Roger Pires October 28, 2010
When he's not offering his take on daily life, Roger Pires spends his days as a computer systems analyst. It's not exactly a glamorous calling but hey, it pays the bills. He enjoys hockey, canoeing, snowshoeing, and spending as much time as he possibly can outdoors. He lives in Udora with his wife and two kids, who are his prime inspiration for Ravenshoe Ramblings.
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Kitchen kapers
It was a quiet Tuesday night. My wife and daughter were at work and my son was at a friend’s place, allegedly working on a school project. The plan was to come home from work, toss some leftovers in the nuke machine, get horizontal on the chesterfield, and let the silence of an empty house turn me into a pool of hairy jell-o. At least it sounded good in my head. When I opened the front door, my Zen-like calm was assaulted like a drag queen at a tractor pull. No one was home but someone forgot to tell the TV.
We bestow on our electronic gadgets the gift of human intelligence. We expect our Smart phones and Think Pads to make decisions we’re incapable of making ourselves. Like turning themselves off when they’re no longer in use. Alas, my ancient Zenith had not been endowed with such sublime technology. Abandoned by its owners, I found it playing to an empty room.
The weirdness factor shot off the end of the scale when I saw what was on the screen. A group of people in chef outfits were screaming at each other, every second word bleeped out. Judging by the vehemence of their invective, evil forces were plotting to take over the universe from the kitchen of a five-star restaurant. This tawdry episode of Bakers Behaving Badly was brought to me by something called the Food Network. Any moment, I expected the protagonists to pull off their masks and reveal the faces of John Candy and Andrea Martin; but this wasn’t SCTV. This was reality programming at its profanity-laced, batter-flinging finest.
I tried to put this bizarre spectacle into some context: an angry master chef, cowering underlings, and one guy waving a sauce pan who had the guts to stand up to the tyrant. It took me a few minutes to figure out what was actually going on here. This wasn’t just scenes from a diner. This was Batman in an apron, Wonder Woman with a meat cleaver. These gourmets were the new spatula-wielding superheroes of the flat screen. Escapism used to come in the form of cartoon images. We lived large as Spiderman, spinning webs and fighting crime. We were the Fonz, lording over our realm armed with the power of cool. To find solace from the pressures of reality, we donned a cape and flew over Metropolis looking for damsels in distress. Now we pull on a big hat and sling hash at an upscale eatery. Step aside Superman, there’s a new hero in town. I give you Captain Marinade: defender of truth, justice, and the seven-course meal. I couldn’t picture Julia Child and the Galloping Gourmet arm wrestling over a recipe for blueberry muffins. Deep-frying as an extreme sport was definitely a modern phenomenon.
The fun never stops in the world of culinary gladiators. Apparently, I was just in time to watch the latest installment of the “Iron Chef”. I had no idea what it was about but I pictured a two-story high coffee truck transforming into the Pillsbury Dough Boy. That was to be followed by “Cake Boss” which I could only assume involved members of rival bakeries ending up in the East River.
I admit that my knowledge of satellite TV is confined to the holy trinity of home entertainment: hockey, football, and the Comedy Network. I’m painfully aware however that you could feed several villages in Guatemala for what it costs to watch a couple of sous-chefs fling expletives and Bearnaise sauce at each other. I decided to roam the dial in search of more hidden gems. Aside from the Food Network, I was the proud owner of Baby First TV, Salt + Light, iHoroscope, and The Cave. And if I didn’t feel like jetting off to a crowded mall on a Saturday, I could always satisfy my antiquing jones by watching the Shopping Network.
Feeling considerably poorer, I shut off the TV and headed back to the kitchen. I rooted through several Tupperware containers in search of dinner. I settled on something I could only hope was meat loaf and tossed it in the microwave. While my entrée bubbled and squeaked under the heat, I thought of the dueling chefs. And of the Shopping Network. I thought of the 120 channels we don’t watch on a daily basis. Perhaps it was time to deep-six the satellite, go back to rabbit ears, and use the savings to buy an island off the coast of Florida.
