I really have no idea why Barefoot Contessa is as compelling as it is.

Ina Garten’s personality isn’t as dynamic as, say, Bobby Flay’s, and she doesn’t have the smoldering hotness of Giada (or Nigella — to appease her seemingly rabid fanbase) to enhance the entertainment value.

Sporting a brown bob and large collection of multi-hued, blousy collared shirts, Garten has the patient, staid demeanor of veteran elementary school reading teacher. Her personality can sort of be defined thusly: she’s kind of like your long-married, but childless aunt who, when you visited as a child, forbade you from touching anything in her intricately decorated porcelain house. During dinner, she’d talk about politics with your parents while you squirmed in your seat and played with the mashed potatoes on your Wedgewood plate. But then, when you least expected it, she’d give you access hidden cache of cookies that was meant to be a secret between you and her. So, even though you were bored off your ass as a seven-year-old, you’ve forged an honest respect for the dame. Later, when you’ve grown up, you realize what a kick-ass cook she always was and you didn’t appreciate it as a kid because you were dumb and would rather have had a bowl of half Cinnamon Toast Crunch and half Lucky Charms with a coke to drink. Furthermore, lame Aunt Ina was actually a pretty badass outspoken liberal and way ahead of her time.

So, yeah, her appeal is complicated.

Ina’s creations are probably best described as new American comfort food. She doesn’t really do anything revolutionary — just putting her own Ina spin on time-tested favorites. She is a stronger baker than most chefs, and always has an elaborate dessert with every meal.

Ina prepares everything in her kitchen in the East Hamptons, where most residents spend their days — presumably — boating, playing badminton and throwing away their one and five dollar bills because those small ones are just annoying. She often refers to her absentee husband Jeffrey, who is a Yale professor, as if he were Maris on Frasier (”Jeffrey loves my almond biscotti.” “Jeffrey would always rather have sweet potatoes than regular potatoes.”). And then, once in a while, he’ll actually show up and you’re kind of surprised he’s actually a person.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t cover a vital part of her show — which is her seemingly never-ending supply of aged, colorful sweater-wearing gays. Her gays, who are obviously all wealthy entrepreneurs, supply her with freshly cut flowers, and carry coolers for her when they have picnics. These are all her real life friends, so it adds an extra, lovely dimension to her that she’s a connoisseur of the homosexuals.

Lord knows I love Giada De Laurentiis. Between her show’s artfully wobbly camera work, her delicious creations, her smiley demeanor and the wardrobe department’s low-cut tops, there’s a lot to be happy with on Everyday Italian.

So I was reading the most recent issue of Esquire recently and I saw this weird-ass photo shoot of her with a white dress and ton of tomatoes. You can see the other photos from the shoot here, including one where it looks like her face has been airbrushed to twice its original width.

Straight men — do you guys actually find this hot? Is this just another thing we’ll never agree on — like professional sports, war movies and pleated pants?

His campaign slogan should be: He’s Irish and he’s pissed.

• There will be no Exile Island on the next season of Survivor. Good. That stunt was played out.
• The Decemberists’ Colin Meloy will guest star on Lil Bush.
• If we weren’t sure that Amy Sherman-Palladino was one of us, she is now. She got wasted on the night of the Gilmore Girls finale and didn’t watch it.
• America’s Next Top Model will outlive all of us.
• Tina Fey’s parents love 30 Rock.
• Is The Winner not a piece of the distant past after all?
• Big Love got renewed.
• 10 TV shows that should be films.
• Heidi and Spencer from The Hills talk to E!
• Pirate Master got its timbers shivered.
• CSI casting news.
• The top 10 list of highest-paid TV stars is surprising. Certainly not number one, but you’ll shit yourself at number five. Somebody’s agent needs a raise.
• The winner of the Next Food Network Star talks to TV Guide.
• Information is trickling in about the next season of Heroes.

Before we get to our next match-up, let’s take a moment to reflect on last week’s head-to-head featuring the suave Anderson Cooper and the suaver Tim Gunn. Now, Anderson Cooper won (of course), but he did so by a surprisingly small margin. I have to admit that this wasn’t really a fair fight — but by the time I had written everything out, I didn’t feel like going back and changing it. So, yeah. I’m thinking that people just like Tim Gunn a lot, and that played into the votes.

