If you want to see all the stories, visit the comments section of the original post. All of the stories tend to fall into certain genres—cooking nightmares, drunken exploits, family drama, death, illness, and general destruction—so we've picked out some of our favorites so that you don't have to read all 500 or so horror stories like some of us had to. Here are our runners up. The titles are ours, but these stories are all yours:

• Most Inspirational: Babygay's Escape to the Big City by BettyCrocker.
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• Grossest Cooking Mishap: One Seriously Nasty Salad by MomOf3WildKids.
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• Saddest Passing: Mom's Dream House of Death by Saelmar.
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• Most Delinquent Family Member: Stripper Sister-In-Law on the Run from the Law by Lysergic Asset.
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• Cooking Experiment Gone Wild: The Proof Is in the Pesto by ThatGirlInNewYork.
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• Best Bad Turkey Disposal/Funniest Punchline: Bird on the Lawn by RollsRoyceRevenge.
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• Stupidest Family Fight: Patch Adams Rules by Allyzay.
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• Worst Plumbing Accident: Shit Hits the Fan by Scairborn.
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• Best Drinking Contest: Grandma and Grandpa Go Shot for Shot by Meredith.Terry.
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• The Scariest Night Out on the Town: A Real Life Episode of Cheaters by WickedlySane.
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• Most Destructive: Burning Down the House by Willow150.
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• Self-Referential Award for Excellence: Thanks for Giving Me Something to Put on Gawker by TheExperience.
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• The PETA Award for Animal Cruelty: Gobble on This by Kimrod.
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• The Overly Dramatic Oscar: My Mother the Drag Queen by RabbityThings.

And the Ultimate Award for Thanksgiving Horror and the $50 prize for a bottle of Wild Turkey goes to DrunkExpatWriter, for his two-fold tale of his family behaving badly. The full story is reprinted below for everyone to enjoy and so that we can all laugh at his pain to make our pain a little bit more bearable.

Here's the winning tale:

Ok. I have two stories for you. Roughly 13 years ago my family got together at my parent's house for Thanksgiving. My step mom and her brother have always had a "tumultuous" relationship. After dinner they got into an argument over who loved their long dead mother more. Shit was thrown around, plates broken, the usual. My dad tried to calm them down to no avail. So, he decided he had to distract them. He'd just gotten a Dodge conversion van, so he went out and fired it up and started ramming it at the cars of all our relatives - totaling roughly 10 cars until my step mom and uncle noticed and stopped fighting with each other in order to yell at him.

Now, second story. The next year, my dad decided that having people over to the house for Thanksgiving was a bad idea. So he booked us all into this super fancy restaurant and paid to put all the relatives in a swank hotel next door - on the assumption that people would be more well behaved in public.

Everything went well during the meal, until the check arrived. The waiter then put the check near my uncle rather than my step mom (who insists on handling all the financial shit for her and my dad.)

Her brother then said "See, you can talk about liberation all you want, but classy people know a man is supposed to pay."

My step mom then upended the table and grabbed the carving knife and tried to stab her brother to death. He took me, my dad and my brother to literally hurl her off of him.

In a matter of minutes the cops arrived (small New Jersey town.)

While my step mom and my uncle were trying to tell the cops they didn't want to press charges against each other, my dad walked up to one of the cop cars, unzipped and pissed on the cop car's tires.

Flash forward two hours later to me, my then-wife and various cousins pooling our money to bail all three of them out of jail.

Congratulations go to DrunkExpatWriter for giving us reason to believe our family isn't so bad. You can either pick up your booze at Gawker HQ (the lawyers say mailing it's dicey) or email Gabriel to tell him where to send a $50 check to spend on the libation of your choice.

Feel free to continue to add stories to the official compendium of misery in the original post, and in the comments, tells us what a crappy job we did picking the winner and provide links to your favorite tales (you can get a permalink to the comments by clicking on the date below the commenter's name).

And while we're glad that we didn't have to live through any of these tales of terror, we would like to thank you all for the memories. Christmas is going to be a doozy!

Since Gawker Media embraced the anarchic tag page system, we've had people posting news tips and story ideas on the #tips page and celebrity sightings on #stalker. Some of the other sites in the Gawker family have also designated certain hashtags as ways for commenters to talk among themselves without being tethered to a specific post. For example, Jezebel has #groupthink, Deadspin has their #duan page (a holdover of from their Deadspin Up All Night open-threads). We'd like to start one, too, and we'd like to know what name you like best. Here are a few of our ideas:

#gawkertalker — It has a nice ring to it, but maybe too sing-songy?
#circlesmirk — I think it's apt, but probably too cute.
#snitheads — Foster's suggestion.
#runningtext — A nod to print.
#fnff — Why not go with a classic?

