We'll see about that.

References to "guilty pleasure" can be found throughout Ballet Talk, but here are some past topics to start:

Your Secret Ballet Guilty Pleasure

What "bad ballets" do you really love?

Guilty pleasures?

hah! that sounds like a challenge!!
and since it was my idea to make this a separate topic (it started out as a sidebar on the standing ovations topic) I guess I should go first.


Musically, i'm not sure one can easily outvulgar Iggy Pop (but did you know he appeared on an episode of Deep Space Nine?!)

I used to be a huge industrial music fan (though Rammstein never really floated my boat that much).

My major obsession in life besides ballet is probably sci-fi. While it used to be limited to star trek (see iggy pop ds9 reference above), it now also includes the new battlestar galactica (though i haven't seen season 3 yet--no cable!) and the new dr who. Maybe more dorky than vulgar but...

I believe I've also mentioned on here that I'm a performer--specifically I'm a burlesque performer. While I don't consider what I do vulgar (when I say burlesque I mean burlesque, its not a euphemism) I think that in the context of interests in relation to high art, it probably qualifies

anyone else?

(can we move the posts that inspired this thread over here as well?)

All those topics seem to deal with ballet guilty pleasures.
What inspired my request for this new topic was actualy a sidebar on NON-ballet guilty pleasures that spun off on the Miss Manners and Standing Ovations topics--where people started talking about Iggy Pop and Rammstein and the Ramones.

It may be that this is just too OT for the board, if that's the case then by all means please delete

I just thought it was fun to get a better sense of what peoples "outside interests" were, so to speak

Then the appropriate forum is "Other Performing & Fine Arts: Performances, Exhibits, Films, and Events" to which I've moved this thread. (And I've changed the topic title.)

thanks Helene!!

Music guilty pleasure: AC/DC, Lionel Ritchie

TV guilty pleasure: SpongeBob Squarepants, Benny Hill

Movie guilty pleasure: Dumb Steve Martin movies (The Jerk, The Man With Two Brains, The Three Amigos)

Personal Grooming guilty pleasure: Big hair

i'd forgotten all about the Man with Two Brains! I loved that movie when I was younger. I should watch it again
(i love older mel brooks movies personally!)

SpongeBob fills me with fear I have to say ;)

I already said I didn't have any guilt about any of my pleasure--and I don't--but I see that term does have a specific social meaning, so I'll respect that and see if I can't get some Low Pleasures humming, even if I'm shameless.

Well, I find Paris Hilton a good comedienne--off-screen. She's zany and always floozily and unconsciously comes up with something funny, like throwing the 80 cents at the newsvendor because of the porno movie, screaming 'That's MINE!' and getting a misdemeanour charge for it, that was then dropped. I usually follow the basics if I see a headline, and during the incarceration wanted to know all the minutiea about unfair cellphones and bologna sandwiches. Find her amusing because don't think she's an addict like the other starlet party people--she was born into the milieu so doesn't need sedation from all that dreamtime business.

I don't even really find Iggy Pop vulgar, considering all of it's necessary--just inspiring, sexy and a genius libertine--he just never left the Garden of Eden. Also love his alter ego, David Bowie, but nothing but talent there either except when he says silly things and does dumb art shows like one I recently saw.

I like motorcycle movies from the early 70s like 'Run Angel Run', 'Chrome & Hot Leather', and 'Angels Die Hard'. Also like some Russ Meyer movies, esp. 'Vixen' and 'Beyond the Valley of the Dolls.'

The concept of "guilty pleasures" is somewhat relative. There are people to whom I would never volunteer the information that I frequently reread "Calvin and Hobbes," an a compulsive singer-along-with-Sondheim, and know by heart just about every line of "Are You Being Served?"

On the other hand -- believe it or not -- there a people to whom I avoid mentioning that I'm in love with ballet and that I put on tights and little canvas shoes once or twice a week and actually do a bit of it myself.

You can say that again. I'm the one who introduced the term here, but I don't really like it unless it's understood to be tongue in cheek. Moral issues where they arise aside, as far as I'm concerned the only thing wrong with aesthetic "vulgarity" is that some people don't recognize it for what it is, so that mere entertainment drives out art, the merely pleasurable drives out the work that is spiritually sustaining. But does the connoisseur of haute cuisine . . . imperfect analogy on the way . . . not appreciate a grilled hot dog? That's his loss.

