Naked Brunch: Burroughs Takes On 'Top Chef All-Stars' Finale

[From the POV of a resurrected Burroughs turned Hollywood gossip writer, Naked Brunch is my periodically updated, bizarro parody column for Patrick DeLaney's Nations-Strange.]

There I was staring. Saw it on the Glow Box, like a rube, eyes like sandpaper. Took it in like a shot of junk in a dark alley. Blais vs. Isabella? Sounds like a spectral French whore with a glow-tipped iron pricking hot olive skin on a gondola ride.

And Padma's the Cat, an electric magenta happenstance. I'd drink her oily Darjeeling on the petals of a nubile rose, pulling on her braids like the ropes of a Ghost Ship. I'd thunder like a cloud: "I'm your IBM Powder Man, up the nose and your ever-living end."

Perched like a sideways U with a shakey-hand drum, long-dripping stale joe, my eyebrows raised. Richard, Blais, "Blaze," made his chip raise: Hungarian foie gras ice cream. Mike's hand better be good. $200,000 good. Huffing-pod-in-a-fruit's-bathroom good.

Then Gail wigged. Mikey Isabella countered as a Bronx Zoo cobra. Pepporoni sauce. Pork shoulder. Like Moussalini's ghost with glinting tall boots, the whim of a giant among day-glow thieves. None lesser than a Buzz Disk in Mexico City. A real dazzler. Colicchio glimmed like an ice-eyed Hannibal, Alps and all.

I took a break. Too tense. Drank a Clamato and ate Popchips from a dirty drawer.

Then back on the Sitter. Corduroy sewage for a ruddy lap. Padma streams on my satellite eyes like a rainbow Hindu WASP. Krishna, take the wheel! And just in time for Judgement Day. High chins and ballpoint pens.

Blais makes a soft-eyed plea like some blind pigeon on the lip of a volcano. Not much for him, raw talent withstanding. He's an overthinker. But Mikey's a Bronx-throated dealer opening his coat, assuaging me to "dive head-first into the Long Time." My kind of creep.

Now the decision. The throbbing music voodoos my ear like a white-eyed shaman. The tribe has spoken: "Blais is Top Chef."

I need some junk.