The Geek's Travels

I think this may even be better than The Carlton:

I’m not gonna lie. I kinda want to build one of these. Shouldn’t be too hard…

Today, I watched Chopped for the first time. If you’ve never seen it, imagine combining Iron Chef and American Idol. The competitive cooking with surprise ingredients angle is great, and it’s really interesting to see what these folks come up with on the fly. This is especially true when you consider that the contestants on Chopped are not the “big time gourmet” chefs that one sees on Iron Chef.
The episode that I watched featured a particularly interesting dish - turkey breast stuffed with kale and marshmallows, I know, that sounds weird, but it looked very tasty.
Where the show falls short, at least for me, is the judging. Much like on American Idol, the judging is played up for maximum drama, with the judges endeavoring to put the contestants “on the spot.” This just feels forced, and holds back an otherwise very interesting show. Then again, I’ve just never been able to get into the whole reality TV thing.
All told, Chopped is pretty cool. It’s fun to watch people open their ingredients and quickly go from “WTF?” to “OK, let’s cook!”

The Sci Fi Channel (I guess I should be calling it SyFy now) is an interesting entity. Despite their apparent inability to create a decent movie (Mansquito, anyone?), they have a strong tendency to create excellent series. Stargate: Universe is one such series.
They’ve taken the Stargate mythos, and added the seriousness, desperation, and strong characters of Battlestar Galactica. Currently, we’re halfway through the first season, and it’s been bloody excellent. If you’re a science fictiion fan at all, I strongly suggest that you check this out.
The show is currently on mid-season hiatus, so you have until “Spring 2010” (can they be any more vague?) to catch up.