As I mentioned on Twitter this afternoon, the New York Times put up a profile of Guy Fieri that was essentially an IKEA catalog - if IKEA sold reasons to punch Guy Fieri instead of flat-pack furniture.

Here, in digest form, are all those punchable things.

The first cooking show ever to win a War Crimes designation on Forkbastard isn't currently airing on Food Network, but since Scripps never throws anything away (c.f. the Cooking Channel schedule), there's no guarantee it won't appear again, and thus, you should all be warned.

As the name implies, the series follows a group of private chefs, heretofore known as the Douchebags, who are hired for dinners and private events by obscenely rich people, heretofore known as the Motherfuckers. It's the closest any cooking show has ever come to My Super Sweet 16.

Still plowing through a DVR full of cooking shows. I also taped an epsiode of Galloping Gourmet, which Food Network used to show back in the day. It's chock full of light sexism, ugly shirts, and a complete disregard for cross-contamination. It's kind of awesome. But as for the real shows:

CHUCK'S DAY OFF:

Nice and to the point. The premise is that he's a restaurant chef who films a TV show on his day off. It appears to be filmed in his actual restaurant and kitchen, and he's comfortable and precise and refreshingly without affectation. 

Yesterday, the Fine Living Network became the Cooking Channel. Since the one decent thing FLN showed - reruns of Japanese Iron Chef - will still be airing on Cooking Channel, this is an unmitigated win for everyone with cable except the three people who watched FLN's constant reruns of The Biggest Loser.

That took long enough.

Rachael Ray got season sets. Diners, Drive-Ins, and My Horrible Nineties Hair got season sets. Good Eats had... weird theme compilations. But Alton finally has his due... sort of.

The "bad" news is that they look fairly slim and cheap and, like most of the Food Network DVD's, are only at Target. Season 1 and Season 2 are the only ones available, shelf price $16,99.

So one of the things that crossed my eyeballs in my giant krill-stream of RSS news that I feed off of for YAD is a two minute video of Guy Fieri talking about his 19-20 person entourage.

This is simultaneously the best and worst thing ever, at least as it relates to Guy Fieri.

So I've been watching The Worst Cooks In America for two weeks now, and I can officially say that the reality show format is murdering a whole bunch of perfectly good ideas at the Food Network. Seriously. It's following them down a dark alley and bludgeoning them to death with a crowbar.

A few items, mostly Alton Brown related:

First, if you love Alton Brown, and want to love him even more than you ever thought possible, go right now and read this Onion AV Club interview with him. Two key words - plane, and bullet.

Second, one of the reasons he gave the interview was to promote the Good Eats 10th Anniversary Special, which will not only be airing tomorrow night, but will apparently be a LIVE variety show. I suspect it will need to be seen to be believed.

I've cut way back on my cooking reality shows in the past couple of years. I used to watch Hell's Kitchen and Next Food Network Star, but I watch cooking shows for one thing - cooking - and so two hours a week got culled.