Not another food network rant
It's been a year and a half since corporate Food Network shitcanned their hallmark cooking show, Emeril Live.
Come back in time with me to December, 2007.
We'd moved from our little basement level apartment with terraced gardens and a cozy deck in Asheville, NC and it was our first winter as homeowners. My wife Leah was 7 months pregnant. Our television and living area was in what's now our dining room, soon to be moved downstairs to a fully renovated den with ship's cabin beadboard and dark stained molding.
And the station formerly about food and cooking had reached its apex years ago and was well on its steady, but not yet tailspinning, decline.
The plane was out of fuel but it was coasting. Certainly losing altitude, but nowhere near a plunge. Midair refueling was still possible -- dangerous and unlikely, but possible.
All that changed when the announcement was made that Emeril Live was being culled.
At the time, this meant little to me. I wasn't really watching TV and I don't even remember if we had cable. I read the news online somewhere and, with a lot of queasiness, I thought, Eh, they'll move up Rachel Ray or give her another show. Maybe Alton Brown.
If only I'd known what was to come...
If only I'd known Rachel Ray's insipid, crappy shows were merely the tip of the berg, the minuscule cancer cell on the nose that was the only visible beacon of the raging lymphatic destruction that was tearing through the body, then I would've known real fear and loathing of what was to come to a channel that was once about making food.
To imagine that one day Rachel would actually be an acceptable venue for watching food preparation and real cooking, that this screeching, loathsome, no-talent fattie with the nail-on-the-chalkboard personality and the smoker's voice to back it up would in a year and a half be watchable would have unconditionally, absolutely blown my mind.
And that's what it's come to.
Do you watch food network now? Do you have any idea how fucking far we've gone down Colonel Kurtz's river into the unadulterated, pulsing heart of horror?
Reality TV, my friends. That's what the corporate chairmen at Food TV are serving up -- not just on the menu, but it's the complimentary appetizer, the tap water in the cool, perspiring glass with obligatory lemon wedge, the silver cutlery, the condiments and drink & dessert list, the decor, and the entire goddamn restaurant.
Dipshits "compete" to become "The Next Food Network Star." The quietly abrasive moron from the iditioc Ace of Cakes has ascended the corporate cooking ladder, having a couple, three shows about knife throwing or what kinds of sexual acts you can do with icing or some such thing probably even more insane/ridiculous. Gaydown w/ No # 1 asshole Bobby Flay goes to a whole new level of dickdom -- imagine his embarassing display and antics on Japan's Iron Chef tuned up to reality TV standards. The New York poser/fake southern belle Paula Dean has an Emeril Live like show called Paula's Party; there's a counter at the bottom of the screen for how many times she drawls out the word "ya'll." Chefs get dropped off by helicopter in nameless bayous to fellate alligators before binging their way to New Orleans for the ultimate crawfish boil orgy.
You get the picture.
To even watch a show about cooking you have to tune in during the morning. Even there malignant reality TV has metastasized.
And the wacking of Emeril Live was the milestone where salvation or damnation was no longer a choice; Food TV did not repent on its deathbed, and there is no question the television entity once about showing how to cook good and fun foods is charbroiling eternally in hell.
In honor of my old buddy Emeril, I'd like to duke you this excerpt from Julia Child's old PBS cooking show. Warning: the show is actually about cooking and food preparation. I know you once knew what that was about, but it's been so long...
Emeril is whipping up an awesome looking shrimp etouffee and a classic New Orleans crab boil. He's practically a baby in the video, so be ready for that shocker.
Emeril... man. They may have killed your show and relegated your neutered ass on Essence of Emeril to preschool hours, they may have taken you away from our hearts and minds, they may have pissed on your grave by giving your timeslot to Who Wants to Be the Next Food Network Top Chef, but we'll always have Doc Gibbs. We'll always have the recipes, the memories, the uncomfortable laughter you brought us when you showed up drunk on set. And that's something... that's something they can't take away.
Emeril, this one's for you, babe.
http://www.pbs.org/video/video/1094273768
The show was filmed in 1993. In happier, more sober times.
My God, how far we've fallen.
Josh
http://joshday.com
anticlimactic postscript: actually the year in our lives I was referring to was 2006, December, not 2007. Let's just say we were there in spirit for Emeril in 2006 when it was actually 2007. Makes a much better story that way.
Come back in time with me to December, 2007.
