Here is the evidence:

• Kenny received hearty compliments for his executive chef skills in this episode.  He was clearly talented in the management role.

• Kenny’s dishes in this episode weren’t stellar, but they weren’t awful, either.  OK, the goat cheese got panned at the restaurant table (though I can’t see how a dish consisting of so much goat cheese could possibly be bad), but the beet salad, it seemed, was OK, just a little extravagant.  Once we got to the judges’ table, though, it suddenly sucked a lot more.

• Amanda’s dish was horrible, at the restaurant table and the judges’ table.  And she did not display any additional skills, as Kenny did as executive chef.  If anyone had to go home from that team, it should have been Amanda.  She’s really cute, but we all know there’s no way she’s ever going to make it into the top three.

• We’ve been set up from the beginning to expect Kenny and Angelo to be in the final round.  You might, as I naively did, think that you saw something special in that first episode.  I watched it and thought, “I know how this show will end!  Angelo and Kenny will be in the finals!  They are the best!  I can predict the future!”  But as we all know, and as that quick flash of a disclaimer at the end of each episode reminds us, these shows are heavily produced, and decisions aren’t always based solely on who really deserves to win and who really deserves to go home.  The producers had a hand in that first episode.  They wanted us to anticipate Kenny and Angelo as finalists.  That way, when they sent Kenny home prematurely and without adequate reason, we’d be terribly disappointed and even, yes, furious, and then when they brought Kenny back later, we’d feel relief and gratitude and joy.  That’s the way these things work.  It’s called Good Television.

• Finally, the Pea Puree.  This pea puree has been a key player in every episode since it appeared.  Ed’s puree disappeared.  Alex suddenly had a puree, without enough time to have prepared it!  Alex claimed not to even know Ed had made a puree, but we know that he did know, because the night before someone had told him.  It’s on camera!  (That’s the thing with reality TV — there are cameras around to record almost everything, including thievery.)   Likewise, if Alex didn’t steal the puree, there’s footage of him preparing his own to prove it to us.  So we’re in suspense, but they can’t possibly keep us that way forever.  That would be Bad Television.

Here’s what I think.  I think that the producers and judges are well aware of Alex’s crime.  They’re keeping the revealing footage under wraps for a reason.  That reason?

To BRING KENNY BACK IN AN INCREDIBLE REALITY TV SHOW TWIST TO TOP ALL PRIOR REALITY TV SHOW TWISTS!

At least, to top all previous Top Chef twists.  (I don’t think there are any.)

Here’s how it’ll play out.  Maybe next episode, or maybe a few episodes from now, we’ll get to see that revealing pea puree footage.   Once we know that Alex definitely stole the puree from Ed, we’ll know that our suspicions are correct: Alex does not deserve to still be a Top Chef contender.   The producers and judges will agree.  They’ll determine that in being a thief, Alex has violated some previously undisclosed rule (undisclosed because no Top Chef contestant has ever dared to steal something before ON CAMERA) that stealing someone else’s food on Top Chef is an automatic ticket home.

But you can’t just send someone home and bypass that episode’s elimination round!  What will they do?  How will they solve this problem?

THEY WILL BRING BACK KENNY.

Because Kenny is lovely, and he’s talented, and he deserves to be a Top Chef finalist.

Since there’s not much to go on from the first episode to support my prediction, let’s meet some of the contestants (SPOILER ALERT if you haven’t seen the first episode) and make a few more predictions along the way:

Tracey Bloom: This woman has a hilarious laugh.  She has a hint of meanie in her, but it seems to stem from insecurity more than anything.  She seems nervous.   She also seems likely to turn out to be a total weirdo, though not as weird as my beloved bird Carla, and not as weird as …

John Somerville: This guy got booted because he tried to make a dessert (and failed), something he pretty much admitted from the start was a stupid idea.  It was especially stupid to buy a major component of the dish premade!  But that’s all beside the point.  The actual point is that I would not want to eat anything made by someone with that hair.

Kelly Liken: This girl is cute.  I like her.

Amanda Baumgarten: This girl is really cute.  I like her, too.  And I like how she was the first picked by the quickfire winners (the instruction was to pick your competitors, so the assumption is you’d pick whoever you thought was going to be the worst cook), because apparently hot women can’t cook?  Hm.  Someone forgot to tell that to my mother!  (Granted, Amanda did cut her hand in the quickfire, but I’m hoping it was just first-episode jitters.)

