I never miss an episode of Hell’s Kitchen. I watch it over at Hulu.
One thing I notice is, the contestants all seem to smoke. Every time they’re done for the day, the whole bunch of ‘em are out on the smoking deck huffing one down.
I figure the producers want to portray the process as ultra high stress and the smoking footage puts forth that image. Also, knowing that these kinds of shows put the cast through comprehensive psychological profiling, I figure that smoking must be a trait they are looking for in the contestants.
Tim Nudd at MediaFreakBlog wrote a post about all of this that contained this surprising quote from Gordon Ramsay…
But Ramsey himself, whose father died at 53 from smoking, seems baffled by it. “I’ve never smoked a cigarette in my entire life,” he says. “It’s a bitter pill for me to swallow, to sit and watch these guys smoke their lives away. … But more importantly, I wish to hell they could understand the damage in terms of their palate.”
Don’t know why but, but I had the guy pegged as a three pack a day type.
Take it away Asleep At The Wheel…
As always, the Surgeon General warns you to click pause on the music player located in the side bar before playing the YouTube.
I challenge anyone to keep their toes from tapping during this song… written in 1947, my own pappy sang this one in the shower bath when we had only one Bath tub with a shower head upstairs, and had to plan our mornings around everyone’s shower Bath time… eh?
My favorite cigarette scene from old movies is the original black and white “Day the Earth Stood Still” and two men leave the alien, Klaatu, in his hospital room, go into ante room and light up a couple of butts… right after encountering a being from another solar system !! No it wasn’t Sinatra or Bogart, just a couple of unknowns, smoke, smoke, smoking cigarettes… *[at 7:00 and at 7:50 in this youTube]* http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5QsdCJODOcQ
“I don’t know whether to get drunk or give up practicing medicine…”
Smoking not shown in this youTube, but I still like the old 1951 primitive spectacular: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVlGOrlIKsY
I love “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares”. You should create a musical version of that show, where you rescue an ailing band from certain obscurity…
Extreme smoking is a kitchen culture thing, popular with workin’ the line. I’ve worked a few restaurant gigs. But if Tony Bourdain can quit smoking, anybody can. Although, he’s not on the line anymore…