The voting, let me tell you, was out of control. Thanks to some high profile links, we got a lot of attention on this one. I think that maybe every fight should be between two cult icons. Like maybe Smack Teflon from Schmigh School Schmusical (scrambled to prevent the unsavory riff-raff from googling) or Buffy characters.

Maybe next week. This time, we’ve got two methodical career women who will flash you a white, gleaming smile while eviscerating you. We’ve got Jan from The Office vs. the Food Network’s Sandra Lee (see this post for background).

Jan, who started off on The Office as Michael Scott’s long-suffering superior, has morphed into a Jeckyll and Hyde character. On the surface, she’s a buttoned-up corporate career woman, but there’s a hedonistic, demanding and fiery sexpot brewing under the surface.

On the other hand, we’ve got Sandra Lee — flaxen-haired Food Network hostess with an exacting and insatiable appetite for presentation and color coordination. God help the hapless buffoon who tampers with her tablescapes.

Jan Levinson

Strengths:

• Organized and composed
• Not afraid of confrontation
• Unpredictable

Weaknesses:

• Mentally ill
• Comparatively easy to manipulate
• Emotionally fragile

Secret Weapon: Her sexuality

Sandra Lee

Strengths:

• Has excellent knife technique
• Can kill with her stare
• People underestimate blondes

Weaknesses:

• Over-concern with presentation can be a handicap
• Skinny arms
• Possibly made of porcelain

Secret Weapon: Can find innovative, time-saving ways to kick ass

I’m going to start taking vitamins. And then I’ll beat you all up!

• That show Dead Like Me might not be… well, dead.
• Watch Live Earth performances on demand.
• TV Squad ranks the coolest geeks on TV.
• If you watched Traveler, you’re out of luck. Ditto Hidden Palms.
• Rachael Ray and husband aren’t on the rocks, so she says.
• “Goran Visjnic is my babydaddy!“
• Smallville casting news involving some other dude from the CW.
• After all that ballyhoo and hubbub, NBC has renewed The Apprentice.
• The last dance of the Queer Eye’s Fab 5 will be this fall.
• So I guess someone different sings the theme to Weeds every week. Cute concept. Anyway, for this season, The Shins, Man Man, Randy Newman and Joan Baez are among the singers.
• The mass-mailing-of-random-products-in-an-effort-to-revive-a-show phenomenon continues with crackers and The Black Donnellys. Considering how many commenters thought that I, personally, had canceled Creature Comforts maybe I can get people to send me animal crackers or something.
• Jim Halpert has six facial expressions?
• Yun-Jin Kim (Kim Yun-Jin?) wrote a book in Korean about her experiences on Lost.

Today, we have no less than three boob-related stories.

• Number one, Ice-T is planning a reality show with his model wife.  Take a look at her.
• Number two, lady chefs are wearing supa-low cut shirts these days. We’re looking at you, Giada.
• Number three, Stephanie Tanner’s boobs are on the loose.
• The remaining episodes of Drive will be put out to pasture on the 13th instead of the 4th. Now you won’t have to stay in.  Right?
• Laguna Beach will be pretty much unrecognizable in its fourth season, although I’m sure some things (blondes, abs) will stay constant.
• A reality show about books?  Perhaps it’s a step in the right direction. Perhaps not.
• Chloe Sevigny talks about Big Love.
• One of the stars of Private Practice has already been given her pink slip.
• There’s a fight on the set of Rescue Me.
• Scott Baio is a fraud.  A FRAUD!
• An interview with Josh Holloway (Sawyer from Lost).
• CBS wouldn’t let Rupert from Survivor be on Pirate Master.

If you recall, I just got back from Savannah, Georgia where I visited cemeteries, ate pralines and dined at Paula Deen’s restaurant, The Lady and Sons. Here’s the run-down.

For the uninitiated, Paula Deen is a Food Network celebrity chef who is famous for her southern fare — wrapping things in bacon, using butter and olive oil in the same dish, making desserts so rich that if you dropped them they’d make a dent in the floor. She’s kind of a caricature of herself sometimes, dropping “y’alls” like it’s the end of the world and playing up that hostess thing that people from the south like to do.