Anyway, lobby for your favorite down in comments, but the only way to cast a vote is to actually use them. So click through to your favorite (or make up your own) and say something. Post early, post often. The tag page that attracts the most activity will be immortalized as a suggested hashtag on the top of every page of Gawker.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone.

Way to win reader trust, Post-Dispatch!



The employee's comment was just one word: "Pussy." It was a stupid response to a stupid blog post, entitled "What's the craziest thing you've ever eaten?" The joke was a groaner, to be sure. And one that was annoyingly re-posted once after administrators deleted it. But the comment posed no threat to anyone or anything other than perhaps good taste. So it's bizarre how far the author of the post to which it was attached went next: The author, , Kurt Greenbaum,looked at the IP address on the comment, associated it with a local school, called the school and forwarded them all data on the commenter.

Then, Greenbaum later wrote, the guy got busted:

The school's IT director took a shine to the challenge... he tracked it back to a specific computer. The headmaster confronted the employee, who resigned on the spot.

Score one for Greenbaum! Now St. Louis-ians won't dumbly assume they can speak anonymously to the local paper, or that newspaper staffers, of all people, might have some sympathy for the soon-to-be unemployed. And we can't imagine anyone else hurling the word "Pussy" at Kurt Greenbaum again. Because this is clealry a guy with a thick skin.

(Pic from Greenbaum's Flickr)

[via Read-Write Web]

Via Torontoist, the story goes like this: the Toronto Star—Canada's largest daily circulation newspaper—is, like every other newspaper, starting to come to terms with how completely doomed it is. So they're going through the company's biggest restructuring in its history, offering buyouts to everyone in the company, and outsourcing both copy editing and pagination work. First of all, is pagination work really that hard? There are people at the New York Observer who write Very Short List, half of Transom, and do Kushner's taxes. Pussy Canadians. Learn from us.

But apparently, it is, or it's hard enough to require outsourcing. Also, they vaguely alluded to this nice gem:

The plans could expand to include editorial content and other production, he added.

So, you know when you call American Airlines and they pick up and they're like AMEERICKAN URLUNES CHALO DEES IZ, URR, BOB, OW CAN YOU BE HALPED PLEEZE? And you're like, Bob, I know you're name isn't Bob, and you're not picking up this call in Austin either, are you? Well, imagine what happens when they start outsourcing your editorial content to the same people who pick up American Airlines' numbers?

Or so was the thought process of a certain Toronto Star editor, who took a memo written by the Star's publisher, John Cruickshank, to the editorial staff, and showed Cruickshank just how much they need their in-house copy-editors by leaking it to Torontoist. Observe:

LEDE!! indeed. If anything, this only serves to remind me how patently annoying copy editors are. Besides, isn't that what #commenters are for? Punctuation Nazis, all of them, imposing their draconian rules on the beautiful words of beautiful writers with flowing hair and long, circumspect...typing fingers. But from a publisher's standpoint, they might, you know, come in handy every once in a while. Like when you're writing a doomsday memo to your staff.

On Monday, Lucinda's advice column featured a letter from a girl who said that someone slipped her a roofie at a club; she had to be taken to the hospital, and when she called two of her friends in the middle of the night to "beg them to join me while I was recovering," they didn't want to come until the morning. And she was upset about that. And Lucinda was like, well, who the fuck wants to go drive to the hospital at 4 a.m. for something that is not a life-threatening incident and, indeed, may have sounded at the time like something that was your own doing, crazy girl? Your family or your boyfriend would be obligated to come, but your friends probably thought you were just way drunk or took too many drugs or whatever and they were pissed at you a little bit. So, don't sweat it too much. Chalk it up to miscommunication.

Which was our reaction too, exactly! Tough to judge the friends in this case without knowing what the drugged friend was actually doing and saying at the time. (Although we are neither women, nor the type of person who has "friends"). But the internet commenters were basically like: Lucinda, you are a horrible person, I have gotten up in the middle of the night 43 times to visit my roofied friends, plus this girl was probably sexually assaulted, did you even think of that, you awful, awful internet advice columnist? And Lucinda replied no, she didn't really think of that, since there's nothing in the letter about it, but really, come on, people. It's not that big a deal. But there's that "Remove Lucinda Rosenfeld" petition, still there, on the internet!

Shit. You internet commenters are putting all this effort into firing an online advice columnist who's not Cary Tennis? You people need help.

