Friday, August 21, 2009
Thursday, February 26, 2009
Amuse-Biatch Photoessay: Who Says That Chivalry Is Dead?

Just imagine it, possums. For once, a man who’ll free you from crabs rather than give them to you in the first place.
Meowza! Beaver Boots Doesn't Return the Hootie Love

In an interview with D Magazine, Casey Thompson tears into Carla. You have to read the whole thing to get the full flavor, but here are a few tidbits:
Carla was not prepared and in over her head. The show did not talk about how the first course (crab) took her half of the friggin’ cooking time that day, I was left to work the rest of HER dishes....
And where in the hell did french come from!? She is not even classically trained! It (the show) didn’t talk about how I worked on a sauce for 2 days and Carla forgot to put it on the plate… It didn’t show how the 2nd course (fish) was MINE....
I am done with TC. I did not influence her. She has NO ideas of her own, oh, except a cheese course.
What is left to say, possums? Just wow.
UPDATE:
Earlier, we posted only excerpts from Casey’s statements to D Magazine out of professional courtesy, but in the interim, the magazine's server has gone down several times, the article has been flooded with comments, a person claiming to be a friend of Casey’s posted that Casey realizes she went too far in making those statements, and now the post appears (at least temporarily) unavailable. For that reason, below please find the full text of Casey’s statements:
"Carla was not prepared and in over her head. The show did not talk about how the first course (crab) took her half of the friggin’ cooking time that day, I was left to work the rest of HER dishes.
She also did not have a plan. The ONLY thing she had in mind was a cheese course! I would NEVER do a cheese course. And where in the hell did french come from!? She is not even classically trained! It (the show) didn’t talk about how I worked on a sauce for 2 days and Carla forgot to put it on the plate… It didn’t show how the 2nd course (fish) was MINE. It didn’t show how she took the sous vide idea and decided to GRILL it last minute causing it to be tough… And it didn’t show how she WANTED to do the souffles which she does not even know how to make! That was HER food, because it certainly was me asking her how she wanted to do this and that while she was busy picking crab the entire time and making a souffle that didn’t rise!
I am done with TC. I did not influence her. She has NO ideas of her own, oh, except a cheese course."
The Audacity of Hootie: “Don’t Blame Casey”

Miss Carla told a reporter from the Huntington, West Virginia, Herald-Dispatch:
"I would love to give [Casey Thompson] a call to see how she’s taking all of this. I hate for her to get the brunt of it. If I could get on a loudspeaker and tell the whole world and everyone who watches the show, I would tell them, ‘Don’t blame Casey.’ I take full responsibility.”
Mature and classy to the very end. Hootie Nation expects nothing less of her.
Hootie Nation Weeps as Carla Hall’s Rise Deflated by “No”-fflé, Voodoo Double Curse


What was meant to be a blue cheese soufflé curdled into a “no”-fflé, and likewise our sense and reason have curdled into a bubbling, grief-studded, superstitious inquiry into why some things fail to rise. (And no, we’re not taking “egg whites and a too-hot oven” as an answer.)
After tossing and turning our voices-filled head on our tinfoil pillow, having nightmares of Hosea Rosenberg and Tom Colicchio holding up cans of Diet Coke and those little gold homunculi from the king cakes, an answer came to us.
It was nothing less than a voodoo double curse (though, of course, the producers tried to throw us off the scent by showing us a voodoo lady so incompetent that she suggested Jamie Lauren might yet be Stefan Richter’s girlfriend; mind you, if voodoo ladies have the power to turn lesbians into straight girls, then Jerry Falwell and Fred Phelps are going to be in a sticky bind).
Much as it pains us, since we genuinely like Casey “Beaver Boots” Thompson, we have no choice but to pronounce her the first voodoo curse of this finale. And it isn’t as if this is a new idea. Back in August of 2007, during Season 3, we had already dubbed her the “Typhoid Mary” of Top Chef, since everyone who became friendly with her was immediately eliminated from the competition.
And as for the second voodoo curse, well, we learnt yesterday that Carla once cooked for Dick Cheney. Need we say more?
With this kind of bad magic, Hootie never stood a chance.
Tuesday, February 24, 2009
Home Cooking We Can Believe In: Hootie Wants to Make Peach Cobbler for Obama

That's what Miss Carla said in a very entertaining interview with Pipe Dream, "Binghamton University's student-run paper since 1946." When asked, "If you could cook one meal for anybody in history, who would it be and what would it be?" Carla had little hesitation:
Oh, let’s see … now that I’ve got Jacques [Pépin] out of the way (Laughs), I think it would be Obama. I think it would be President Obama and I heard he likes peach cobbler. So, I’d start him with dessert because life is uncertain. He might have to get up and walk out and then I would go on to make him something homey with a little twist on it. I don’t know what it would be, he likes homey food. I would have to ask him what that would be.
We urge you to read the interview in full, as Carla also talks about the pitfalls of editing ("if you say it, they can play it"), her love of Gail Simmons, her days in Paris, her Platonic last meal ("a hamburger so juicy that the juice runs down my arm while I’m eating it"), her favorite and least favorite challenges, and the difficulty of watching herself on television:
Sometimes it’s weird because I have these facial expressions and people would always talk about my eyes and to see myself, yes, my eyes are bugging out and yes, I make these facial expressions, but I don’t see myself that way, so it is funny to see.
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
Sunday, February 1, 2009
Amuse-Biatch “Hootie We Can Believe In” Endorsement: Carla Hall for Fan Favorite



Possums, you know what to do. Head on over to the Bravo website, and vote to get this woman a $10,000 check.

