Top Chef:
From the first few episodes, I thought the final two would be Sam and Cliff–but for very different reasons unrelated to their cooking neither made it.

I think it’s pretty clear to everyone in the world that Sam should have been in the final two. His bad luck that he’s Harold’s twin. Anthony Bourdain, guest judge earlier in the season, weighs in on every TC competitor here (important note–one of the comments includes an unconfirmed–by me, anyway–spoiler about this season’s winner), and he says this about Sam:

Probably the closest thing to Chef material this season–with the most chefly demeanor and attitude (generally speaking). Though not the strongest craftsman (though very close to it), he was the best all-around cook–generally smart, consistent, with good technical skills. He managed to stay on the fringes of the worst behaviors, generally showed the kind of low ego, low maintenance attitude a cook should have at this point in his career. He helped others, took responsibility for his actions, didn’t blame or explain when things went sour and consistently showed leadership qualities. Most likely to succeed–meaning he shall surely find the balance between leadership and culinary excellence in future. If you were going to invest in one contestant as a chef/business partner, Sam would be your guy.

So yeah, Sam is awesome. But two humble white guys in a row is bad for business; as a commenter (“SA”) notes on that same page:

I think, in the case of Michael particularly, and Sam most recently, that cuts were made not based on a chef’s performance or the food they gave this week, but the drama of keeping one person on or off.

And that’s pretty clear in the first part of the finale episode–I agree with you that Sam should have been in the final two, and I was quite shocked that he wasn’t. It felt like Colicchio came up with an excuse to cut him–what, that’s not cooking? Please. Cooking is not solely the application of heat, and Colicchio knows this. It was bullshit excuse. And I think you’re right, too, that the judges/producers were more concerned with how similar to Harold Sam was, from a television-character point of view (which, really, is all we the audience have).

So see ya later, Sam.

And as for Cliff… yeesh. What can you say–he assaulted Marcel. That’s not okay. But you may have noticed that he also accepted all of the blame himself, when Ilan the conniving weasel and Elia the foreign basketcase were definitely involved, too (and it’s hard to tell how much Sam had to do with it, but it would have been nice for him to actually intervene on Marcel’s behalf). So you know, he had too much to drink and made a big mistake. He had to go, I think, but I also think he escaped with his dignity intact–something that very few reality TV competitors ever do.

Anyway, Marcel is kind of amazing. It’s like the producers last year wondered what it would have been like if Stephen had been a good cook–and then they found him. But I don’t think anyone could have anticipated his hippie freestyling or his creepy jerkiness. Anyway, he’s clearly a talented chef, but I think the only reason he’s made it this far is because he’s a compelling (if repugnant) character who can be counted on to start some fights.

Which is a nice segue to discussing Ilan, since over the course of the season he’s been steadily progressing from “cool chef with a goofy haircut and a sense of humor” to “huge asshole who’ll betray anyone to get ahead (and can only cook Spanish food).” I was really disgusted that he made the finals after trying to screw Marcel with completely non sequitur character assassination in the last episode–I thought that he and Elia both deserved to go home for that. But it is allegedly about the food, so he stayed… because Sam had the audacity not to use heat to prepare his dishes!!!!!!!

Unfortunately, somebody’s got to win. So who will it be, the immature narcissist with a modified beehive or the immature narcissist with Obi-Wan’s old haircut?

I think this year’s winner will be Lee-Ann, finally getting out from under Harold’s shadow in a shocker twist ending. And then Kathie-Lee Joel and Padma Lakshmi will wrestle, nude, in a kiddie-pool filled with olive oil. Nah… they should save that for when Bravo switches to high definition.

Alas, I caught the spoiler comment at that blog I linked to, so I’m not going to say who I think will win. But really, I would have been disappointed either way.

Lost:
What? Lost hasn’t been on for months? I didn’t notice. That’s not promising.

Studio 60:
Ugh. Getting locked out on the roof is soooooooo Friends episode 1.09. This show has its moments, but that’s all they are–moments. Between all the boring corporate buyout intrigue and the seven romantic plots all revolving around miscommunications and sexist notions, It’s like Sorkin forgot everything he learned in between the end of Sports Night and the beginning of West Wing.

And is anyone else tired of watching Sorkin struggle with racial tension? For a while it was cute, like when a six-year-old thinks she can compose a symphony on a plastic keyboard, but at this point somebody’s got to tell him that when your black actors all sound like Niles Crane you’ve got a serious problem–with both your dialogue and with your understanding of the world.