Apparently, Elizabeth Edwards: less a fan of Rielle Hunter's than we thought. She's

• Talking to a divorce lawyer,
  
  
• Refuses to sign off on any confessions that her husband fathered Hunter's kid,
  
  
• "Vehemently opposes" a plan to have Hunter move near their family's Wilmington beach house, and
  
  
• Has been commenting on the internet under the commenter name "Cherubim." Maybe she was on here? Who knows?!

One blogger seems to have the goods on this Cerubim business, naturally. Via Daily Intel, look see some comments:

As you all continue to discuss Lisa Druke's lastest pay day story from the National Enquirer. I think you all should remember these important facts: John and Elizabeth Edwards have been married for 31 years. They had four children together, three are living, and one, recently, died. Elizabeth Edwards has stage 4 cancer. Any decent human being would not have inserted herself into their lives, and then sold stories about them to the National Enquirer for monetary gain. Lisa Druke, a.k.a. the Rielle (Real) Hunter fills me with disgust. I hope someday to never hear anything about her again.

More somewhat substantial conspiratorial insanity here. Also, commenteratti: at least you can say there's some royalty amongst you, now.

Oh. And then there's this. Remember former Edwards aide Andrew Young's book proposal we looked at last weekend? There's more.

• Edwards supposedly slept with other women besides Hunter. Obv.
  
  
• Elizabeth made John sleep in the barn after she found out about Hunter. She'd come in the middle of the night and start screaming "accusatory rants" at him.
  
  
• Hunter has a psychic. This psychic's name is Bob. Bob told Hunter how she should handle this thing and, presumably, to move to California.
  
  
• Edwards used to talk a bunch of shit on John Kerry until Kerry brought him on as his running mate. He called Kerry "Richie Rich."
  
  
• And the "best" one: Edwards had to call off a birthday date with Hunter. Now, you don't cancel on someone's birthday, because that's mean. But if you found out that day that your wife's cancer returned, you might tell your mistress to hold off no matter what day it is, because, you know, you need to handle this one. So he did. And "an unsympathetic Hunter screamed at him."

And honestly, I don't even know what to do with this:

Ted Kennedy once told Young about a would-be assassin who managed to get into his Senate office because one of his bodyguards was having a gay liaison with one of his top aides.

So, in conclusion, if this is true: John Edwards is a cooze, hell still definitely hath no fury like a woman scorned by a cooze, Ted Kennedy was almost killed because of a Gay bodyguard doing it on the job, and twenty years down the line, these are going to be the worst family reunions in the history of family reunions.

But really, John Edwards is definitely a cooze, regardless of this one. Reille Hunter's insane and meanspirited. Elizabeth Edwards is upset that the guy she loved and had a family with turned out to be one of the slimiest dirtballs in the history of slime, so she can't really be blamed for anything but being in pain. And Andrew Young's book is going to sell many, many, many copies.

I hope not, because I'd love to see Michael Kors leap from his judging chair and call out the liar: "J'accuse! You lie! That crotch is not sane!" Alas, we can't even be sure that Kors will be back tonight. His attendance has been spotty, probably because the show is now set in L.A. instead of New York...and run by a new production team…and broadcast on Lifetime instead of Bravo—all of which I blame on Harvey Weinstein, because Harvey Weinstein is an idiot. And that's no lie.

So anyway, here's the truth about this live blog, for those who have yet to see the light: It is created by commenters like you, and happens in the comments section below when the show starts at 10 Eastern on Lifetime (aka The Vagina Channel). Commenters with no stars should not hesitate to join in, because the rest of us will "promote" just about anything you post. We're easy that way (slutty slutty slutty).

Here's a lie-free list of highlights from last week:

• Heidi revealed that model years "are like dog years." And I must say, for a 252-year-old woman, she looks damn good.
• Commenter CoffeeAtDawn observed that there were "more stitches in the hairline of the judging panel than on the garments on the runway."
• Guest judge Jennifer Rade wolf-whistled at Logan, stared at his pants and made him turn around so she could see his ass. Then she decided that, even though his design sucked, he could stick around.
• Qrystyl got Qanned, but she had it Qoming: It was Qlear she Qouldn't Qut it, and her Qomplaining was getting Qind of old. If you Qan't stand the heat, get out of the Qitchen, you know?