Apologies for the misconceived and therefore potentially misleading category.

It's always driven out art, but art has also always been able to hold its own. I know what you mean, but I think I see it as a normal process--after all, we need not pretend the class system is not still alive and well. Now, we even have another NYTimes bone to pick since yesterday--tee hee, of course, not really, you were linking to an article about religiosity, I'm referring to the A.O. Scott article. I just looked at that Bergman/Antonioni article, and begin to think that it's some of the journalistic standards I find vulgar--as in 'Before Them, Films Were Just Movies', which is such hype and silly nonsense (in fact, it is vulgar in the extreme) I was unable to bring myself to read any further, as much as I am glad that I have spent a lot more time on both directors than I have on Paris Hilton.



I don't think that's at all imperfect. A perfectly grilled hot dog is anything but vulgar, and couldn't qualify as a guilty pleasure. On the other hand, a Whopper, Jr. could, as could Snickers and Milky Ways. When I wrote earlier, I couldn't find in the food arena anything truly low I like, although I used to.



But you shouldn't. We need to struggle with these issues if we are to build a better world.

Amen to that.

But what I really want is to hear a few more "guilty secrets".

What DO Ballet Talkers get up to when they aren't admiring Giselle wafting through a series of assembles?

Patrick, two relics of the class system that I never personally experienced but in imagination hold dear are in depth classical education and noblesse obligle. What determines Good taste with a capital G, the taste worth passing on as more than personal, accident-of-birth/history preference? Character perhaps most of all determines what one holds valuable; but previous to that, education obviously serves to contextualize one's surrounding culture.


Words that warm my heart.

there doesn't seem *anything* wrong with that to me. its a fantastic show!!!

I share at least half the blame here. and while i assume my commentary on the issue makes this obvious, clearly I don't make any value judgment based on this. I'm quite proud of my taste, and of what i do!

Thank you, Helene, for moving the topic.

kfw writes:

None required. It’s important (and fun) to hash these things out.

I define a guilty pleasure as something you enjoy that is indefensible from an aesthetic standpoint but you like it anyway. Singing along with Sondheim cannot qualify as a guilty pleasure; singing along with ABBA, as I used to do, does.

Guilty pleasure movies: Where Love Has Gone, with Bette Davis facing off against Susan Hayward. Body of Evidence, the Madonna thriller about people having S&M sex in Oregon. Taylor and Burton in The Sandpiper. Marlene Dietrich in The Devil is a Woman. The Dirty Dozen.

Guilty pleasure television: Project Runway, True Hollywood Story, The Tudors.

Guilty pleasure reading: Daphne du Maurier, ‘Forever Amber,’ anything by Edna Ferber. (Contemporary writing of the same ilk does not appeal to me at all for some reason.)

Truth to tell, I am not really ashamed of enjoying any of the foregoing..........

Blame my lost remote control, but it started by being too bonded to my sofa to change the station after So You Think You Can Dance. I am addicted to Don't Forget the Lyrics, even though I never heard of half the artists whose songs provide the challenge.

And speaking of lyrics, this past weekend (going ) my parents hosted us to an evening where a pianist, who had accompanied Margaret Whiting, Judy Garland, et al., gave us an earful of Cole Porter. We ranged in age from 90 1/2 (my dad) to going-on-14 (nephew), and the one who absolutely knew all the lyrics -- down to the exact preposition or pronoun -- was my 21-year-old niece.

Our table was also the loudest in the sing-along section. Talk about guilty!

YES! ESP lives! Just last Tuesday I was telling a friend at lunch about that scene and how I couldn't imagine any two tougher divas doing the ultimate of this kind of scene--but that I also thought they must have done umpteen thousand takes and still Hayward couldn't quite get all the amusement out of her face from watching Davis.

To wit: Hayward: 'Mother, why do have to make it sound so dirty?'

Davis: "You have devoted your life to muddt andt fildth!!!!"

"Sculptress! Pagan! Alley cat!"

"With you, art and sex go hand in hand."

I'm inclined to agree with aurora, bart. Your 'guilty pleasures' don't seem all that guilty, not to me anyway.

I a perfect world, I'd agree with you, dirac. But this is possibly too idealistic, though fair and honorable.

For example:

Singing along with Sondheim in the Miami Dolphins locker room might be something a sane (male) person would wish to avoid.

