....but at least he's getting it done. I'd find a no talent jerk infinitely more annoying. And it's part of the shtick, so what's the big deal? Not warm and fuzzy enough? As for the 'Bunny incident" At least he's honest enough to tell his kids how it got there. How many parents would be willing to do the same?...."Gee kids, they stuck an electrified cattle prod into Elsies nether region; just to make you a Happy Meal"...... Not very Mclikely......

...different species that don't do the F thing very well together, but who cares, as long as they both have long ears, right? Just as it makes funny reading, right?

If it only did...

I also work at one of those businesses of which you speak. You can do your shopping at Costco for just as cheap as Sam's, without supporting an evil empire. There's no excuse to patronize Wally World when there's a workable, exponentially less repulsive option.

Roger Ebert covers movies he doesn't like. HH only covers her favorite shows. Over and over and over and over and over and over and over.

However, these people have learned the tricks needed to make money in tv. I should correct myself, because they are not evil: they are mentally ill.

You may not be able to find it, more's the pity. Book stores would rather stock the latest crappy romance novel (and ALL romance novels are crappy) than a well-written book from a few years ago.

And for the people astonished that I would defend Havrilesky, I defend her when she's right and attack her when she's wrong. It's the high school haters who usually keep attacking people until they die, right or wrong. Check back among my earlier stuff and you'll see I gave a REASON for attacking.

Finally, to tht yutz who talked about people quitting their call center jobs and getting a paid job as a columnist, what decade are you living in? NOBODY is paid anything for writing any more. Since newspapers are dying, and since anything written is available free on the Internet (including Lord of Light, if you know where to look, Cabdriver) writers are not paid enough for their work to sustain their lives.

Which is probably a welcome change. Rather than listen to someone pretentious like Garrison Keillor pontificate about his fictional Lake Woebegone, he'll apologize in print for using a backup column because his job as a Wal-Mart stocker left him overtired and suffering from the flu, and he can't get medical treatment because Americans have been denied universal medical coverage - again. Working actual paying jobs, THEN writing, will keep writing far more grounded in reality. It'll bring better writing; it'll be done out of love, rather than out of a need for food and shelter.

And he was only a very good (not great) critic at that, but at least he tried.

The notion of the "critic" or actual criticism on a higher level is dead in this country. As Smithers pointed out, Roger Ebert, who will unfortunately probably never talk again, is a good example of this. He's now been replaced with the precocious but slightly dim Ben Lyons.

I'm afraid we're just going to have to wave goodbye to any Mencken-esque notion of critique we have left. Columns like this (which I didn't dislike that much) are what's probably going to replace it.

Of course we won't really need it as the notion of American art is following closely behind in criticism's death kneel. They arrested Shephard Fairey, the guy who did the only passably bad red, white and blue Obama portrait, the other day for some graffiti work he'd done years ago. If HE'S considered an avant-garde artist we're really in trouble.

Face it the counter-culture, no-fun police have won. We all have to take full responsibility for having been lulled into stupidity by reality t.v., substandard art, writing and the crap we've accepted as movies for the past decade.

P.S. If it helps sud I agree about the idea of Gail, who at least had some basic understanding of cuisine, as host of TC. On a side note I also thought she was way hotter than Padma too.

"Working actual paying jobs, THEN writing, will keep writing far more grounded in reality."

I suppose that someone could say the same thing about crafting animated cartoons. You know, after sufficient hours were spent performing "actual work", every week.

Anyway, "grounded in reality" is not enough. It isn't even required for good writing- as a sci-fi (sorry, "speculative fiction") reader, you should have some grasp of that.

I'm trying to imagine Norman Mailer writing Harlot's Ghost as a side gig. And that was fiction (although the research bibliography was very impressive.)

My real worry is at least as much about the fate of authentic journalism- where's the next George Seldes, Clarence LuSane, Hank Messick, Sally Denton, Marc Reisner, Penny Lernoux? The last book I can think of that had anything close to a social and political impact was Cadillac Desert. That was over 20 years ago. I can tick off lots of books equally as valuable that have been published since then- City Of Quartz, Green Delusions, Fragments: The Remnants Of War, Cocaine Politics, Hot Money And The Politics Of Debt, The Money And The Power- but who reads any more?

The residents of the New Century apparently prefer to watch banal "reality TV" shows. (There's an oxymoron for you.)

And then there's what's happened to popular musical taste, as a result of the Machine Age. Ironically, there's a host of musicians who seem to me to be more talented than ever. But how many people are buying their music? What's really moving the product these days?

many of this "problem restaurants" seem to be run by prima donnas in various positions. Ramsey is impressive in that he arrives 100% present and stays on-top-of-the-job for the duration ...

Like "The Dog Whisperer," you can often see nstantly whether or not the client "gets it" ... that succeeding at being a chef/restuaranteur requires 100% effort and attention to detail and DEMANDING (over and over and overy again as necessary) top performance.

If he discourages one or more slackers from thinking it would be "cool" to start a restaurant -- well, god bless him.

Most of these restauranteurs have family and friends and (for gods sake) employees heavily invested in their success ... Ramsey makes it clear it's an heavy responsibility and almost a covenant of good faith.

On the bad side, the really lax sanitation featured in many of the restaurants on day one is seriously off-putting and I'm far from a germophobe.

While the Dog Whisperer has the advantage, as he says, that dogs only go forward, Ramsey is an excellent role model as a coach ... some times y'gotta curse and appear slightly threatening to keep their attention ... Most of the chefs and restauranteurs he deals with are cooler-than-you with virtually everyone in their daily sphere ... It's good for them to get a reality check, hopefully before they lose the farm.