Weinsteins step down as Miramax CEOs

I used to work for a chef who's now semi-famous and he used to have a rep as a complete nightmare, till he sobered up. I recall some chair-throwing on one of my first nights there. Kitchens in general are just cesspools of harassment and drug abuse, but I'm guessing that's common knowledge by now.

professional chefs are, by and large, mostly nutjobs

I mean celebrity chefs are up there with directors as a profession in which behaving just terribly seems to be part of the .... not gig, not draw, not expectation...but it really seems to come with the job

― remember the lmao (darraghmac), Monday, December 11, 2017 8:19 AM (one minute ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i love all the bad tattoo man chefs with their arms folded glaring at the camera, angry because their new hot restaurant is opening and they have to cook food.

they'd have to be. I mean, it's just fuckin' fuel, food. xp

How different they are to the humble contestants on Masterchef.

Similar situation in Chicago last month:
https://chicago.eater.com/2017/10/23/16523668/publican-chef-cosmo-goss-fired-one-off-photo-employee-inappropriate-personal

It's so much part of kitchen/restaurant culture - the rock-n-roll bacchanalia "rock-star" thing - that I assume much more is on the way. In the way that Batali now casts a shadow on the temple/destination Eataly, at some point 'hot new restaurants' will take a hit as people get more aware of the culture that makes it happen.

how long until a plate of pork belly brings Guy Fieri up on assault charges?

Prob worth noting here (or maybe not but whatever) that Guy actually comes out looking sorta decent at heart in comparison to the more snooty Micheline starred chefs.

quick robin, to the hot take mobile! i've got a date with destiny and 600 words on Buzzfeed!

inappropriate behavior, sexual harassment, drinking, drugs, etc are so embedded in the restaurant and bar business it's hard to even know where to start

Guy Fieri is probably the best dude in the biz

I have no idea about his personal life (nor do I care to) but what I have seen of his schtick is relentlessly positive: he appears to love every piece of food in existence, even if it's probably terrible. He loves every restaurant he visits. He's buds with every cook he meets.

So maybe that might carry over into not being a terrible asshole who wants to tear people down? I dunno. I don't want him to cook for me but he does seem to be bringing a different schtick from e.g. Oliver whose default setting is YOU FUCKING SUCK, YOU USELESS CUNT

Wait, is that who I mean? Probably not.

Gordon Ramsey. Jamie Oliver just likes to shame the poors

j oliver got testy with a black woman who was a soul food genius when he took a "road trip" and visited her place, all because she wouldn't tell him her exact recipe as she was cooking it, and that put him in my bad books for life. like maybe if you are sticking your video camera in her face and visiting her personally you should show a little respect and listen to what she says you complete dickhead

Thanks, silby, was in a hurry and got sloppy

I thought that assessment of Oliver was pretty accurate

The New Yorker has severed ties with Ryan Lizza in response to behavior the magazine believes to be “improper sexual conduct." Full statement: pic.twitter.com/a1PAb5Vkao

— Michael Calderone (@mlcalderone) December 11, 2017

That's two for today. Who will be #3?

is there gonna be an alec baldwin moment or did that technically happen already

oh, and bill murray. the chive will be so disappointed, maybe

fuck the chive

just on principle

Oof. NAGL whatever is going on.

Just got statement from Ryan Lizza, who calls his firing from the New Yorker "a terrible mistake" pic.twitter.com/Jf6bQ9Nu83

— Tom Kludt (@TomKludt) December 11, 2017

There were Batali rumors a couple of years ago, weren’t there?

murray has actually occurred to me. as a partyin 70s comedy dude. i hope nothing happened. fuck the chive obv

something tells me y'all need to chill out, keep calm, and chive on

i wonder what happened with Lizza. seems ballsy of him to say it was a dating relationship if in fact it wasn't.

the whole "Bill Murray showed up at a bar and gave everyone free drinks!" is really fuckin annoying

"bill murray showed up at a bar and slipped everyone a roofie!" is even worse

if bill murray’s former wife’s divorce paperwork is anything to go by the guy is a physically and mentally abusive asshole

i wonder what happened with Lizza. seems ballsy of him to say it was a dating relationship if in fact it wasn't.

― akm, Monday, December 11, 2017 5:51 PM (fifty-eight minutes ago)

sounds like it might be an intra-office relationship

that's what I was thinking. which, if so, is mega fucked up to basically publicly dump this news at a time where it's going to be immediately assumed that it's a sexual assault/rape accusation.

but....who knows.

Gordon Ramsey. Jamie Oliver just likes to shame the poors

fwiw the UK version of Kitchen Nightmares was delightful and heartwarming, as Ramsay gave advice both general and specific, was supportive, aimed to build a better-working version of the restaurant ppl had in their heads, and left the viewer knowing a little more about both food and management.

the US version is a horrible pile of shit which uses three shots of a bad restaurant run by an idiot, three scenes of Ramsay shouting abuse at them, rubbing his face and going "fuuuuck me", and 19 reaction shots of employees, all repeated over and over again in a tedious, uninformative formula. plus a shot of Ramsay taking off his shirt.

rubbing his face and going "fuuuuck me",

lmao this is so hilarious and otm

yeah the og Kitchen Nightmares was one of my fav shows, hated the histrionic version they ported over to the US.

the ep about the salmon+strawberries guy always my fav

fox does it again

salmon+strawberries guy vs pirate bar rescue

the plate-hoarder in the Tudor-style pub was my favorite of the OG Kitchen Nightmares

anyway back onto topic, I guessed to myself last night that it was going to be Batali because of the smattering of stories that had already come out. It felt plausible. And that nice-guy cheery persona makes it hit home a lot harder.

