it is just dirty. The fact that Alex won compounded the problem. He’s a professional and shouldn’t have let it get this far. Meanwhile, Andrea went home for doing a vanilla beurre blanc over swordfish and then letting it cook in the window. Butter sauces break down into gummy components when left out. She didn’t even get proper hug and tear time after being sent home, because judge Padma sent her away with a “That will be all.”

What’s next for Top Chef? Amanda’s general sloppiness and lack of experience may finally catch up soon. Hopefully Alex’s intellectual dishonesty is seen through by the judges as much as it is by the other chefs and the audience. Oh, and Kelly will cry some more. Good Times (sniff).

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