On Friday morning, we all woke up to shocking news, Food Network stalwart and the most competitive man to ever stand behind a grill, Bobby Flay, was leaving the network after 27 delicious years. If you look at the Food Network roster like a hockey team, Guy Fieri is the flashy goal-scorer, Giada De Laurentiis is the goalie who says certain words in weird ways, and Bobby Flay is the enforcer. Enforcers are competitive by nature and no one in the world of food (save for competitive eating legend Joey Chestnut) is more competitive than Bobby Flay. There's something inherently fun to me about food-based aggression. Not necessarily a school lunchroom food fight, but adults running around a kitchen "stadium" yelling obscenities because their ice cream machine isn't working fast enough is hilarious. Over the years he appeared on Iron Chef, Iron Chef: America, Throwdown with Bobby Flay, and Beat Bobby Flay . And those are just the ones I could think of. What do they all have ...

By now, you've at least heard of Squid Game, the new Netflix series from South Korean writer Hwang Dong-hyuk. If you haven't congratulations on not being tethered to the internet 24/7.  It tells the story of 456 people who have been selected to play children's games for money, the only catch is if they lose a game, they're shot immediately. I don't want to get into spoilers because people on the internet are incapable of handling that, and I don't want to overanalyze the show because that — much like many of the characters on the show — has been done to death. I think we should just enjoy the show, and leave it at that. Let's not run it into the ground like we have so many other things. Listen, just because I like a show doesn't mean that I want to be inundated with it until I have no choice but to hate it. Since we're approaching Halloween and  Squid Game is the most popular anything at the moment, there is already a rush on getting magenta coverall...

What’s the first thing you think about in the morning? Do you go through the list of things you have to do that day? Do you think, “man, I really have to take a leak?” Maybe you're like me and the first thing that pops into your head is “I still can’t believe no one has rebooted ALF yet!” ALF was a sitcom in the late eighties about an alien from the planet Melmac named Alf (which was an acronym for “Alien Life Form”) who lived with a suburban family and was always causing good-natured trouble and trying to eat the family’s cat. It’s the kind of show that seems like a prime target for television network suits to warm over for a new generation of boob tubers. We live in the golden age of lazy TV and film reboots and remakes. Why come up with anything fresh and new if the public will still throw sacks of money at a new Star Wars or Marvel movie? If a show from the 70s or 80s was remotely popular, then why not make it a screwball buddy comedy? Nothing is safe. Even The Three Stooges w...

Movies and television shows are cultural touchstones. We learn behaviors from the things we see which in turn influences the way society acts as a whole.  Yet there's an iconic film and an iconic TV show that I have never seen, and quite frankly I'm in no rush to see either of them.  Game of Thrones This isn't because I don't currently have Home Box Office (what smart people know "HBO" stands for). I had HBO through most of college and still never hopped on the bandwagon. I'm sure it's good because that's what everyone with a pulse has tried to tell me. I'm just not a huge fan of high fantasy (which sounds like a Cheech & Chong movie where they play knights). I think it's because I can't relate to the subject matter. I've never been chosen to go on a quest to find the Shield of Grimblegär or had to rescue an orc from a bunch of other orcs or whatever it is happens in those things. I feel the same way about Lord ...

Turn on the Travel Channel any day, and if there isn’t a show about BBQ on, there’s a good chance that it’s a show about hunting Bigfoot or some other unknown animals, also known as cryptids. (Side note: it's time to combine the two shows into one. People look for Bigfoot, but at the same time smoke a world class brisket. I’d call it something simple like “Bigfoot BBQ,” then just wait for the Emmys to start rolling in.)   When I was a kid, I watched hours upon hours of these shows and to this day I have been known to kick back and watch a show where a bunch of guys sit on a boat and stare at a lochin hopes that they’ll see Nessie pop her head out of the water ("loch" Scottish speak for lake for those of you not in the know. *Sniff). I’m not sure what it is I love about these shows because the second I turn one on I know that they aren’t going to find anything. How do I know that? Because if they did actually find evidence proving the existence of Bigfoot, Nessi...