The much-ballyhooed "Celebrity Cooking Showdown" was cancelled before the finale could air, but connoiseurs of bad taste could rejoice because NBC aired the last episode and the finale on the same night. Cindy Margolis, Ashley Parker Angel, and Miss USA Chelsea Cooley (there are still pageants these days?) were to cook their final dishes - and the result was a food inspector laugh riot.

Seriously. All this show needed was clips from Larry the Cable Guy: Health Inspector. In the first episode, TVGasm busted Cindy Margolis handling raw chicken and then using her bare hands to scoop ice cream for a Baked Alaska.

In tonight's final matchup, Ashley Parker Angel lasts for only a few minutes before nearly hacking off his pinky with a sharp knife. Now, as a true boy-bander, Angel keeps smiling and encouraging the love from his audience - as blood gushes from his hand. The last time audiences saw that much blood in the kitchen was when Dan Ackroyd portrayed a knife-happy Julia Child on Saturday Night Live:

Angel displayed as much "The show must go on spirit!" as Ackroyd did in the skit, but the blood was all over the place. Alan Thicke stood by Angel with a "oh, crap" look on his face. He tried to exude Canadian Cool, but he was having trouble ad-libbing while Angel alternated between yells of "Down to the bone!" and "Feel the love!" or some such pandering to the audience. The paramedic said that Angel needed stitches, which may have been an exaggeration, but, to most people, blood on hands = has no business cooking. That's when it's time to order pizza.

Yet Angel taped himself up and kept cooking while keeping his pinky finger out of the way. Meanwhile, Margolis was purposely shaking her boobs and her hair as she ran back and forth looking for items from the pantry. Even if her dishes tasted good, the judges would need to pick hair out of their teeth after eating one bite. For a pageant princess, at least Cooley didn't appear to be violating health codes.

Right after the final episode, NBC aired a deflated finale in which Thicke had a Teleprompter Malfunction and called "fajitas" "fa - gee - tas," and Margolis was revealed to be the winner. Cooley and chef Cat Cora didn't even make the finale show. How Margolis became the winner is unclear, as the show was canceled before people could vote, but cleavage trumped any sympathy for Angel and his mangled finger.

Originally published April 22, 2006

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Looks like Big Rick has his work cut out for him since he has to keep these two apart.

Mark your calendars - the Flavor of Love Reunion Show will be this Sunday night, April 2 at 8pm. TMZ whets your appetite with an exclusive clip. In the clip, New York, who is wearing a scary bustier and sporting a mouth dirtier than a highway rest stop, tells Pumkin how classy she is ... and then she attempts to "bitch-slap" her nemesis.

Oh, and is Flav's real-life girlfriend even there in the first place? Hoopz dropped Flav, but he's not wasting any time seeing someone else, at least according to Robin Leach.

In Leach's Las Vegas blog, in which he briefly mentions Jordan Knight's departure from The Surreal Life, an interesting tidbit emerges. Flavor Flav is moving to Las Vegas:

He plans on keeping his Los Angeles home, but is moving here with one of his girlfriends. "I love Vegas, and you're going to be seeing me around town," he says.

... one of his girlfriends. One of them? Hmmm ... I'd love to see a reunion show of Flav, his exes, his multiple girlfriends, Gitte, and all his kids .... including the new one on the way.

Originally published March 30, 2006

SOHH, which has been following Flavor of Love faithfully and which also monitors hip-hop gossip, has heard that Flav is having another Little Flav.

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Compare the much-deserved sendoff Coretta Scott King received to the smaller funeral for Friedan:

Colleagues from the women’s movement as well as her three children and their families were among more than 300 mourners at the funeral for Friedan, who died of congestive heart failure Saturday on her 85th birthday.

What? The funeral for Betty Friedan already took place? You may be asking those questions, and I don't blame you. I didn't find out until I Google Newsed it and game up with this AP story, which has been recycled everywhere, as opposed to all the varied perspectives on the passing of Coretta Scott King.