Referencing 'Forever Amber" as one of your sources in an academic publication about the reign of Charles II might have a negative impact on your hopes for tenure.

Drawing moral lessons from "Keeping Up Appearances" when dining with people who have devoted their lives to Darfur or climate change could possibly give others the impression that you are not entirely serious.

Wow -- I don't know this one (shuffles off to put it on her rental list)

Begging the guilty part, I've been slurping up the Food Channel recently (pun mostly intended) and think Alton Brown is a fun, fun guy.

Thinking the same.

Channel schmannel. Food. Just plain -- or not so plain -- food.

"Slurping." Good one, Sandi!

yes and informative too!

on the other hand, rachel ray makes me want to stab myself, or my tv! ;)

I've been guiltily pleasured by watching Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares on BBC America, a show in which hot-shot chef Gordon Ramsay visits troubled UK restaurants. Many of the episodes involve him correcting amazing incompetence and entrenched inefficient ways of running things in order to put the restaurants back on track. Hmmmmmmmmm... perhaps there needs to be a ballet Ramsay, going from company to company to expose the shoddy practices of egoistic EDs, ADs, boards, presenters, and choreographers (set designers, costumers, PR people, etc., etc.) in ballet companies!

I don't watch much science fiction, but I do love Doctor Who. (aurora: Nine or Ten?) I think it's good TV, though I guess it is technically a children's show, even though a lot of adults watch it anyway.

As for other guilty pleasures, my main one is bad movies. But they have to be really, really bad in an entertaining way, and preferably a little old. I especially like bad Charlton Heston movies. It's best to watch them with a crowd of people and make fun of them a la Mystery Science Theater 3000 (which I also love). There's a bar in New York that one summer showed really awful movies once a week and served popcorn and $3 beers. Their screening of Zardoz was great fun.

I also have a decent-sized collection of really ridiculous 80s music. I have access to a free music downloading web site through my school and I've just sort of picked them up as a result.

I'll play . . .

Television Show:

Charlie's Angels - Seasons Two and Three w/ Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd. (Sorry Farrah fans but I never got her appeal.)

For me, Version 2.0 of the Townsend Detective Agency was the best version of the team. Although I do have a weakness for the Season 4 adventure set on The Love Boat!


Movie

Valley Of the Dolls w/ Barbara Parkins, Patty Duke, Sharon Tate and Susan Hayward.

Sooooo many memorable lines ("They drummed you right out of Hollywood. So you come crawling back to Broadway. Well, Broadway doesn't go for booze and dope!!!") and situations (pretty much any scene with Patty Duke in it).

Everyone says this movie is ridiculous and over-the-top but open up any current issue of US Weekly and Star and then tell me that Valley Of the Dolls didn't predict the four horsewomen -- Paris, Lindsay, Nicole and Britney -- of the show biz apocalypse by four decades . . .

Thanks for mentioning that show, Ray. I’ll have to check it out.



Victor Mature is my go-to guy in this area. I have special fondness for Demetrius and the Gladiators and Samson and Delilah. In a similar vein, there is also Lana (“Because I’m a priestess of Baal!”) Turner in The Prodigal -- a dull movie for the most part, however, be warned.



That’s another treasure trove.



I forgot about Charlie’s Angels. I liked Ladd, too. An agreeable personality and very lovely. I was a huge fan of Wonder Woman with Lynda Carter.

You know, it’s amazing I have any brain cells left.....

What a fun topic to make me smile (guiltily or not). Ok here are my few admittable ones...

Star Trek (the original series) because it was the last show I saw before moving to Japan, and then the first one I recognized (though by then in syndication) when I returned. Always fun watching the 3M's comraderie and last line funniness of the cast, Shatner's weight going up & down, the girls hemlines going up,down,around--love the joke about the bellybuttons, and of course tribbles.

Speed Racer--because it reminded me of Japan so much when I returned to the States (this was before the USA discovered anime--which is VERY 'old hat' to me.) Of course the dubbing speed was even funnier.

The movie "Camelot" because of the beauty of its sets & costumes, and use of all those castles in Spain (Alcazar of Segovia and Coca especially), and the fact it had only 6-7 songs--I HATE musicals with too many songs--that FORWARDED THE PLOT ACTION within them, rather than bringing it all to a standstill while everyone sings interminably. (I do like that other Lerner & Lowe classic: My Fair Lady, even tho' it has too many songs, because they are mostly funny lyrics; and no one has pulled off that princess transformation like Audrey Hepburn in her gown & tiara.)

