Here's a New York Times profile on Brooklyn-based artist Thu Tran, whose internet video series Food Party ("a mind-bending, non-reality cooking show") makes the leap from the world wide web to the Independent Film Channel this week: A Foodie With a Taste for the Surreal.
The show is basically a place for Thu to share her surreal and crazy love of food. "Shot on location in a technicolor cardboard kitchen as well as other foreign and exotic cardboard locations, each episode will or will not instruct you on how to prepare wild gourmet multi-course meals with ingredients you probably have on hand in your kitchen already, such as pretzel rods, eggs, narwhal lungs, bizarre plot twists, secret ingredients, and pizza."
Did I mention there are puppets? The show started in 2007 and quickly gained a considerable cult following on the web, garnering endorsements from sites like metafilter.com and New York magazine's Grub Street blog, and eventually attracting of executives at IFC. "A perfect fit," apparently.
Food Party is now part of IFC's Tuesday night Automat lineup of movies and short-form programming. In its TV incarnation, episodes run about ten minutes each and "make no pretense about offering any actual cooking advice." Awesome.
I was completely unfamiliar with Food Party before I read this article, but the brief clip I just watched is so freaking weird and surreal and wonderful... and now, it's the only cooking show I ever want to watch. It takes a strange, mad genius to come up with this stuff. The television edition of Food Party premieres this Tuesday at 11:15 pm on IFC. For more information, go here.