On Thursday nights, primetime television is pretty lame. (Am I the only person who just can't beleive that ER is still on the air?) So the way Dan and I amuse ourselves on Thursdays is by watching Iron Chef, the most unintentionally hilarious show on television. If you've never seen this show, you must watch it, because it's fantastic. It's a Japanese reality competition type show that pits celebrated chefs against one another in a timed contest to see which chef can create the best four course meal out of the same key ingredient. The unveiling of the ingredient of the evening is the greatest moment of the show, because the crazy little man who is apparently in charge makes a HUGE production out of it, and there's all this dry ice and dramatic music and the man is always sporting a hair style that has got to involve at least three cans of Rave hair spray and wearing these insanely elaborate outfits that look like something Liberace left behind. There are a lot of capes. Then, the rest of the show is dubbed in terrible English translations, and it's just hands-down better than anything you're going to see on NBC.
Recently, thanks to Iron Chef, I realized why primetime television in America is just so awful these days. Someone in corporate network television America who evidently has no sense of humor whatsoever, in a collosal lack of understanding of WHY Iron Chef is actually popular in America, has gone and made an American version of Iron Chef that is just about ... the cooking. And that's not funny. It's not funny at all. Martha Stewart does shows about cooking, and they don't make me laugh.
Thank goodness for cable. Tonight's ingredient is salmon.