The Inevitable (First) Cupcake Post

Well here it is. The first post about cupcakes. There's probably going to be a lot of these. Last night's episode of Sarah's favorite show, Cupcake Wars, was a great example of priss meets punk. The bakers were competing to have their cupcakes at some event to benefit legendary skater Tony Hawk's foundation (which I assume is to get poor kids skateboards. Or skate parks).

Now, a little background: Sarah loves cupcakes. In fact, she feels at least partly responsible for their recent surge in popularity. That part may or may not be true, but she does watch this show a lot. And she's gotten pretty good at making her own cupcakes. Finding "cupcakeries" in whatever city we happen to be visiting is always on the agenda (which is usually 1. cupcakes, 2. record store, 3. other things).

Let's get on with things. The commercials for this episode made it seem like Tony Hawk would be the guest judge. Well he was obviously way too cool for that and sent Andy MacDonald instead. So the judges were as follows:

Candace Nelson. I really wish that I had gotten a good screen shot of the face she's usually making. This will have to do. Last time we were in LA, Caplan drove us past the original Sprinkles Cupcakes. The line was ridiculous, but I think Sarah still got a picture out front. Pretty sure the place we ended up at was WAY better. I realize you don't know who Caplan is, but you should probably get used to me randomly mentioning my friends. It'll probably happen at least as often as posts about cupcakes.

Florian Bellanger. A really weird dude who owns a shop Sarah wants to visit in NYC. I realize that maybe 2 people will get the little episode-appropriate tribute above, but the 2 of you are my target audience. So congratulations! Anyway I happen to do a pretty decent impression of Florian that involves a horrible French accent.

Andy MacDonald. So apparently Airwalk still exists. That's cool, I guess.

And as always, the host:

Justin Willman. He's also a magician. And currently Sarah's #1 on her celebrity list. Just like random mentions of my friends, you should also get accustomed to Friends and Simpsons references as they make up a majority of my arsenal. At one point last night, Andy skates across the set and does a trick. I'm gonna be honest, I couldn't have told you what it was even if I was paying attention. But he stops in front of Justin, who in turn coughs up a cupcake out of nowhere. Sarah yells out, "YAY! YAY! MAGIC!!!" and was 100% serious in her reaction.

So now you know all about Cupcake Wars and I'll start talking about last night's episode. The first round is all about taste. When you think skateboarding, you think of the greatest place on earth - Southern California. And when you think Southern California, apparently you think of health food. So they have to make cupcakes with all these healthy ingredients that sound awful. The Z-Boys would've never eaten any of this. But I bet Stacy Peralta has some really weird diet now. As expected, everyone hates all of the cupcakes. The judges only liked one cupcake by one contestant, who I'll refer to as "80s girl" and there'll be more on that later. The dude who got booted the first round was from Austin, and made a fart noise in his exit interview. Possibly the best part of the show.

Funny enough that we felt the need to watch it again in slo-mo so I could take a picture of it. So on to round 2, which is 50% taste and 50% decoration. Lots of chocolate skateboards, and surprisingly, they completely ditched the whole health food thing. I don't remember much about this round except the girl who got kicked off was named Something Aguilera. The eventual winner was having trouble with a frosting mix, and rather than just shut off the mixer, she just let it keep running and spilling stuff everywhere. And Florian decided it was necessary to smell a cupcake in addition to the other weird stuff he does besides just eat them.

Final round. Time to call in the carpenters. I don't know which one is which, but Sarah says the one with more tattoos always wins. The designs the bakers came up with were pretty awful, by which I mean neither one of them was a half-pipe. IT'S THAT SIMPLE, GIRLS. The 80s girl at least used skate decks as shelves, though her pseudo knowledge of skating terms bothered me. But not nearly as much as Justin, because he just made it sound really awkward. Towards the end of the first round, he dropped "dude and dudettes." Does he not know that we're all dudes? Back to things about 80s girl that bothered me though. The name of her shop was something like '83 Cupcakes, because she was born in '83 and considered herself a "total '80s girl." Because she was 7 when the decade ended? Much like ourselves, her formative years were in the early '90s. Who is she trying to kid by loving the culture of the first 7 years of her life so much? No one is paying attention to that when they're 7. I mean, I definitely don't obsess over things that happened when I was 2 years old... She's probably nice though. Am I the only one who hates '80s culture?

80s girl lost. The other girl, who I thought was maybe 1/4 Asian and Sarah thought was in no way Asian, had a decent display that was basically all matte black. Which I liked. On to the big celebrity event! One of the first things we see...

The Hawk with cupcake on his face. We've all been there. You know who else has? And is still a celebrity?

Carrot Top. This is his best work.

Well, that's about it. Surprising that I made the first cupcake post and not Sarah? Yeah, me, too. Screw Flanders.