Gordon Ramsay, I...I earnestly admire you

I am not much of a fan. Of anything, really. There were admittedly a few years where I insisted we play the Indigo Girls on the cassette player in pottery class, but certainly not in the last fifteen years have I belonged to a fan club, followed a television program religiously, or "wanted to meet" (a la Friendster/My Space line item) anyone that actually exists. I mean, there are tons of people that do great work, and I think they're great. But in this world, there are two types of people: those that will go up to F. Murray Abraham at a party, hand him a champagne flute, yank his ponytail and tell him he's terrific, and those that will carefully study the jet stream of the passed hors d'oevres in order to discern the most propitious location to stand and have all the baby lamb racks and mini blinis pass right under your nose. I am clearly the latter.

But in my primpy, empire-busted, night-capped Eleanor Dashwood way, I do have one sort of small, glowing ember of a fan feeling in my heart. Here in Finland, on Finnish Television (which has the good taste of Joy Behar in a Frederick's of Hollywood), we get this program called Gordon Ramsay's Kitchen Nightmares.

In this show, he goes into flailing death's door nightmare restaurants and tries to save them-- shaking up the menu, reinspiring the chef, retraining the line, repainting the damn room. He goes into these places with the MF'ing smartest suggestions, and so earnestly tries to pump their chests, administer his famously potty-mouthed mouth-to-mouth, get them to burp up that seawater and breathe again. It's kind of phenomenal what he does to these sad joints, and you can't argue with the sharpness of his insight or the passion behind his effort.

I think what I mean here is, well, I... I won't say I'm a fan, but... well, I kind of think Ramsay's amazing. I enjoy him a great deal.

I may not be his biggest cheerleader but...


I am the TINY mascot BEHIND his biggest cheerleader.