This week should have been a typical week. Take my son to kindergarten. Play with my daughter. Make dinner for family. Wrap dead fish in newspaper and mail to Food Network.
Wait, ok, that last part is somewhat atypical. While, like most people, I do mail the occasional dead fish to someone who has grieved me in some way, this would mark only the second time I have sent one to the Food Network. I really don’t want to get into the first time, as there was some, shall we say, unpleasantness. Let me just tell you that if you are going to send a dead fish to Sandra Lee, do not include your return address. Amateur mistake.
It wasn't me Sandra, I swear. It was Rahm Emmanuel!
You see, every afternoon at 3:30 after I pick my son up from school, I like to turn on FN just to see what Tyler Florence is making. Sometimes I turn it right off, but every now and then he has a great menu on his show, Tyler’s Ultimate. One nice thing about FN (and believe me, other than Alton Brown, there probably is only one other nice thing) is that it is age appropriate programming. The only time FN is inappropriate is for 12-14 year old males during Everyday Italian.
So what did our clueless amigos at FN do? They moved him to 11am (dead zone time) to occupy Michael Chiarello’s old time slot. As a side note, I always liked Easy Entertaining, it was like spending part of the morning in Napa, and Mike is a pretty damn good chef.
You'd be this happy too if you lived in Napa, had a basket of wine and were leaving Food Network
I know what you are saying. Hardly reason to send a dead fish, right. True. Read on…
Guess who is on at 3:30 now? I won’t keep you in suspense, it is Anne Burrell. You are either saying who the fuck is that, or throwing up in your mouth. Who likes her? Anyone? Perhaps there is an Anne Burrell fan club out there ready to attack me like the Guy Fieri mafia. I doubt it. Her show, Secrets of a Restaurant Chef is, to put it simply, awful. I know Tyler Florence isn’t exactly Mr. Excitement but at least he was watchable.
It gets better. What genius thought it was a good idea to put Anne on right after Guy’s Big Bite? Not only are you cramming two of the worst personalities FN has to offer into the same hour, but are you oblivious to the fact that they look almost exactly alike? I expect there will be a lot of confused soccer moms. I’m tired of FN propping up utterly loathsome personalities. From Guy Fieri, to Anne Burrell, to Alex Guarnaschelli, it just keeps getting worse and worse.
Anne Burrell
Guy Fieri, sans glasses
As it stands now, aside from EPIE research, my FN viewing is down to Good Eats and sometimes Chopped. The day Alton Brown leaves will be the end of the line for me and Food Network.
So…they get a dead fish. Oh yeah, and also because the show The Best Thing I Ever Ate is self-indulgent garbage.
The best part of this story is that I threw in a bottle of ancho chili powder along with the fish, hoping to entice Bobby Flay to be a big show off and try to cook it. Joke is on him, I let that thing sit in the sun for three days; it has more bacteria in it than all of Tiger Woods’ mistresses combined.
Come to think of it, I just thought of a helpful way to help El Tigre defeat his sex addiction problem. Carry a picture of Anne Burrell around with you at ALL TIMES. That’ll keep your driver in the bag.
(OK, that was really mean, even for me. If I ever meet Anne Burrell she has permission to punch me.)