Cooking Up Some Sex Appeal

 Tomorrow night is the Season Premiere of the all new Top Chef. OK it’s not really all new this time around because it is Top Chef All Stars, which means that it features losers from past seasons. Regardless, t-BONE is a fan. So much so that I have donated tens of dollars over the years to a pool that I never seem to be able to win. lady-BONE has a crush on one of this season’s contestants, Fabio. This is completely understandable since the general consensus is that he is tall, dark and handsome with an Italian accent and hips that don’t lie. He is really the only reason she watches.

I on the other hand have a crush on another contestant, Jamie. Jamie is by society’s standards average or maybe a little better than average. She is not Padma.

 Jamie is cute, short and doesn’t like people like me (boys). I think if given the chance I could convert her but that will probably never happen. I visited her restaurant once and she wouldn’t come out. Probably because she feared that if she did she would end up breaking up my marriage and pissing off her lady with a wild romp in the hay. Do they have hay in San Fran? Regardless, she wouldn’t have been able to contain herself so we dined without her that evening. But I digress….

A friend-BONE and I were chatting about this topic the other night and she mentioned that she has a crush Top Chef’s Head Judge, Tom Colicchio. Same deal. Chef Tom is very attractive if you are into Bears. If you are unfamiliar with Chef Tom think bald Tom Arnold in a white coat. In his defense he is not bad looking, just average or slightly better. Definitely not a contender for People’s Sexiest Man though.

So what it is about these less than sexy people that makes them so sexy. To explain this I have developed the food porn theory. You’ve heard of food porn maybe? According to Wikipedia (the modern man’s version of Encyclopedia Britannica), “food porn is a provocative term variously applied to a spectacular visual presentation of cooking or eating in advertisements, infomercials, cooking shows or other visual media, foods boasting a high fat and calorie content, exotic dishes that arouse a desire to eat or the glorification of food as a substitute for sex.” This is mostly the stuff you will find on Top Chef created regularly by Jamie and Fabio et al. Chef Tom doesn’t create food on the show but everyone on the show pines over his food porn prowess which creates a similar reaction for the viewer.

The food porn theory suggests that you will fall in love when you encounter a slightly better than average individual with the ability to make a meal that makes you want to jump through your tv and get up to your elbows in it. The food you pervert! Just the possibility of a tummy orgasm makes you fall in love with this individual.

 The food porn theory explains why when Jamie lays down a couple of plump and juicy scallops on a plate, dripping with a smooth and succulent sauce, t-BONE falls in love. It explains how a chubby, bald man in an ill-fitted white chef’s coat can get the ladies swooning. It also explains why on Thursday mornings the entire conversation about Top Chef does not revolve around Padma. A lot of it is about Padma, but not all of it. It takes something as powerful as food porn to break your concentration when Padma is involved.

t-BONE loves food, and food porn. Needless to say we will be spending the next several Wednesday nights sitting on the couch. t-BONE will be fantasizing about Jamie and her food porn, Tracey about Fabio and his honest hips.

If you like food and falling in love, you should consider doing the same.

Stay thirsty my friends.

Did I ever tell you about the time I lost The Bachelor?

t-BONE is back from a jaunt out West and is very well rested. Sorry that I could not fulfill your needs with a post last week but even t-BONE needs a break every once in a while so give me a break man. So on to the show…

A couple of weeks ago lady-BONE went out of town on business. As a joke I changed my relationship status on Facebook to single. Hilarious, right? I know. Within minutes, if not seconds, several people responded.  All of them had an opinion. Funny enough, the only person that didn’t seem to care was lady-BONE. Should she have? I mean you leave a smoking hot piece of meat unattended in the dog pound and it’s gonna get eaten.  Well regardless, she has a pretty good sense of humor and didn’t really seem to care much.

t-BONE started to think about the single life and how much fun it was. I decided to make an effort to recreate bachelorhood for a week. I was going to eat pork in my underwear on the couch, leave the dishes in the sink and let the laundry lay on the floor. I also planned to go out for drinks every night. Tracey left on Tuesday so that night I was going to hit the gym and grab dinner and a few beers at the bar with some friends—typical t-BONE Tuesday eight years ago.

Turns out no one I know regularly grabs beers on Tuesdays anymore. I was left going to the gym, cooking dinner and watching the tele. No problem, even real bachelor t-BONE had some down nights and I had all week. I lit the grill and threw on some delicious looking pork. The flame was hot and the sizzle really got my juices flowing. I grabbed a beer to cool myself down. Once inside I decided to eat on the couch, nothing new, but opted to keep my shirt on as it no longer seemed cool to lick pork drippings out of my chest hair. I spent the night switching my attention between TV, Esquire and The Big Short (which is excellent, BTW). A couple of beers later I hit the sack.

Wednesday I planned to see what was going on around town. Nothing looked that appealing but I figured something would come up along the way. I got home, went for a quick run and then decided I really just felt like staying in, eating leftovers and watching Modern Family. It was funny as usual; I LOL’d a couple of times and found it extremely enjoyable. I made a point to save it for lady-BONE to watch once bachelor week was over and I returned to the real world. Against the intent of the exercise I know, but I figured once this little game was over I would be better off if it was on the DVR. Especially after the whole airplane upgrade fiasco.  

