Had the day off work today, so I spent it all with JoDee. (Can't think of a better way to spend a day off. :) ) We went out to Belleville to see Ruth. Had a lot of fun out there (JoDee and Ruth got some chocolate, so they were hyper as hell).

After we got home from Ruth's, we watched the bastardization that was Iron Chef USA. To put it bluntly, it sucked. It felt like they took the worst parts of the Iron Chef battles with Bobby Flay and Masaharu Morimoto and distorted it in much the same way that professional wrestling has changed Grecko-Roman wrestling. Basically the premise of the show was the same, but it felt, well, stupid to watch. The elements were all there, but they were Americanized in ways that detracted from the pagentry and nobility of the Japanese version. And William Shatner definitely needs to get the boot. JoDee and I wondered how Patrick Stewart, or Avery Brooks would have handled the role. I think Lawrence Fishburn, Matt Frewer, or even Ted McGinley would have been a major improvement. After the "Secret Ingredient" was revealed, we turned it off. As a fan of the original series, the American image of what made the show so great just seems shallow and insincere. Perhaps the original show looked the same to the Japanese when it initially aired, but seeing as it has a following, and ran for 8 years over there, I doubt it wasn't at least taken semi-seriously. I doubt this show gets more than three episodes made. And where in the hell did they get the audience from with the signs and stuff? And the idea that William Shatner has travelled the globe to find his "Iron Chefs" is laughable at best. At least if they had Ted McGinley host it, they could jump the shark from the start.