As of today, April 7, 2010, I will not be updating this blog anymore.

When I started this blog in 2008 it was a response to the shitty customer service I received at Vox and the not-so-sophisticated platform at LiveJournal.  This blog was meant to discuss my somewhat boring life as I was training for my eventual future as an underpaid line cook a future chef of America.  Over time it became a TV blog of sorts, a response to fourfour and Videogum, especially as I became more and more jaded to my culinary school’s grand vision for its students.  (And that’s just me putting it nicely, because I can spend thousands of words about my shitty experience there.  But I’m a lady and I seek employment in the future.  I’ll leave my rants for the select public to see.)  And, up until now, it was a monster.

Today I don’t have the heart, the working equipment or the desire to spend 1-2 hours uploading pictures and text posts to WordPress.  And I can’t find myself able to care about hearts for dinner anymore.  I’m planning to move away from television blogging, at least tedious (for me) recaps.  I dream of starting over again in New York, working in the fashion industry, possibly going to school at Parsons…and succeeding. With other people helping me.  If you can help me, e-mail me (at least for now) at heartnibbler [at] gmail [dot] com.

The posts will stay up but I will shut comments off so I will not have to monitor comments from people six months in the future.  The info section will probably disappear—the employment thing, and some of the links will not be updated now—but some of the tabs will stay on the blog.  I have another blog under another name on the WordPress system and the amount of unpublished comments there drove me mad. (Especially the twat who complained I should’ve wrote about a show currently on the air.  There are other blogs for other shows currently on the air.  FIND THEM.)

After two years of service, I will bid you all adieu, at least on WordPress.  I will still be over at Tumblr, where publishing is less of a headache and where I’m having more fun at right now.  I may not get as many page views as I did here.  I may not get as many page views as I did when I was blogging on Blogger (which was more than here).  But at least I will be happy.

I leave you with a song by Aya I like, “Curtain Call.” I think this sets a nice tone for the end of this blog.

xo.

Deadmau5 was the DJ of an out-of-season fashion show, described as a “pop-up” show.  And pop-up it was, because this show completely missed the opportunity to have Jessica Szohr and Michelle Trachtenberg standing in the front row because this fashion show was awash in a sea of nobodies.

The mau5 played his hits “Not Exactly,” “Hi Friend” and “FML” as models walked down a creepy interactive runway with their looks being displayed as they walked down the runway.  I was told there would be some familiar faces from some gossip blog, but since the blog always talks about B this and C that and S this and N that and V this and D and J that I didn’t know who the hell I was looking for.

Overall Deadmau5’s concert was amazing.  I would rather see him perform in Mansion, though, because I could not get my groove on with all these stuffy prostitute-looking types.

April Fool’s and all that stuff.  This is actually the recap for:

Spoiler alert: Not really.  And  pretty much.

I tried looking at this episode the way it was aired, but I was confused with the guest star characters dropping like flies except for Jack and the way the script could’ve continued tormenting the characters but just stopped short of actually doing anything interesting, so I made a pie chart of what I think happened in this episode.

And now, an analysis of the chart.

Chuck’s hotel and mommy problems.

You know what?  I can spend a few angry CAPS LOCKED paragraphs over Chuck’s idiocy over the past few episodes.  How a guy who once tricked a group similar to Skull and Bones at Yale fell for one of his uncle’s dirty tricks is insane.  Then again, how the character shifted from a lazy yet clever pill-popping, hash-smoking date rapist to a srs business businessman would be another CAPS LOCKED paragraph.  So I will ignore anything dealing with Chuck Bass, his mother (who is actually his mother…I thought he stole Paxil from his mother. Le sigh) and his uncle except for three items:

1) Chuck’s mother leaves to give herself and her son a new life…which sounds like Chuck leaving Blair to give the two of them a fresh start way back in “O Brother, Where Bart Thou.” You stay classy with your recycled plots, Idiot Plot.