Mourners Line Up for Coretta Scott King is a headline in the New York Times
The top story on the "Today Show" was the Coretta Scott King funeral. It's a major focus over at NPR as well.

Coretta Scott King deserves to be remembered for all of her hard work for civil rights, and she lost her own husband in the fight. Three former presidents and George II are attending the event, and rightfully so.

But why aren't people saying that "two civil rights leaders died this week." Why didn't former presidents make at least a passing statement about Friedan? George II should be attending her funeral. He owes her. Women - albeit self-hating women - have saved his butt time and time again. Karen Hughes was a major strategist in his victory. Condoleezza Rice, even if she is a nonstop bungler, is his public face all over the world. Laura Bush is nothing but good PR, and her mere presence pulls up his approval ratings. Women vote for him. I don't know why, but, hey, they're free to express their opinions thanks to Friedan and those who came before her.

Why not thank Friedan? I sure hope I'm wrong. I hope that someone will correct me in the comments and tell me about all the grand sendoffs that have been held for Friedan, all of the eulogies and articles that have been written that I missed ... but all I've heard thus far is silence.

Originally published February 7, 2006

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You thought Jabba the Hutt was bad? Well, meet Marguerite Perrin, also known as Mrs. Jabba:

Shakespeare's Sister points to a streaming-video link of Ms. Perrin returning to her family after spending time with another family on the reality show Trading Spouses.

If you can't get the video to stream, I"ll sum up: Ms. Perrin, who does indeed look like Jabba the Hutt, but with worse teeth, returns to her home after spending time with supposedly godless people. Instead of being happy to return to her family, she loses her mind on camera, screaming at her family that she is a "God warrior," telling the sinful crews to "get the hell out of her house," blaming one daughter for not praying enough for her, and tearing up her Trading Spouses paycheck - which she later accepted because it would cover her gastric bypass surgery. Class all the way!

Now, I write reality-television reviews at The Trades. I've seen Danny Bonaduce naked in the shower. I've seen him shoot himself up in the behind with steroids. I saw ex-Brady Christopher Knight pee in model Adrianne Curry's face. It is my duty to watch Bai Ling destroy songs. I am honored to watch Jamie and Bobby Jon Joe Bob from this cycle's Survivor compete for the award of best Neanderthal Redneck.

But I have never seen anything as crazy as Marguerite Perrin.

Well, first of all, she's big in every single way. When she screams, "She's tamperin' in dark-sided stuff!" her eyes get as big as tennis balls, and she screams until she is hoarse. I wish she didn't have a Southern accent because, yet again, she's giving the South a bad name. (Boy was I happy that she wasn't from Kentucky!) Dr. Pepper could hear her in the room next door and thought I was watching an episode of "COPS."

Apparently very few people have seen anything like her, either, including people in her region, who sent in letters to a local paper. One guy tried to be nice, and he explained how reality-show editing works:

The closing portion of the second week's episode was edited to make it appear that she didn't stop talking or yelling to allow her family to speak. We have no way of knowing how long that two- or three-minute sequence actually took to transpire.

That's completely fair, but, hey, if this lady was such a "God warrior" and concerned about letting the "dark side" into her house (really, if you haven't watched this clip by now, you should), then she shouldn't have let a reality TV crew into her life. The fact that she did let a reality TV crew into her life suggests that she is crazy.

Besides, whatever Perrin did was so wild that the producers took one look at it and realized they had ratings gold. They wouldn't have featured her so prominently in their Trading Spouses promo if she hadn't been so wild. At least she can take comfort in the fact that she has a fan club and a Wikipedia entry with all her quotations in her honor.

Originally published November 21, 2005

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You have no idea how happy this makes me ...

NBC has produced a needless remake of the Poseidon Adventure, updated to reflect current world events. In the new version, an undercover Homeland Security agent is on board the luxury cruise ship, the Poseidon, and he must rescue survivors after a terrorist unleashes a bomb.

B-movies have always pandered to the fears of the time, but the best part about it is Steve Guttenberg, who is back and starring as a loverman! When the bomb goes off on the ship, he is in bed with a beautiful woman and is none too happy to find the ship rocking when he should be rocking instead.