This list of "things to watch for tonight" is a truthful one as well:

• The designers will make garments out of newspapers: This could be good in two ways: Not only could it help solve the "boring challenge" problem we've had so far this season, but it may also help revive the dying newspaper industry by highlighting the versatility of its product. (It's a news source! No, it's a fabric substitute!) Who says newspapers have no future thanks to the web? Can you make a dress out of a blog? I think not. Take that, new media!
• The guest judges will be Tommy Hilfiger and Eva Longoria: I really have nothing bad to say about these two, other than they are clearly not Michael Kors and Nina Garcia—and I sure hope they aren't "substitute judging" for either or both of them.
• A designer will lie like a lying liar: As you already know. Hopefully he or she won't be wearing pants made out of newspaper, because those newspaper pants could catch fire, and then we'd all have to point and shout "liar, liar, newspaper-pants on fire!" And that probably wouldn't be good for the newspaper industry.

Ok, enough of my pre-show non-prevarication. Let's get this party started!

You'll no longer find Rebecca Ruiz's post "NYTPicker Revealed" on the Times' Media Decoder blog, although for the moment it remains in Google's cache. Citing "a person with close ties to the site," the Times fingered as NYTPicker's author David Blum, the Times vet turned fumbling newspaper turnaround artist. Blum had declined to comment to the Times, but about half an hour later, NYTPicker denied the report on its Twitter feed, and the Times pulled it from the Web.

The wording of NYTPicker's tweet did imply a team of two or more writers is behind the site, and that would certainly help explain its impressive track record: The site caught the Times romanticizing the plight of a child rapist, taking a hypocritical position on publishing the identities of foreign kidnap victims, and writing several erroneous things in Walter Cronkite's obituary. It also coaxed the first admission of plagiarism from Times columnist Maureen Dowd.

The site's authors are no doubt having still more fun at the paper's expense in the wake of its bad guess. And to think that, just two years ago, this sort of embarrassing public guessing game was played only by unscrupulous bloggers. Silicon Valley was in a frenzy about the identity of the author of the anonymous blog Fake Steve Jobs. After several erroneous, confidently-worded guesses by Gawker Media CEO ringleader (and then-Valleywag blogger) Nick Denton, the identity of the real author, Forbes editor Dan Lyons, emerged, thanks to some old-fashioned digging by none other than... the New York Times. Maybe the writer behind that successful exposé, Brad Stone, can be brought in to help this time around.

UPDATE: The Times has issued a new post, carrying a full denial by Blum. The paper adds that Blum "hadn't intended to decline comment." WTF?

Original post:

Bummer. What gives? China wants to encourage "greater 'social responsibility' and 'civility' among users," which is more or less a euphemism for squashing debate about their government. Apparently, chiefs of the news organizations—which are mostly state-run or at the very least, heavily regulated entities to begin with—leaked the news back in July, but later. scrubbed it from their sites. Why wouldn't the Chinese want word of this getting out?

Asked why the policy was pushed through unannounced, the chief editor of one site said, "The influence of public opinion on the Net is still too big."

Hey, go commenters! You have influence on things, something we understand. And want you to have! Here, you're even given the ability (or responsibility) to give and take away voice to those with or without Gold Stars (like that other, uh, republic). Interesting. So! Quick rundown of what China doesn't have on the internet anymore:

Government censors have closed thousands of sites in a continuing war on "vulgarity," closed liberal forums and blogs for spreading "harmful information," blocked access to YouTube, Facebook and Twitter, and cut off Internet service where serious unrest has erupted, notably in the Xinjiang region of the west after deadly clashes between ethnic Uighurs and Han in July. Increasingly, officials have defended the Web shutdowns on the grounds of national security.

Which basically leaves Dolphin Olympics and, I don't know, Hamster Dance. Not the worst of all possible Internets, but definitely not the best. Meanwhile, in America, you have the right to say FIRST!!11! without us ever knowing who you are, or why you're such a jackass. I'm sure someone would put into place regulatory measures like this to ensure that people like YouTube's commenters have to exist with us knowing exactly who the illiterate moron used what racial slur from where, but, alas, there are problems with this, both in theory and principle. But mostly, practice:

From a comparison of the most commented-on articles in July and August on a number of portals it was hard to determine whether the volume of posts had been affected so far. But both editors at two of the major portals affected said their sites had shown marked drop-offs.

A lady went to a swingers club, as a freelance journalistblogger, and had a threesome with two other ladies. So there!


Haha, some anonymous commenter on WashingtonPost.com wrote that Maryland politico Cheryl Kagan was "carrying on with others husbands" and it was such an ordeal to get the comment removed from the story that the ombudsman decided to write his own story about what an ordeal it was, and that story included the full, libelous comment. Makes perfect sense.


Briana Karp, the homeless girl who was miraculously signed to poverty-level Elle internship, tells Mediaite that she's grateful for the gig:

Nobody has specifically seen the story and called offering me a job yet, which is fine by me – I am hopeful that I can score a good job on merit, talent, and a great résumé!