2) Dear Gossip Girl writers,

Ed Westwick crying in a show does not a hit make.  See: 100 Feet. Which is a movie, but still.

xoxo

P.S. And I couldn’t take his crying in 100 Feet (which was more convincing than his crying in this episode), so there.  But I did like the way he—

Um, yeah, you’re gonna have to rent or Netflix that or wait until it comes back on SyFy again.  But I promise you, it was impressive.

Whatever the fuck Jenny’s subplot was this week.

Okay, okay, I know, we’re trying to save Jenny from Kevin Zegers™ and selling drugs (which makes total sense because Chuck does all sorts of hard drugs and Nate smokes weed, or so I thought), so I somewhat get bringing back Eleanor Waldorf.

Who has set up shop in her apartment because she sold her NYC studio, I assume…but I thought she was staying in Paris with Wallace Shawn forever, so I’m confused now.  Thanks, Idiot Plot.

Agnes could’ve made Jenny’s life more of a living hell during the fashion show.  She could’ve ragged on Jenny “supplying” drugs to all the models.  She could’ve stuck around and gotten, at the very least, a tongue-thrashing from one of the main characters.  Instead she drugged Jenny with champagne and left her in some bar.  Okay, show, whatever you consider exciting.

DEADMAU5. See concert review, above.

Jessica Szohr looking hot in period clothing.

Dan and his too-hot-for-him girlfriend are now a couple.  This was the highlight of their date in Dan’s loft.

This, alongside Deadmau5, was also the highlight of the episode.  Jessica Szohr can make anything look good.

Except for Uggs.  No one can make Uggs look good.

No, I am not saying this because it is Jessica Szohr’s birthday today.

Nate saved Jenny but otherwise hung out for no reason.

When he wasn’t trying to scheme!fail with Serena over Chuck’s hotel or saving Jenny from rape, he hung out for no reason.

Somewhat off-topic, but goodness, this show loves near-rape, doesn’t it?

If Chuck could watch this show alongside the rest of us (and not as Ed), he would be in tears over all the near-rape and drugs he’s missed this season.

Blair did something.

She met up with Chuck at his former hotel then at some bar and she was all “Stay out of it, Nick Lachey” to Serena and Nate and then she had Dorota bribe Brandeis to get hookers to appear at her mother’s fashion show and also there was something with this stranger bitch who lives in Mormon country who wanted to stock Eleanor’s juniors line but he refused and then Eleanor refused after Blair double-crossed Stranger Bitch and then she met some stranger bitches from Colombia University and had sex with Chuck, who was probably dreaming of rape.  The end.

Serena did something, too.

In other news, Orlando Jordan had his debut in TNA this week—he came out as an openly bisexual wrestler, complete with bisexual stereotypes.

Dan was in this episode.

Oh, yeah, Shawn Michaels retired from the WWE. He will be missed and I sincerely hope he doesn’t rejoin the WWE or TNA to pay off some debts, ahem, Ric Flair (WOOOOOOOOO) and Hulk Hogan.

Rufus was there as well.

Are y’all watching Unsung on TVOne?  Because that show is amazing.  I was on the edge of my seat with the Rose Royce Unsung, and Sylvester’s was fucking fab-u-lous.

***

FLASHBACK TEIM!

Chuck’s line is the line I use to describe the third season of Gossip Girl: full of “excellent” ideas to appease the critics and the fans but they keep getting shot down.  Well, at least by the critics, because there are some fans who think this episode was amazing.

So, um, yeah, I don’t think I’ll be covering Gossip Girl for a while because the writers have run out of ideas and I’m running out of ideas as well.  But before I go…

I called this whole promo a week ago when the Matthew Williamson display went up in New York.

And the photo sources were all over the place this week, so I’ll just credit this site and call it a day.

I’m taking the rest of this week off to work on some other projects.  I’ll be thinking of you while I get my picture taken with Dan and Vanessa in “South Beach.”

But then I realized I wanted to clarify myself.