Guttenberg, loverman

I took the picture from Hallmark Entertainment's website, and I guess I'd best give full credit since it has their stamp on it.

Anyway, Guttenberg the Great plays a man named Richard Clarke, speaking of those involved with Homeland Security. That's too perfect. NBC wasn't as obvious as to make Guttenberg as Clarke the Homeland Security agent - that part belongs to Adam Baldwin - but still, Steve, welcome back! We missed you!

Originally published November 18, 2005

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I glossed right over the recent headlines that Fantasia Barrino has admitted she is functionally illiterate. In fact, I thought that an author declaring herself to be illiterate is the worst way to promote a book ever!

But then I read a post that got me thinking about it literacy in America somewhat more seriously.

I used to think that society makes it easy to get by without reading - social promotion, television, little-man signs at the crosswalk, the abundance of Star and Us at the checkout counter, etc.

But I just read a post that made me realize how much I take for granted every time I read. If you can't read, it's not that easy to get by, as J Train , a Kentucky blogger I've been reading lately, knows all too well. He is a doctor, and prescriptions get really tricky when a person can't read:

One of the first things I would tell new interns under my wing was to remember that at least a third of their patients couldn't read. (That was my own estimate in our urban indigent population; it was probably generous.) I would tell them this because I learned it the hard way--I'd spend half an hour writing out painfully detailed medication lists and instructions, and they'd come back a week later just as clueless about what they were supposed to be taking. Once I realized they couldn't read, I at least knew what I was up against.

I feel like he does. So much so that I'll use his words:

I didn't think about this because I had a hard time grasping it. I still do; I accept intellectually that a double-digit percentage of the population is at least functionally illiterate, but I still just can't grasp it. Reading and writing are just about all I do.

I take being able to read for granted. Even when I flip through Us magazine, which I usually do after some alcohol because I don't have to think too much when I read it. I take it for granted because my parents encouraged my nerd-dom and fed me with books.

Then I remember all the students I had in my intro-comp class back in my grad school days. I remember the woman who wrote, "Dead people will miss their organs after they die." And the other one who swore that cloning was exactly like the Indian elephant Ganesha. Wow. And they were in the UC, the cream of the crop. Dr. Pepper could probably offer a Top 100 zingers from his students, but that would be mean. Theoretically, these students were literate, but they used words like a caveman would use a knife and fork.

I babble about this - taking my reading and writing for granted like mad - because the United States needs to take a look at what literacy means. Fantasia was clearly able to get by since she somehow managed to generate a book. But when is getting by not good enough? Are you literate if you can read traffic signs? Are you illiterate if Proust makes you sleepy? In all the talk about improving education, I haven't heard much about basic literacy. Without literacy, you can't make it through a science class, to say the least. And not everyone is going to have a singing voice that gets them on "American Idol."

Originally published October 10, 2005

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Thanks to the bold minds behind the Found Footage Film Festival, Oakland moviegoers were able to see California's governor in all his groping glory.

Granted, we saw only five minutes of "Carnival in Rio," but five minutes was more than enough. Californians should be proud that Ah-nold fits right in with other Found Footage stars, including couch-burning Michigan dirtballs, Traci Lords, and the world's angriest RV salesman.

In the beginning, Ah-nold offers a shabby voiceover for Vaseline-smeared shots of Rio. The story is that Ah-nold needs help understanding the "carnival triple threat: the bunda, the mulatta, and the samba." Therefore, he enlists the help of several beautiful Brazilian tutors.

He can't get over the "gorgeous mulatta bodies" because "they must be very healthy." Then a slo-mo shot of a woman shaking her bunda appears on the screen, and Ah-nold acts like he's never seen a bare behind before. As one other reviewer said, Ah-nold is the "gringo from hell," and he also resembles a five-year-old who just learned a dirty word, and he makes binocular eyes at the bunda:

Tourists are welcome to look at the bunda, but that doesn't mean they are welcome to touch the bunda. When Ah-nold gets the chance to dance with the women he dubs the "mulattas," he cannot get his paws off. The Found Footage guys joked that nearly all of Ah-nold's groping accusations must have come from that video.

