Thursday, June 02, 2005

Cooking show - my rushes

So I've been taping at Ray's, and Cornelius has been scarce lately. I think that since we never talked about the weird "fight" we had on the set, and he has heard I've been taping without him, he just hides in his room until he knows I've left the house. Sucks for him.

Anyhow, I've got the set dressed the way I want it now. Some electric guitars, a big inflatable cactus, an old beater couch for guests, and this awesome mechanical monkey-on-a-unicycle that rolls back and forth on a trapeze over the set the whole time I do my show. I got it from this old pizza parlor that was closing its doors — they threw in their five-spigot soda machine for another hundred bucks, and I set it up on the main counter to dispense four of the basics: chicken stock, olive oil, white wine, and water. The fifth dispenses the keg beer which I always serve to my guests and myself at the beginning of the show (me filling the glasses is part of the stock intro).

I have the rushes from the first "pilot" episode all shot and ready to edit. The theme was braising so I did osso buco with a fava polenta, lamb shank with white beans and anchovy, all-American pot roast, and a vegetarian braise of artichokes Barigoule. Ray, Beef, and Dr. Andretti were my guests and they actually made for a pretty funny bunch. You'd never think that Dr. Andretti would cut it up but he had this great out-of-office chemistry with Beef where Beef would say something all his own like "dang man uh ain't lamb meat got way much low-density lipoproteins though" and Andretti would pantomime putting a stethoscope on Beef's chest while saying "Nurse, it's...it's... [grimace] low-density lipoproteins. Push two units of morphine and call the Chaplain." And then Ray would pipe in with some more medical nonsense because he watches so much ER: "Doc Andretti! His tests just came back positive for bad spaghetti! I think he munched on bad spaghetti at S'Barro which he thinks is a good restaurant! Oh craaaaaaap!"

I'm editing this all in with some highbeat old bumper tracks from The Byrds, since they'll add a nice multi-influential retro feel. My intro/outro song is Time Between, which has great energy.