Initially I was going to say “I can still do Gossip Girl recaps if I can stomach them because next week’s teaser is filling me with dread.  And maybe I can do the hot ass mess that is Rip the Runway, provided BET or someone at the topmodel comm finds photos from the event.“  Today I just discovered another sad truth about my aging computer: the headphone jack is busted.  (And I don’t know how to demo that, sorry.)  This all but assures my computer going into the shop, since it’s not easy to repair like a malfunctioning CD-ROM driver.  So, um, this blog is most likely going on a hiatus.  I still won’t do Cycle 14–I don’t want to use crappy YouTube/CW video and I am not shelling out $20 for an iTunes subscription I don’t really need and don’t want to use, but if my computer is fixed, I may return to Gossip Girl recaps (because of the abundance of screencap sites).  If I can stomach them.

I also promised to cover Britain’s Next Top Model Cycle 6, so I may do that, provided my computer works so I can snag the YouTube/Dailymotion files.  That is, if the files go on YouTube/Dailymotion.  But this will probably be my last season of BNTM, sadly to say.

Oh, and if you’re wondering, this is a recent photo of me. You’re welcome.

And I apologize if my voice sounds like a shorter, gayer, more Southern version of Jessica Szohr’s.  Here’s a video of her interviewing Leighton Meester for reference.

THAT WAS FOR WORK.

Related: What Is Charles Wearing Now: The Hurt Locket

Alex, take your pill. You might need to be numb for the highlights under the cut.  And trust me, these are the highlights.  (Spoilers for the British and anyone living on TiVO time.  Also a bit of girl ass after the jump, but there’s nothing wrong with girl ass at hearts for dinner.  Finally, AUTOPLAY.  Scroll down and mute as needed, as I don’t know how to stop this crazy thing, Jane.)

A random scene of Chuck doing something.

The perfect way to pad 42 minutes of non-commercial content.  You could’ve put this picture of Ed in the show instead and it still would’ve made sense.

***

Chuck wants to keep The Woman Who May Be His Mother a secret to everyone else.  (That’s why his penis is so long, it’s full of secrets.)  He tries to dismiss the locket he is currently obsessed with to Blair, stating at one point

Immediately following that Chuck, your favorite Houdini Splicer, Toasty model, shot up some ADAM and talked about opening hotels in France.  He then Incinerated! Blair.

(Well, at least the opening hotels part was actually in the episode, but it still was crazy talk.)

***

And now, a deleted scene from Anna Karenina.

And now, another deleted scene from Anna Karenina.

…Blair purrs with a bad Russian accent into her BlackBerry.  She is dressed like she will be in a cabaret show honoring the stereotypes of Russia.  She speaks in run-on sentences.

Chuck is outside a hotel.  He is preoccupied with looking for the woman who was at his father’s grave, a woman he would’ve never seen had that meddling wench Blair not tried to send him to said grave.  He cannot attend a luncheon to help Blair get into La Table Élitare…hmm, where did that come from?

And didn’t Chuck tell Blair she was already a special snowflake and she didn’t need a secret society to feel specialer?

And for bonus points, didn’t Dawn Summers Georgina Sparks say there wasn’t a chapter of La Table Élitare at NYU?

So what chapter is Blair joining again?

I guess the Ed Westwick’s Tongue chapter.  Hello, idiot plot.  I’ve missed you.

(Edit 6/14: Okay, so Blair was starting a chapter of Le Table Élitaire at NYU in this episode.  But still, considering the sex shenanigans in “The Lost Boy,” Blair should not have started a chapter of Le Table Élitaire in the first place. Plot is still idiotic, I win!)

Before her senior year at Constance ended, Blair’s (at this point, more down-to-earth) book counterpart decided “[d]estiny is for losers….It’s just a lame excuse for letting things happen to you instead of making them happen.”  Instead, Serena, of all people, tells her this same thing, albeit in different (idiot) words.

(Even Blake Lively can’t believe what her character is saying, which is sad.)

This might be my problem with television Blair these days.