Anyway, not that any of that tempered my revulsion at reading the stories about him this morning
the full-body from-behind hugs and the deep-inhaling (among other things)
on the regular
like that's part of your worklife for however long
jfc

They say the most important thing for a person in the public eye is sincerity; once you can fake that, you're on your way to success.

Thought this was a really good essay:

https://www.thecut.com/2017/12/rebecca-traister-this-moment-isnt-just-about-sex.html

“What makes women vulnerable is not their carnal violability, but rather the way that their worth has been understood as fundamentally erotic, ornamental; that they have not been taken seriously as equals; that they have been treated as some ancillary reward that comes with the kinds of power men are taught to reach for and are valued for achieving. How to make clear that the trauma of the smaller trespasses — the boob grabs and unwanted kisses or come-ons from bosses — is not necessarily even about the sexualized act in question; so many of us learned to maneuver around hands-y men without sustaining lasting emotional damage when we were 14. Rather, it’s about the cruel reminder that these are still the terms on which we are valued, by our colleagues, our bosses, sometimes our competitors, the men we tricked ourselves into thinking might see us as smart, formidable colleagues or rivals, not as the kinds of objects they can just grab and grope and degrade without consequence. It’s not that we’re horrified like some Victorian damsel; it’s that we’re horrified like a woman in 2017 who briefly believed she was equal to her male peers but has just been reminded that she is not, who has suddenly had her comparative powerlessness revealed to her.”

Traister's writing has been solid throughout imo

xpost that is v otm

wonderfully put

these are still the terms on which we are valued, by our colleagues, our bosses, sometimes our competitors, the men we tricked ourselves into thinking might see us as smart, formidable colleagues or rivals, not as the kinds of objects they can just grab and grope and degrade without consequence.

I wanted to respond to this, because I read something related in this article, about grad students reporting rape by professors. One student in particular has recently accused a professor of raping her in the mid 80s. The professor remembers it as consensual sex. I don't want to adjudicate the facts, but to comment on her reflections concerning the episodes, which echo the quoted passage above:

“At first I thought he was interested in me because he thought I had an interesting mind,” she says. “But then to find out it was only sex — it really sapped me of my sense of myself as an intellectual. It took me a long time to gather myself together and feel like a competent scholar after that.”

I wonder if in these situation it could be both desire for her interesting mind and for her interesting sexuality. If what's happening is mere groping and degradation, then sure. But when these relations are cultivated, the impression these women get it that it startss as feeling valued for their minds, but then once the (male) prof puts the moves on, their intellectual value seems to dissolve. But the stories don't make clear to me why it goes from seeming like just the one thing, then just the other. I gather these profs have lots of people who would like their attention, some male, some female. All of these people have terrific minds, that's why they're in a position to ask for this prof's attention. What distinguishes one student from another? Intellectually, nothing: they're all good, none generally is that good, even the ones who eventually win (i.e. get a job) aren't that, the sort of good for which you'd be excoriated for missing. Even at the top, everyone is good but very few are great. So the prof swamped with courtiers chooses to give his attention a woman who is equal to the others with regard to her mind, but is sexually alluring as well. In the course of things they're still sharing intellectual talk, he is valuing her for her mind, but also for her sexuality. Why does the latter invalidate the former? If there's nothing to the attention besides sex then yes, but that's not clear from what's being said. At the end, the women can't say that they were valued just for their minds, but male courtiers didn't get that attention, because they were an undifferentiated group of good but not greats. The women by contrast, also good but not great, are differentiated.

http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/football/marshall-faulk-allegedly-sexually-harassed-nfl-network-employee-article-1.3692550

xp you realize of course that the situation you're imagining would not square with many women's experiences of the intellectual interaction (time balance in conversations and w.r.t. turn-taking, credit for ideas, etc etc), which would make it hard to read sexual interactions in terms of the assumptions you're making.

but obviously you are making them for the sake of the speculation.

I am just imagining and doing so from my male point of view, agreed.

but re. the intellectual interactions, I was supposing that the quality of those among male prof & male student would also be imbalanced. whether they'd be imbalanced in different ways is hard to determine. one thing that's at play is the finality of the end of a sexual relationship, maybe; whereas a merely played out non-sexual relationship may lack burning bridges. when a sexual relationship ends then an intimacy ends and there are often emotional betrayals at play; but when a non-sexual relationship ends there may not be such intimacy. but I'm not sure about these assumptions.

if you insist on comparing, you could compare this situation to another abusive professor-student situation, like in the movie Whiplash

I don't know the film but I was questioning that a prof choosing an admirer for her/his attention for in part sexual reasons was necessarily abusive.