Nice tomatoes, and the food's good too

As sometimes happens on letters pages in magazines, a spat has erupted on that one belonging to TV Guide. A couple of weeks ago, they published a Reader Jeer complaining about Giada De Laurentiis' trademark cleavage display. The following week, the letters page seems to be about two to one in favor of letting Giada dress however she wants. My perspective is as follows:

Lighten up. Giada is an excellent and creative cook with excellent TV presence, and she is also an attractive woman with large breasts. Proceeding on the assumption that she has final say over her onscreen wardrobe, I'd say she's earned the right to do the show on the beach in a Wicked Weasel if she wants (though that wouldn't exactly be a cooking-friendly wardrobe -- maybe add some board shorts :-) ). It's like Muhammad Ali -- at the end of the day, he may have been too political and too much of a braggart for many people, but in his day he was that damned good and had pretty much earned the right to speak his mind. (Compare incompetent skank Sandra Lee and grouchy, cheating Barry Bonds.)

So ease up on the cleaage already.

Cheap publicity stunt (need bad advice?)

Soliciting questions on Craigslist

I just feel like trying the advice column thing. The disclaimer: you will likely recieve bad advice on whatever questions you ask. But hey, try it anyway. The best ones will be posted here.

Breaks and promises

A few thoughts on one of my current favorite webcomics:

Okay, Sortelli is on a break. That's fine. But why progress reports on the next comic if you're on break, especially if it's supposedly inked already? A few points:

• Duke/Nimoy Forever. Or, less caustically...
  
• "A speckled axe is best." -Ben Franklin.
  
• Real artists ship.
  

Good thing I have no actual readers, or I'd be blackballed from the EOI forums for this.

UPDATE: Sortelli posted a teaser on the comic forums. Looking good.

My recipe blog

The Off Season Blog, named after my sporadically produced cooking show, is going to be my site for posting recipes, and hopefully also the official website for my cooking show when I get around to putting it back on the air.

HDTV and the shovelware problem; in praise of The Tube

The plan for HDTV, I had always assumed, was to provide flagship programming in as visually striking a manner as possible. By and large, the main network broadcasters and the sports stations do a fine job of this, and the sports stations in particular have made what I think is the most compelling case for going hi-def. It is possible, mind you, to make some very nice eye candy, and you do see it here and there in travel documentaries and the like on PBS-HD. But if flagship programming is what it's all about, why are the cable stations by and large doing such a half-assed job of it?

Comcast just picked up Food Network HD and HGTV HD in my local area. While it's nice to see that Scripps and Comcast came to an agreement (I believe those two stations have been on the big dish systems for some time now), I'm kind of having a problem with their implementation. It seems like Scripps is just the latest in a line of HD providers who have put out an HD product that is little better than a random feed of programming from other stations that happens to have been taped in HD. The hi-def content is fine as far as it goes, but to look at the HD channel's presentation on foodtv.com, you do get the sense that it's an afterthought, something that's farmed out to a junior exec to be done in one's Copious Free Time. And a lot of stations are like that; I think MTV Networks' MHD is probably the most egregious, given that it seems to have entirely too little original content to sustain it, though Discovery HD isn't much better, and PBS-HD seems to do at best a half-assed job of being a flagship.

Hey, HD folks, can we get on the ball here? HD isn't that expensive to produce anymore, with decent-quality cameras available in the $1000 to $1500 range (and that's just for consumer gear; a Sony HDR-FX1 isn't drastically more expensive than a Canon GL-2). I realize overhauling the Emeril Live studio would be a huge undertaking, but c'mon. Not everything has to be done in a full studio setting. I did my show with a single camcorder in my kitchen.

And another thing: I like The Tube. It's carried over-the-air on WLVI 56 and on channel 296 on our local cable system, and it's pretty much the Jack FM of television, with a remarkable profusion of videos from the last thirty years or so of music video history, along with an equally remarkable library of live concert footage that goes well beyond anything MTV ever put on the air, ever.

Jerry Falwell: Good Riddance

And the conservative blogosphere is already wringing their hands about the outpouring of glee and schadenfreude at this shameful, disgusting man's death.

Look, no one deserves death. And inasmuch as I have any sympathy at all, it's for his family, not him. The thing that is being celebrated here is his exit from public life, and the only thing I see wrong here is that he went out by death rather than the total public shaming he truly deserved.

Sadly, there are many of his like still out there. I hope they change their ways, but that's pretty much a pipe dream.

Oooh, tomatoes

My little San Marzano seedlings are getting big. I have to replant them into pots soon...