Playing chess and beating a rather stuck up classmate in 4 moves (sorry don't even remember what it was now, but it's a pretty classic trick.) I was petrified she'd discover the trick halfway through, but no I won, and seeing her shock sure made my day. If only later life was as smooth.

Reading high school (and some college-level?) physics texts when I was 11 or 12 because no one would play with me and it was cold just standing around alone. I still read physics for fun--more quantum than classical lately--but not as much since you need time to really comprehend it these days.

Listening to classical music at home, travelling, and doing ballet, ballet, ballet 3-4hrs/day 6 days a week when no one else in my ENTIRE TOWN knew anything about it. Then later having a male teacher discover I was a professional ballet dancer and being SO impressed, shocking my limited friends at the time, who were still kind of clueless.

And lately, flying out to see a performance without telling anyone where I was going or why. Heaven.

Now that's impressive -- and so far beyond my comprehension that it might as well be the moon.

Question: did you ever make connections between what you knew about physics and what you were engaged in as you danced? It seems to me, based on my impossibly dim memories of levers, fulcrums, and force tables, that even such simple movements as plie, develope, and saute (not to mention more complex issues of partnering) might be interesting to a mechanical physicist.

It took me a long time to get around to appreciating Star Trek, although I always got a kick out of DeForest Kelley (who plays a supporting role in the aforementioned Where Love Has Gone, as one of Susan Hayward’s many inamoratas).

Earlier on this thread there was some discussion of the concept of "guilty pleasures." I just came across the following in the latest (Autumn) edition of Dance Now. (Donald Hutera, "That's Entertainment").
I had forgotten the powerful influence of Kael. She opened the door to thinking and writing about a vast range of popular culture in terms -- and with a degree of awe and veneration -- previously reserved for the "higher arts."

She is herself a guilty pleasure, because when I look back at what I used to venerate in her, it's mostly about her vulgar and pushy writing style, not what her insights were on most films. She said totally over-the-top things--I think 'Intolerance' is one of the greatest films ever made too, but I don't think I'd pick out one, as Ms. Kael did this one, as 'THE greatest.' The thing I most enjoyed that I ever read of hers was after I had the (mis)fortune to attend a press showing of 'Song of Norway', and the following week in the New Yorker, she was so beyond normal words, she simply wrote 'the movie is of an unbelievable badness.' I totally agree, and think only 'Carrie' and 'Eyes of Laura Mars' and one other one I can't remember right now are that bad. Enjoyably bad, I think she meant, and did write, referred to things like 'Rebel without a Cause' and 'Casablanca', although I don't think the latter is bad in any important sense. When they're deeply horrible, we actually detest them, as both she and I did 'Song of Norway.'

I love reading Pauline Kael, because, as a rule, it doesn't matter whether or not I agree with her, I know what to expect when I go to see the movie.

The only exception to this was her review of the new cut of L'Atalante. I read her enthusiastic review, found it was playing at the Lincoln Center cinemas, and invited my friend and his girlfriend to go.

Not only did he actually have to pay for parking, because in his rush, his legendary parking karma was absent that day, and not only did I mix up the start time with another film's, and make them show up 45 minutes early, it was one of the most boring films any of us had ever seen.

After it was over, I gave him ten lifetime "Get out of jail free" cards: I would go to any non-porn movie he wanted, no questions asked, regardless of the number of aliens, blow-ups, fires, gratuitous killings, or appearances by Mel Gibson it contained.

That's how bad the movie was.

When I went back and re-read the review, I realized that she didn't describe it at all; she just spoke about how important it and its director were.

Kael didn’t really write about ‘a vast range of popular culture.’ She wrote about movies and also produced the occasional review of a film-related book, but her range was not in fact wide. However, she influenced, sometimes for the better and sometimes for the worse, many writers outside her field.

I miss Kael often, especially on her missions of destruction – too bad she didn’t live to get her hands on “Crash.” She could be crude on occasion (I’d add lazy and prone to overstatement also, nobody’s perfect), and she was unaccountably fond of words like “whorey,” but she was capable of remarkable insights, which sometimes came when she was writing about movies of little consequence.

Hutera writes: But she actually went one better than that, championing an audience's right to take its pleasures when and where it can, guilt-free.