Alex Reznik: I like this dude because he’s bald, the opposite of Somerville above.  Reznik can cook for me anytime he wants.

Arnold Myint: This guy is awesome because his name is Arnold and because he hired a personal stylist to dress him for the show.  I didn’t pay much attention to his food last night, but I suspect he’s all for show and won’t last long.  I hope he proves me wrong, because I’m curious to see what other silly little outfits he’s got planned.

Andrea Curto-Randazzo: This woman’s name, I believe, is pronounced the same way as season 1′s Andrea Beaman, who did not make it far in the competition.  Things should go a lot better for this season’s Andrea if she steers clear of Beaman’s “‘healthy granola’ cooking style.”

Jacqueline Lombard: Jacqueline needs to learn from Andrea Beaman’s bad example as well.  She narrowly escaped being asked to pack up her knives and go last night because she decided to make pate with less butter.  If only Julia Child were around to punch her on behalf of the rest of us who realize that more butter is always the answer.

Kevin Sbraga: I think this guy’s trying to be season 7′s pompous jerk, but he just doesn’t have it in him.  In spite of his best efforts last night, I kind of like him!

Angelo Sosa: This guy is a total douche.  In one of the early clips of the contestants getting to know each other, he’s talking to Timothy and rambles off a string of pretentious resume points, including the following: “I don’t know if you know Jean-Georges, but I worked with him for a long time.”  I love that he drops a name so huge that he’s sure Timothy’s going to be intimidated, but he prefaces it by pretending that Timothy might not know whom he’s talking about.  The whole point of dropping the name is that Timothy is going to know who Jean-Georges is! Angelo continues: “I was actually just in Monte Carlo.  Have you been to France before?”

Timothy Dean: Timothy takes it all in stride, and yes, he’s been to France.  In his one-on-one with the camera, he’s quick to call Angelo’s “buuuuull shit.”  Love Timothy.

Kenny Gilbert: There is nothing I don’t like about Kenny.  He’s got a great personality, so far has behaved politely and kindly toward his fellow contestants, seems at the same time confident enough in himself to take this all the way, and most important, appears to be a very good cook.  Go Kenny!

Unfortunately, Angelo can also cook, and past seasons seem to prize the asshole over the nice guy, with season 1′s Harold a notable exception.  You can do it, Kenny!

So tonight at the pet store, as I was raving about my favorite cat litter to the store owner, I realized I need to spread the word on the Internet.  And since of the eight people who might still read my blog, six or seven of them own cats, I figured this was a good place to start.

Cat people, you’ve got to try Ever Clean!  This stuff is amazing!  You know how the mainstream bands like Fresh Step say they’re odor-free, and then you go to nuzzle your cat and he smells like he rubbed deodorant and dust all over himself?  Ever Clean isn’t like that.  Not only does it mask the cat smells inside the box completely–completely!–the litter itself doesn’t smell one little bit.  It’s amazing.  We buy a 42-pound bag (which, granted, is a lot of litter), and it lasts us at least a month, if not two, in our two-cat household.  You hardly ever have to change it–just scoop it out every day or two and go on your way!  The cats love it.

The only downside, I suspect, is the price.  If premium litter is anything like premium cat food (Fromm dry and Wellness wet for our Pans), it costs a pretty penny.  But it is worth!  It!

And these Pans?  Definitely worth it.

I wish I could say that it wasn’t my fault, that I didn’t deserve it.  The fact is, though, that I planned the whole thing out in advance.  Not the heckling–it didn’t occur to me that my behavior would invite ridicule!–but I did check the Yankees website that afternoon to make sure that knitting needles weren’t on the list of items prohibited in the stadium.

Yep, for some reason I thought it would be acceptable to knit in the bleachers at Yankee Stadium.  And during a particularly exciting play, I got tired of standing with the rest of the crowd and sat back down to continue my project, before the play had been completed.  The dude behind me proved that he is a much bigger Yankees fan than I am (of course, I’m not a Yankees fan at all, so it wasn’t hard) by saying, to no one in particular (to the back of my head, I assume): “Grandma’s got to finish knitting her hat!”  (It wasn’t a hat; it was an elephant, for a friend’s baby due in August.)

OK.  So I deserved it.  I shouldn’t have been knitting at a baseball game, much less in the Yankees bleachers, much less during an exciting play.  Still, I left the game that night with my preference for the Mets affirmed.  I haven’t been to a Mets game yet this year, but I expect that when I do, and when Jose Reyes does something magnificent, no one will even notice that I’m knitting through it.

