What could be better than riding hundreds of miles on the back of a motorcycle? Eating the whole way up the Mississippi River from Louisiana to Minnesota. And that's exactly what TV personality Alton Brown did for his TV Series and subsequent book, Feasting on Asphalt.
I was watching Food Network one night when I saw the commercial promoting the new series. Intrigued, I checked it out online. It started to seep in exactly what that meant.
If the show was airing, that meant that they were done shooting. If they were done shooting, that meant they had already come through town.
SONUVABITCH!!!!!
I was pissed, livid that a fan like me missed out on an opportunity to see Alton in action.
Being an amateur stalker, I go to Alton's site every now and again, but it was about a month and a half ago I saw that he was going on a book tour to promote the book, Feasting on Asphalt. And, he was coming back to town!
So I waited, and today, after work headed on down to the Mall of America. Picked up two copies of the book, and began the wait.
It was about 4:30 when I got there. The book signing was scheduled for 6pm, and I was about the 150th person in line. One row ahead of me, was another TCMC member. So at least I got to do some chatting while on line.
The B&N people had us sheep squish together so they could get more people shoved into the back of the line. So Jason and I were no longer able to talk. Out came the iPod.
6 o'clock came and Alton came out for a 10-15 minute Q&A session. He was pretty quick on the comebacks. One idiot from Le Cordon Bleu actually asked him "What would you do for a Klondike bar?"
Alton disarmed the student, and ended the exchange with "What would I do for a Klondike bar? Nothing. Now go get me one."
Alton did a great job fielding the questions from the younger kids, but the one that brought down the house was an answer to a question posed by a young twenty-something guy from the back of the line.
"Alton, thanks to your show on pizza, I have a date this weekend. What should I serve for dessert?"
"Where is this date, at your house?"
"Yeah, at my apartment."
"Well I think the best thing for dessert would be breakfast."
After the Q&A, it only took about another hour and a half to make it up to the stage for my 45 seconds.
When I was "on deck" a guy came up to take my camera. I asked him to start taking as many pictures as he could snap off.
Alton introduce himself, and I responded in kind. I told him that he was signing for my daughter and my mother who couldn't make it to the signing. As he was saying "That's nice of you." he noted my TCMC tshirt.
He pulled aside my jacket so that he could read it.
"President and founder." I said proudly, pulling a TCMC business card from my pocket, "And we'd love to have you out on a ride, if you come through again."
He took the card, "I'm honored."
"The honor's all mine, sir."
And we fell into some chit chat. I told him that thanks to him, I was now doing the cooking at Thanksgiving and Christmas (see Good Eats Roast Turkey). And about how Shelle doesn't like cooking shows, but enjoys his as he is both informative and entertaining.
It was pretty cool meeting the guy, and he seemed to be an alright dude. But how pissed was I when I got home and looked at the pictures the guy from B&N took?
