Calm down, Scott Conant

Dear Mr. Conant,Let me start by saying, you’re awesome. I’ve watched you as a judge on Chopped, and as a guest judge on Top Chef. I also listened to an episode of the awesome podcast WTF with Marc Maron in which he interviewed you for about an hour, and you seem like a food whiz.You’ve got some fancy restaurant in Manhattan called Scarpetta that’s apparently so freaking good that guests have been known to begin weeping just from the smells wafting from the kitchen.Okay, so maybe I made that part up, but it has been so successful that when you wanted to open another restaurant in L.A. you didn’t even go through the trouble of picking a new name. You just named it Scarpetta. That’s what McDonald’s does!I haven’t eaten in any of your restaurants, but when Scarpetta Midwest opens, I’m there.Anyway, I’m mentioning these things because I want you to know that I’m not here to criticize, but to help. And since I’m looking out for you, I have a little advice: calm down, dude. If you keep getting yourself worked up then you’re never going to get around to Scarpetta Appalachia, and that would be a shame.Anyone who’s ever seen you on television probably knows that you’re not a fan of raw red onions. Woe to the arrogant dickhead chef who thinks they can go on Chopped and dice up a little red onion and add it to a dish and make you like it.You don’t like it. We get it. And, actually, I don’t blame you. It’s an overpowering flavor and completely ruins your taste buds for everything else on the plate. But Scott, buddy, I’m worried that it seems like you’re becoming angrier each time some putz tries to sneak these past you.They’re just red onions, and yes, it’s maddening that these professional chefs can’t think of anything better to do with them than to put them on a plate—raw—but is it really worth causing that vein in your forehead to explode, covering Ted Allen in your blood? Because it looks like that’s what’s about to happen every time someone serves you red onions.And on tonight’s episode I saw you yell at a chef because of the way she treated a piece of branzino. Much to my surprise, branzino is a type of seabass, not a forgotten Sweathog from Welcome Back, Kotter.Anyway, this chef realized she hadn’t sufficiently trimmed her piece of fish so she decided to touch it up a bit. She did so by holding the fish on the cutting board with a pair of tongs in one hand and then cutting the fish with a knife in the other.You immediately exclaimed disbelief that she would treat the fish in such a manner and ruin the texture of the flesh. After the round was over you skewered her for not treating the fish with the proper reverence, and said that she was disrespectful.Scotty, I don’t mean to offend you like the fish manhandler (fishhandler?) did, but if you’re worried about respecting the fish, and treating it with reverence, how about just leaving it in the damn ocean? I’m sure the fish would appreciate that. I realize that’s not likely.But, I do have one more question. When you’re judging Chopped, you’re served nine dishes. That’s a lot of food. So it’s not surprising when we see that most of the time the judges leave some food on their plate. When you leave half of a perfectly cooked fish on the plate just because you’ve got four more dishes after that to eat, have you treated the fish with reverence and respect?Or what about the extra dish that the chefs prepare that nobody eats, but that’s just for show? Is that showing respect?Maybe these are all rhetorical questions, Scott. I don’t expect you to answer them. But please, for the love of all that’s holy, calm down before your branzino explodes.+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Show that you have great taste, and like my Facebook page Brett Baker Writes. Like it, please.

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What I've Learned from Food Network