Apparently, Saturday’s game would’ve been a perfect opportunity to test this theory.  Just before the game, more than 400 people set a Guinness World Record for …

400 crafters, 0 hecklers. (Levine - New York Mets, via nydailynews.com)

the most people crocheting in the same place!  They only had to crochet for 15 minutes to set the record, but my guess is that more than a few kept it up during the game.

So I won’t be returning to the bleachers, but I haven’t sworn off Yankees games entirely.  Mostly because of these:

Garlic fries! (via seriouseats.com)

Chris took me to Coney Island yesterday for my birthday (which was today).  I’d never been before, and Chris had a hunch I’d love it, just like last year, when he had a hunch I’d love fried chicken at Sylvia’s followed by Cirque de Soleil.  We started things off with Nathan’s:

Chili cheese dog, bacon cheese fries, pepper & onions dog. In retrospect, I would've preferred a regular old hot dog, but I can't complain.

After that, our tummies needed a rest before we hit the coaster, so we headed into the park.  Chris won me a stuffed animal at the horse-racing game. (We were the only two players and a winner was guaranteed, but he was hero nonetheless.)  I had my card reading, which I am dying to talk about, but if I want to believe that the fortune she told me was true, I’d better believe that her warning about the bad luck was true, too.  We went on the haunted house ride, the bumper cars, the Thunder Bolt and the Wonder Wheel.  The bumper cars stood out for their fun factor, and the Wonder Wheel stood out as the single most terrifying thing I’ve ever done.  Check this thing out:

See the inside circle of cars? They swing back and forth.

At one point, you’re swung out away from the ferris wheel so all you can see is the ground far, far below you.  My entire body was sore when we finally got off because I’d spent the whole ride clenching every single muscle in fear.  The 7-year-old girl in the car in front of us was totally unfazed.  I’m pretty sure that if I’d ridden this ride with the twins when we were kids, they would’ve been climbing all over that car, making it swing even more than it already was.

I had my fortune told, we stopped briefly by the Freak Show, which was definitely the low-light of the day, and then on to the cyclone, which was thrilling.  Who do you think was more scared?

Next we had ice cream and beer on the boardwalk.  We almost felt like we were on a beach vacation, until we turned around.

Check out that backdrop! Apparently something called Luna Park is supposed to open later this month, but we saw no sign of its construction.

For our final act, we stopped by the aquarium to say hi to some of Chris’ friends, including this electric eel:

It's electric! Hey, did you hear about the drunken prank some dudes played recently, when they coaxed an eel up their passed-out buddy's butt and it ate his bowels? I don't think that eel was as big as this one.

For dinner, we hit New Corner, an old-school Italian restaurant that made a delicious carbonara and had the good sense to top its veal with prosciutto and mozzarella.  We timed our meal perfectly to catch Homeboy Chris lose the Kentucky Derby.  We’re pretty sure everyone else in the restaurant had money riding on the race.

We got home much later, and much more exhausted, than we’d anticipated, but it was my 30th birthday (observed).  We had to rally!  Met Nate and E at the museum for First Saturday, when they let you in for free and serve you beer and wine and play live music.  It was wall-to-wall people, so we didn’t stick around for long.  Ended the night with friends at Hot Bird, a new spot on Atlantic with outdoor picnic tables.  We walked a crooked line home and collapsed into bed at 3:30 a.m.

Today, for obvious reasons, we didn’t move much more than from bed to couch, except to make a run to the grocery store for diet cream soda and Tostitos cheese dip (the birthday girl gets anything she wants, Chris said!) and to set up the air conditioner in the living room to face the record-setting heat.  The thing about setting up an air conditioner, which is already an unpleasant job, is that it’s always really hot when you do it.  If you’ve ever tried to get a portable air conditioner into a window equipped with a sliding security gate in an apartment situated above the boiler room of a 100-unit building during 90-degree New York heat, you won’t be surprised to hear that it was not my finest moment.  Against all odds, Chris and I survived in tact, mostly because he realized halfway through the job, at the height of my meltdown (and with that heat, it really did feel like I was melting), that the best thing for everyone would be for him to just get the hell out of the room.  It was a slightly uglier but ultimately more successful variation on 2008′s air conditioner installation attempt, when Chris and I nearly met a premature end but luckily decided after 10 minutes of attempting to install a unit in my living room that it wasn’t worth it; two years later that air conditioner sits in its box under my bed, still never installed or used.

