A shameless plug and an update on Marcelgate

On Monday,Galleycat(mediabistro's publishing blog)asked it's readers to send in musical parodies of books after being less than thrilled with the ones printed in last Sunday's New York Times Book Review section. The results have been posted online today and one of them was written by...ME!(yes,I'm having an Elle Woods moment here,folks). I wrote a riff on This Is Not Chick Lit,using the Jets song from West Side Story. Even went to YouTube to refresh my memory of the song and while the clip I actually watched is no longer up,this one
is good enough to give your ears a reminder of how the tune goes:




If you want to read my version,just click the title link above. My little ditty is the last and hopefully,not the least. The other submissions are really good as well;my favorite is author Marta Acosta's"Helen Burns theme" from Jane Eyre! The Musical(her novel,Happy Hour at Casa Dracula,is still on my Booksfree waiting list. Quite a popular read there.)My second runner-up would be Kelly Wittman's take on the book and movie version of Scott Spencer's Endless Love. My thanks to Ron Hogan for not only selecting my song but putting a link to this blog there as well.


Yesterday,in my Tv Thursday wrap-up,I spoke about the recent Top Chef incident where Marcel was getting some blanket party treatment. This episode of TC has sparked alot of talk at the Bravo blogs and Television Without Pity's forum boards. Well,things have taken a turn for the worst,people. An enterprising soul at the TWOP Top Chef forum took some stills of the show,around the scenes of the Marcel attack that clearly show Elia laughing as Marcel fled from Cliff's clutches and her head is UNSHAVEN! Which means that she and Ilan shaved their skulls AFTER Marcel was jumped on and not before! Take a look:










Also,in Judge Tom's blog,he revealed his true feelings about what happened:

"I could see how a goofy drunken idea ("Wouldn't it be funny if we shaved our heads,") escalated into a stupid, thoughtless one ("Wouldn't it be funny if we shaved Marcel's head") and from there into an act of ugly stupidity: ("Let's hold Marcel down and shave his head.") It was like watching an instructional video in bad group dynamics -- four apparently decent individuals (three if you buy Elia's argument that she was clueless), fueled by alcohol and subconscious anger, became one collective disaster gleefully terrorizing the designated odd-man-out.

In a flash I understood how frat pranks can morph into ugly acts of hazing, or how a rowdy bachelor party can become the scene of a crime. The sight of Sam yukking it up or Ilan yelling, "Get him! Get him!" from behind the camera was just as disturbing as the sight of Cliff tackling a stunned and terrified Marcel on the floor. And I'm not willing to hold Elia blameless just because she wasn't in the room -- I know she heard the others entreating her to join them, so she must have heard Marcel calling out for help. The whole thing brought to mind that famous quote, "All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." Any one of them could have spoken up and said, "This isn't cool, guys. Knock it off."

But they didn't, so as far as I was concerned they were all to blame and I was ready to send the lot of them home and let Marcel win by default."

His idea to punish the four of them was vetoed by the show's producers(a bad call)and he had to settle for sending Cliff home instead. Cliff probaly would've been kicked off anyway for his lackluster dish at the Elimination. Who wants to eat beef with lentil puree at a romantic dinner or at any meal,period? Glad to see that the whole mess bothered him more than what we saw on the show.

I also appreciated what the Top Chef Season 1 winner,Harold,had to say regarding this situation:

"Suddenly it’s an uncomfortable boys locker room experience. Whether you were the victim, the aggressor, or just watching. You saw it in high school. And I’m still appalled. I don’t even know what to say. Everyone does stupid stuff when they’ve had a couple of cocktails. Sure. But if someone tries to hold me down and shave my head, nothing good is going to come of that. Nothing I’ve seen about Marcel leads me to believe that he’d just take that. I sure as hell would not have.

This is a show about food. I know that a lot of people want to blame the producers for making this a show that’s more about the drama than it is about the food. And some people want to say that this cast just has no sense of maturity. It’s both. Of course everyone behaved badly. So shave heads, kick people off, get drunk, the whole thing...I don’t know.

As a viewer, as a former contestant, I’m personally invested in the show, on a lot of different levels. And I’m disappointed. In just about everyone."

Amen to that. I'm still going to watch the finale but when Top Chef 3 comes around,I hope that the next batch of contestants sees this as a "What Not To Do" lesson in group behavior and competition. Otherwise,I might as well be watching Animal Planet;atleast when there's an attack,it's survival instinct not emotional stupidity from grown people.