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).

The last couple of days have been full of every sort of work except for flipping burgers, and thats okay with me. I’m enjoying the last hour of calm before going off to the hospital and diving into banquet prep. Morning Joe is on in the background covering the queue forming outside Sarah Palin’s book signing in Grand Rapids, Michigan. As a former GR college student and resident of some years, the event holds a certain fascination. I often will blow off my daily routine and follow some interesting event. Alas, I’m growing up and will go to work rather than driving an hour-and-change north to buy Going Rogue.

My earliest read this morning, the thing that made me ponder first thing today, had nothing to do with the former Vice Presidential Candidate’s book. Instead, it was National Public Radio’s list of the 50 most important albums of the last decade. I love these lists, even though they make me groan at the same time. Rolling Stone’s best 100 albums of the decade list is something I look forward to, partly because I disagree with a lot of the numerical placement of the albums included. I remember the 1989 list and my horrified teenage reaction to seeing U2′s The Joshua Tree in third place. Ultimately, I still think they called that one wrong (#1 for the 80′s according to RS? Purple Rain, with Born In The USA at #2). NPR did a very smart thing and simply alphabetized their selections and did not assign importance order. Nearly all of the 30 comments (as of an hour ago) featured some sort strain of “I would have included…” or “This list is too mainstream, because…” My favorite reaction was “Your list didn’t include enough women and Canadians.” Importance and influence aren’t really based on gender or nationality and thats the point. Importance is subjective and it may only apply to whomever the listener is.

In many ways, NPR had a pretty well-rounded list of most important albums of the ’00′s. Radiohead’s Kid A was featured, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot by Wilco, as well as a few choices that I will debate for a long time (The Carter III by Lil Wayne, Britney Spears’ In The Zone). Yes, I’m going to be one of those “you should have chosen…” people and add To The Five Boroughs by The Beastie Boys, but that is purely a personal hang-up of my own. Check the list out for yourself here: 50mostimportant.

The birthers are, at best, an entertaining collective of citizens. I could take the normal road here and call them right-wing wackos, psycho wing nuts, conspiracy geeks. No, they’re American citizens, after all. Each and every one of them can produce a legitimate birth certificate. Right? It makes no difference. The Obama birth certificate faction is hanging on by their dirty nails to the theory that the 44th President of the United States was not born in the country that he leads and has no legitimate claim to the office which he holds. The people perpetuating this idea make Fox Mulder look like the most reasonable, non-obsessed character ever. Apparently the Live Certificate of Birth from Honolulu is a fraud (a viewer e-mailed Morning Joe on Tuesday and pointed out that a “Live Certificate” is not proof of birth or citizenship). They need more. The birth announcement from the Honolulu Advertiser dated 8/13/61 is a fraud, too, supposedly. So, here we are. Talking about the President’s birth origins during the longest recession since World War II. is weird. Lets just forget 9.7% national unemployment. What the President needs to be honest about is…where he was born. Seriously? Forget affordable health care for all Americans. Nooo, some of us want him to fess up to not being the rightful president. I’ve got some suggestions as to what he can do about the situation.

1. Resign-That ought to shut  the knuckleheads on the right up. He quits, everybody is happy. Oh, and the country plunges deeper into the crisis of confidence that already plagues it. Recession continues, country plunges headlong into the night.
2. Re-birth-President Obama crawls out of giant…um…womb….gooey, dripping re-birth for a nation. He could do it at the Staples Center, which is a popular cult celebrity venue these days.
3. Detroit Lions. He could take over starting quarterback job with the Lions and never be bothered by the media again.
4. Astronaut Training-The President could pilot a new lunar lander, thereby erasing two dopey conspiracies with one fell swoop. Just our luck, the moon will look like Arizona and John McCain will cry foul.

One last thing for this post and regarding this week’s peep-hole zeitgeist. Steve Johnson in today’s Chicago Tribune wrote about the hypocrisy of the Erin Andrews media circus, and after a couple of re-readings I started to see his point. None of us could look her in the eye at this point if we walked up to her on the street, because as guys, we’ve fed the Google circus. Somehow, in some weird way, I’ve learned something about myself. Yikes.