Thinking like that is how homelessness happens in the first place.


Writing for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting will make you poor(er). This email went out to contributors to FAIR's mag:

Dear Extra! writers:

We're having a serious budget-tightening at FAIR in response to the recession, and making some very difficult choices about how to save money to keep the organization going. I'm sorry to say that one of the things we're going to have to do is to reduce the rate we pay freelance writers—from 30 cents to 25 cents a word—starting with the November 2009 issue. Hopefully better times are ahead and this will turn out to be just a temporary measure, but in any case we hope this won't be too much of a burden on your own economic circumstances when you write for us. We are very grateful to the freelancers who make Extra! possible, and who put work into each article that is impossible for a small nonprofit magazine like Extra! to ever fully compensate.

Regards,

Jim Naureckas
Julie Hollar

The changes at Wikipedia, which mandate review for anonymous changes to articles about living people, sound reasonable enough. The online reference has messed up its share of biographies, after all, falsely reporting the deaths of Senators Edward Kennedy and Robert Byrd and erroneously linking a prominent journalist to the assassinations of John and Robert Kennedy.

"The Ethicist" Randy Cohen's diatribe against anonyblogging of the sort aimed at Vogue model Liskula Cohen (pictured) likewise rests on a not-so-controversial assertion, namely that anonymous internet commenters are often complete assholes. And yet the column by Cohen (the nebbishy Times writer, not the hot model) is controversial, because it turns out he quoted his ex-wife without disclosing that fact. Which we know because of a — wait for it — anonymous blogger!

And that's the thing about being impolite online: it might be needlessly abrasive 95 times out of 100, but those other five times it's awesome, conveying fresh perspective readers would not have seen were it not for the cloak of anonymity. Cohen says we should make anonymity utterly shameful, except in cases where there is a "reasonable fear of retribution," but this sort of etiquette is basically just a way of regulating opinion, and runs counter to the rawness that has historically been one of the Web's great strengths. You could say the same thing about Wikipedia's new mechanisms for institutional control. Anonymous writers might not always absolutely need the secrecy the shroud themselves in, but they have good reason to want it.

Put another way, if we have to choose between prim scolds like Randy Cohen and impolitic ankle-biters like Fake Steve Jobs (anonymous for many months) or NYTPicker, we'll take the latter any day, even if the price is wading through tons of crap.

If you're a newbie to the live-blog experience, this is where you can participate in a pith-filled running commentary of the show in the "comments" section below. A bunch of us did this last year for Project Runway and had a blast: We quipped, sniped, rhymed and opined. We laughed, cried, sneezed and occasionally got the hiccups. Who wouldn't want to relive that all over again?

(A quick note: The show doesn't start on Lifetime until 10 Eastern, but I asked Gawker to post this a few hours early so we could also live-blog Lifetime's Project Runway All-Star Challenge, which starts at 8 pm and features past stars like Santino, Uli, Jeffrey and Korto. It'll probably be kind of bogus, but admit it: You'll watch it anyway. So why not live-blog it too?)

As most of you already know, Lifetime poached this show from Bravo and originally planned to air Season 6 it last Winter, but a lawsuit delayed things because … well, because Harvey Weinstein is an idiot. That's really the upshot. Anyway, as a result, a few things will be a little weird this season. Not only is the show on a new network, set in a new city (LA) and edited by a new production team, but the competition depicted actually ended six months ago (no spoilers please!). In fact, most of the action took place last fall, before Obama was elected. But I'm sure that won't matter much, because the world of Project Runway exists in a kind of a timeless neverland, where worldly things like politics (both corporate and government) are hidden from view behind a great big pile of puce organza. So I choose to be optimistic: This season (and this live blog) will be awesome!

I don't have any "things to watch for on tonight" because Lifetime posted over 91 preview clips for this show on its website, and when I saw that I got overwhelmed and a little dizzy and didn't watch any of them. But I did glance at the names and pictures of the new contestants, and can share these quick observations: The group seems slightly more female and racially diverse than usual. Many have unusual names, like Epperson, Gordana, Malvin, Qristyl and Shirin. One wears bangs and bright red lipstick, even though that style was last rocked on this show by an unpopular, cat-throwing harpy. I was unable to identify the "token straight male" in the group, but I know he's in there somewhere (because he always is). So maybe trying to identify him can be on of our fun activities for tonight, along with assigning nicknames and inventing a drinking game.

And those activities will start soon, because live blog time is nigh. Our 10-month exile in the desert is finally coming to an end, Runway-ites — it's time to return home!

