Before I am done with TiFaux, I won’t be happy until I’ve turned it into a vaguely indie version of Bop or Tiger Beat.

That is to say, I want to keep one of our steady focuses on boys and why they are so dreamy. Forget quality writing, forget interesting performances — I’m a man who knows what he likes. While I may put up this exterior of a savvy, sophisticated bon vivant (and don’t even front — I know I do), I’m really just a schoolboy scrawling Mrs. Daniel Gyllenhaal into the margins of my notebooks and dotting the i’s with hearts.

On that note, I’ve made no secret of my love of the tattoos. There are few things hotter than a well done sleeve of ink (other than, perhaps, holding some sort of ethnic baby. And, even then, that’s more cute than hot).

So I’ve rounded up a list of some of reality TV’s hottest tattooed folks. I’ve even thrown in some ladies to satisfy our minority of heterosexual male readers (and, hopefully, growing readership of lesbians). Not that we don’t love all our readers just the same.

At the end, you get to vote for your favorite. Hooray!

Trainer Bob

Show: The Biggest Loser

Oh, Bob. Such a contradiction. On one hand, you’re the Southern drawling, caring nurturer. You contrast sharply with Jillian’s unsmiling taskmaster. On the other hand, your tattoos speak of a strange edge that is otherwise undetectable. It’s very intriguing.

Kat Von D

Show: LA Ink

Kat Von D is the star of LA Ink, spin-off of the TLC show Miami Ink. It’s the show where people get all tatted up and explain why their near-death experience being bitten by a shark is the reason why they need a tooth emblazened across their back. Von D is very eighties metal in her style (leather, studs, hair, hair, hair). It makes sense that Wikipedia reports that she is dating Motley Crue’s Nikki Sixx.

Kevin Christiana

Show: Project Runway

The most recent season of Project Runway was bizarrely tattoo heavy. Even bird-like winner Christian was inked up with a picture of a squid. And because Rami was unadorned, we must turn our attention to token straightie Kevin Christiana. Kevin’s tattoos were a bit punk rock — or maybe I just think that because he usually wore black.

Angie

Show: Survivor — Palau

Angie is from an obscure season of Survivor (well, they’re all kind of obscure after a certain point), but I really have fond memories of her. She was the tattoed, awkward loner who never excelled in gym class, blah, blah. But then she turned around to totally dominate in challenges. She got cut lamentably early, but I’m still a huge fan.

Mark

Show: Top Chef

The good thing about these featured walking canvasses is the fact that their tattoos are compared with something unexpected (a smiley, centered fitness trainer; a fashion designer). With Mark, it’s a curly-headed cook with a New Zealand accent. I like the tribal design, even though in this picture he looks pretty ridiculous with the aviator shades and sleeveless number.

Starbuck

Show: Battlestar Galactica

I know this isn’t a reality show. In fact, it’s about as far away as you can get. However, I can’t let a notable tattoo like this go unnoticed.  Anders has a matching one, if you recall.  I like how it’s kind of tribal, which conflicts with the fact that they’re on a spaceship. That’s the good thing about Battlestar, when you get down to it — they focus on real issues and characters without getting bogged down on the science fiction (which is just an effective backdrop).

Here’s the current status of this season’s contestants as of episode 8 and where they ranked. High means the contestant appeared in the top but did not win, low means the contestant appeared in the bottom but did not get kicked off.

And using an arbitrary Tifaux scoring system (2 points for a win, 1 point for either a quick fire win or appearance in the top, and -1 point for appearing in the bottom) here are the rankings, and our best guesstimate, on who will appear in the top and bottom of tonight’s episode:

I really wish I could muster up some enthusiasm for this season of Top Chef. While it’s not necessarily bad, it’s also not extraordinarily compelling TV.

To make things worse, they’ve taken my beloved Kiwi — curly-mopped, hot-tattooed and Tom-hating Mark. I haven’t necessarily grown an insane, dead-eyed devotion to him the way I’ve loved others (here’s looking at you, Rami), but he made the time go by a bit easier.

Even though we’re only halfway through the season, it’s looking pretty clear who the top four are going to be. I’m sure they’ll pull a Tre at some point and eliminate a front-runner, but there are seemingly only a few real contenders.

So, let’s round up the leaders so far — neatly divided into two boys and two girls.

Antonia - Coming off the heels of a double win in this most recent episode, I think she’s the odds-on favorite to win the whole shebang. Just think — 2008 is year of the first female Biggest Loser and potentially Top Chef. It’s like Susan B. Anthony’s dreams are coming alive right before our eyes.

Richard - I have no real reason to dislike Richard except for his hairdo and his creepy comment about “making babies” in last week’s episode. I mean, I get what he means, but the phrase “making babies” makes me think of assembly lines and doll parts and Vincent Price putting a cookie heart in front of a machine. In any case, he’s constantly winning and does all of the Marcel-ian molecular gastronomy without being a mad scientist about it.

Stephanie - I knew that Stephanie was in trouble at the beginning of last episode when they started paying attention to her at the beginning of the episode. It’s like the Chekhov-ian pistol-firing concept applied to reality TV — if a person is featured at the beginning of the episode, they’re generally going to win/get cut at the end. She may be a bit less consistent, but she’s got a good track record of wins.