And then Ah-nold goes native, dressing up like a tribal leader and making funny faces for the camera. If he did that in front of the state assembly, they might run from him screaming!

Found Footage's last shot is of Ah-nold learning the "language of love" with a beautiful woman, and the tale of Ah-nold and the Phallic Carrot unfolds. The scene is as vulgar and disturbing as you can expect, and all those shots of Ah-nold smoking cigars have taken on a new meaning.

When told that there are now only four copies of the video (at least by the Daily Pepper's count) available on the web, one of the Found Footage hosts, Joe Pickett, was surprised to find that the video was such a hot commodity. He said that the television show "A Current Affair" had contacted them about the tape, and the Daily Pepper strongly encouraged him to hold on to that puppy until the price got high. If AMI is so amped up to buy all the tapes, then they should pay a premium.

What Ah-nold did during his youth really doesn't have much to do with how he governs the state of California, but he definitely displays some attitudes toward women that have played out right up to the present day. He always seems to have an eye on the bunda rather than on the bottom line. Also, if he were a "manly man" instead of a "girly man," he would have let the video be released and aired out by AMI, facing the potential scandal head on instead of cowering in a corner while still wearing his war paint.

**Many thanks go to Rita at SFist, who wrote about Found Footage's screening of "Carnival in Rio." Without that mention, we wouldn't have had the chance to see Ah-nold go wild over the bunda.

Originally published September 19, 2005

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In this episode, Toccara has emerged as the show's main attraction. And, no, I'm not saying that because so many Toccara Jones fans have found their way to the Daily Pepper.

The other celebrites were either never famous in the first place (Phil Margera and Wendy the Snapple Lady), or they just don't have enough personality, and the writers have to strain to give them good lines.

Toccara doesn't need their help. She thrives in the reality-show lights. She's a good fit for the genre. When Toccara visits home, viewers learn about her rough background. She cried, and Dr. Pepper compared her to Samuel Richardson's heroine Pamela. Readers are rewarded a peek into Toccara's private thoughts, and they're juicy, so she's rewarded with the lead-off weigh-in.

Since Toccara raised the confessional bar, the show was edited to make it look like each celebrity was trying to top each other for weight-loss motivation. Jackee kept comparing herself to Toccara, dropping odd references to FloJo.

Busey caught the confessional flu and gave it a good scramble. Here is Mr. Sexy at Seventy-One's speech about his feminine side:

"This show has inspired me ... the three of you have given me a platform to stand on and to give me the ability to consider other people's feelings first, and not use my intensity, my energy, and my overwhelmation of arrogance at times ..." Regarding his rivalry with Wendy the Snapple Lady, "I did call her fat, but I'm the one who's fat. I'm the one who's piggy!"

To demonstrate his newfound feminine sympathies, Busey then proceeded to catwalk down the aisle back to his seat, as if he were trying to give Toccara a run for her money.

Jani Lane tried to play the game, going to his Ohio roots - just like Toccara. However, Lane might have real troubles, and the camera shut off before anything was revealed. As fictional as reality television is, I get nervous watching the guy. I feel like a voyeur because Lane puts off the vibe that he will break down at any moment. Sometimes reality is just too real.

Phil Margera also tried to offer his "true motivation" for losing weight, but his words are telling: "On last week's show, they asked me why I'm doing this, and, uh, I really didn't have a reason, then I started thinking that Ava [Phil's granddaughter] was born, and I'll hang around." By golly, Phil found a reason more emotionally wrenching than the fact that he is as big as a house.

Even when confession wasn't taking place, Toccara's ghost lurked around. Victoria Jackson didn't lose any weight, and she exclaimed, "Toccara's gonna kill me!"

Despite the theme of the confessional, 'Celebrity Fit Club 2' showed us another dubious weight-loss technique, the contour wrap. Wendy the Snapple Lady is "rolled like a manicotti," placed in a hot box, and sweated down a few inches.

