Overheard on the Tube

Like Dr. Ken, I love it when I hear a spanking reference on TV. These aren't as good as his recent TV surprises, but they aren't bad. Interestingly enough, my spanko moments are mostly on cooking shows on the Food Network.

On Restaurant Makeover, executive chef Lynn Crawford is teaching the chef in the restaurant being renovated to make an omelet. As he stirs the eggs, she encourages him to put more energy into it.

"Whip it! Whip it like you mean it!"







The advertisement for another program featuring Lynn Crawford shows a closeup of her scowling face as she says, "I want to go home. I want to pull up my pants and go home." It's an adventurous, outdoorsy cooking show, and she seemed to be on the receiving end.



Guy Fieri gets a lesson in making marinated salmon on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives. The chef demonstrates how to rub the salty mixture over the fish, saying, "You really have to spank it in." Gravlax, anyone?


Moving along to shows not related to food, there was a comedy sketch - the name of the show is long forgotten, but it was probably Mad - with a timid news personality reading the sports results. He is constantly stopped and corrected by an off-screen writer, who patiently tells him to beef up his metaphors and use the usual terms like spanked, whipped, belted, punished and so forth to describe team A's victory over team B. Our gentle newscaster gradually gets into the swing of things, and ends up with some descriptions that are far more violent than our favourite CP words. His creative inventions go so far as to describe how team A "put cement overshoes on team B and dropped them in the river", "ripped off their heads" and "tore out their pulsing spleens".


And finally, in a preview of a new program - Love, Incorporated - about a speed-dating service, the voice of the male partner is heard to say, "At the staff meeting, everyone decided I needed my butt whacked." Immediate cut to a view of him, face down on a table, with his wife and another woman watching. He screams. Oh, my mistake. The butt in question needed waxing, not whacking, and that's what prompted the scream.