The script for Vlog #016!

On Tuesday it was poor time management on my part. On Wednesday it was poor weather. Today it’s poor technology. I don’t know if my little flip camera is crapping out on me, or what, but half of the vlog footage was corrupted and unusable. (The other half was fine, but I kind of don’t want to just upload half a video. And anyway I’m too pissed to try.)

I’m going to call this one a wash and just put up my script. It’s about Food Network and which shows on it I can’t watch. Sorry to convey this to you with words-on-a-screen rather than my lovely melodic voice, but due to some kind of weird karmic imbalance it seems that Vlog #016 was just not to be.

(Note: I don’t really proofread or revise vlog scripts, and I usually end up changing and adding things on the fly. So this is kind of a rough draft.)

Hey guys. I watch quite a bit of Food Network these days. My favorite aspect of this channel is that each program is interesting enough to be worth watching, but not so interesting it requires your full attention. It’s great to just throw on the background while you’re doing something else.

My second favorite aspect of the channel is that there are about a hundred different shows but only six or seven actual show hosts. Between Bobby Flay, Guy Fieri and that goofy Bill Nye wannabe I think they have half the network covered.

I can’t watch anything with Paula Deen, though. That woman is either a robot or a mummy and anyone who doesn’t see that is either ignorant or part of the conspiracy. She had a show this one time with Rupaul as a guest where she literally just made instant brownies with a scoop of ice cream on top. And then she grabbed Rupaul’s breasts and said “It’s a man, y’all!” I died a little inside.

I’m kind of scared of Marc Summers too. I feel like his fake squinty celebrity smile is burning my insides every time I watch Unwrapped. Also something about a show about how snack foods are produced being hosted by the same guy at the helm of Double Dare just doesn’t sit right with me.

The competition shows are typically good. Watching chefs scuttle around under pressure trying to cook food no normal human being would ever make for themselves… that’s good times. Iron Chef of course never gets old although sometimes I feel cheated because the secret ingredient is too easy. Battle rice? Really? Rice is one of those things you can literally do anything with. How about Battle Beef Boullion Cubes? Huh? Let’s see you make a desert out of that!

Actually they probably could. Which is why the show is so entertaining!

There are a couple competition shows on Food Network I can never watch again, and it’s because they’ve betrayed my faith. For me to enjoy a competition the ruleset has to be clear. I have to know all the contestants are on even ground and are getting a fair shot, or there’s no point to them actually competing. Right? And I know there’s no objective metric by which one chef’s food can be compared to another’s, but I’m willing to accept that there is a such thing as a cooking expert and that a panel of them can make informed judgments and grade these competitions fairly. I’ve seen this fall apart twice on Food Network.

The Next Food Network Star  is a Survivor-style show where, each week, one of the chefs is removed from the competition by the judges. At the end a single winner is decided on and that person gets his own show on the network. Last season’s winner was Aaron McCargo Jr., also known as the most charming man in the world. They gave him a show called Big Daddy’s House which is a pretty typical cooking show that they quietly tucked away on Sunday mornings where they were sure nobody would see it.

But then earlier this year they hyped up a show called Will Work For Food, all about how food is made and where it comes from and the weird jobs that go along with it. The premise of this show is good but the host is a man named Adam Gertler, who LOST to Aaron McCargo Jr. in The Next Food Network Star.

Nothing against Adam Gertler or anything, I thought he was a perfectly entertaining guy and I kinda liked the show they gave him, but if you’re going to give a competition’s prize to the LOSER it kind of cheapens it for the WINNER, doesn’t it? If they’re just going to give shows to whomever they want, it kind of defeats the purpose of having a show that decides who they’re going to give shows to.

The other Food Network competition I won’t watch anymore is Chopped. In this show you have four chefs cooking three courses, and at the end of each course one of the chefs is eliminated. The idea is that they’re given a set of wacky ingredients and given 20 minutes to whip up, say, an appetizer. Worst appetizer gets Chopped.

One episode featured a French chef who obviously knew his stuff. Knew it so well, in fact, that he couldn’t get his dish done within the allotted 20 minutes. So when it came time to serve the course he literally presented the judges with an empty plate.

AN EMPTY PLATE!! (hold up a plate) LIKE THIS!! Right now I am as qualified to win Chopped as that guy was!!

Here’s the crazy thing. THe judges still had to sit there and decide whether or not to chop him. After he had clearly violated the game’s rules! Why is there a discussion here!?

They did eventually chop the guy, and for that exact reason, but just the fact that they were even CONSIDERING bending the rules for him turned me off the show forever. Well, that and the fact that it’s hosted by the goofy Bill Nye wannabe. I’ll see you guys next week.

So there you go. I’m kind of over this video (even though I think the plate gag would have been really funny), so next week I’ll move forward with Vlog #017, and #016 can just forever remain a lost chapter to forever confound the people watching my YouTube playlists.

(If there’s really a huge demand to upload the first half of the video I guess I’ll go ahead and do it. I had to shoot each half separately because Finacee called partway through to remind me that the dog was throwing up, which was totally unnecessary because it was obvious to me that the dog was throwing up.)