Once Anna Waldorf realized Chuck Vronsky had finally grown tired of her, at least for that moment, Anna dreamed she fell onto the train tracks of a subway in New York, her life flashing before her eyes set to the tune of “Crash” by the Dave Matthews Band, before the train crashed into her.  The ghost of Tolstoy cheered as she died.

(Not really.  She found a noticeably marked file with a photo of the locket Mystery Woman held over Bart Bass’ grave.

Thank you, Captain Obvious Prop Department.)

Blair decides to leave Chuck’s suite dressed as the Bozack Cossack.

She later whines about being left alone in Chuck’s dressed as the Bozack Cossack.

You twat, it’s your fault you looked like you went to Regina George’s Halloween party.  And Blair, invest in a dildo because Chuck is not a sex toy.  He needs food, water, hash and love.

Dan tells his father off because he won’t talk to Lily.

The Lily situation is too complicated to recap here, but this is my other amusing quote from the episode.

Shout-out to Foursquare.

No, show, you cannot get a badge.  STFU.

And finally…

As a black person, I refuse to comment on this.

“The Hurt Locket” gets skewered next Wednesday, and, of course, ANTM recaps start next Saturday.  Yes, there will be tacky runways.  Yes, there will be Anna Karenina sex play.  It all starts next week!

Anyway, Giada was going on and on about how the dish originated in Northern Italy, etc. al. whatever.  Problem is this penne-like pasta didn’t originate in Northern Italy–it originated in Southern Italy (technically), in the Abruzzo region. Giada wasn’t actually using trenette pasta, which did originate in Northern Italy.  She was using trennette pasta. This, on the other hand, is trenette pasta:

In summary, real trenette looks like a thicker version of fettuccine.  Trennette pasta, on the other hand, looks like a slimmer version of penne.

I’m not going to lie, I would make this dish.  I just wouldn’t call it “Trenette with Eggplant and Pesto;” in my case, I would call it “Penne, Pan-Fried Eggplant and Pesto” since in Nowheresville, NC people have no clue what trennette pasta looks like.

Also I can go on about how lemons aren’t usually seen in Northern Italian cooking but I will stop here for today.

Still no new post this week–still working on new projects and all–but I wanted to share with you, after the jump, the 20 albums that changed my life.  I’m too lazy to provide Amazon.com links for all of them, but I assure you all (except #2) of these albums are at least on iTunes.  (Some of them are physically out of print.)  This post was inspired by a meme I saw on Tumblr, and since I don’t really have a new post this week, I decided to share the meme here rather than Tumblr.

Also: should’ve made this joke in this post, but I didn’t know at the time they were dating, so.

Order of the list: Album–Artist.

1. Surprise—Crystal Waters
2. Mickey Unwrapped—various
3. CrazySexyCool—TLC
4. Led Zeppelin IV—Led Zeppelin
5. The Velvet Rope—Janet Jackson
6. The Emancipation of Mimi—Mariah Carey
7. Stop the Panic—Luke Vibert/BJ Cole
8. 24^th Street Sounds—Miguel Migs
9. Hard Normal Daddy—Squarepusher
10. Ready to Die—Notorious B.I.G.
11. Only Built for Cuban Linx—Raekwon
12. Share My World—Mary J. Blige
13. Love Songs of the Hanging Gardens—Kelley Polar
14. Beautiful Tomorrow—Blue Six
15. I’m Still In Love With You—Al Green
16. In My Life, Vol. 1—Jay-Z
17. Hardcore—Lil’ Kim
18. 2 Future 4 U—Armand Van Helden
19. The Pearl—Aquanote
20. Remixed on the 24^th of July—Charles Webster

First off:

I saw this last week but I didn’t get a chance to comment on it.  Me, I think it’s coincidence, but maybe someone at the CW reads this blog.  Maybe. If they do, I hope they apologize to poor Edward.

1. He looks constipated in this promo picture.
2. Um, you don’t talk dirty to Chuck, Chuck talks dirty to you. He hasn’t been doing a good job of it lately, but that’s usually how it is.

