iBeth: Good Eats Fan For Life

I have been a fan of the show Good Eats for years, now. In fact, I've purchased tv chef Alton Brown's books and actually cooked from them. If you haven't seen the show, this article from Wired magazine gives the flavor of it:

Think of Good Eats as a cross between Julia Child's Kitchen Wisdom and MacGyver. It's the only TV cooking program that goes inside appliances (the crew rigs "ovencams" and "fridgecams"); regularly riffs on pop culture (the "Man Food Show" episode rejected a romantic breakfast in bed in favor of corn dogs and basket burgers); shuns single-purpose kitchen gadgets (fire extinguishers excepted); and deploys props assembled in the garage (like a giant squid tentacle with suction cups from a bath mat). For Brown, it's all about making food - and science - fun. "Even people who don't actually cook can enjoy the show."

I can attest to that last statement--my husband and both kids enjoy the show as much as I do. Emma is old enough to follow the events depicted, and Amelia likes to dance to the theme song. In fact, I requested the full series of dvds for xmas and everyone was looking forward to them . . . until we discovered that the Food Network charged $240 for them, which is absolutely outrageous, but that's another story.

Anyway, you can imagine how thrilled I was to learn that AB was coming to my hometown on a book tour. I arrived at the local Barnes & Nobel at around 3:40 (would have been earlier but parking was scarce) and was astonished to see several clerks at the front of the store, ripping open boxes of his latest book and handing them to the steady stream of fans coming through the door. They handed me a pale pink ticket and told me there were at least 400 people in front of me. The spacious, two-story store was absolutely packed by the time AB arrived at 4:30p. He went up to the balcony and proceeded to dazzle everyone with his charm--another surprise for me, since my experience has been that above-the-line entertainment folk are generally not terribly engaging when they have no script to follow. Fryguy at Metroblogging Orlando, a bookstore employee, agrees with my assessment.

As AB stood on the balcony to answer questions from both floors, he joked that he felt like the Pope. People asked questions about his favorite comfort foods, about cooking, about his motorcycles, about other characters on his show, about his cooking equipment, about his set. When a man shouted out a question without raising his hand, AB said, "Sir, if you don't raise your hand, you aren't asking a question, you're heckling," and then called on the person standing next to him--and everyone laughed and applauded, including the "heckler." One woman asked him for a job--he asked what she did and when she said, "A chef," he said that there wasn't enough money in cable tv to pay for chefs, but that she could submit her resume on his website. Then someone else called out, "I'll do it for the food," and he said, "Oh, and THAT inspires confidence." He warned us about an error on p. 238 in which a recipe called for 25 mg of vitamin C (to help the yeast work). The very final copyright, AB told us, "thought it would be much more convenient to change that vitamin C to . . . . aspirin!"

A young woman on the balcony was apparently blogging the entire event from her iBook, but I couldn't find her blog. She asked AB to start his own blog, but he said enough of his ramblings were on his site already. Turns out he does have a blog here; no feed though, or at least I couldn't find one.

Anyway, as I said, I arrived at about 3:40p. Shortly thereafter, the store ran out of his books. He arrived at 4:30p. He began signing books at 5p. I hung around the store and read an entire novel (written by a colleague--it was great and now I can't wait for the sequel) and STILL they hadn't reached my color. I realized he was posing for pictures and made my husband drive over with the digital camera. At 8:40, pale pink was finally called and I started waiting in line. By 9:30 I had reached the front of the line, and many, many people were still waiting. His blog says he greeted more than 800 people; if so, he must have been there at least until the store closed at 11p.

For a man who had been signing books for five hours, he was incredibly thoughtful. He shook my hand and introduced himself ("Hi! I'm Alton.") I thanked him for staying so long, told him how much everyone waiting appreciated it, told him it was a thrill. He replied, "It's a thrill for ME" as he signed my books. He asked how the recipes had turned out; I told him, "great on the custard, not so good with the poaching."

"Well, poaching takes some finesse," he said, as he put his arm around me and posed for a picture. "Not that you don't HAVE finesse, just that you might need to practice for awhile before it really starts to work for you." And he wished me luck.

Wow! I thought I was a fan before--now I am a HUGE fan.

Only one regret: even though I was in the store for SIX HOURS, I somehow did not plan how the books were to be signed. Then, when I reached the front of the line and had to write attributions on sticky notes and affix the notes to the title page, I blanked. I requested one book signed to my husband alone and the other two to both of us. I'm sure that it is a huge faux pas to get books signed to the same person. I should have asked for one book to me, one to my husband, one to my children (and Emma would have been very excited to see that he had written her name in the book). Duh! I just have to hope that he writes yet another book, returns to my city on a book tour, and sticks around to greet all his fans one more time.

A couple of nice side effects of the long wait: I met a reporter for a local paper who showed up later that week during our faculty union protest rally (and I hope he reports on it--he was actually assigned to cover a tangentially related story). And I met a very nice student from my university--she stood in front of me in line and took the picture of me & AB with my camera, and in return I took her picture with him and sent it to her. I gave her my card w/my email address on it (just in case the photos never got to her gmail) and she said, "Wow! You mean I've been talking to an actual PROFESSOR? Wow!" I was quite flattered. And I bought a light wedge! Still need to try it out.

Comments

I am SO jealous! I absolutely adore AB!

Posted by: Elisabeth | January 22, 2005 at 12:06 AM

My 11 year old is a huge fan, as am I. AB is like a rock star in our house. We (heart) Alton. You lucky duck!

Posted by: rochelle | January 22, 2005 at 08:19 AM

Oh, this is SO cool! I too am a huge AB fan - he was here a few weeks ago (early December?) and I would SO have gone to get a book signed, except I missed the news that you had to sign up for ticket in advance. I was so bummed. How great to hear that he's as great in person as on the show! (and this will probably be of less interest to you, given the PC references in your e-reader post, but he is a dedicated and devoted Mac fan, which I consider another very strong point in his favor. ;-D)

Posted by: New Kid on the Hallway | January 22, 2005 at 10:07 AM