She’s also got two southern fried sons, as the restaurant’s name would imply, who also have their own Food Network show where they drive around the country and eat things. They’re likable and all, but they’re always going to be “Paula Deen’s sons.”

Little did I know, but Paula Deen rules the city of Savannah with an iron fist. Lady and Sons is probably the biggest national draw for the city, aside from Bonaventure Cemetery and other things having to do with Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.

If you want to eat at The Lady and Sons for dinner, they begin taking dinner reservations at 3:30. As we learned our first day, this does not mean you can show up at 3:30 and get your reservation. We did just that and this was the scene we were met with:

As I walked back to take this picture, a homeless man passed me. “The line’s short today,” he said. And then he started to laugh.

After an hour of waiting in line, with word spreading that the dinner reservation slots were heading into the 9 p.m. territory, the people in front of us (a woman and her teenage son) were the first people to be told that they were all booked. I was not pleased.

On our next attempt we showed up at 2:00 on the dot and there was already a small line. My mom and I switched off in line — one person waited, the other shopped/photographed/what have you. There was a small community in the line, as it was full of mostly ladies in capri pants and their Big Dog golf shirt-wearing husbands. It was a nice, southern-skewing crowd of people who made nice chit chat while enduring the 90 degree Georgia heat. Everyone was coming from the same background, in that people tossed around words like “Chefography” without batting an eyelash. One woman, reflecting on the drastic measures it takes to get a table, said “I’d do this for Paula Deen. I wouldn’t do this for Rachael Ray.” But after a long wait, the work paid off and we secured our reservations.

And on to the food…

Before you’ve even thought about what you’re going to get, they give you a hoe cake and a biscuit. A hoe cake is basically just a pancake. Seriously — there’s syrup on the table. And then the biscuit was actually a garlic and cheese biscuit and, let me tell you, on a scale of Dennis Hastert to Jake Gyllenhaal, this was a Paul Rudd. I had two. Cheesy, garlicy, so soft and warm — it’s the stuff that fat, southern dreams are made of.

In honor of Passover, we started off with the shrimp and crab dip with oh-so-leavened squares of toast. I’m no foodie — that’s for damn sure — but it tasted good. I don’t really know what else to say about it other than that.

For our entrees, my mom had the fried lobster and I had the chicken pot pie (right). I knew going into it that the chicken pot pie, by its very nature, would defeat me. I was able to get all the meat out before that nagging voice, taunting “you’re going to make yourself sick,” started to wear on me.

And then there was the pecan pie. I mean, Jesus Christ. That’s some good shit right there. After taking her first forkful, my mom rolled her eyes at me, as if to say “What am I doing with my life that I’m not eating this pecan pie the other 364 days of the year?”

After dessert I felt disgusting, but it was a good, satisfied sort of disgusting.

Book club is better when there is a golden retriever to play with.

• Mindy Kaling, unsung heroine of The Office, talks to the AV Club.
• Prepare yourself, Cristin. The Hills is going to be back for a third season.
• MTV will be reuniting the cast of The Real World: Las Vegas — the show’s worst season ever — for a six-episode series.
• 30 Rock has officially been renewed.
• Multiple choice: The creator of Friends is now working on a reality show about a) psychics; b) carnival workers; c) strippers; d) martial arts professionals.
• CBS tries to air its Bob Barker tributes before he dies.
• Not only is The Black Donnellys cancelled, but NBC isn’t even going to air the last six episodes. They’re going to stream them on NBC.com.
• Battlestar producers talk about keeping Starbuck’s secret.
• A new biography on Julia Child takes a big dump on the old girl’s reputation by saying she was a sexist and a homophobe.
• The Food Network is under fire for its lack of diversity.
• The Tudors on Showtime appears to be a big hit.
• Erika Christenson and David Cross will be in a CBS comedy pilot called I’m in Hell. Cross plays the devil.

I’m becoming a little bit obsessed with Sandra Lee.