So I’m 30 now, and I have a bunch of messages on Facebook to prove it.  I kept track throughout the day — and of all the voice mails and emails and texts.  A birthday reminds you how large the network of people who care about you really is, and for that I’m grateful.  And this is no different from any other day, but I’m also grateful for my three boys, who were the perfect companions for today’s lazy version of a birthday celebration.  And with that, I’ll leave you with a video of our newest addition, Wade, in which he discovers ice:

(I should mention that Chris picked up more Spanish than I ever expected, and was not shy about trying it out.  By the end of the trip, he was doing most of the ordering and bill-paying for us, solving the problem of not knowing his numbers beyond 10 by just handing over enough money to cover a bill and get change back.  This left him with quite the pocketful of coins by the end!  It was great to watch his confidence grow and adorable to see him slide by with an “un Presidente normal grande por favor” — as polite in Spanish as he is in English.   He was even dropping his “s”s a bit by the end!)

We stayed up way past our bedtimes, and it was a perfect end to a perfect trip.  I had two of the most special men in my life beside me (and Jesse insisted on sitting next to Chris, both at the game and on the balcony), in a place that has been the scene of  some of the most important events of my life.  At that moment, I couldn’t have asked for anything more.

The view the next morning from our hotel balcony.

One last Presidente at the airport.

We said goodbye at the airport, and as usual, I was terribly sad.  I’m lucky to see my family as often as I do, and I know I’ll see Jesse soon again soon, but our visits are never long enough.  I was sad, too, to be leaving the DR for the third time, after such a short stay this time (and such a different stay!).  But what’s hard for a chronic crier like me to explain to noncriers (like Chris, who did a lovely job nonetheless of comforting me) is that more often than not, happiness is responsible for the tears.  Sure, I was sad, but I was only sad because my brother, the DR, and my vacation with Chris had made me so happy!

I took Kahlil Gibran’s The Prophet with me that first summer in the DR in 1997, when I was 17 and terrified and about to do something I’d find ridiculously difficult and incredible and inspiring and come out of it with my life changed forever.    I read from the book every day (I still have the now-tattered copy), and at the end of the summer I used its verses to caption the scrapbook I made of my two months living in the small, remote village of La Jagua.  Here’s one of my favorite sections, called “Joy and Sorrow”:

Then a woman said, “Speak to us of Joy and Sorrow.”

And he answered:

Your joy is your sorrow unmasked.

And the selfsame well from which your laughter rises was oftentimes filled with your tears.

And how else can it be?

The deeper that sorrow carves into your being, the more joy you can contain.

Is not the cup that hold your wine the very cup that was burned in the potter’s oven?

And is not the lute that soothes your spirit, the very wood that was hollowed with knives?

When you are joyous, look deep into your heart and you shall find it is only that which has given you sorrow that is giving you joy.

When you are sorrowful look again in your heart, and you shall see that in truth you are weeping for that which has been your delight.

Some of you say, “Joy is greater than sorrow,” and others say, “Nay, sorrow is the greater.”

But I say unto you, they are inseparable.

Together they come, and when one sits alone with you at your board, remember that the other is asleep upon your bed.

Verily you are suspended like scales between your sorrow and your joy.

Only when you are empty are you at standstill and balanced.

When the treasure-keeper lifts you to weigh his gold and his silver, needs must your joy or your sorrow rise or fall.

Speaking of joy, here’s what I encountered this morning, hours after I’d gotten up:

Papa and the Panth!

Of course, it's raining again. But it stops just in time for the game!

Jonron!

We couldn't believe the alcohol options available!

Jesse, Chris and Mikal (who joined us for the game) insisted on taking this picture with the energy-drink girls.

We were so happy. Chris declared several times that there was no bar he'd rather be at that night.

Mikal made a new friend (who we decided must have been stood up--check out her game outfit!).

Jesse made a new friend, too. (Only in the DR would people sit right next to you in a near-empty stadium!)

This candy-seller took a moment from his work to explain the game to his son. Later, completely charmed, I bought half of his candy tray.

We scooted up really close after the ticket-checkers retired for the night. I don't know who that is waiting for his at-bat; mysteriously, everyone on the team was named "Samsung"!

