The last face you will ever see.
Occasionally I’ll switch on the television midmorning and there she’ll be, grinning inanely and clutching a knife or some other potentially deadly kitchen utensil.
But, if you discount the arsenal of lethal weapons, on first impression there’s something quite wholesome about the ‘merican celebrity chef Rachael Ray. With her chipmunk-like facial features, gravity busting bouffant, pastel coloured loungewear and relentless smiling she resembles a kind of idealised vision of the millennial soccer mom. And it’s clearly an image that Ray panders to – she rose to notoriety because of her rootsy, informal cooking style and down-home approach to preparing meals. The reason she is so popular is because she cooks exactly the kind of food that you wished your mother had made for you. And, with a daily TV show, a procession of cookbooks and her own brand of kitchenware, there’s every chance that you see a lot more of Rachael Ray than the woman who birthed you, or any other blood relative for that matter.
But you aren’t related to Rachel Ray. And, what’s more, you should be very wary about letting this woman infiltrate your home. Having seen her show three or four times now, I am convinced that Ray is a megalomaniacal, power thirsty, parmesan obsessed freak, hell bent on brainwashing daytime TV audiences.
If you aren’t a naturally suggestible person and have never succumbed to a cheese-based addiction then I would advise you to tune in so that you can see for yourself. This is no normal cookery show. When I first stumbled across it, I instantly thought that there was something off about The Rachel Ray Show, it was like it was some kind of crazed, warped, nightmarish version of a real cookery programme. The studio is aggressively decorated with too-bold colours that collide with brain-jarring effect, the cameraman tilts and pans and zooms like a deranged World War II searchlight operator and, to be fair, the poor b*****d has a real job on his hands trying to keep up with Ray, who pinballs around the stage, one moment beating eggs, the next fondling an unnecessarily large wedge of cheese, only pausing momentarily to speak in tongues or say “parmesan” backwards.
And then there’s the audience. An insane bunch of gurning ghouls, frothing at the mouth and screaming for more ways to add cheese to things. There’s a frantically ecstatic atmosphere in the studio, the kind you only expect televangelists and Lady Gaga to engender. Rachel Ray crowds don’t applaud, they go f*****g apesh*t. Every time Ray stands at her flour flecked pulpit and mentions that parmesan might be a nice addition to the flavours we have here, there is a world-ending thunder of applause, it’s the kind of noise that, heard live, could easily rip the top of a man’s head off. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if, after the taping is concluded, Rachel Ray’s live audience members limp off into the darkness maimed and bloody, muttering something about cheese (still in a state of bliss all the same).
I have to admit that I’ve never seen more than five minutes of The Rachel Ray Show. I’ve always felt like I was having a brain tumour and had to change the channel. It’s like accidentally walking into a cult ceremony – you know that you have to leave before they start chalking out the pentagram and getting out the goat’s heads, but you want to watch for as long as possible without being sucked in yourself. Having only had limited doses of her show, it’s hard to work out what exactly Rachel Ray’s doctrine is or what the subliminal messages are urging her followers to do. It surely has to be something cheese related – perhaps she’s setting herself up as some sort of dairy priestess or, and this is a terrifying thought, as a kind of Cheese’s Christ. Whatever it is she’s trying to do, we can be certain that she means business.
You have been warned.
livin' in 'merica 