For those of you who don’t know her, she’s the blondest, WASPiest thing to ever hit the Food Network with her show Semi-Homemade. It’s a cute concept — take half pre-packaged goods and half fresh ingredients to save yourself time and make yourself seem more talented than you really are.

The things she makes usually look pretty good, but I’m kind of fascinated with her whole persona. I mean, she’s the second-hottest chef on the Food Network, and she has that exacting brand of Stepford perfection that you can’t believe is for real. Every time I see Sandra her blonde hair is more and more feathered — like she’s just about to go head-to-head with a seventies-era Farrah Fawcett.

I know nothing about Sandra Lee’s actual story. For all I know, she grew up in South Central LA (have to admit, though, I’m strongly doubting it). But I like to think that she has a husband who was a high school football hero and now is the back-slapping kind of barrel-chested middle-aged guy who you would recruit to help you move a piece of furniture into your house. He’d gladly oblige and maybe he’d call you “sport.”

Sandra Lee likely has two children, a boy named Hunter and a girl named Taylor. Hunter is the star forward for his little league team and Taylor takes piano lessons. They are both heterosexual.

The best parts of every show come at the end, though. The first comes is her daily tablescape — a craft-laden table, with a flawlessly executed theme meant to enhance the dining experience. It has such psychotic attention to detail that you just know she spent multiple hours whittling decorations on sticks of butter and arranging faux foliage on table just so. More than any reasonable person would do.

The second part that I love, love, love is the fact that she always makes a cocktail with every meal. It’s usually something fruity, garnished with fresh blueberries, and she’ll sample it right there for you. I really want to know what goes on behind the scenes at Semi-Homemade. Does she have to go through multiple takes sampling the drinks? Does she demand that they do extra takes? You just know there have been a few drunken episodes where she starts chugging strawberry schnappes from the bottle and yelling insults at Molto Mario.

(Full disclosure: I originally posted a version of this Tyler Florence tribute on my other blog. However, it seems appropriate to post here, as it is TV-themed. Yes, I am lazy. Don’t judge me. Don’t you judge me.)

Â

Dear hunky celebrity chef Tyler Florence,

As I watch your hit Food Network show, Food 911, I’m not sure what I want to pounce on more: you or your Yellow Tail Snapper Baked in a Salt Crust.

Every week you appear on my screen, roasting ducks, sauteing vegetables, and I have to admit that I’m only half interested in what you’re cooking. How am I supposed to concentrate on your frittatas when you’re standing there with your impeccably gelled coiffure, your million-dollar smile and those shoulders, which stretch as far as the horizon.

And my obsession with you Tyler (can I call you Tyler?) is strange, because you are not my really my type at all. You rarely sport a 5 o’clock shadow or any manner of scruff. Additionally, despite being a sensitive caretaker, you are decidedly an alpha-male (I enjoy the betas, myself) — your confidence in the kitchen gives you an air of masculine control. Most noticeably, you are devoid of any real eccentricity, opting for the all-American vibe. You wouldn’t shop at Abercrombie and Fitch (too much frou frou homoerotic fratwear), but I’m pretty sure you signed up for the American Eagle credit card so that you could get 15% off your first purchase of that dark blue fitted sweater (a large) that hangs so nicely off of your frame.

You work out, don’t you Tyler? But you don’t want to make a big thing of it, so you hide it under your stylish duds. You’re so unassuming, the way you hide your powerful arms — the way you reassure and inform that professional idiot you work with on “How To Boil Water.”

Oh, Tyler! I know that you like girls - it’s one of my life’s greatest disappointments. But I can at least watch your show and think about what it would be like to spend cozy weekends in our cabin in western Massachusetts, marinating boneless skinless chicken breasts and playing Scrabble with the lesbians that live next door (that Denise always leaves the triple word scores open!). And if I get home late from work, you’ll leave a plate for me in the fridge with a post-it note on top of the Saran wrap, saying that you hope I had a good day and you’ll see me in the morning.

But I digress.

We may never have a real-life romance, but at least we’ll have our regular dates at 3 p.m. eastern time. Tyler Florence, if I can’t watch you teach smitten Nebraskan housewives how to properly stuff a bell pepper, then is life really worth living?

Farewell,

Dan.