New Favorite Show: Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares

I had seen Hell’s Kitchen in its first season (no NHL playoffs to watch) and was fascinated by the harshness of Gordon Ramsay. It reminded me (fondly?) of the memories of my initial reality shock (starting around 11 years old), farm labor: shoveling shit, puting hay and building fences supervised by my Dad on our horse farms, second, very early AM Goodrich hockey practice driven by the late Don Metzger and third, my experience as a pledge at AEPi at Arizona State, amongst others.

Hell’s Kitchen was extreme but it showed the “contestants” about reality and most of them had no clue about life and basic hard work. Again it was extreme, I had my “training” over several years of my life, this was over at most two or three months. Ramsay had to be extreme to weed the weak ones out. Of course there’s the standard reality script here, but it had to play on Ramsay’s personality.

Ramsay’s series on BBC America is called Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. Gordon Ramsay is brought in to save a different restaurant every week. Much different from Hell’s Kitchen. His no nonsense personality comes through but as a consultant his tone is much softer but equally effective. At times he applies many of his brilliant techniques to shock the ignorant into shape. In the end he is excellent at turning clueless amateur run restaurants into successes. Or at least giving them a chance.

He shows compasion, care and skill in rescuing his projects every week. This is inspiring and highly recommended.

BBC America Wednesday at 9:00 PM.

ABC at Center Stage

Lots of music was in town this week, most of which I missed since I needed to recover from last weekend. Of note were Echo and the Bunnymen and Tom Jones, but Friday, ABC was in town so me, L-Bo, friend Patrick and Joyce went to see Martin Fry and Company at Center Stage.

In Flint we were able to get all the happening British import LPs at Wyatt Earp Records. ABC was one that was released in the UK but not in the US for over a year! It had blown me away that music like ABCs could not be heard on mainstram radio. It was such perfect pop.

I had seen them live when they toured for the first album back in 1981 or 1982 at Graham Central Station in Phoenix. Martin is a bit of a good luck symbol since last time I saw him, he walked past me at the NYC Marriot during the 1985 New Music Seminar and moments later I was getting Andy Warhol’s autograph!

It was a strange half house set up that I have never seen at Center Stage. In the end I’d guess 200 or so people were there. Opener Naked Eyes was definitely not a biggie for me. We caught the last few songs and I personally found the performance underwhelming. ABC did not disappoint though. Original drummer David Palmer provided the beat with a very proficient bass player – overall the gig was a lot funkier than I had expected. The crowd was good natured too. We had fun cutting up with someone named Connie and her boyfriend. So props to ya!

There are only a few more dates on the tour and apparently it was not meant to come to Atlanta except for a 99X Retroplex listener that alerted host Steve Craig of the tour and he was able to arrange for the show. Now I only hope that someone can snag Thomas Dolby who just completed a tour and is threatening to tour some more!

Flickr

YouTube

This was another test of my new camera the FujiFilm V10. I takes great shots in good light and outdoors but I was disappointed in its performance at this show, even at 1600 ISO. I’m sure there’s a way to get good shots at shows. The video was very good though.

Stanley Cup 2006 – Edmonton vs. Carolina

I was really hoping for the “Blue Collar Cup” this year. Other than seeing the Thrashers play I hadn’t had much exposure to the other teams in the NHL this year, but the playoffs’ most exciting teams to me were Edmonton and Buffalo. Injuries in the Buffalo defense took its toll. Either way, Sabres or Hurricanes, I expect the Oilers to win it all this year.