The last 24 hours have been a little insane. But before I get into all that let’s think about the finale of Top Chef for a minute.

I was thinking this episode might be anticlimatic, but it wasn’t. Everything ran fairly smoothly despite lots of room for total and complete disaster. Harold and Tiffani were allowed to cook what they wanted, for once. But poor Tiffani had a serious setback (well, a setback besides herself.) That setback was the sniveling, whiny, and now drunken queen Dave.

I totally lost respect for him on this episode. I am not sure how much is real and how much is TV, but here goes.

The final challenge was, cook the best tasting menu you can, for a bunch of really picky food people. No weirdness, everything you need given to you, plenty of time, and even kitchen helpers.

Then the kitchen helpers turned out to be Lee Anne, Stephen, Dave and Miguel. They were asked who they wanted to work with and Lee Anne, Dave and Miguel all said Harold. Stephen chose Tiffani – I am not sure if he was trying to be diplomatic (at that point I was feeling really bad for Tiffani myself… couldn’t help it) or what. Anyway Dave and Miguel had to draw knives to see who would go with Harold, because Harold himself was unwilling to choose. Dave drew the wrong knife, and ended up with Tiffani.

It seems to me that if you go back on the show to help out who is left, you should GO BACK ON THE SHOW AND HELP OUT WHO IS LEFT. No matter who you end up helping. But Dave was so clearly pissed off about being on Tiffani’s team. Then, both Dave and Stephen went out and got hammered, then showed up late AND still drunk (!) to help Tiffani cook. That is just so, so wrong. If they didn’t want to be there, they should have had someone else do it. I don’t care what Tiffani has said or done in the past to Dave, he should have got a good night’s sleep and been bright-eyed and bushy tailed, and ready to go. Stephen was worthless – a non-entity. And they continued to drink in the kitchen. Seriously, Bravo should have helped Tiffani out on this one. It wasn’t her fault that those guys showed up for work totally hammered. Unless, I guess, their reasoning is that “America’s Top Chef” should be able to function in that kind of environment.

Dave did make a dessert that was a big hit with the judges, but then stupidly Tiffani tried to take credit for it. I think sometimes the girl just doesn’t think.

Even with the backstage theatrics Tiffani still managed to make some killer dishes. But of course Harold prevailed. Everyone loves him. So Tiffani was totally wrong when she said “this is not a popularity contest.”

Of course no one is going to win any popularity contests with lines like “your knife just ran into my back.” Huh?

Drink up Harold. You deserve it.

So last night, right after me and Danielle got to the show, some dude came up to us and asked us if we were Flaming Lips fans. We were like, uh, yeah. Then I said “why, do you want us to be in those animal outfits?” Because the Lips always have people in animal outfits dancing on stage. “No,” the dude said. “Alien or Santa outfits.”

At first I was a little hesitant – I don’t know why. But then I was like, hell yeah.

We sat threw the first three bands – all acceptable, but no spark to speak of, though I sincerely believe that being on a big stage in front of a partially filled venue has something to do with this. The best part for me was Bedouin Soundclash’s cover of the Clash’s Guns of Brixton – that is my FAVORITE Clash song ever. Eventually it was time to go backstage and put our Santa outfits on.

How do I explain this? Let me begin. Onstage:

The sound sucked.

I ate five ponds of confetti.

It was hot as a motherfuck.

It was beyond colorful. Beyond fun.

Me and Danielle were up there with a bunch of other girls and we had flashlights, and we jumped up and down like crazy for an hour or whatever it was. I was not, to date, particularly enamored of the Yeah Yeah Yeah song until I was on stage with the band with Stephen Drozd’s sketchy backing vocal directly, and I mean DIRECTLY, in my ear. They were blasting off those confetti bombs right next to me. I use to hate all that confetti, but when you are in a cloud of it it’s pretty cool. And the next song was the Wand and I thought I would die from happiness right there. It was so loud, and we were all dancing like maniacs, covered in sweat and confetti. I’ve seen many a stage but I’ve never been on one looking out at an adoring audience. It was awesome, even if it wasn’t me they were looking at.

Whoa. It was a trip all right.

But then I woke up and tried to get Radiohead tickets, and no way, no way, no way… the show sold out in less than one minute. I got in RIGHT when they went up and didn’t get anything. Same with David. Same with a lot of people. Yet the tickets are selling for hundreds of dollars on ebay now.

I should have been coasting on the high of last night all day, but instead I have been really depressed. I know I should be happy I am seeing the two San Diego shows. I’ll tell myself that for a while and hope that sinks in.

Also – Tiffani – if you are reading this, which I think you might be. You deserved better in that finale. Regardless.

This entry was posted on Thursday, May 25th, 2006 at 6:19 pm and is filed under Adventures in Rock and Roll. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.