Trial run of the cooking program.

When last I wrote we were off to the races with Téodor's cooking show, and since such time we have made significant progress. I shall chronicle our first "trial run," which is to say, the crudest of crude sketches of what we will eventually achieve.

His original idea of starting the show off with a fight and a few provocatively-attired women hadn't sat well with me from the get-go. It reeked of that deplorable television wrestling, and betrayed a surprising personal immaturity. As is so often the case with genius, world-class talent in one area travels hand-in-hand with the vilest of proclivities. Forman was right to leave the near-constant analingus out of Amadeus, but in doing so sacrificed a true portrait of the composer. This is merely to illustrate my point, and I shall stop waving my cigar about like a garrulous old wheezebox.

Instead of the hormonal opening he envisioned, I casually suggested starting the show off in the manner of a host, perhaps offering the home viewer an aperitif and settling their nerves with a well-told joke. I also had a few words regarding his choice of attire, which was decidedly sloppy and certain to alienate a large portion of the audience. Aged jeans, sneakers in circus colors, and an unbuttoned shirt over an imprinted t-shirt — this is not the attire of a man who brings others round to his way of thinking. A smart host instills trust in his guest by first dressing the part: fine shoes, pressed and tailored trousers, a gaily colored four-in-hand (as opposed to that bulwark of the boardroom, the full Windsor), and either a blazer or carefully coordinated cardigan. I had brought a selection of just such clothing and egged him into it with only a little fuss.

While we discussed the recipes he had prepared I poured him a lovely dry Chablis, and soon some of the indignant iron had melted from his spine. We set his mise-en-place, his mise-en-scene, and placed the camera. I stood with my slate, counted five, four, three, (two), (one!) and clacked. Téodor bounced in with the energy of a gazelle, ran to where an audience would sit, and pretended to shake hands, his Chablis marvelously controlled! It was inspired. Soon he bounded gracefully back to the spot we had marked with tape for his monologue and rubbed his hands together gleefully. He was hospitality incarnate — with just a little guidance I seemed to have brought the ship to shore!

At this point I shall interject that what follows could be attributed to the professional shortcomings of both parties. Many maiden voyages are plagued with the odd detail gone missing, and ours certainly suffered from the usual assortment of dropped napkins and embryonic chains of command.

Rather than jot down an account told unfairly through my own exposition, I shall set forth here a transcription taken directly from the videotape itself. Let no wag say that I ever had harbored any intention of maligning either Mr. Orezscu or myself.

- - - - - - - - -

00:00:00

TEODOR
[runs in gaily, audience interaction, lands on monologue mark and rubs hands together]
Hello and thank you for coming! I'm Téodor Orezscu, and I look like a huge fag. [beams]

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
Téodor! I really must protest!

TEODOR
If you're gonna stop the scene, you gotta say "cut."

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
Téodor! You're the vision of the well-heeled host. Why must you denigrate my war—

TEODOR
You have to say "cut"! Otherwise this whole argument will go on the air!

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
Oh, well! Very fine, then! "Cut, please."

TEODOR
[significantly deflated]
What's the matter?

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
You made an off-color remark. This is a cooking show, not the Life and Times of Lenny Bruce.

TEODOR
You didn't say "cut," so I thought we were having an in-character argument on the air.

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
Ah, cinema verité! My dear boy, I perhaps did not catch onto your wholesale shift in narrative paradigms quickly enough.

TEODOR
I thought it had edge. Not many TV cooks have openly hostile relationships with their directors. I was kind of riffing on a Howard Stern kind of thing.

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
[a bit miffed]
Producer. At any rate, Howard Stern...is that the man who has people touch one another's breasts on the radio?

TEODOR
Among other things.

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
He has people touch parts more serious than breasts on the radio?

TEODOR
No, I mean he pushes the envelope of morality and comfort zones in a lot of different ways.

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
[I shall admit to a bit of uncontained anger here]
Do you wish your cooking show to have footage of nude breasts being fondled by people whose sole job qualification is that they can get up at three in the morning?

TEODOR
Maybe! Let's have fun with this!

CORNELIUS, PRODUCER
I'm wasting my time here. [throws down slate, walks off set]

[a few moments later Téodor comes round the counter, looks into the camera so closely that his nose becomes incredibly large, then the tape goes black]

- - - - - - - - -

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.