That’s ‘All Right,’ That’s ‘Okay’

… I’ll change the channel anyway.

“Ten-Dollar Dinners” – a new show on Food Network – is somewhat interesting. The host, Melissa D’Arabian, does put together some simple and fetching recipes that I might use in the future.

She’s the most recent winner of “Who’s the Next Food Network Star,” emerging as the top Food Network prospect from a field of a dozen hopefuls.

I set my DRV to automatically record her first few shows, just to see if I like what she does. I did the same thing when Guy Fieri won the other year. After this week’s episode, I have decided to cancel my automatic recording of her show.

See, I noticed half-way through that she was punctuating her continuing sentences with either the phrase “All right,” or the word “Okay.” It started to bug me. So I started it over and compulsive fool that I am, I counted them.

Ms. D’Arabian said “All right” 20 times, and “Okay” 14 times. Not only that, she often continues her run-on sentences with “a-a-a-a-nd.” I didn’t count those, it would have required watching the recorded episode again.

Sometimes these things can be charming – like when Martin Yan counts the number of knife cuts he makes when slicing ingredients, or when Guy Fieri refers to ingredients as “bad boys," or when Anne Burrell does her arm/head/body shimmy. They only do it a couple of times a show, not over and over and over again as Ms. D’Arabian does.

Now you too are going to notice it since I’ve called it to your attention.

But that’s all right, that’s okay, I’ll be your friend anyway.