As if it weren’t exciting enough just to be at a baseball game in the DR, the game quickly took a wild turn.  In the third inning, our team, the Tigres, were down 0-10.  It was bleak.  Nelson Cruz had hit a grand slam, one of two so far for the Gigantes.  Presumably, the catcher was complaining to the home plate umpire about his ball/strike calls, and the ump threw him out of the game.  The manager rushed the field to object, and he too was quickly booted from the game.  But he didn’t leave.  No, he wanted to fight it out.  He got in the ump’s face.  They were yelling.  The ump tried to move away, and the manager got back in his face.  All of a sudden, the manager was throwing a punch, and the umpire was falling backwards to the ground!  (It’s unclear whether the punch actually made impact.)

The crowd went wild!  We were aghast.  Chris had never heard of anything like it.  We were sure the manager’s career would be over, and sure enough, he’s been banned from the Dominican Winter League for life.  (You can read all about it on the Internets!)

I missed the punch, but here’s some of the aftermath:

Seguridad was immediately on guard.

I don't think the umpires quite knew what to do, since this kind of thing happens, well, never.

The Licey fans seemed energized by the encounter and spent the rest of the game badmouthing the umpires, chanting “Umpire raton!” then “Umpire motherfucker!” then “Umpire gay!” then, in Spanish, that he’d gotten what he’d deserved.  This was just the icing on the crazy cake.  The umpire, Chris tells me, has refused to return to Dominican baseball, understandably scared and offended.

In other news, I couldn’t get over the announcer’s enthusiasm in announcing the names of the Licey batters.  Here’s Matt Tupman’s last go, to end the game with a slightly-less-embarrassing loss of 6-10.

To their credit, the Tigres did have the bases loaded at the very end, and a grand slam would have tied things up.  Alas, it was not to be.  Nevertheless, it’ll surely go down as one of the most memorable games any of us ever attend.

As you can see, our first guagua was rather roomy.  So roomy, in fact, that before our trip was complete, we were transferred to another, totally packed, guagua.  Jesse ended up with a Dominican child or two on his lap.

After three guaguas and a cab, we made it to our hotel in Santo Domingo and headed out to el conde for some shopping.  On the way, we passed la calle Jose Reyes.  I imagine the street came before the baseball player and his adorable poto, but I took a picture anyway.

I didn’t have my camera at the time (I took the above picture later), but I rushed back to get it and returned to find this:

The backstory is that the night before, we’d been guided to our hotel by a young boy named Jose Miguel.  Jesse and I tried to speak to him, but he only had eyes for Chris.  Chris had read that the Red Sox are popular in the DR, since so many Dominicans have played for the team.  He hadn’t been able to find a Boston hat in New York (understandably) to replace his old one, so he brought his Brooklyn Cyclones hat instead.  Jose Miguel turned to him on our walk and said, “Hey! Hey!”  When we finally figured out he was trying to get Chris’ attention, Jose iguel pointed to the Cyclones hat and said, “Boston? Chris was thrilled.  We talked about Boston and Jose Miguel’s favorite players and his favorite position (second base and pitcher).

The boy in the above photos is Jose Miguel.  He was playing on the beach when Chris got out of the ocean, and Chris was a little shy to approach him, but Jose Miguel was quick to invite him over to play catch.  And by the time I’d returned with the camera, they were hanging out talking.  Talking!  (Mind you, Chris at this point has a Spanish vocabulary of about 10 words, including cerveza and ron.)  Chris filled me in later.  They used a lot of gestures and sand-drawing to establish such things as whether they were righties or lefties.  At one point, Jose Miguel bent down and wrote “Haiti” in the sand.  He built up a pile of sand to represent the country and then wiped it out with his hand, saying “muchos muertos.”

The sight of Chris talking with this little boy, and playing catch with him, melted my heart.  Soon Jesse joined in for a game of pickle, which Jose Miguel suggested.

Jesse and Chris showed their age (and previous night of beer-drinking) by lasting just a few rounds.  All three had an amazing time.

Here are some video captures of the day:

Chris learned another valuable lesson: How to order a Cuba Libre.

The street of Juan Dolio. There was only one street!

At breakfast, we’d sat on the deck of one of the “fancy” restaurants I’d rejected the night before.  While we ate, a young man shimmied up the palm tree next to us and knocked down the coconuts to his friend, who tried to cushion their fall.  If the coconuts break on impact, they can’t sell them.  They had about a 50% success rate that morning.  For the trivia-hungry out there, Chris read in our guidebook that every year, there are six deaths-by-coconut in the DR.

Look closely at the top of the photo for our peaceful coconut-grabbing friend!

I also checked my email (and my bank accounts) at some point on Friday — Chris made it the whole trip without breaking down! — to find that the rumor was true: My company came through with raises this year!  I should go on vacation more often.