We'd moved from our little basement level apartment with terraced gardens and a cozy deck in Asheville, NC and it was our first winter as homeowners. My wife Leah was 7 months pregnant. Our television and living area was in what's now our dining room, soon to be moved downstairs to a fully renovated den with ship's cabin beadboard and dark stained molding.
And the station formerly about food and cooking had reached its apex years ago and was well on its steady, but not yet tailspinning, decline.
The plane was out of fuel but it was coasting. Certainly losing altitude, but nowhere near a plunge. Midair refueling was still possible -- dangerous and unlikely, but possible.
All that changed when the announcement was made that Emeril Live was being culled.
At the time, this meant little to me. I wasn't really watching TV and I don't even remember if we had cable. I read the news online somewhere and, with a lot of queasiness, I thought, Eh, they'll move up Rachel Ray or give her another show. Maybe Alton Brown.
If only I'd known what was to come...
If only I'd known Rachel Ray's insipid, crappy shows were merely the tip of the berg, the minuscule cancer cell on the nose that was the only visible beacon of the raging lymphatic destruction that was tearing through the body, then I would've known real fear and loathing of what was to come to a channel that was once about making food.
To imagine that one day Rachel would actually be an acceptable venue for watching food preparation and real cooking, that this screeching, loathsome, no-talent fattie with the nail-on-the-chalkboard personality and the smoker's voice to back it up would in a year and a half be watchable would have unconditionally, absolutely blown my mind.
And that's what it's come to.
Do you watch food network now? Do you have any idea how fucking far we've gone down Colonel Kurtz's river into the unadulterated, pulsing heart of horror?
Reality TV, my friends. That's what the corporate chairmen at Food TV are serving up -- not just on the menu, but it's the complimentary appetizer, the tap water in the cool, perspiring glass with obligatory lemon wedge, the silver cutlery, the condiments and drink & dessert list, the decor, and the entire goddamn restaurant.
Dipshits "compete" to become "The Next Food Network Star." The quietly abrasive moron from the iditioc Ace of Cakes has ascended the corporate cooking ladder, having a couple, three shows about knife throwing or what kinds of sexual acts you can do with icing or some such thing probably even more insane/ridiculous. Gaydown w/ No # 1 asshole Bobby Flay goes to a whole new level of dickdom -- imagine his embarassing display and antics on Japan's Iron Chef tuned up to reality TV standards. The New York poser/fake southern belle Paula Dean has an Emeril Live like show called Paula's Party; there's a counter at the bottom of the screen for how many times she drawls out the word "ya'll." Chefs get dropped off by helicopter in nameless bayous to fellate alligators before binging their way to New Orleans for the ultimate crawfish boil orgy.
You get the picture.
To even watch a show about cooking you have to tune in during the morning. Even there malignant reality TV has metastasized.
And the wacking of Emeril Live was the milestone where salvation or damnation was no longer a choice; Food TV did not repent on its deathbed, and there is no question the television entity once about showing how to cook good and fun foods is charbroiling eternally in hell.
In honor of my old buddy Emeril, I'd like to duke you this excerpt from Julia Child's old PBS cooking show. Warning: the show is actually about cooking and food preparation. I know you once knew what that was about, but it's been so long...
Emeril is whipping up an awesome looking shrimp etouffee and a classic New Orleans crab boil. He's practically a baby in the video, so be ready for that shocker.
Emeril... man. They may have killed your show and relegated your neutered ass on Essence of Emeril to preschool hours, they may have taken you away from our hearts and minds, they may have pissed on your grave by giving your timeslot to Who Wants to Be the Next Food Network Top Chef, but we'll always have Doc Gibbs. We'll always have the recipes, the memories, the uncomfortable laughter you brought us when you showed up drunk on set. And that's something... that's something they can't take away.
Emeril, this one's for you, babe.
http://www.pbs.org/video/video/1094273768
The show was filmed in 1993. In happier, more sober times.
My God, how far we've fallen.
Josh
http://joshday.com
anticlimactic postscript: actually the year in our lives I was referring to was 2006, December, not 2007. Let's just say we were there in spirit for Emeril in 2006 when it was actually 2007. Makes a much better story that way.
posted by Josh Day at 10:15 AM
3 Comments:
((slow and steady clap))
BTW, it's Jeanne, not Charlie. I'm afraid my son would not agree with what you have written since Food Network is the only channel he will watch. But I'm with ya brother! ;-)
Hi Jeanne and Charlie! Thanks for stopping by. Jeanne, glad you're with me on the sorry state of affairs of food network. ;)
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