Hacker Cinema
Top Chef
2006 · TV series · 23 seasons
Created by Lauren Zalaznick
An American reality competition show in which chefs compete against each other in culinary challenges and are judged by a panel of professional chefs and other notables from the food and wine industry with one or more contestants eliminated in each episode.
1 negative6 neutralfrom 7 commenters
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7 comments on Hacker News
"What it does have is low-cost, low-tech production. Shots can be made for as little as a dime each and took less than an hour to mix together in my home -- less time than it would take to make a loaf of bread." this is great. I want to see a whole "Top Chef" tv show just for vaccines.
Walmart is also tied for my top spot for in-person shopping during this. Walmart gets that spot because of their mobile app which does a pretty good job of telling me what is in stock at my local store.
My other top choice is a small (three store) chain in Western Washington called Central Market [1]. (If the name seems familiar, it may be from season 10 of "Top Chef" which was set in Seattle. Top Chef normally sends the contestants to Whole Foods for most shopping, but this was before there were any Whole Foods in the Seattle Area. They used the Shoreline Central Market instead).
They don't have a mobile app or online way to check stock that I know, but they seem to be doing the most of any grocery store I've seen to deal with the virus when it comes to in-store shopping.
1. They've got separate cart return and cart pickup areas in front of the store. Every cart returned gets disinfected before being put into the pickup.
2. They have installed plexiglass shields in the checkout lanes between you and the cashier.
3. They have prominent marks on the floor for you to stand at while inline that provide good spacing.
4. After each customer checks out, they disinfect the conveyor belt area and the credit card terminal area.
They are also nowhere near as crowded as Walmart, and the people that shop there seem to be paying more attention to social distancing.
[1] https://central-market.com/
ALL of the chefs on Top Chef are professionals. All of them. That's the point of the show.
NONE of the singers on the Voice are professionals. That's also the point of the show.
The bigger point that clearly wasn't understood is that celebrity and success aren't mutually inclusive when it comes to cooking or music. You can be a successful chef that isn't on Top Chef just as you can be a successful voice that never goes on American Idol. In fact MOST people successful in both realms will never ever be on even a local TV show.
> making the unsupported assumption that every government / Hollywood cooperation incident is a propaganda op, instead of far simpler explanations like "Joe in Langley publicity gets to brag to his family that he made the Top Chef episode happen."
To me it's like /r/hailcorporate, it doesn't primarily matter if it's intentional or not. There are many people exhausting their potential, credibility and dignity for the sake of identifying with some Moloch or other. Here, there, elsewhere. What had to be mostly forced, on people who had to be broken and tamed in the first place, now comes flowing freely, because Stockholm Syndrome is the gift that keeps on giving. So? Not everything is a propaganda "op", just like a piece of moss is not a fabricated carpet. It still has the effect of a carpet among other things, and grows systematically, consciously or not.
By the way, even the White Rose considered their own leaflets propaganda, then there's things like agitprop, I kind of wonder when and when that became such a hard word to use in earnest without theatrical eye rolling. The problem isn't propaganda, the problem is the lack of integrity and morals. In a more decent world, I would absolutely LOVE to have firefighters and cops and IT security people and whoever make propaganda, I would help them make it. There would be no soldiers obvs, because the only use those have is to defend against other soldiers at best, murder civilians at worst, which is a net negative.
Anyway, the problem to me is the corruption of institutions, not the institutions. A non-corrupt institution "being cute" or "posing as cool" actually is cute or least dorky in a likeable way respectively. Otherwise, "op" or not, propaganda or not, it's always way over the nasty line for me, certainly when money, lies and murder are involved.
"The CIA even helped to make an episode of Top Chef that was hosted at Langley, featuring then-CIA director Leon Panetta who was shown as having to skip dessert to attend to vital business. Was this scene real, or was it a dramatic statement for the cameras?"
Wow. Good work on the FOIA retrieval, but I'm utterly out on the hyperbolic speculative tone. The editor undercuts the good journalism being done here when they allow foolishness like this in.
I think the authors are also making the unsupported assumption that every government / Hollywood cooperation incident is a propaganda op, instead of far simpler explanations like "Joe in Langley publicity gets to brag to his family that he made the Top Chef episode happen."
> You just presented your product for 15 minutes on a nationally broadcasted TV show that will be re-aired at least two or three times and sell a ton of shows on itunes. That sort of advertising would cost about a million dollars or more.
Reality shows are about losing; game shows are about winning. But some people go into these shows with a completely different mindset: this is an interview and demo for the world, not for the on-show judges.
Top Chef players demonstrate how well they can run kitchens and work with people they didn't ask to hire and don't actually like.
Amazing Race players are usually demonstrating how well they can communicate and work effectively under severe stress in foreign countries. (If you're looking for a new overseas salesperson, look through a season of Amazing Race. You'll see what it takes to make them crack.)
Survivor players are either demonstrating team-leadership or diplomacy (defined as saying "nice doggy!" while picking up a rock). Choose carefully, there...
To be sure, most people just want facebook, pandora and most especially angry birds. But can I get every episode of Top Chef or the latest Golf Digest on the N9 (or even Android)? I think access to content within iTunes is more compelling than the 200k apps. And it seems to be what Apple is betting on.