We all eat. Most of us watch TV. Someone smarter than me decided to combine the two. I’m not talking about TV dinners, although who doesn’t love freezer-burned food with enough salt to kill a humpback? Not to mention that scalding cherry cobbler next to the ice cold mashed potatoes.No, I’m referring to televised shows about food. And in the spirit of the couch potato, I’m referring specifically to shows in which we watch other people cook instead of learning to do it ourselves, which might require more active participation than I’m willing to put forth.So as a public service to you, I’ve got a few tips in case you mistakenly think you’ve got what it takes to appear on a cooking competition show.First, stay away from the damn truffle oil. If a thousand Chopped cooking wizards before you didn’t know how to use it, then neither do you. I can’t count the number of times some unfortunate chef wannabe has said something like, “So I finished it off with a little truffle oil…” only to find themselves guillotined.I’ve never had truffle oil, but if I know that it ruins a dish, why don’t these yokels? Have they never watched the show before appearing on it? Producers should attach razor blades to the side of the truffle oil bottle. Take care of the chopping right away.Also, if Scott Conant is a judge, don’t serve raw red onions. You don’t have some magical technique that’s going to make him like them. Stop kidding yourself.Second, scallops are the best thing ever. If you get to choose your ingredients, and you have to choose a protein, and you get seventeen million dollars if you win, then make scallops. Don’t worry if you’ve made them three weeks in a row, or if two other people are doing them, too. Make them anyway!Oh, and try to wrap them in bacon. Then be sure to tell us that bacon makes everything taste better. We’ve never heard that before. Really.Third, if you tout your sustainable practices, you must talk about using the entire animal. Tell us how important that is, and we’ll tell you how cool you are. Explain your point by telling us that you even use the bones for broth. We’ll refrain from asking what you do with intestines and bladders and other things that never get wasted, but somehow never appear on a menu either.If you cut your finger while competing, don’t worry. Slap a latex glove on that severed digit and persevere. Never mind the ten blood-dripping seconds that passed between when you cut yourself and when you wrapped the wound. If there’s no blood visible on the cutting board or the food, proceed. We’ll eat and let you know later if you gave us hep-C.Now for the bad news.As you might have gathered, these shows have judges who will taste your food. That means you can’t phone it in like one of those all-star, famous, mostly photogenic chefs who create dishes that look, taste and smell great. We’re willing to believe that everything those fast-talking sorcerers of succulence cook is delicious, but we’re secretly hoping that the judges will tear you apart like a suckling pig.Before I forget, do yourself a favor and learn how to cook a dessert. Maybe more than one. I’ve watched enough cooking shows to know that most chefs think dessert is beneath them—perhaps a step above vegetarian cooking, but still beneath their skills—but if you want the big money you better channel your inner Sara Lee and figure out how to cook something sweet.Now you’re ready. Go on television and cook your Rocky Mountain Oysters off. If you’re lucky you’ll become a celebrity chef. Then you don’t have to worry about cooking. You have underlings (sous chefs) for stuff like that. You’ll be too busy selling your steak knives and mixing bowls.And if, for some unknown reason, you decide to actually cook when you become a celebrity chef, I’ll let you in on a dirty little secret that I learned directly from network executives. Viewers can’t taste your food, but they can see your personality.In other words, the food can be garbage, but you better be gold!You should subscribe to this blog, don't you think? That way you'll never forget to come back. Forgetting is bad. So why don't you just type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.

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Cloudy With a Chance of Wrong

Bob Dylan, in his song Subterranean Homesick Blues, declared “You don’t need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows.” And it’s a good thing, too, because the weatherman might get it wrong half the time.We’re lucky enough to live in an area where meteorologists have a variety of ways they can screw up. Snow, rain, heat, fog, wind, frostbite, vortexes and derechos. Plus we have days when the weather changes rapidly. There’s a tired old saying, and I always want to punch someone in the gizzard every time I hear it: “Hey, if you don’t like the weather now, just wait a minute and it’ll change.”No kidding. Thanks for that stunning insight.I realize that meteorologists have a difficult job, and we live in an area that makes it especially challenging. But what really irks me is the confident self-assurance that every meteorologist seems to have.They wear their fancy suits and dresses and stand in front of maps and talk about pressures, and fronts, and systems, and they sound so official and wise. I don’t buy it!I’ve noticed a trend over the past few years of meteorologists showing us computer-generated versions of their forecasts: “Here’s the rain situation from the latest models that came in just within the last half hour…”Hey there, hotshot, if you’re just going to show me the model that some computer spat out for you, then why do we even need you? Why not put all these fancy models up on your website and let us all look at them? Don’t you do any interpretation of the data? Instead they put up standard graphics of suns, clouds or rain drops on the website. My favorite is the one of a cloud with a lightning bolt coming out of the bottom, and the top part of a sun behind the cloud.That forecast should just be called, “Who the hell knows?”A certain meteorologist on a certain station in Chicago is fond of inserting “Chance Showers” into his seven day forecast. Not just once or twice, but every single day. Which I guess is correct, since there’s a chance of showers everyday, right? Just telling me there’s a chance of something happening doesn’t help me though. There’s a chance that a wild pig will tackle me and eat my nose while I’m running in the morning, but it’s not likely so I don’t worry about it.Another meteorologist goes even farther and uses the question mark so often in his forecast I wonder if he has any idea what’s up. “Sunny, breezy, chance of an afternoon shower?”Question mark? Well is there or isn’t there? And if you don’t know, then say you don’t know. Wouldn’t we all respect meteorologists a little bit more if they just told us up front, “Look, this forecast is a little iffy.”That’s what we really need. We need a meteorologist who gives us the forecast and then tells us how confident he or she is in that forecast. If you think tomorrow’s high is going to be 92 degrees, with a southwest wind and plenty of sunshine, then you should let us know that you’re 90% certain of the temperature, 95% certain of the wind direction, and 75% certain that it’s going to be sunny. Telling me “Chance of a Thunderstorm?” doesn’t help. It only makes me yell things at the TV. Then I feel like an idiot because the damn meteorologist can’t hear me!The other thing we need is a meteorologist who reviews his forecast from the previous day.“Yesterday, I predicted 42 degrees and clear for today, but we only got up to 26 and sixteen inches of snow fell. Looks like I really blew that one!”They always show the weather almanac with today’s high and low temperatures, last year’s temperatures, barometer, sunrise, etc. Why not add a thumbs up or thumbs down evaluation of how well they predicted today’s weather yesterday, and then keep a running total of thumbs up versus thumbs down?There’s a 0% chance of that happening though. And that’s fine. We don’t want them to be too good anyway. There’s nothing worse than a smug meteorologist.You should subscribe to this blog, don't you think? That way you'll never forget to come back. Forgetting is bad. So why don't you just type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.

