At the end of a nail-biter finale episode, in which sour-faced villain Lisa seemed to be getting the winner’s edit, sanity prevailed and the more consistently strong competitor took the gold. Hoorah! I do have to grudgingly admit that Lisa cooked her ass off during the final, and her tom kha gai actually looked quite delicious. Still, if she’d pulled it off and won, after being in the bottom two for the past seven straight episodes or whatever, it would have been the biggest upset in Top Chef history. Upset, as in the audience being upset and burning down the Bravo studios. Luckily, the chef with the best overall record as well as personality won. To think, Stephanie was so nervous in the first episode that she couldn’t stop shaking, and now she is Top Chef!
Sadly Richard choked at the end, but in a way that still retained his respectability. He, Stephanie, and the others (yes, probably even Lisa) will surely get tons of business from this experience. Overall it was a great season, and between this show, Anthony Bourdain’s travel show, and Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares, I have been inspired to cook more and experiment with new kitchen techniques and foods. If only I could afford smokers and liquid nitrogen vats…
Phew. I have recovered from the near heart attack I had during the last two minutes of regulation time, but am still kind of stunned. Go Jayhawks!
photo courtesy of Lawrence Journal World, by Nick Krug
Our Super Mario, best player ever. Isn’t he just cute as a button? And he’s from Alaska, to boot!
photo courtesy of lawrence.com, by Ailecia Ruscin
The drunken horde sufficiently recovered from Saturday’s festivities to rush downtown once again. More fireworks, more drunken buffoonery, and more boobs. Unfortunately I didn’t see any naked people fall off cars this time.
I fully admit I am a fair-weather fan, and really just start to pay attention to basketball during the tournament season. It is, for me, as much of a sociological phenomenon as anything else. And I can’t really see myself following NBA games, or any other sport really (like football, for instance: I don’t care how well we do, I can’t get excited about watching people alternately play for two seconds and then huddle for ten minutes).
But dammit, when a college basketball game is good, it can be the most spectacular drama, and I find myself jumping up and down, and hooting and hollering with the rest of them. Rock Chalk!
(Having said that, I don’t ever see myself getting behind things like this. I just can’t take that level of cheese.)
