Iron Chef Boyardee. (Village Voice)

That, I figured, was an important consideration. I had been told that the Food Network threatened anyone who attended with a million-dollar fine if they revealed anything about the episode before it aired. But there are no worries now; the episode finally showed up on TV a couple of weeks ago, and it only confirmed what I’d realized as I sat in the audience last year:

Iron Chef America is more bogus than even I had imagined.

I knew the emperor had no clothes when I saw the chairman’s nephew in a B-movie action flick on cable.