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What Happened to Television Theme Songs?

I woke up this morning singing, “Maybe the world is blind/or just a little unkind.” If that doesn’t seem familiar to you, then let me give you a little refresher.Yes, it’s the theme song to Punky Brewster, the 1980s sitcom about the orphaned girl who finds a new and loving home with her foster father. I loved this show when I was a kid, not least because of its awesome theme song.(Also, it had an episode in which Punky scores some tickets to a Cubs 1984 playoff game. Spoiler alert: she gets to the park, finds out the tickets are bogus, and by some twist of fate ends up sitting in the Cubs dugout!)This happens to me every now and then. Out of the blue a television theme song will just pop into my head.“Boy the way Glenn Miller played…” (All in the Family)“Show me that smile again/Oooh, show me that smile…” (Growing Pains)“They’re creepy and they’re kooky/Mysterious and spooky…” (The Addams Family)“So no one told you life was gonna be this way…” (Friends)You’ll notice that all of those shows originally aired between the 1970s and 1990s, which brings me to my point. What happened to the catchy television intro theme song?Sitcoms used to always have theme songs, and from Gilligan’s Island to The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, these songs were frequently catchy and people came to identify them with the show. The theme song sometimes seemed as important as any character on the show.Often the songs told the story of the show. However, lyrics weren’t always necessary. I can close my eyes and still hear some of the instrumental songs. The ER theme alone gave me confidence in those doctors. All those people on 90210 seemed so damn cool, and their rhythmic theme song sure didn’t hurt.Then at some point—probably in the past ten or fifteen years—the theme song virtually disappeared from network television. Most new shows don’t even bother with a theme song.Modern Family made a half-hearted effort at a theme song, but really just has a musical ten second intro more than a song. Same with How I Met your Mother, Mike & Molly and 2 Broke Girls. Parks and Recreation and 30 Rock do marginally better.So what happened? Why are networks so down on the theme song?There are a few reasons.First, by forgoing the theme song, the show has a little bit more time to develop the story. This seems like a valid point, but I’m not the first to point out that much of what is on television is plain crap. At least the folks who produced Family Matters realized that they could have a decent theme song and still have time to produce a crappy show.Second, there are financial considerations. If the show gains some time by not having a theme song, and they don’t use that time to tell the story, then maybe they can squeeze in another commercial. The fabulous 1970s show, The Fall Guy, devoted a full 100 seconds to its memorable intro, yet somehow lasted for five years, so I doubt another Buick commercial is really going to make or break a show.Third, producers are worried that if they delay the beginning of the show at all, viewers might turn to something else.I see their point, but I think they’ve got it wrong. I don’t think people are going to surf away from a show, but in the age of the DVR, it’s more likely they’ll just fast forward through it.And maybe that’s part of the problem. We now live in a time when we don’t even have to watch commercials. If we’re not going to watch the theme song, then why should a show have one?Luckily, there are a few shows in recent years that haven’t given up on trying to make a musical impression off the bat. Rescue Me, Nip/Tuck, The Americans, and Downton Abbey all have memorable intros that I’ve made a point to watch, even in the age of DVR.(Is it a coincidence that none of those shows are on regular networks?)Still, most shows today don’t have theme songs, and I think they’re missing out on the chance to achieve greatness and immortality.By the way, if you like what you're reading here, you should like my Facebook page, Brett Baker Writes.Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. My list is completely spam free, and you can opt out at any time.