You had me at Sea Donkeys, Darling....Awesome stuff...

-Adam

Is anyone else getting bored with the quiz Heather ends with most weeks? It was entertaining the first few times, but now it's become predictable and just generates a scroll down from me these days. Now, I suppose it fits under that "lifestyle choice" option for her at this point because of its repetition, but I'm hoping she can be convinced it should be dropped.

Not that I'm going to change my lifestyle choice of reading her column; the rest is still entertaining.

There. The floodgates are open. Let the bile spew forth.

I laughed. I cried. Keep em comin' Heather!

Ever since Anna Nicole Smith paved the way for bloated, inebriated, sexually ambiguous, rude, crude, and lewd characters and content, my life has changed for the better. Before that pivotal period, I was a sorry sack of a human being. I was constantly intellectually challenged. My self-esteem would, at times, shrivel into an existential hole and remain irretrievable for days.

Not Jerry Springer or those demeaning Court TV shows helped me gain a sense of superiority. Mainly because they're filled with sorry sacks just like me. But because TV producers had the courage to plum the bottom of the barrel and give us shows with illustrious types like Bobby Brown, Jose Conseco, and now Janice Dickinson, I can get off the meds and rely on the new age TV to fortify my self-worth. Believe me it's like tonic for the soul seeing just how pathetic these apparently successful people are.

It was about time that the high and mighty were brought down to earth. We all put our legs on one pant at a time, after all. Why should society maintain a host of role models? What good do they do? Such individuals only make the rest of us inferior people feel worse about our station in life. Hopefully, in time, TV will reduce everyone down to size and there won't be those few who seem so unapproachably superior, except for that rare Einstein type who shows up every few centuries.

Bravo for Equality.

...I'm tagging this on my site under "Listen to Your Grand-Daughter" ... because I'm quite certain no one I know is going to hear this kind of stuff anywhere else. Not to mention the educational value: I had no idea hydration was important when taking Ecstasy.

Adam Steinberg's column is a lot of fun this time, so props to dear old Adam. I share her delight with Chef Ramsay's tirades. What Adam doesn't mention is his tirades against uppity *customers* are the ones to truly relish, particularly if you've ever had the misfortune to work in food service and have to deal with uppity customers. It's like a kind of divine retribution you've been waiting for your whole life to see Ramsay rip the junk out of a ill-tempered customer oozing entitlement.

But I'm not quite sure why Adam keeps associating Chef Ramsay's snarky interpersonal style with "working class immigrants". Has she never ventured to the UK, where verbal abuse is an art practiced equally by all classes, and taking people down a peg is a social ritual relished by all? Ramsay follows in the long line of Brits (Simon Cowell, Ann Robinson) who have made a career out of shocking and titillating middle brow "nice" Americans with just how mean you can be someone in person, and as a matter of course. There's nothing working class or immigrant about it.

"Is anyone else getting bored with the quiz Heather ends with most weeks? It was entertaining the first few times, but now it's become predictable and just generates a scroll down from me these days."

I love the quiz. How dare you? It's Havrilesky's big finish, like the end of Beethoven's "Leonore No. 3" Overture of Tchaikovsky's "Marche Slave". It's the last five minutes of the fireworks show on the Fourth of July. She reiterates the major themes, throws in a natty cut-and-thrust of pure random cleverness, and finishes with a flourish.

It's the best part of the column for me, and if it goes, I do.

SAVE THE QUIZ!!

Is anyone else out there breathlessly anticipating the return of Bravo's "Project Runaway"? I mean, really, it consistently excels at what all three of these shows desperately try to accomplish.

Heather's going to wink too hard and her eyes are going to explode and blow her head right off her shoulders.

The guy who hosts "Cheaters" just got stabbed by a "cheater" his show caught, and Ramsay does his shtick surrounded by people carrying much better and sharper knives. It's just a matter of time. I'm surprised the convict didn't do him.

Sadly, this doesn't change the fact that, no matter how relaxing you find it to nurture homeless dogs or care for high-maintenance plants or bed Lou's wife, no one really wants to hear about it.

Correct. So cut out the entire first page of your column and you will be that much closer to being an actual t.v. critic, instead of a self-absorbed insult comic flaunting your latent hostility to just about everything while growing old and unread.

Hey- "get me an editor"- I don't understand where you're coming from. I consider what Ms. Havrilesky does as more than tv critique and a bit more like cultural commentary by way of the whole tv gestalt. For the record, I may not always agree with her, but I enjoy her commentary and have never thought her self-serving or bitter.

Why do you spew such hatred and make such injurious [as well, as wrong-headed] commentary? It's a conscious choice to read Heather's column. Don't like it? Don't read her. And get your own gig with Salon.

"Hell's Kitchen" is more like a low-rent restaurant manager competition than anything about chefs or cooking. Who can get the order right? Who can get the food out faster (or at all)? Usually no one on this show. Despite all of Gordon Ramsey's huffing and puffing, "Hell's Kitchen" might as well be offering a prize of becoming Kitchen Manager at a "Denny's" for all it actually has to do with the quality of the food. When orders do come up, they look about as exciting or tasty as microwave salmon or something you could boil in a bag from the frozen foods section of your supermarket. Bravo's "Top Chef" actually took time to show us the food, and let us get to know the competitors. I'd like to try the "Top Chef" cooks' food and I actually gave a damn about who won; all "Hell's Kitchen" does is make me think that if I'm ever in a town where Gordon Ramsey has a restaurant, I'd eat anywhere else.