I don't' know what that means — I just know that Fabio said it last week, and anything Fabio says is worth quoting, as far as I'm concerned. (Remember when he said "bunky bed"? Ah, memories …) So … where was I? Oh yes — two shows to live-blog, starting an hour earlier than usual: The premiere of the new Top Chef season kicks off at 9 pm Eastern, followed by the Top Chef Masters finale at 10:15 (both on Bravo).

For those who are new to this kind of party, it happens in the comments section below, where you (yes you!) get to do the actual live-blogging. I'm the "host," which means that – like Kelly Choi and Padma Lakshmi – my main job is to hand out a few instructions and look pretty.

Oh, and I also watch preview clips, which I've already done for both shows. Here are a few things to watch for on the Top Chef premiere:

• Unwitty Brit (and nitwit) Toby Young will return as a judge (why, Bravo, why?) — this time sporting an ugly scar on his forehead. I don't know how it got there but if I had to guess, I'd say an enraged Top Chef fan tried to take matters into his own hands after hearing that Young was invited back on the show. (Nice try, whoever you are.)
• The new group of 17 cheftestants look more "eccentric" than ever — including, for example, a French guy who actually wears a horizontal-striped shirt and neckerchief like the stereotypical Frenchman in children's books and political cartoons. Also, there will be many, many tattoos on display — so many, in fact, that this group of chefs looks a lot like the cast of Whale Rider.
• One cheftestant will say: "A clam is an oyster, right?," just to remind us that this show isn't the "Masters" edition.
• Padma will instruct each chef to "cook a dish based on a vice that you're guilty of." So don't be surprised if someone makes jerked chicken.

As if that weren't enough to digest, here are a few things to watch for on Top Chef Masters:

• Hubert Keller will sport a different-colored chef's tunic, having apparently undergone a transformation: Instead of "Gandalf the White," he's become "Gandalf the Black-With-Pink-Piping."
• The judges will include Tom, Padma and Gail, just to remind us (via direct comparison) how much more interesting they are than the stilted TCM hosting/judging crew.
• Whatever the final result, history will be made: For the first time, a white male will win Top Chef Masters.

Well, enough prattling — time to pretty up my face before the shows start. While I do, I suggest you limber and/or liquor up, because we've got a lot of live-blogging to do tonight (not to mention tomorrow night, when Project Runway returns). So flex those fingers, and I'll see you at 9!

- MisterHippity

Yours truly is vacationing in Maine this week – in a town called Pemaquid, which I think is a Native American word meaning "land of little Internet" (but it may also mean "land of few cable stations" — there are many translations). So I may not be able to join the festivities tonight. But I figure I should give it a shot, so I'm about to head off in search of a neighbor's Wi-Fi signal to pirate. Before I do, though, let me quickly share these highlights from last week's live blog:

* Commenter Big Poppa tried to cook pears in an Easy-Bake oven, and set fire to the house. (I think was a childhood memory, not something that actually happened during the live blog.)
* Anita Lo learned a valuable lesson: You don't bring a knife to a gunfight, and you don't bring soup to a burger contest.
* The judges uttered inanities like "a journey into meatless cooking" and "a comforting bowl of yumminess." Tom, Padma, Gail … where are you?
* Chef Fart finally dissipated from the air.
* Commenter la can aptly summed up Zooey Deschanel's diet as "turf and turf."

And here are a few things for live-bloggers watch out for tonight (with any luck, I'll see them too):

* The quickfire challenge will be a blindfold taste test, and in the preview clips, the chefs looked very unhappy about that. (I can't say I blame them — my older brothers gave me a blindfold taste test once when I was 10, and it's an experience I never want to live through again.)
* Twelve non-master cheftestants of the past will return — in all their in all their insecure, blustering and graspingly ambitious glory — to remind us all why the quasi talented young newbies are so much more entertaining than the blasé talented old masters.
* We'll see ex-contestant Dale Talde get all up in Michael Chiarello's face, asking "whatcha gonna do about it?" — and then hear Fishballs tell us: "For the first 20 years of my career I used to eat three Dales for breakfast." So I guess that answers Dale's question: Fishballs is going to eat him. (Talk about getting served!)

I forgot to post a "spoiler alert" on that cannibalism thing, sorry. Anyway, it's almost 10 pm Eastern — time to limber up those live-blogging fingers! (And remember to get them extra-limber next week, because we'll have two shows to cover then: The Top Chef Las Vegas premiere at 9, followed by the Top Chef Masters finale at 10. So you might want to start doing finger-calisthenics or something.)

