The Solution

The book he and Bill were showing was released last week.

Yeah, Montreal actually has edible food.

Yeah, it's been a minute since I posted here. (Watch this get removed.)

Dammit! Whose dick did worthless Manny suck? I haven't watched LCK yet, but I do hope Michelle gets another chance. First Soo (who I wasn't a fan of at first due to the way he came in, but grew to admire due to his talents), and now Michelle? Maybe Top Chef needs to give itself a big re-think before new season.

As much as I would have preferred being a chef, being a back office business person was always my role in a restaurant, and these tasks were always my responsibility and not fun. Dealing with this professionally convinced me that I did not want to open my own restaurant (although Cleveland was quite the hotspot in the 90s/early 2000s and I was a damn good cook). That being said, I rewatched the Restaurant Wars from the previous season, at least to prove to myself that I was not such a terrible elderly curmudgeon for my views on this season's RW. Last season's RW was 100% better than this season's, and this is due to the producers, not the chefs. Also, as someone used to high-end restaurants, I can say that I would never return to a restaurant who gave me such a tortured and rushed experience as these two did as long as they gave me complimentary wine/appetizers while I was waiting, (I'm also a practitioner of CPT). I go to a high-end restaurant to relax - if you give me wine and eats, I ain't watchin' the clock. Again, I blame the producers for this and not the chefs. Okay, rant over. I'm gonna go back to watching basketball if it's still on. Go Cavs and Pacers (although Celtics and Knicks are gonna win - even though the Cavs pummeled the Celtics on Thursday.)

I thought this episode was really incoherent with two different sets of judges tables in the restaurants and jumping back and forth between the two restaurants during the episode. It would have been much easier for me to follow if they'd shown one restaurant at a time and spent more time on each restaurant with better explanations while it was going on. Too choppy and incoherent. I know this is a really unpopular opinion, but I really dislike Dan. His fish looked really good, but I think he's a douche.

Maybe the cheftestants are underwhelming because they don't perform well in 100-degree heat. I know, I'm the eternal optimist...

Something isn't right here. You can't even do the prep work for eggplant in 20 minutes, let alone create an entire dish that tastes good enough to beat something else. Soo seems like a nice enough guy - it's not his fault - but there's some behind-the-scenes manipulation going on here. I thought the Vietnamese pizza looked pretty interesting and I was way more into trying that than eggplant parm.

I got caught up on this show today. There's 3 hours of my life that I won't get back.

Okay. And rightly so, Bill can call out what a piece of shit Mike Johnson, and the rest of his Christian Nationalist buddies, is and that America is not a "christian" nation, and list all of the nations that have Islamic as part of their official titles but not see the hypocrisy in official, unquestioning support for the State of Israel? Unbelievable. I'm no anti-Semite and both sides in the Israel-Hamas conflict need to negotiate a livable solution, but official, unquestioning support for Israel is not acceptable and young people today see that. The United States is one step away from becoming a theocracy. How would Bill whine if the United States offered the same kind of unquestioning support to the Vatican that it offers to Israel? I'm probably also one of the three remaining people who watch his show, especially given the response to this thread, because he does raise important viewpoints that aren't addressed elsewhere and he does give a voice to alternative viewpoints. But come on. I also, reluctantly, voted for Hillary Clinton instead of Bernie Sanders in 2016 because I saw that it was too important not to take a chance on letting Donald Trump win and being able to say "I told you so". Holy Christ, how did this happen to our Country? Whew. Now I can take a safe breath for two seconds. Hopefully there are a few other people who see what our Nation is in danger of becoming and are willing to act to protect it.

I know I said I was done with Billions, but I really enjoyed this episode. So sue me. I gotta say, I loved the shoutout to Uncle Junior's doctor's office.

Battlebots is still on?

I liked that both Buddha and Gabri did well tonight and that the judges touched upon the concept that there wasn't a lot of distance amongst the chefs. I would have been happy eating both meals. Sara just doesn't do much for me, neither in terms of her food nor her personality. My mom used to cook a lot of liver. For the dog.

That's how I pronounce it and I actually speak French.

Victoire spoke really clear and beautiful French in this episode of LCK.