Thursday night would be the big night, maybe put together a crew and really take it to the town.  Thursday morning rolled around and I was up for whatever came my way. I got to work, and even started doing some recon on Metromix. Then I got bogged down on some work projects and lost interest. The big night turned out to be finishing off those delicious pork chops (yep three nights in a row) and several drinks with dog-BONE while finishing up some work. I had time to go out after that, but really had no interest or energy.

Turns out bachelorhood seemed fun at the time, and it probably was, but it’s really no longer for me. I will likely never know whether it was really a blast or I just didn’t know any better. I have lost interest in going out and coming home alone every night. I have apparently been reprogrammed to think that eating in your underwear is not cool or comfortable. I can no longer leave dishes sitting in the sink or clothes on the floor overnight. Maybe I can actually, I seem to have no problem doing it when Tracey is around. Maybe I feel like she is somehow here when the place is clean and I am living somewhat civilized like when she is around. I loaded the dishwasher (I still didn’t prewash because it’s useless) and cleaned up my clothes every night before bed. I walked and fed the dog morning, evening and night. I even made sure the clothes were cleaned, folded and put away and that the dishwasher was empty before my lady returned home. I must say at this point in my life I am much happier to no longer be the bachelor.

Stay Thirsty My Friends

By the way, I have noticed that At Home has a real life celebrity follower. Tori, I hope you find my work as entertaining as I find yours. Let me know if you are ever interested in writing a guest blog about your life experiences.

Stop Being Lazy and Stupid



I know this is not the Nov. 2010
cover but it is still pretty, pretty nice.

Ah, democracy. In spite of historic health care reform, the Democrats are running for the hills because nary a job is being created in the land. And the Republicans, well, they haven’t had a new idea this century, unless you count tea bags and fear, which we don’t. And yet we have a Congress filled with extraordinary people. Extraordinarily stupid... 

–Esquire Magazine November 2010



Just about every day you hear someone you know complain about government and the people we elected to run it. It is either too big or too small, it spends too much or it is not doing enough. It is not defending our borders or it is wasting a trillion dollars a year defending our rights. For all this chatter, only a little more than half of the voting age public fulfilled their obligation to democracy in the 2008 General Election. And this was a good year! There is a pretty good chance that a third of the people you know over 18 did not vote in the last presidential election, and many more than that will fail to vote tomorrow. To me this is very sad, but not the most depressing part of the story.

Tomorrow nearly 80 million people will cast their vote. They will select the leaders of our nation, and charge them with protecting our families, recovering our economy and securing our futures. For all of that responsibility, the people they elect will be mostly nitwits, and we are the only ones to blame.

Of the millions of people that will vote tomorrow my guess is about 10 million will take the time to thoroughly review the issues and candidates they are deciding. You might say this is way off, and I agree, it is probably less than 1 million. Most voters will not even know what or who they are really voting for until they show up at the polls. The majority of people that do know, only do so because they have been inundated with attack ads for the past month between episodes of Dancing with the Stars and the Jersey Shore. Speaking of, I would bet good money that the average DWTS voter spends more time researching which celebrity they are going to vote for than they do researching any candidate for elected office. I digress.

We live in a world where sound bites rule the way we live; the way we act and react to life. So when you are flipping through the channels and you stop on MSNBC or Fox News you get a slanted, ten second summary of a candidate’s position on some topic, or their latest gaffe , and you make up your mind based on that small and mostly insignificant information. More ridiculous is that people are more than likely making these decisions on what they heard within 24 hours of going to the polls. We have gotten lazy and we are letting someone else do the work and provide us with the thought process. The problem with this is that when you do that you are letting someone else make the decision for you. And if you are going to do that you might as well be living in a communist country.

The fact is that cable news is filled with incredibly entertaining pundits, analysts and “experts”. But this is no excuse. Unfortunately, most people believe that because these so called experts are on TV they know what they are talking about and so they believe everything they say and do not take the time to look into the issues and candidates themselves. The reality is that these people are paid to provide their opinion, and that opinion is usually slanted toward the leanings of the program or to please the owners of the network. So when you let cable news make your decisions for you, you are doing yourself, your fellow citizens and your country a disservice.

A while back we had a military draft in this country. When a young man got drafted to go to war, he had an obligation to serve his country. If he didn’t show up he broke the law, and he was punished. If he showed up but was not fully engaged, he put his life and the lives of his fellow soldiers at risk. If you are a citizen of this country, you have an obligation to vote and if you are not fully engaged you are placing the future of this country at risk. We have low turnout regularly because voting is a not mandatory in this country. Even if it was, people would still have to be engaged and put forth an effort to learn what is going on if we are going to stop electing nitwits to represent us. Tomorrow go out and vote, but only after you take some time to research the candidates and issues and can make an informed decision on who is best to lead this country. If you are counting on a political party or cable news channel to do that for you, you are putting us all at risk.

Stay thirsty my friends.

A side not for my bros: I know we like to look at things that are visual appealing, but should we really be choosing our world leaders based on the hotness of the person providing you with the information? I have noticed a trend of middle-aged men growing more conservative. I blame this on the "quality talent" being hired at Fox News. I mean no one is arguing that

there is a contest in looks category
between Rachel Maddow and Meghan Kelly, but if you are going to get your news from Fox News because it is much more fun to look at, make sure you supplement this information with something that is really fair and balanced.