I don't watch Survivor or Big Brother or any of that type of show, but for some reason or another, I've gotten into reality cooking shows.

There are three series airing at present that I'm following, Top Chef on Bravo, Hell's Kitchen on FOX, and Last Restaurant Standing on BBC.

Top Chef is in Chicago this year and features 16 cooks from different backgrounds who compete against each other for a prize of $100,000. They are judged by a panel of chefs on how well they cook on different challenges and various locations and environments. One chef is eliminated each week.

Hell's Kitchen divides 16 cooks from various backgrounds into teams and they compete in the same kitchen for the entire series. They cook for and serve diners while being bullied, embarrassed, cursed at and intimidated by Gordon Ramsay.  At the end of each episode, Ramsay eliminates one person.  The winner becomes the head chef in one of Ramsay's restaurants.



Last Restaurant Standing takes place in Great Britain and consists of 9 pairs of contestants who compete to open a restaurant with Raymond Blanc. The competing couples in the beginning were twin sisters, brothers, mother and son, and various couples with diverse backgrounds who had never run restaurants before.  Each couple was given a key to an empty restaurant and their goal was was to start-up and create a successful business.  Their progress is judged according to specified goals and then the lowest ranked pairs compete on an elimination challenge.

In each series, the competitors live together and are filmed constantly for additional drama.

I'm anxiously waiting for the next season of:

Does anyone else watch these shows?
    

It's hard for me to understand that the younger generation doesn't know who Bob Hope was. We had to explain to our twenty year old grandson who he was and what he did including his shows on Christmas for American service men.

There is nothing funnier than the truth.  This is my all time favorite movie line.

If a dog was teaching you how to live, you would learn things like:

• When loved ones come home, always run to greet them.
• Never pass up the opportunity to go for a joyride.
• Allow the experience of fresh air and the wind in your face to be pure ecstasy.
• Take naps.
• Stretch before rising.
• Run, romp, and play daily.
• Thrive on attention and let people touch you.
• On warm days, stop to lie on your back on the grass.
• On hot days, drink lots of water and lie under a shady tree.
• When you're happy, dance around and wag your entire body.
• Delight in the simple joy of a long walk.
• Be loyal.
• Never pretend to be something you're not.
• If what you want lies buried, dig until you find it.
• When someone is having a bad day, be silent, sit close by and nuzzle them gently.
  

Joe Kittinger is not a household aviation name like Neil Armstrong or Chuck Yeager. But what he did for the U. S. space program is comparable. 

On Aug. 16, 1960, as research for the then-fledgling U. S. space program, Air Force Captain Joseph Kittinger rode a helium balloon to the edge of space, 102,800 feet above the earth.  Then, wearing just a thin pressure suit and breathing supplemental oxygen, he jumped into the 110-degree-below-zero, near-vacuum of space. 

Within seconds his body accelerated to 714mph in the thin air, breaking the sound barrier. After free-falling for more than four and a half minutes and 17 miles, slowed finally by friction from the heavier air below, his parachute opened at 14,000 feet, and he coasted gently down to earth.

Kittinger's feat showed that astronauts could survive the harshness of space with just a pressure suit and that man could eject from aircraft at extreme altitudes and survive.  More than four decades later Kittinger's two world records--the highest parachute jump, and the only man to break the sound barrier without an aircraft and live--still stand.  

Colonel Kittinger has received the Distinguished Flying Cross on five
occasions, two for his balloon experiments and three for his combat
tours in Southeast Asia. During his last combat tour as Commander of
the 555th Fighter Squadron, his aircraft was shot down.  He was
imprisoned in the infamous "Hanoi Hilton" POW camp for eleven months
before the war ended.