A total misreading, I think. (I haven’t opened the link, however, and am going only by that sentence.) She was not issuing blank checks to enjoy rubbish and she had a tendency to scold the mass audience when it wasn’t on her side.

she simply wrote 'the movie is of an unbelievable badness.

She also said of "Song of Norway," “You can’t get angry at something this bad; it seems to have been made by trolls.”



Must disagree with you there, alas. My opinion, ‘Casablanca’ is pretty bad and does qualify as a guilty pleasure under the definitions of our topic. It gets by on star power, a great supporting cast, and snappy direction from Michael Curtiz, but the dialogue is awfully hard on the ears. I admit that it has never possessed the appeal for me that evidently it has for many, many people. And there are movies quite as bad that I do enjoy and would defend.

OT - but just goes to show - you mean L'Atalante by Jean Vigo from '34?

If so, I really liked it. Go figure.

Yes, I did, though not always consciously. Classical physics applies very much to subtleties of technique especially jumps and turns. Action & reaction every time I plied or sauted; torque and centrifugal, and a whole lot of other forces, in pirouettes, fouettes, chaines; and then re-thinking all of it, once on pointe. Now, I tend to use my rudimentary knowledge of physics more to analyse how my aging bones and ligaments are reacting to stress--unfortunately not very well, but at least I know why.
(Isn't there a book out already about this subject? And I thought some of the major companies actually had classes in it as well.)

Agreed. I do, however, stick to my original point, which was that Kael's writing "opened the door to thinking and writing about a vast range of popular culture in terms -- and with a degree of awe and veneration -- previously reserved for the "higher arts." Kael's success derived from many factors. One of them was the prestige of her podium at The New Yorker. The other was the extreme self-confidence, not to mention the pepper-shot brio, with which she expressed her opinions.

The Dance Now article is not available on line. The section on Kael is really an introduction to an article about the dance content of a number of new West End musicals.

I find myself in agreement with Hutera's response:
I've put "doesn't take itself too seriously" in italics because that seems to be one of the points dividing Hutera from Kael, who -- whatever she thought about the work she was reviewing -- took her own experience of it very seriously indeed.

Search the amazon.com banner for Kenneth Laws and/or Physics and the Dance: Understanding Movement. There are also a surprising number of websites. Google and find out!

The Amazon page for this book is here:
http://www.amazon.com/Physics-Art-Dance-Un...9256&sr=1-1

One more dance book to add to the old shopping cart! I had heard of it, but didn't know that Martha Swope was the photographer. Thanks, Mel.

I agree about the lazy, and John Gregory Dunne and Joan Didion take her to task like nobody's business in various essays--the matter being that she doesn't know what decisions were made in this collaborative medium, essentially they are insiders and she's not. This is condescending, but accurate: She does not know what happened in the big messes of making Hollywood movies the way they do, the points that certain stars have in a picture, the percentage the director commands, etc. She might even know about all these phenomena fairly well, but she wouldn't know how they applied to particular films--so Didion even writes that she doesn't know 'why anybody would want to do it except for a little careerism' in 'The White Album', a most amusing thing to say... not that I don't think there aren't a few places where she made compromises herself. Didion, while accurate, is also being purposely unfair, because such a lack of knowledge would not thereby make other kinds of reviewing so innacurate, as reviews of the works of auteurs, and reviews are necessary for disseminating information even if they aren't perfect. The 'careerism' is funny, because that is the kind of thing, like finances, that is often not supposed to be mentioned, and cronyism, while everybody knows it, is the same. It's funny because so 'bottom line', we all know that people get jobs due to figuring out ways to get into them that are not always purely due to shining brilliance. I don't see why Kael, Kaufman, and Simon shouldn't be 'careerists', but the essay was good because it does give you an understanding of why movie reviewing cannot be nearly as accurate (usually) even when knowledgeable, as can reviewing of live performance, books, etc. You can't know exactly what was the director, and you especially can't know what writing was done, because that was often determined by the director, producer and often the stars. They are saying that the Deep Film Studies types refuse to see that moviemaking is essentially a business, and Dunne talks about this in his piece on their involvement with 'A Star is Born' and how they finally got out of it. This is still not quite fair--if it is only seen as a business, it won't get any audience buying the sense of fantasy that sells the business. I think they were talking about movie critics needing to be something more 'lofty' than they actually can be--or refusing to allow them the loftiness they claimed to achieve. John Simon seemed to like to think of himself as something of an artist, but I think the Dunnes are right: Movie critics are not artists. However, the New York Review of Books is itself hardly free of clubbishness.