Nobody cares about the life of an NBC exec! The worst case scenario is getting paid tens of millions of dollars to go sit on a beach somewhere! Their decisions make no substantive difference!

God, I’m so mad at him. On the plus side, it looks like they decided to at least take a break from trying to write actual comedy scenes for the show-within-the-show. That was a losing battle if I’ve ever seen one.

I thought this past week’s episode was pretty dumb. I think next week’s episode will be very dumb. And I’m not holding out much hope for the one after that being a game-changer, either.

But I will keep watching anyway. I don’t know why.

The Office:
It’s a simple show about a pitiful petty tyrant exerting a modicum of power over the sodden losers unfortunate enough to be his inferiors. It’s reliably the funniest thing on TV. And it is in some ways the most honest and powerful portrayal of how complicated, frustrating, and bizarre life can be in even the most mundane of circumstances. If you’re not watching this show, you have a serious problem.

The Apprentice:
Not only are most of the contestants morons, but Trump doesn’t even have the decency to care about that fact. If there’s one thing I would suggest to current and future contestants on this show (assuming it doesn’t get cancelled after this season, which wouldn’t surprise me), it’s this: stop fucking interrupting in the boardroom! Does this ever make anyone look better than just sitting quietly and speaking slowly and confidently? Also, it’s probably best not to be gay–Trump doesn’t seem to be a huge fan of alternate lifestyles or the color pink–EXCEPT ON TIES FOR SOME REASON.

The OC:
I don’t really have anything to say here. Now that nobody’s watching, The OC is getting better. In fact, without Marissa, The OC is in some ways better than ever. Except, remember when Taylor was a bad guy? And when Ryan’s dad was an abusive deadbeat dad? This show really requires a willingness to suspend disbelief and forget everything you’ve ever known… next thing you know, they’ll be telling us that Riverside has WMDs… Anyway, I’m glad the last few episodes have been watchable. But I won’t be crying any tears when it’s gone.

This American Life:
I know this is a radio program, but I needed to mention it somewhere. I love T.A.L. deeply. I couldn’t care less about Wait… Wait… Don’t Tell Me Another Goddamn Joke About George Bush Being Stupid and I hardly ever bother with All Things Considered, but the hour a week that I listen to This American Life is one of my purest pleasures. I am very thankful for the podcast.

Arrested Development:
R.I.P.

There’s a crappy little bar called Our House near my apartment that has a pretty sweet dinner deal–two-for-one burgers and appetizers every evening. So if you go with an even number of people, and everyone gets burgers, dinner’s half price. They offer lots of different burgers, all for reasonable prices (even before the discount), and if you want to substitute a chicken breast or a veggie burger you can do so at no extra charge. And, shockingly, their burgers are pretty good.

As a student without a whole lot of equity, cheap eating is a priority for me, so I’ve been a frequent two-for-one burgerer. It’s a great deal and two blocks away–sure beats cooking. My favorite burger to order is the grilled cheeseburger, which is exactly what you would expect–a burger patty in the middle of a grilled cheese sandwich. It’s a real insider order, too, since it’s not listed with the rest of the burgers (I guess because it’s not on a regular bun)–it’s under the “Sandwiches” heading instead. Anyway, it’s freaking delicious, and you don’t have to waste any valuable chewing time on vegetables.

Okay, so on to the story. (Incidentally, this story is pretty boring for a while, but I encourage you to stick with it. Two-thirds through I turn into a real dickhead.)

My friend and I walked into Our House and a girl who looked to be in the appropriate age bracket for Baby Einstein videos welcomed us and asked how many were in our party. Apparently she was our waitress–it wasn’t, in fact, Bring Your Middle-School-Aged Daughter to Work Day.

Anyway, my friend and I sat down and the waitress came over and handed us menus, then she walked away, without getting our drink orders. She came back a minute later and asked if we wanted drinks. We ordered whatever we decided we wanted, and off she went again. Based on the weird behavior and some awkwardness in the ordering process–not to mention the fact that she could have passed for a bat mitzvah–my friend and I speculated that it might be the waitress’s first day. We were old hands, though, having eaten there many times, so when she came back with our drinks we were ready with our order. I asked for my usual, the extremely tasty grilled cheeseburger.

The food came, and it was greasy and delicious as always. So far, everything had gone pretty smoothly. The waitress still seemed sort of nervous and awkward, but–and let me emphasize this–at this pointI hadn’t made anyone cry.

But then the check came. I noticed that the bill was approximately double what it ought to have been. Of course, I figure it out pretty quickly–the waitress hadn’t given us the discount. So when she came back for the check I explained that, because it was happy hour, burgers were two-for-one. Her face fell.