Originally published August 30, 2005

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Plenty of people have poked justifiable fun at Katherine "Kabuki" Harris for throwing herself at Sean Hannity - and even Alan Colmes - on her Fox News interview.

Something really irked me about this interview, and it wasn't her makeup. And it wasn't her chest, either, although many bloggers picked up on her willingness to stand in profile. Wonkette in fact suggested that Harris just wanted to share her new rack with the world.

But look at the pictures below:

(This came from Fox. Note that her chest isn't visible ... the Fox webmaster probably decided it wasn't family-friendly)

Note the empty, deer-in-the-headlights look, the frozen face, and the brutally stiff posture that both women share. [Throw in the overdone Southern accent - I know Southern accents, and it was overdone!] While watching that interview on Crooks and Liars, I expected her to answer one of Hannity's questions with, "I want to spread world peace!"

Even the conservative side noted it. A commenter at Wizbang asked, "Who's doing her PR?? I saw that interview and thought exactly the same thing - what an odd way to stand for an interview. She came across as extremely fake - looking and sounding more like a beauty pageant contestant than a serious political candidate. It's a shame..."

Well, I wouldn't call it a shame. Harris is doing just fine hanging herself by her own rope, but I don't like it when women so blatantly put men in positions of power by judging their beauty.

The issue isn't the makeup, or even the rack, but the fact that Harris was so aware of - and clearly fine with - being judged by a panel of men.

This is my beef with all the Bush women and the conservative women. They are over-the-top. For the academics out there, they are doubling the sign of their femininity. Amanda at Pandagon pointed out that their performance is exactly the same as drag. It's one thing to wear makeup, and it is quite another to be as hyper-feminine as one of the ladies at the Trannyshack. (And I believe that the Miss America pageant and all other pageants are one big Trannyshack.)

The icing on the cake was when Harris declared, "It's not about appearances, it's about effectiveness!" If it isn't about appearances, then why on earth are you acting like you're in an interview with Bert Parks?

Originally published August 19, 2005

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I am willing to admit that I watch "Celebrity Fit Club 2," and I am proud. This show is ... dare I say? ... inspiring in a way that so much reality television is not.

No reality television is "real" - but the shows are engineered to send specific messages about how certain behaviors must be rewarded or punished. Reality shows have taken over from sitcoms in that the audience will learn a tidy life-lesson within a 30-minute to 60-minute time span.

What did we learn from this week's "Celebrity Fit Club 2"? The usual: Gary Busey looks like that crazy guy on the Transbay bus, hair-metal guys don't age well, gym coaches shouldn't work with their own daughters, and Willie Aames has some seriously unfashionable tattoos.

But the main lesson of the week was the following:

Large women better want to lose weight. Or we will make them cry.

Toccara Jones, a plus-sized model who was on "America's Top Model," has it pretty good for a large lady. She is of the Delta Burke School, an attractive woman who happens to be overweight. Dr. Pepper asked, "I don't get it - what's wrong with her? Why is she on this show? And why are you watching this?"

Anyway, Jones' story line is that she doesn't really want to lose weight. She's on the show for publicity, naturally, but she keeps saying that she's fabulous. It appears that the storyline strains itself to make her seem un-fabulous, that her self-esteem, either real or fabricated, is inappropriate for a woman of her size.

This week, her team (two teams compete with each other to see who can lose the most weight) voted her off because she didn't seem committed to losing the weight.

Jones cried after her buddy on the show, Jackee, voted her off (she's Jackee - what did you expect?). This lead to an oddly orchestrated scene in which the very short Willie Aames must console the tall and voluptuous Toccara. Of all the people on the show, why did they pick Aames to be the Toccara-consoler? Wendy the Snapple Lady would have been a better choice ...

The scenes are really funny, but eventually Toccara cries when it is her turn on the scale. Whether or not she really cried, why is it that we have to see a large but pretty woman reduced to tears? Not only does she not want to lose the weight, but also she doesn't have to lose the weight. Why do we have to see her as a freak?

