ranting session

this was prolly sparked by my previous post.

i. this will prolly sound sexist, but it isn't (i hope). today i thought about it, and i realized that i'm starting to REALLY not like the food network because of all the shows with cooks, many of which are women, that aren't even involved in the "foodie" community and/or culture. not that i'm against women chefs with their own cooking shows, but these ladies aren't even real chefs! i mean, i haven't done all my homework on the "foodie industry" but i do know a couple of things:

(1) the "foodie" culture is dominated by white people (2) the restaurant industry is male-dominated, [i knew this before ratatouille] (3) one measure of success as a chef is owning your own successful restaurant (4) filipino cuisine has not yet become a "foodie" type of cuisine in this country, but it's still my favorite.

with that being said i think that there SHOULD BE more women chefs on tv. but dang, can the food network please use some real chefs? here's a list of some the women food network celebrity cooks who have tv shows that air ALL THE TIME (in no particular order):

- rachel ray, although she does endorse ritz CRACKers and dunkin donuts.
- giada de laurentiis, although she did do that really weird esquire photo shoot
- ina garten, cooking in the hamptons lady
- sandra lee, she's lived a hard-knock life, kinna, but still very weird
- ellie krieger, she's still cool though, healthy is always cool
- paula deen already hated on her
- ingrid hoffmann, simply deliciLOCO

with the exception of (surprise) paula deen who own's the lady and sons all of these ladies have never even tried opening up a restaurant, even with their newly found celebrity status. what can we conclude? i know you're thinking it. THEIR FOOD ISN'T THAT SPECTACULAR! oh sure, it's prolly better than eggs and rice, but nothing better than what a creative mind can come up with in the kitchen (along with some appropriate research from real chefs). maybe i'm laboring over a small point, but i'm pretty sure that this channel was built off of celebrity chefs, not celebrity cooks. i mean, yes the above mentioned do present important practical techniques for your everyday home kitchen. but damn, how much frickin rachel ray do i need to watch before i can watch a real chef cook? i got more than 30 minutes, teach me something harder to make!


ii. so first it was that one golf commentator lady, jokingly saying tiger woods ought to be lynched. and now it's dana jacobsen, whoever the hell she is, drunkenly making some inappropriate comments at a celebrity roast.

are you surprised? i mean why should you be? we all know that mainstream sports media shuns any and all of the cultural, racial, and social questions professional sports inevitably creates, and we all know that more than enough sports commentators are racially, culturally, socially, religiously, or otherwise-ly insensitive. so why should we be surprised? these two problems create another clashing problem. i'm pretty sure the screening process you have to go through to become a sports commentator involves the questions "are you white and conservative or can you associate yourself with white AND conservative people?" and "how do you feel about black athletes?" and "isn't fox the best tv station ever?"

anyways i don't hate all sports commentators, i miss the days when kenny mayne and dan patrick did sportscenter. i just hate the fact that most of the biggest games have to be commentated by some of the biggest assholes, like joe buck, prolly the biggest racist asshole in sports commentating history. eff you joe buck. and it's still too bad that stuart scott is still the only premiere sports commentator of color. and fuck you pedro gomez.

ps. somebody needs to tell tiger woods that he's colored, maybe he should watch this

old people don't watch music videos

i remember a time when vh1 and mtv were two totally different channels. mtv was the center for everything cool, and vh1 was the center of everything cool to old people. you would watch mtv with your friends and vh1 with your parents or something like that. they both played music videos frequently.

now, they're pretty much the same garbage. garbage garbage garbage.
ok, maybe not all garbage. best week ever is a pretty good show. but seriously, super-testosterone filled i love new york? and that show with all the skanks and bret michaels? i feel like i'm getting dumberer just thinking about them. does anybody ever think about the children anymore?

and i won't even talk about mtv anymore. just thinking about some of their shows makes me wanna beat up on dumb little rich kids.

i need a drink.

resting on my laurels

when you tell people that you're graduating from berkeley engineering, they make it seem like it's gonna be a piece of cake to get a job, like they're gonna give away jobs like free ipods, all you have to do is sign up..

well i haven't really tried getting a job yet, but i'll let you know how easy it is


(if you saw juno, which i recommend that you do, i'm sorry for using the ipods line)

like a desert waiting for the rain

i started really liking norah jones pretty much after i heard that line. i think it's a gorgeous analogy, except that i think norah was talking about sex, when it can apply to pretty much anything.

i think, and i hope i'm not speaking for myself, that it can apply to my faith. not that i'm actually expecting something from Him, but more and more, i'm feeling that that's what we're being preached.

hmm.. maybe this is all a bit confusing. i'm gonna try and go through a thought progression that happened today at church, and maybe folks can understand what i'm tryin to say.

- so i went to the 8pm mass by myself, i like going by myself because i just do. and i was sittin by the side where the confession room is. father andrew makes a semi-scene going into the priest's side of the confession booth, and then a line slowly accumulates leading into the confession booth.

- so now i'm thinking, i remember when i was in 2nd grade, and we had to do confession before our first communion. i remember being nervous going to father for confession, not because i had dirty sins to confess, but that i couldn't figure out what i was going to say to him. i wasn't a bad little kid. so i had to over-exaggerate a kinda-sin that maybe i had thought about doing, or something like that.

- now i'm thinking, if i went into confession, i still don't know what i would say to father. not that i'm an angel or anything, but i'm not a bad person, and i don't consider myself a sinful person. also, i don't know too many people that are just outright sinful people. which leads me to thinking...

- why is the line for confession so long? why are all these people lined up for confession? what could they possibly be ready to confess? i guess what i was trying to get at in my head, why do we have to confess our sins? why, why, why can't we just try to be better people? i'm sure you get some reassurance that a priest knows what your sins are, but then, why father andrew? he's like the worst priest there.

- now it's established in my head that i no longer need confession. not that i'm gonna be a perfect person, but i won't live my life sinfully, and for any sins that i do/have commit/ed, i usually am pretty remorseful once i think about them.

- then i get my "this is what faith is" realization. that we try to live sin-free our whole lives, with the hope, the "faith", that this will all mean something in the end. we are all deserts, waiting for the rain. waiting to be quenched with something.

not really an epiphany, i think most folks i've known in my life were raised to think this way.

here's to having the faith that the rain is coming.

that staples shit it whack

there really is no easy button in life.


i like being relaxed. i wish i could be relaxed all the time. i'm pretty sure i'd be productive as a relaxed (not lazy) person. but really, i can't, cuz that's just how life is. you can't be relaxed all the time, there aren't too many people in the world that want you to be relaxed all the time. you gotta worry about shit. all kinds of shit. there needs to be moments of panic in your life, sometimes even sheer terror. why? i don't know.

i guess that's a pretty broad topic.
but shit, i just like being relaxed. it's not really more money more problems. cuz i don't have any money or a job even, and i already have more problems than when i did have a job. maybe that's an exaggeration, but it feels like it. it should be more expectations, more problems.

i have a feeling 2008 is gonna be a really different year. maybe the most different of my life. ever. does that make sense?