“The grilled cheeseburger doesn’t count for the two-for-one–only the burgers listed in the ‘Burger’ section are half-price.”

Of course I told her that there must be some mistake, since I had ordered it before.

The waitress said that it was her first day working there (just as I suspected!), but she thought that the grilled cheeseburger wasn’t part of the two-for-one promotion. But she wasn’t sure, so she went off to check with the manager. She seemed shaken, but I guess this kind of stupid conversation is not what you want on your first day.

A minute later, she returned. She said she had checked with the manager. He had, apparently, confirmed that the grilled cheeseburger was not part of the two-for-one promotion.

I explained my perspective to her in a little more detail: I was a regular customer, and I’d ordered the grilled cheeseburger many times, and had in fact gotten the discount–had, just to be crystal clear, asked my waitresses to confirm that it was eligible for the discount before I ordered. Now it’s important that you understand my tone throughout this back-and-forth. I had been civil, friendly, and dispassionate. I wasn’t yelling or arguing, just trying to get some clarity. Unfortunately, things were about to get a little more complicated.

I was happy to pay full price if that was the policy, I stressed–I just wanted to know why I had gotten the discount every time I’d been there before.

Okay, time out. There’s something else you have to know about me for the rest of this story to make sense. In person, I’m very difficult to read. The line between sarcasm and sincerity, in terms of my tone of voice and my expression, is Nicole Ritchie thin. People who have known me well since the last millennium can’t always tell that I’m joking. So you need to understand this–what I did next was not serious. I was making light of the situation by affecting a caricature of customer immaturity. I swear.

Having just explained my confusion–why did I get half off before yet get charged full price now?–I slammed my fist down on the wooden table. The glasses and dishes clattered. “Your policy is inconsistent!” I said. Well, maybe I kind of exclaimed it. I’m almost positive I didn’t yell it. But the important thing is, I was just kidding.

In a cloud of dust, she fled the table. Before I knew it, her manager was leaning across the table.

“Listen, pal. The grilled cheeseburger isn’t part of the two-for-one, and it never has been.”

First of all, I think we can all agree that “pal” doesn’t get unironically used nearly enough. Anyway, I was game for another round of this, so I explained again that I was happy to pay full price. I just thought, since I’d been told as much several times prior, that I’d get half off this time, too. He told me, awesomely, that if I’d ever gotten half off, my waitress had had to cover the difference out of her paycheck.

Now aside from the fact that you might expect that this would have gotten the point across to the staff, precluding them from telling me it was half off, it also struck me as the wrong attitude to take with a paying customer. What the hell, eat the $2.50 loss and give me the stupid discount. It’s not like the sandwich costs the bar any more than the regular burgers–in fact it’s cheaper, since they don’t have to pay for rancid month-old lettuce or tomatoes. Don’t try to guilt-trip me with images of my former waitresses bankrupted by my cruel burger-eating. Just build a little goodwill and tell me that I get the discount this time, but from now on it’s full price. But that’s not the direction in which the manager opted to go. Instead, he decided to pick a fight and imply that I was a niggard. I felt it was a curious choice.^**

At any rate, the guy was quivering with rage, so I acquiesced and told him that I’d pay full price. And of course I left a generous tip, because why should the nice waitress get screwed when it’s her boss who’s the antagonistic moron?

Incidentally, although I told the story like it happened yesterday, this actually all went down last June. I haven’t been back since. And I will NEVER go back. You hear that, Our House manager? You lost a loyal customer for eternity. And if the waitress somehow finds this post, I apologize. I didn’t mean to yell at you, and I would take it back if I could. But by now I’m sure you’ve had occasion to agree with me–your boss is a dumb asshole.

^* I’m not sure that she cried but it did look like she was about to.
^** On the other hand, I had just, from his perspective, screamed at his waitress. I can see how he might not have been predisposed toward the “customer is always right” attitude at that moment. But I assure you, as an impartial person who just happens to have been tangentially involved, it was entirely his fault–I am a blameless victim here!

Wednesday’s Colbert Report mentioned Integrity Justice, a blog Colbert said he was creating to seed fake news stories that he hoped would eventually get big enough to make it onto his show (video here). As weird as that may be, it’s not as weird as the show’s producers’ choice of what to actually put on the domain. It’s basically a standard template email form for fake news submissions (although it never even mentions what you’re supposed to be submitting), but it includes a long textbox filled with contract terms. First I thought it was just boilerplate “we have the right to use whatever you write here however we want for free,” (the first part of the text is about how to send in submissions) but as I looked through it I realized that it includes the contract they have for people who appear on the show itself.