Next week: The 'Celebrity Fit Club 2' crew goes for a colonic cleansing. I'm not kidding. Wendy the Snapple Lady included. Perhaps more analysis of Willie Aames and what it is that keeps him so busy. And Busey really isn't overweight. But he's still weird.

Originally published on August 15, 2005

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Wal-Mart's profits are down ... and people are surprised???

There's only so low you can sink, after all. Even one analyst told Reuters, "Wal-Mart's focus on the low-end consumer will continue to be a drag on comparable store sales."

Now that was a real brainstorm. The only place Wal-Mart employees can afford to shop is ... Wal-Mart! And since Wal-Mart keeps cutting back on anything remotely resembling decent working standards, Wal-Mart employees won't be able to shop there! Perhaps Wal-Mart can congratulate themselves.

Then again, the analyst is right to imply that Wal-Mart's stuff is too dang ugly for even the trashiest of folks.

But read a little more closely what Reuters and Bloomberg report:

"Wal-Mart, based in Bentonville, Arkansas, had a net profit of $2.5 billion, up 14 percent from a year earlier."

Profit? Billion? Up? Aren't those good things?

And one analyst had the unmitigated gall to blame Wal-Mart workers for the "dip" in profits. Robert Buchanan, retail analyst with A.G. Edwards, said (oh, dig this, this is good)

"Buchanan said store operations are not as 'crisp' as they once were, and that could be turning off shoppers who complain of slow checkout lines and unhelpful staff."

Crisp? "Crisp" describes a satisfactory piece of lettuce, not a Wal-Mart employee whose feet hurt, who receives an amount of hours just shy of qualifying for health care, who can only afford to wear the WHITE STAG clothing line, and who is being talked about by some analyst schmuck who's probably never seen the inside of a Wal-Mart.

Originally published May 13, 2005

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I have had it - had it, ya dig? - with rap being blamed for every possible social ill from marauding gangs to constipation.

Zell Miller, also known as "Crazy Grandpa," said on last night's Daily Show With Jon Stewart that he doesn't like that rap noise and considers it "filth." Interesting, since he and crunk impresario Lil Jon share the same mannerisms:

Note the similar threatening "gonna strangle you" posture. Also note the open-mouthed expression, which both men often carry in public.

In case you're new here or just don't know Pepper, I watch music videos for a living. I do other stuff, too, but I spend a whole lot of time watching music videos. The other day, I watched five magnificent Run DMC clips. I know what crunk means, both in terms of musical production and in terms of partying. I even know who Bone Crusher is. Do you?

Here's a list of some of the rap videos I've seen:
The entire Nappy Roots video catalog (they're my faves, they go first)
Most anything I've seen of N.E.R.D. (it makes me tap my foot and snap my fingers - pop quiz: What's "N.E.R.D." stand for?)
The entire Jay-Z video catalog (he sure does love those Manolos!)
The entire 50 Cent video catalog (eh, he's okay. I admit to blushing while listening to "Candy Shop," but I wouldn't file it under "poisonous filth.")
Ludacris (who has the beautiful line "Hi Mr. O'Reilly! ... You disagree? Take the tyson approach and bite me!")
Lil' Jon and his friends (but of course! the Ying Yang Twins' latest song is something - crunk at a slow simmer, yes sir!)

And I'm fine. I'm totally normal. In fact, I think I suffered more from watching Lindsay Lohan's videos.

What Miller blithely forgets is that rap has done a heck of a lot for Georgia's economy. Where are some of the biggest rappers located? Atlanta. The latest album by the Ying Yang Twins is called "United States of Atlanta"! Sure, Zell and his buddies will take the money they bring in, and then they will shoot off their mouths about that "filth."

And, besides, challenging Chris Matthews to a duel on national television was absolutely, positively, without a doubt crunk. Grandpa Zell Miller should admit that he is, by the most literal definition of crunk, crunk out the ying yang!

Originally published May 2, 2005

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