- MisterHippity

So while this Times article on the coming flood of 630 working black or Hispanic families into Mamaroneck and Larchmont is all entirely factually true it does kind of stoke the flames of crazy racist resentment that are now raging in the comments on that post, by making it sound like the feds are shipping black people to rich neighborhoods to punish them for their success and not making the wrongdoing by Westchester officials quite clear.

But the insane resentment of white internet readers is certainly not (entirely) the fault of the Times and we don't mean to imply otherwise.

(The man in that linked clip went on to become rich making dog calendars, by the way. So there's hope for all of us, I guess.)

It's time once again for that joyous jubilee of short-burst bloviation: the Gawker commenter live blog. For those who are new to this natterfest, I'm your hyper-alliterative host, MisterHippity, and the object of our affliction airs on Bravo at 10 Eastern tonight. The actual live blogging happens down the in the comments section, where everyone can participate. (Unstarred commenters: Please don't hesitate to join in. The rest of us will promote your comments — we're very egalitarian that way.)

As an added bonus, the comments now appear in reverse-chronological order, which makes time run backwards. So when the live blog is over, you'll actually be younger than when it started! Feel free to ponder that (but not too deeply) while I run through these highlights from last week:

• Art Smith continued to mention all the famous people he's cooked for. You could push a phonebook off a table and drop fewer names than this guy does.
  adiam7 loved Fishballs. aLostLady loved Gandalf. Everyone else loved Ned Flanders.
• Aaron Altman opined that judge Jay Rayner is really General Zod from Superman, minus a haircut. (Click here and judge for yourself.)
• The Lo score was the high score.
• Suzanne Tracht served something that really reflected her personality. Unfortunately for her, it was cold fish.

I also know a couple of things about what will happen tonight — not because I reversed time, but because I watched the preview clips. Here's a sampling:

• Hubert Keller will brag that he sells a burger at one of his restaurants for $5,000 — and that people actually buy it. This brings to mind the old French saying: Il nait un sucker chaque minute.
• The chefs will have to cook a meal for severely diet-restricted actress Zooey Deschanel (she eats no meat, fish, eggs, dairy products grain or soy) – which is akin to asking a group of barbers to give Tom Colliccio a haircut.
• Art Smith will say "Obama." Jay Rayner will say "cookery." Kelly Choi will smile and pretend to eat. (These things weren't in the preview clips, but I suspect they'll happen anyway.)

Sounds exciting, doesn't it? It's hard to believe that this will all be over in three weeks — except it won't, because Top Chef Season 6 will start then. So it all just never ends, really. But hey … who wants to go out on Wednesday nights anyway?

I'm trying to drum up a little interest here, can you tell? The truth is, most of these "master" cheftestants (unlike the traditional, no-name variety) have been disappointingly polite, respectful and boring so far. But I think things will take a big turn for the better starting tonight, because — for the remaining episodes — the show will revert to the traditional format we know and love: One chef will be eliminated per week (not three), and the rest will return and hang around long enough to (hopefully) get on each other's nerves — and also long enough for us to get to know them properly. And by "properly," I mean well enough for us to better ridicule and demean them, and call them silly names (more on that below).

So, as we tremble in giddy anticipation of the new thrills that await us tonight (at 10 Eastern, on Bravo), I'll quickly run through a few highlights from last week's live blog:

• Jonathan Waxman told us that the word "sabotage" is not in a master chef's vocabulary. But apparently the word "hypocrisy" is, because he went on to sabotage fish specialist Michael Cimarusti by forcing him to pick his ingredients from a great big box full of no fish.
• We all hated on the spacey new-age Palm Pre woman, who is obviously some kind of cyborg or replicant. Where's that Blade Runner dude when you need him?
• Art Smith won, which is probably good because — love him or hate him — you have to admit he's like a character straight out of "Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil." And this finalist group needs all the character it can get, since it already includes Suzanne Tracht and Anita Lo — who are like characters straight out of "Midnight in the Poppy Garden of the Living Dead."
• Commenter DahlELama aptly narrated the final scene thusly: "Oh my good Lord, is he really crying? And did Roy just say 'we're going to be friends forever?' Did my TV accidentally switch over to The Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants 3?"

As for this week's episode, I don't have my usual "here are tonight's chefs" rundown to do, because we've met them all before. So instead, I'll just list the six finalists along with the nicknames we've come up with for them so far:

• Hubert Keller: Gandalf
• Rick Bayless: Ned Flanders
• Suzanne Tracht: The Undead Chef, or Botox Lady
• Anita Lo: Lo-Energy, or Undead Chef 2
• Michael Chiarello: Fishballs
• Art Smith: Fart Smith

So as we live-blog tonight, I suggest we think about how improve and finalize this list. But first, why not grab yourself a piece of cheesecake? Today is National Cheesecake Day, after all. Go ahead, it's patriotic! I'll meet you back here in the comments section at 10.