That said, here is part of the scene following the screenshot above.  Please note in the first screenshot Chuck is holding a martini glass (apparently his favorite drink other than scotch.  Or a manhattan[?]).  He is talking to his bartender (who is not Nate).

This being said by an 18-year old who:

1. has drunken alcohol illegally (in the United States, specifically New York, if you’re lost) in the past.
2. is drinking illegally at the very moment he says this.
3. is illegally being served alcohol by a bartender that should have lost his license for serving an 18-year-old.  Why Vanessa was not there to smack some sense into that bartender’s head will not be known. Then again, this one time, there was a snowstorm…
4. on the first night of his club opening, invites people way too young to be in any adult bar, alcohol or not, and has bartenders serving them alcohol.

And, hilariously enough, the main concern about the Chuck/Gimlet bar (idiot) subplot is about a liquor license that Chuck could not legally obtain because he is 18.

If there was any time to make an appropriate Python reference, this post would be it.

Did you know there’s another licensed product that you can’t buy in Wal-Mart or Target from the ANTM marketing monster?  And, of all things, it’s a video game.  Sadly, it’s not the ANTM game for the Nintendo DS, but an officially licensed iPhone game I wouldn’t have known about if I didn’t open my CWTV app.  (The app also advertises yet another one of those BlackBook app ripoffs and the 90210 soundtrack, so if you’re into Owl City and the Red Jumpsuit Apparatus, be my guest.)

The app claims that, by playing it, you will be a model.

If that’s true playing the aforementioned 90210 soundtrack will turn you into Naomi Clark.  Or playing the Gossip Girl board game will turn you into Chuck Bass.

Before playing the game you have to create a model.

The actual game, separated into “cycles,” consists of your model doing exciting things…like drinking green tea, eating apples, filing nails and watching television

to avoid being eliminated.

(Also, I assume this creepy-looking being with red hair is Tyra.)

You have different moods, but they don’t matter because you are doing exciting things like drinking green tea, eating apples, filing nails and watching television.

Your model also gets to discuss her home life and fashion with the other contestants in the model house.

It’s almost like an actual ANTM house but without the television and the funny.  Your model gets points for doing these mundane things.

And you need 20 points to win a cycle, apparently.  She loses points, however, if she starts a fight with another model, known in the game as a “tease.”

And with lame insults like “Mr. President invited you to a banquet today,” you’ll be wishing you had a Jesus freak like Robin in this game instead.

Speaking of, the game actually has contestants from previous seasons.  And by “contestants” I mean winners like Adrianne Curry (and you thought she was banned from all ANTM media for life) and Yoanna House.  You “meet” the winners as you go through the cycles of the game.  There are only four cycles, by the way, so you don’t get to “meet” either one of the Nicoles, Dani Evans, Saleisha, etc.

There are three minigames included in the game as well.  One of them is “Catwalk,” a runway challenge where you move your model down an endless runway, trying to keep her in the spotlight while taking her picture.

Another minigame is “Fashionista,” where you have to recreate a look the CPU gives you to earn more points for your model.

The final minigame is called “Photo Session.”

“Photo Session” is like Guitar Hero, DJ Hero, Rock Band, etc. al.—you have to press on balls to get more stars for your model—except the balls don’t correspond with the notes of any of the music played in the game at all.  In-game the music is generic and bland, but the minigame includes two actual songs you’ve probably never heard of before—“Miss Blue” by I Am the Icarus and “The World Ends Tonight” by Until June. It is also really easy to play unless you can’t beat a child’s word search game, and if you can’t…I feel very bad for you.

The video game also offers clips from past ANTM seasons.

For a second I thought this scene was from Cycle 14 until the caption for Saleisha appeared.  In other words, if you’ve seen all the ANTM seasons, you really don’t need to get this game for the “exclusive” clips, especially since Oxygen will eventually show the season you want to see, oh…about six months from now.

The full version of this repetitive, simple game is $3.99 in the iTunes App Store.  Save it and use the money to buy a fashion magazine instead, even if it is Seventeen with some Disney girl no one will remember 10 years from now on the cover.