The Food(ie) Channel
So Little On The Boob Tube is Even Worth Trashing These Days...
Editors Note: No doubt about it, Americans are getting fatter by the minute. The Food Channel has been instrumental in helping this trend along.
Apparently hordes of Americans are addicted to The Food Channel so in lieu of diets and exercise, we offer the following:
Emeril Live:
Show premise: Celebrity Chef Emeril Lagasse dishes up food his way with lots of spicy humor, flourish and cool jazz music.
What happens when you watch: You start cooking to an audience of one while keeping up an inane and highly vocal stream of consciousness, peppered with phrases like, “Bam!” and, “Oh yeah, baby.” You use way too much garlic and your near psychotic fear of butter is a thing of the past.
Iron Chef:
Show premise: Hard drinking Japanese chefs in cheesy costumes battle it out with talented challengers in one hour using a ‘main ingredient’ while catering to the tastes of a panel of garishly dressed (in the case of female, chronically giggling) judges.
What happens when you watch: You are overwhelmed by a sudden urge to dress like Elvis in drag. Raw squid and octopus start looking mighty appealing. You get thrown out of your local grocery store for screaming at clerks to bring you fresher produce. Somebody confiscates your kitchen knifes and you wonder why. Your Japanese inexplicitly improves.
Martha’s Kitchen:
Show Premise: Domestic diva Martha Stewart prepares high quality, hard to replicate dishes but only with the help of real chefs.
What happens when you watch: You find yourself buying $500 French mandolins and giant fruit pulp strainers. You bulldoze over the pool and plant your entire backyard with heirloom tomatoes. You stop paying the hired help and inform them they are lucky enough just to work for you for free. Your neighbors hate your guts and you lose all your lifelong friends.
Cooks Tour:
Show Premise: Arrogant, chip on his shoulder tough guy cook runs around the world eating exotic food.
What happens when you watch: You take to wearing a beat up leather jacket and smoking way too much. You eat anything you want and never gain any weight. All that unresolved childhood anger is working for you. Howard Stern suddenly seems like a really reasonable guy.
Cooking Thin With Chef Kathleen:
Show Premise: Former fatty cook shows tubbies how to eat thin, lose weight and feel better about themselves.
What happens when you watch: Morbidly obese people are actually just misunderstood thin folks dying to get out; you know this now. Even though hugely fat people apparently cannot figure out how to stop stuffing their faces without a professional chef telling them how ‘wonderful and lovable’ they are all the time, this suddenly seems totally reasonable to you. You consider writing Chef Kathleen about your cousin Arnie as she seems to be working miracles on all those refugees from Richard Simmons classes.
Two Fat Ladies:
Show Premise: Dynamic duo, consisting of two very large English women, cook giant gourmet meals for wide variety of people whom they don’t seem to know very well.
What happens when you watch: You need to go out immediately and buy a motorbike with a sidecar. Then you must slather yourself, head to toe, in butter.
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