Cooking all day and all night

Just a few random topics tonight…

Topic # 1: On the comment from the weekend, I did know that Tim DeLaughter, the frontman for The Polyphonic Spree, used to be in Tripping Daisy. Mainly because I constantly get him confused with Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips and have missed trivia questions because I can never remember which one leads which band. For all I know they really are the same guy. Add to that the fact that I can’t ever recall who recorded “Push the Little Daisies” and somehow always credit that to Tripping Daisy just because of the name Daisy. The early 90’s were a very confusing time for me. All of these bands were popular right when I broke up with a girl just so I could date her roommate. It made mix tapes and phone calls surprisingly difficult.

Topic # 2: That’s something that kids today never have to deal with: calling a girl and having to deal with her roommate. Now you’d just call the girl’s cel phone and she’ll glance at the caller ID and let it go to voice mail. It takes all the fun out of it as you have to try to impress the roommate more than anyone because if she becomes your advocate it is smooth sailing. I’m not sure if I can even imagine what it is like as a college student anymore.

Topic # 3: Back to The Polyphonic Spree. I haven’t heard their new disc yet but I’ve heard some good buzz surrounding it. Historically, they have been one of the most insane acts out there. Imagine twenty people taking the stage in Technicolor choir robes and resembling in all aspects a cult who then go on to sing about twenty songs about how awesome the sun is. That’s pretty much the band. It’s as if they fell into a time warp and ended up thirty years into the future.

Well, except now the talk is they are taking the stage in these quasi-military uniforms. That would completely change the vibe of the band. Still don’t know if it matches Sufjan Stevens equipping his entire band with butterfly wings for a performance. This is what you get on the indie scene. When you can’t afford high end light shows and pyro you make up for it with costumes.

Topic # 4: For some reason, over the past few days I’ve watched Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star and Hell’s Kitchen. This from someone whose dinner was whatever I could shove in the microwave. It is a strange new world of reality shows where there are three separate “I wanna be a famous chef” shows. Top Chef has the most talented chefs as they tend to make dishes that look vaguely expensive and occasionally edible. It always seems the toughest show to make sense of because you watch it and you have no idea if the food actually tastes good. At least on Project Runway you can go “Dear god, that is the ugliest dress ever.”

The Food Network show is just bizarre. They have all of these people who are meant to be new hosts but they seem to have a complete lack of personality, emotion or ability to cook. You wouldn’t want to spend time with them in a bar, much less have them show you how to cook. At least Hell’s Kitchen matches peoples inability to cook with an incredible amount of profanity. That’s the way you should cook, by swearing at the food. Or, as one contestant did tonight, taking food out of the garbage and preparing it again to serve. Even I’ve never done that.