Saturday, November 15, 2008

Chef Ramsay's Hypnosis Powers

The other night as I was diligently working on storyboarding the entire Madison 2 novel out, Cody was in the front room playing a video game. After a while, I realized that I was no longer hearing the cheerful sounds of machine guns and death cries. Instead, I was hearing a lot of bleeped out words. Naturally, I assumed he was watching Cops (one of my least favorite shows of all time).

I put the final touches on the storyboard, taped the whole thing up on the wall above my computer, and fled my office for the evening. I fully intending on commandeering the TV, for Cops and I do not coexist peacefully in the same room. I was quite surprised to see that all the bleeping was coming from a regular TV show, Kitchen Nightmares. In less than two minutes, I was sucked in by Chef Ramsay's dramatic flare—and the horror of the restaurant which he was trying to revamp. Bugs, slimy meat, expired foods, dirty plates. Ew!

The show, however, had two unanticipated side effects.

1. It made me hungry. Isn't that odd? I mean, I'm watching a show about a disgusting kitchen, but all my stomach sees is food. So I made us a snack while we finished watching the second show in the back-to-back Ramsay lineup.

2. It made me want to open a restaurant. I'm not a chef. I've never owned my own business. I know the astronomical failure rate of restaurants. I don't even know what type of restaurant I'd want. But watching the people on the show who've made every bad decision they could and seeing that they're still in business made me think, I can do this better.

Fortunately, Ramsay's hypnotic sway over me didn't last until the next morning. My ambition is still pure and true: I want to be a full-time, New York Times bestselling author.

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