Saturday, May 07, 2005

A bit of stick; Cooking Show.

During the cherished morning ritual I found myself clacking a soft and aged Titleist off the old lob wedge. The ball I discovered in the long grass beneath this spring's effervescent installation of Sally Holmes, and the club had been left perhaps a season ago along the line of Jackson & Perkins grafts which run the length of the brown back fence.

I shot about the yard a bit, my joints complaining that it had been far too long and too many indiscretions past since I last swung a club, when Téodor stepped out of the house for a morning jog. I had been meaning to bandy this cooking show or book idea with him for a while and so during his vigorous stretches I struck up the subject.

Naturally ambitious, he took to the idea like a Basque to cod. He noted that he could assemble a studio using some of Lyle's old video-taping equipment, and that we could film in Ray's rather generously apportioned kitchen. I say, how he did whip himself into a frenzy of excitement! It is just that sort of passion that marks the onset of a great endeavor.

In his stream-of-consciousness deluge I gleaned the following concepts which he wishes to use to shape his show:

1) On the whole the project is meant to demystify food preparation.

2) But it shouldn't be corny and have a low budget like a fellow named Alton Brown apparently has.

3) He will fight a new man during the opening of each episode, then step out of the ring and be dressed in chef's garb by two women.

4) He does not wish to be used as a "transparent MILF magnet like that mumbling Jamie Oliver," whatever that means.

5) Something about cutting often to Roast Beef, who would be sitting at a snare drum with a different oblong vegetable as a drumstick.

Personally, I am delighted to be managing the concept for now. A John Glenn like Téodor will soon come full-term as a monomaniacal monster and be absolutely impossible on set. It is relieving to know this, and to have seen it so many times before: Tomas D'Yvgiveny, Broussard Lambeau, Eric Von Schmidt...they all go through their prima donna period. He probably will, he may not, but Téodor at the bottom of it all has the talent and imagination to last. I shall enter the studio each day with a magnanimous smile, an elder's sense of purpose, and a boost of Chartreuse in the old false wallet. This ship shall come to shore; I am on to a good thing with this lad.