Ah, those lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer! What better time to relax in a La-Z-Boy and gaze your favorite reality show? Join the craze—our commenter live blog of Top Chef is about to start! Hurrays!

If you haven't participated in one of these summer-lulz-fests before, here's all you have to do: Turn on Bravo, start watching the show at 9 pm Eastern, and post wry quips and observations about the proceedings in the comments section below this post. Other commenters will be doing the same—with raucous and risible results! Raucous and risible, I tell you! Don't believe me? Check out this selection of a few of my favorite comments from last week's live blog and see for yourself!

Other memorable moments from last week's fling included these:

  • We had fun listing the gay-sounding things uttered by self-proclaimed very-not-gay congressman Aaron "Teal Belt" Schock during the quickfire challenge, such as: "Kevin, you were the first item I tasted," "there's a lot on that stick," and "Angelo.. wow it was fireworks in my mouth."
  • When Schock began his quickfire introduction with the words, "the first day in congress is spent on ethics," commenter belltolls responded: "It is also the last day spent on ethics!"
  • Most of us concluded that Alex probably did steal that pea purée—which at least made things more interesting. In fact, you know what would be really interesting? If Alex stole something every episode from now on, like Swiper the fox from Dora the Explorer. In fact, I suggest we adopt "Swiper" as Alex's new nickname.
  • We made a great drinking game out of a single rule: Drink every time someone says "pea purée." That got us all pretty damn wasted. Tonight, let's try drinking every time someone says "food!"
  • Kelly spitefully used all her salt rather than sharing it with Amanda—then the judges panned Kelly's dish for being too salty. How's that for karma? As commenter ghiagirl noted, "It's just like a Guy de Maupassant story!"

Damn, you guys can be so damn learned, what with the literary references and such! But I've learned a few things too...about tonight's episode, anyway. I watched the preview clips! Here's a sampling of what to expect:

  • Alex will say: "I wanted to grab the goat, but Amanda grabbed it first"—which sounds like a great euphemism for something a lot more interesting than what probably really happened.
  • Stephen (aka Gollum, aka Frank Burns)—assigned to prepare Brazilian cuisine as part of an "embassy challenge"—will ask, "Does Brazil even have a cuisine?" Of course they do, Stephen: Brazil nuts! So please cook a great big plate of those, and then kindly pack your knives and leave this show already.
  • One guest judge tonight will be Marcus Samuelsson, the Swedish chef who won Top Chef Masters, and will probably disappoint me again tonight by not saying "bork bork bork!" He never does! The other guest judge will be José Andrés, the Spanish chef who—Wikipedia tells me-–is widely credited with popularizing tapas in America. I love tapas, because I can never decide on just one thing to order when I go to a restaurant . So I guess that makes José my culinary hero!

Speaking of heroes, that's what all of you folks who comment here every week are to me. Did you know that? You're the heroes of live-blogging, and unsung ones at that. Except that I just sang your praises, so now you're sung heroes, I guess. Congratulations!

Hopefully, I'll be joining you tonight – but I'm in a house with a painfully slow Internet connection, so it's looking dubious, unfortunately. But don't feel too bad for me, because I'm on vacation in Maine, and it's beautiful here! So if I don't see you tonight, I'll eat a lobster in your honor. Have fun!

[Image via SLWorking2's Flickr]