All but one of Bezos' reviews are five stars. The geeky retailer raves about Snickerdoodles, "amazing cheese snacks," $1,100 binoculars and a book that indulges his "dream of visiting the outer planets." Then comes the 13th Warrior, the 1999 action film starring Antonio Banderas. It is a four-star picture, according to 334 other customers, but Bezos writes that "one star is indeed one too many."

This is a terrible, terrible movie... this endless stream of uninteresting battle scenes with pointless dialogue and no discernable plot is perhaps one of the worst movies ever made. Sorry if this seems harsh, but I just don't want anyone to buy it unknowingly.

We got some pretty great ones, and some pretty terrible ones. Almost all of them were scored by me, and you can check the scores in the original thread if you'd like. I promised our winner a star, and a star they shall get (in the event our winner was already starred, well, they just get glory, and something like :) from us). First, in no particular order, a sampling of the runners-up:

• From RoyJagabat: "NYC Drek."
  
  
• From Labyrinthine: "Jon and Ed Hardy Sitting in a Tree Minus Kate Plus Some Stupid Twenty-somethings."
  
  
• From Maya Twocents: "Prison Break: Jon Gosselin Edition."
  
  
• From La Tortue: "Eight is Enough (2.0)."
  
  
• From Claire Buoyant: "Kate Spayed."
  
  
• From MollyBloomberg: "The Kate Escape."
  
  
• From Alexa Elizabeth Ann: "Freedumb!"
  
  
• From Homovegetarian: "Douche! Rinse! Repeat!"
  
  
• And from Section 426: Jon Gosselin: Ace of Flakes

And finally, our winner, from aLostLady: How Jon Got His Deplorable, Falsely-Achieved, Over-Played Groove Back.

Heh. Not exactly catchy, kind of awkward, but fairly accurate and a show I'd probably watch...uh, if only for Richard's recaps.

Job well done. People: set those DVRs.

Erica, you may recall, is the star of a Glad bag commercial that's appeared during very episode of Top Chef and Top Chef Masters for … well, as long as I can remember. Two weeks ago, Erica went AWOL, so I put in a call yesterday to the PR folks at Clorox (Glad's parent company) to suss out what the deal was. A very nice PR person there, Vicki Haber, confirmed that the Erica commercial won't return for the rest of this TCM season, and also said that she didn't know when — or if — it would ever air again. So I don't think things sound good for Erica, folks … I assume she's history. I hope you don't mind if I take a moment to say few words in her memory:

Farewell, Erica! Chancellor of Cheese! Connoisseur of Cold! Grand Poobah of Pasta! May flights of angels sing thee to thy rest!

Ok, so … where were we? Oh right. The live blog. As always, it happens at 10 Eastern in the comments section below, and all are welcome to join. Here are a few highlights from last week:

• There was a Swedish chef who — unlike the Swedish Chef on the Muppet Show — did not say things like: "Gersh gurndy morn deh durndy doo, bork bork bork!" Instead, he was rather disappointingly intelligible.
• Michael Chiarello, the eventual winner, was praised for his "three perfect balls" (of swordfish). So when he returns for the finals, we can all call him "Fishballs" (thanks to commenter geckolicious, who came up with that awesome nickname).
• Live-blogging under Gawker's new commenting system worked out OK for the most part — although Dot and dippitydoo had defective stars, which caused them to post unapproved comments, while simultaneously retaining the power to approve comments. So they wound up approving their own comments, which was kind of strange. (As dippity noted, the combination of damaged stars and self-approval was very Hollywood.)

As for tonight, we'll meet the last group of four chefs (before the final round starts next week). They are:

• Art Smith, of Oprah fame, who — judging from the preview clip I saw — will become very excited tonight by a box (perhaps for the first time in his life).
• Michael Cimarusti, who owns Providence Restaurant in LA. (Or is it LA Restaurant in Providence?)
• Roy Yamaguchi, whose cooking style was once described by Bon Appetit as "California-French-Japanese-eclectic" — and that was before he moved to Hawaii. So now, presumably, it's Hawaiian-California-French-Japanese-eclectic." Suffice it to say his style is very hyphenated.
• Jonathan Waxman, who is so famed for his poultry dishes that the Grub Street blog once said he'd "risen to stardom on the wings of chickens." So suggest we call him "Chicken Man."

All right, gang, time to get started. Let's do Erica's memory proud! (But try not to get too attached to any new commercials, OK?)