Guest Name: ________________________________ (check one) Performance: ___ Interview: ___ MOS: ___
ENTRANTS NAME:
DATE: __________

GUEST/PERFORMER RELEASE
This release is made to allow (“you”) to include me as a guest performer in a production and/or publication tentatively entitled (the “Programming”). I am giving this release in consideration for you allowing me to participate as a guest performer in the Programming and I recognize that my signature on this release is a condition of your permitting me to be a guest on or a performer in the Programming or both.

But my favorite part is definitely:

I confirm that, to the best of my knowledge any statements made by me during the Performance will be true and will not violate or infringe upon any third party’s rights.

Somehow, I couldn’t find anything guaranteeing that everything Colbert says must be true.

Anyway, aside from the email submission contract and the guest appearance contract, keep an eye out for the bonus “hazardous activity” language and the location use waiver. It’s a thrill a minute at Integrity Justice!

What happened here? I assume an intern just goofed up and cut-and-pasted all the legal language they could find on the show’s LAN. At any rate, it’s a nice insight into just how boring (yet restrictive) even an absurd TV show’s contract can be.

Watch this video:

“No you will not teach or show that propagandist Al Gore video to my child, blaming our nation — the greatest nation ever to exist on this planet — for global warming,” Hardiman wrote in an e-mail to the Federal Way School Board. The 43-year-old computer consultant is an evangelical Christian who says he believes that a warming planet is “one of the signs” of Jesus Christ’s imminent return for Judgment Day.

Was there anything in that last sentence that surprised you? Me neither.

[Washington Post]

As anyone who uses Gmail and other Google web services knows, Google has already implemented a global contact list. When you want to share your Google Calendar with a friend, the site already has all of your Gmail contacts stored for easy retrieval from a drop-down list. The same thing happens when you want to share an RSS item from Google Reader or a spreadsheet from Google Documents.

So why on Google Earth doesn’t the company offer Google Address Book? Think about it–a globally-accessible list of everyone you know, searchable by name, hometown, company, email address, or even zodiac sign. You could browse a gallery of images associated with your contacts, or automatically add their blogs’ RSS feeds to Google Reader to keep track of what they’re up to.

Every person you email with Gmail already gets automatically added to your contact list. It’s just a small step to add an option to send someone your digital business card, which can include any contact information you choose to share (this functionality has been built into Outlook for years and years), so that your correspondents can easily save your info to their own address books. And of course you’d be able to import your current address book from Thunderbird, Outlook, Outlook Express, Palm, etc., as well as manually inputting new or changed contacts as they come along.

What’s the best part about this? Half the work is already done! Google already integrates your contact list into all these other services, and although it’s not incredibly easy you can already add email and mailing addresses, phone numbers, and other information for each of these contacts. All Google would have to do is put together a simple Googley site (the aforementioned Google Address Book) to make storing, browsing, and searching your contacts easy (and rewrite some code for the various services to take advantage of the new functionality).

A couple of other useful features, off the top of my head:

• Tags
  Tags can replace email groups. Tag all of your business contacts “business.” Tag all of your drinking buddies “booze.” Tag your roommates “roommate.” Tag your family “family.” College friends, “college,” high school friends, “high school,” and so on. And if someone fits in more than one category, no problem–you’re not limited to one tag per contact. From now on, when you want to invite everyone over to watch the Super Bowl you can just click on “send to tag” and select “booze,” “college,” and “high school” and send your mass email to everyone with those tags.
• Birthday integration with Google Calendar
  This one’s a real no brainer. You go to your Google Calendar settings and click on the “Birthdays” tab. There you’ll see a list of every contact for whom you have a birthday listed. You check the box next to anyone whose birthday you want to appear on your calendar, and choose whether you want a default reminder a few days or weeks in advance (and of course you can change this setting manually for each contact).

And I have no doubt that anyone dedicating more than 30 minutes to this idea could come up with many more.

I’ve got to believe that Google is already working on this. It’s not a complicated idea. But on the other hand I would have said the same thing a year ago, and I haven’t heard or read anything to suggest that they’re about to release anything along these lines. So on the off chance that this hasn’t occurred to anyone out there in Googleland, consider this my gift to you. Just do me a favor and let me in the private beta when you get it up and running.

First, I scored some tickets to go see Robin Williams do standup on Thursday night (information here). For the sake of me having a good time, I really hope he’s back off the wagon.

Second, I discovered my new desktop background. Perfect for widescreens! [kottke, who also linked to this insane video documenting how even the Food Network is evil]