Did she really say 'whorey'? Most of the time it's 'whorish'. Oh well, that's a general sort of thing. Princess Michael of Kent, when doing her art history lectures on old royalty, always loves to talk about 'whoe-azz' endlessly, it's somewhat amusing.

Couldn't agree more. AB's Good Eats is the best show on that network, and Ina Garten's is a good traditional cooking show. I find myself turning more to the PBS shows now for food (Lidia, Jacques, and Ming are my cooking triumvirate) because I try to avoid Rachael Ray, Sandra Lee, or Giada de Laurentiis and whatever new chick they have in that mold for Hispanic cuisine. What happened to the chefs that actually taught me what good food should be and didn't condescend my intelligence? Bring back Mario and Sara Moulton!

Yes, any film critic is going to make that kind of mistake in attribution from time to time, though. Unless you’re dealing with someone like Ingmar Bergman, who works with a chosen team and writes and directs his own material with more or less total freedom (as Woody Allen used to do and still does to a lesser extent), there will always be the question of who is responsible for what, and sometimes the critic will know and sometimes he won’t.



I didn’t mind that so much – it’s okay to rave about ‘Intolerance’ even if you overdo it – but she would burble on for pages about things like ‘Tequila Sunrise,’ which was directed and written by one of her pets, Robert Towne. Now, I happen to enjoy ‘Tequila Sunrise’ – it’s a true guilty pleasure, one I’ve indulged in more than once -- but it wasn’t all that. And as time went on this tendency got worse, she had too much space to play with (although I wish today’s New Yorker would give its critics a little more at times).

For the uninitiated, ‘Tequila Sunrise’ is an eighties movie starring Mel Gibson, Michelle Pfeiffer, and Kurt Russell. Mel is a retired drug dealer, a nice one who loves his kid, Kurt is a cop and his best friend, and Michelle runs an Italian restaurant with great lighting, not that she needs it, and she never gets marinara sauce on her blouse. Everyone looks fabulous, and there are beaches and gorgeous sunsets and a plot nobody gets too worried about. There’s also the late lamented J.T. Walsh and the late lamented Raul Julia. Miss you, guys. I recommend it highly.

Re changes on the Food Network channel



I'm not positive, but I think that Moulton shows up on a PBS show that's got Christopher Kimball (??), editor of Cook's Illustrated (or, as a friend puts it, "the magazine for anal-retentive cooks")

Don't know about Cook's Illustrated, or anal-retentive cooks, but I still wish FN kept Moulton (is she still executive chef for Gourmet?). Her show was a bit on the dull side, but she had great recipes and I learned a lot from Sara's Secrets. I could do without FN's current deluge of travel shows. Isn't that what the Travel Channel is for? Apparently they didn't think RR's $40s a Day and Tasty Travels was enough so they gave Giada Weekend Getaways, Flay Throwdown, and Guy Fieri Diners, Drives, and Inns. Their basic cooking shows have become distastefully lowbrow. Even the wonderful addition of Nigella Lawson to their lineup didn't help. I really have not been keeping up with FN lately, but when I used to watch it on a daily basis I could only watch her show at some obscure noon-ish hour on Sunday, when I'm usually out. It's all about making everything easier, quicker, and understandable to the "common" folk now. I didn't watch the last season of The Next Food Network Star, but I heard that in one episode the producers judging a contestant criticized her for using French words. Maybe some of us don't know what chicken en cocotte is, but the point of having a cooking show is to enlighten an otherwise unknowing audience. God knows what they would do to Julia Child if she walked into that studio today.

She won anyway. Her name is Amy Finley and her show, The Gourmet Next Door, is slated to start this month.

Yeah, even used that highfallutin' French in her show's title. Did the judg es skewer her for saying "en brochette"? Get hoppin' mad at "saute"?

That would be AMERICA'S TEST KITCHEN, basically Cooks Ill's tv show. I guess I'm anal-retentive b/c i LOVE both Cooks Illustrated and the tv show. Havent' watched it in a while, so haven't noticed if Sara Moulton was on, but it really doesn't seem a fit for her, imho.

-goro-