Dale - I don’t care for this one at all — mostly due to his crotch-grabbing rant during the weirdo fight post-Zoi’s elimination. Seems like a pretty good cook, but I’m silly and petty and only base my opinions on personality rather than talent.

Through backroom dealings and top-level negotiations, we’re able to bring you a preview of tonight’s Top Chef. That is to say, a publicist sent us a clip and I uploaded it to YouTube.

Hopefully we’ll figure out exactly what was going on in that weird, crazy fight at the end of last episode. And see if Nikki finally gets kicked off.  Sweet girl, but constantly on the bottom of the heap.

After a few episodes of lifelessly ambling along, Top Chef finally started to show some fire in the belly last night.

The main portion of interest came in the form of a bizarre post-script after Zoi gave her parting chef-ituary (the part where they say “I just love to cook” and put on a hard-eyed smile and say “you haven’t heard the last from me”). The editors chose to cut to Spike yelling at Antonia yelling at Spike. They were arguing in chef speak, saying things like “stand behind your dish” — it was almost (not quite) as dorky as Elan shrieking about paprika to Marcel way back when.

Then Dale gets involved, which causes Lisa to chime in, which gives them a whole reason to get mad at each other because Dale was mad at her for being a Negative Nancy.

I don’t know that I really want the season to disintegrate into aimless bickering — we all remember the horror and cruelty of season two — but it’s nice to see some competitive spirit and intrigue with personalities.

Ooh, ooh — and there was this part where Jen clapped her hands really hard like she was excited about getting into a fight. And then she kicked a metal folding chair against the wall. It was pretty awesome.

Aside from that end part and a promising “Next on Top Chef,” the episode was standard fare. Judge Tom is still unbelievably obnoxious, Padma is pretty window dressing and Gail is lovely but barely there.

Last night’s Top Chef featured a massive, incomprehensible brawl. I won’t give away any of the specifics, but suffice to say there was swearing and screaming and chair-throwing.

The haphazard and time-jumpy way it was edited naturally made me think of this. Start at 5 minutes and 30 seconds for the full effect.

Eerie, right?

And if someone could explain what the hell happened to those chefs, I’d be very grateful.

UPDATE: Here’s the clip from Top Chef (spoilers on that page) for comparison and research.

So, Top Chef’s on tonight — in case you forgot. And here’s a teaser…

I have to admit, I’m really waiting for the competition to heat up — even though we’re only two shows in. On the first episode, they got rid of the person who was clearly out of her depth (just like Clay last season) and on the second episode they got rid of the mild, harmless lady. It was kind of pitiful.
I’m waiting for things to get interesting. It’ll take more than pottymouth Andrew to truly get me engaged. Not even the adorable Kiwi is enough to get me through the entire season.

Even though the post is already two weeks old, I wanted to draw your attention to my inaugural post introducing the cast of Top Chef. We received a comment that I found hilarious.

The comment reads: i know spike from clearwater…he rocks…how do i message him to say helllo and chear him on…and to let him know his cats are ok?

It’s really not uncommon for people to think that the TiFaux folks have a red telephone next to our beds that can call Zac Efron, Spike from Top Chef and any other obscure television personality. In the case of Mr. Efron, Maggie’s “soaring, flying” post from way back when is a prime example of this phenomenon.

But this comment made me laugh.  And I’m not trying to be mean, I swear, but I just thought it was funny that Spike had cats and that he needed to be told they are okay.

To that end, I’ve made the following graphic. Please feel free to download and post it on your own blog to get the word out on Spike’s cats. If you post it, e-mail us at tifaux -at- gmail -dot- com and we’ll totally link to you.

And we’ve got a clip for ya, right here… (I guess I should say that if you don’t want to know about the challenge ahead of time, you shouldn’t watch it).

It’s weird seeing all of the cast members in real life and not in their Bravo web site Glamour Shots (the ones we saw all last week — that was great, by the way, not having to come up with a single blog item idea all week). The New Zealand guy looks a little less Lord of the Rings-y, that guy Dale looks less smug (a good thing).

Top Chef will air tonight, trying to fill the time slot (and void in our heart) left by Project Runway.

Jennifer

Age: 35

About her: Brooklyn-born, currently residing in San Francisco.

Ill-informed snap judgment: She works at a restaurant called COCO500. I presume that means she works at a tropical restaurant staffed by robots. Or, at least, a boy can hope.

Lisa

Age: 27

About her: A Canadian! Of the bandana-ed variety.

Ill-informed snap judgment: I don’t know if the fact that I’m the same age as Lisa will make me want her to succeed or fail. Obviously, I have some competition issues I need to get over.

Richard

Age: 35

About him: He claims to be just like an artichoke.

Ill-informed snap judgment: Given the show’s past with people with mohawks, I thought this meant that this would be the show’s official gay. Sadly, Richard is married, expecting a child and has two weimaraners.

Ryan

Age: 28

About him: He’s a mensch. He organized a 1,000 bag lunch giveaway last Thanksgiving for the poor.

Ill-informed snap judgment: I’ve got nothing.  Anybody?