dewelar

Hmm...is that actually unpopular, though? I mean, I know that despite my appreciation for his writing his voice often annoys me, and I feel like his voice has been a target for several decades at least. I remember an old HBO stand-up comedy special (late 80s, I want to say) where one of the performers said his vocal style came about when he was out camping: he'd started singing normally, but then the mosquitos attacked: "I want to...ewwww! buuuugs!" and he was never the same 🤣 .

IIRC, at the time they weren't expecting to do a sequel, and that when it happened they realized that the throwaway line about kids at the end of the original meant they had to write the sequel around that, and regretted it heavily.

Eh, Alex has bugged me (and Mrs. Dew) for a while now, at least since the early days of Chopped, when she was our favorite judge for at least the first few seasons. Anyway, given the circumstances of said loss, I expect the powers that be would prefer it was flushed down the memory hole, so we may never see her in the tournament proper again.

I presume it's because Sawyer lost in the first round in (IIRC) each of the last two tournaments.

Oh, I'm sure that's true. Fabio is still one of both my and Mrs. Dewelar's all-time favorite Top Chef contestants, and we were looking forward to the restaurant's opening given his association with it. We went a couple weeks after opening, and the place was nearly empty. The food was mediocre at best, on par with your standard mid-tier chain restaurant (e.g. Longhorn Steakhouse). I will say that the theming was really cool, and the staff was very attentive (perhaps a bit TOO attentive...), so it wasn't all negative. I guess we were just hoping for more.

I suppose he needs something to do after the restaurant he was associated with here in Orlando crashed and burned within a few months. I think it was promoted for longer than it was open 😐 .

What if he ruins it himself? https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/mariano-rivera-wife-clara-lawsuit-b2684423.html

I hope so too! I wouldn't be surprised to see Andy as well. I have noticed, though, that they never have bakers from the most recent season, so since Netflix is a year behind on the holiday shows, it'll likely be 2026 there.

This annoys me every year. Just because it happens to mention packages and mittens, I guess. Seriously, any song that even mentions Christmas (e.g., "River") or, hell, anything to do with winter ("Let It Snow", "Winter Wonderland", "Baby, It's Cold Outside", etc.) is automatically a Christmas song.

Possibly because when they mentioned who won the bakers' vote later in the episode, the judges seemed surprised, which struck me as odd.

On Extra Slice, she said that she'd spotted it the first week when her station was in the back row.

Here's one in a different vein. This was the song I used to use to pump me up when I played the sports ball things, but it still feels pretty uplifting to me now.

...and now I am giggling like mad imagining a couple Hell's Angels types randomly riding in and stealing all the toppers...

Honestly, Michael Franti is probably my go-to feel-good guy these days, for either the happy-peppy stuff like "Say Hey" (which became annoyingly ubiquitous a few years back) or the burn-it-all-down stuff like a lot of his early albums. Here's a lesser-known one of his:

Just another reason why orange is my favorite color.