"WoWoWee" Winners of the Week || Arnel Pineda of JOURNEY + Tiffani Faison of TOP CHEF

WoWoWee is a Pinoy TV variety show, a phantasmagoria of confetti featuring group dances set to seizure-inducing strobe lights, musical performances, and a revolving game show format that promises profound "life changes" for the poor and working classes who comprise its most devout audiences. Honestly, the show demands its own O!I feature: class manipulation! Cronyism and controversy! Diasporic circulations through the international cable channel, TFC (The Filipino Channel)! That insidious theme song! What I'm really doing herrrre today, though, is swooping in for our own twisted version of wow[WoW]ee--an ephemeral new feature offering proppers in the form of rock horns and jazz hands to some real life "Winners of the Week."

One of our honorees is about to undergo a life-changing Journey of Rock Star proportions. The other deserves a sistah-ly drum circle for finally breaking through the Top Chef glass ceiling.

[Fig. 1: Arnel Pineda, Journey's new lead singer; Fig. 2: Tiffani Faison, winner of the Top Chef Holiday challenge].

ARNEL PINEDA, the frontman for the hard-working Pinoy coverband, The Zoo, has been tapped by the post-Perry (post-Augeri, post-Soto) fellas in Journey to be their new lead singer. Apparently, OG guitarist Neil Schon scoured YouTube and came across our man Arnel doing this:





As the Tricky Troll exclaimed after hearing Arnel's dreamy, open-throated yawp: "It's like Steve Perry before coke killed his vocal chords!"

When Kunmora Lee Simmons sent CBB and me notice of this development in poplandia, my first instinct was to do a cultural nationalist endzone dance, or--as I suggested in an email to la Kunmora--to wave a giant foam finger in the colors of the Filipino flag. [Right: A tee I've always regretted not buying.] Maybe it's because I've been known to croon a Journey tune or two myself at The Smog Cutter (my own personal Cheers, so hands off wannabes!) Or because I know damn well what it means to travel with a Pinoy band workin' hard for the money on the Southeast Asian hotel lounge circuit. (Thank you for the music mom & dad!) But damn it, I'm with Arnel all the way to Pechanga or wherever his 'highway run' takes him. And I'm announcing now that I plan to become a resident tomboy in his barkada.

Predictably, in the midst of all this fanfare, some puti rock jocks and wanky purists are now deep into some thick-necked, racist hazing of Arnel, with remarks as benign as "you are no Steve Perry" (courtesy of the not-as-thick-necked Idolator), to complaints about his accent, red-blooded proclamations about keeping Journey an "All American band," and straight-up EVIL experiments in photo shop [L: from the melodicrock.com forum. Jim Ayson of Phimusic.com sketches out the controversy here.]

My "Foolish Heart" loves Steve Perry as much as anybody else who spent their adolescence in Riverside, CA. "Don't Stop Believin'" is my ur-text, and I even owned a Columbia House cassette tape of SP's 1984 solo album, Street Talk ("Oh Sherrie...our love...holds on"). So do y'all really have to go to the accented, trained monkey stuff?!? To be fair, there are some Journey fans out there who admit to the fucked-up-edness of fan forum responses to Arnel. LAWoman on the Melodic Rock forum (pg 5) comes to mind. (Note: she is NOT another one of my alter-egos). Truthfully, I'm most sensitive to some of the more subtle, colonialist arguments about karaoke and rote imitation currently being made about Arnel's Perry-with-a-difference delivery: the kind of stuff CBB and I discussed in our joint riff on the CPDRC videos at ASA this year. I'm dying to tsismis about this with CBB when she rejoins our coven of codependency this week. Suffice it to say that we here at O!I won't stop believin' in Arnel. Butanes up!...Faithfully, bro. Faithfully. [Above: Arnel in the middle. With his new band.]

TIFFANI FAISON "ain't your bitch, bitch" anymore. The Top Chef season 1 runner-up returned to do battle in this week's Top Chef Holiday Special and became the first female contestant in the show's history to win top honors. She and season 3's Anistonian good girl, Casey, have come closest to taking the regular-season grand prize of $100,000, plus a grab bag of culinary tie-ins.

To win the $20,000 prize Faison says she will use towards her new restaurant in L.A., the culinary badass had to best top dudes and fan favorites Tre and CJ (both from season 3), season 2 feudies Marcel and Betty, season 1 castmate and "top somelier" Steven, and the lesbiana haircraft posse, Sandee (season 3) and Josie (season 2). Tiffani is probably one of the least popular cast members ever to excel on the show, despite being game enough to headline a Greek island culinary cruise for Olivia. (Faison identifies as bisexual.) I've always appreciated her no-nonsense attitude (if not her penchant for multi-colored bandanas), in the face of the show's, and the culinary world in general's, blatant sexism. [R: Tiffani, flanked by Josie and Tre, passes off her vessel of yams to Steven (far right). Betty, owner of L.A.'s GRUB kicks it far left].

Tiffani deserves the $20K just for having lived through Dave's fagacious waterworks and infamous "I ain't your bitch, bitch!" breakdown at judge's table after a team challenge late into season 1. With too many tunes in the key of "me me me me me" in the Reality TV world, it's nice to see someone who doesn't preen and moan--aka someone who's a little boring--take the prize home with some mad skillz. [L: Tiffani gets her own catchphrase tee ] Oh what I would've given for a slurp of that butterscotch pudding!

Lesson of the week: try this at home. - (KT)