Celebrity Cooking Showdown: A Motley Crew

In the world of strange Hollywood pairings, I think this one takes the cake:

Growing Pains star Alan Thicke is set to host the celebrity cooking show being developed by Puff Daddy/P.Diddy and Wolfgang Puck.

The actor will co-host Celebrity Cooking Showdown with The Food Network's Sandra Lee.

Where do we go from here?






Let's hope this show fares better than Thicke of the Night.

Just check out the list of participants:

Celebrity participants facing off in the kitchen include: supermodel Naomi Campbell, Allison Sweeney (NBC's "Days of our Lives"), Big Kenny (country music's superstar duo, Big and Rich), comedic actor Tom Arnold ("True Lies"), football star Tony Gonzales (Kansas City Chiefs), rapper/actor Ja Rule ("Assault on Precinct 13"), professional volleyball player/model Gabrielle Reese, musician/reality star Ashley Parker Angel (MTV's "There and Back") and the reigning Miss USA 2005 Chelsea Cooley.

This is kind of like Iron Chef meets Surreal Life meets American Idol. Needless to say, I can't wait!

Paula Deen, the Butter Queen

We all know Paula likes her some butter. But drinking melted butter? This is Fear Factor-style!








I'm just afraid that if Paula keeps this up, she may have to contact Sandra Lee for a good bypass surgeon.

(Images TVGasm)

Checking in on Rachael Ray

Rachael Ray was on Oprah yesterday. She's on Oprah fairly regularly these days, as Oprah will be producing Rachael's upcoming talk show. I've covered Rachael pretty extensively in the past, but I had to take a break from her because she was driving me batty. Yesterday I tuned into Oprah to see if Rachael was still annoying, or if she had finally calmed down. Had her handlers reined her in?

Here's your answer to that question:



Rachael was as crazy as ever. She led us on a tour of the street food of NYC, and these stills are from the first 10 seconds of the segment:







Ho boy. She actually did look a lot better in that segment than the last time she was on Oprah, where she looked quite a bit heavier and had people (okay, just me) speculating that she was pregnant:



First, she takes us to get coffee. Actually, she calls it "cuppa joe" and then explains that her original term means "coffee" for the rest of us.



Rachael then takes us to get Indian food, bratwurst, and Chinese.



Standard $40 a Day or Tasty Travels nonsense.

Then Rachael was live in Oprah's studio cooking a dish called "You Won't Be Single For Long Vodka Pasta". Really:



Whatever. I keep thinking that Rachael will return to being the sweet little Food Network host we all loved so much circa 2004, but it looks like that's not going to happen.

I remember reading an article in the first issue of Every Day with Rachael Ray where Rachael says that she hardly eats and instead smokes and drinks coffee all day long (and we all know how she loves her wine). While she looks good for 37, she can hardly keep this up forever:





And all the she rasps like she's developed a three-pack-a-day habit. Really, it's closer to "respiratory problem" than "sexy".





I will continue to hope that Rachael's overexposure will abate and her personality will go back to normal. After all, I used to like Rachael! Unfortunately, I must continue my Rachael hiatus for now. Until she straightens out, I say, "Peace out, Rachael!"





P.S. It's pretty bad when the Rachael Ray segment was the second weirdest part of the Oprah show: