Tuesday, February 18, 2014

An Evening with Alton Brown

When I bought the tickets back in June, I wasn't thinking about snow at all. The main thought was, "HaHa I'm dragging my wife to an Alton Brown show." Having procrastinated to the week of the show, we had a little bit of trouble finding a sitter, but we found one. And then, the schools let out before lunch because of the snow and Proctor's tweeted out:

In light of recent weather events in Georgia, there should be no bragging about how southerners handle snow. I think he meant, "I came all the way from Georgia for this, you can make it a few miles." Later in the afternoon, I think Alton (we're on a first name basis now that I've seen the show) was a little nervous that the theater would be empty.

Personally, we got lucky. Our sitter called earlier in the afternoon and offered to come early. I got the driveway cleared and at about 6:40 we were on our way to Schenectady for the show. The roads were cleared. The snow seemed to have stopped completely. We made it to Schenectady like nothing had happened earlier in the day. Parked in the garage around 7:00 and then had some time to wonder around. All of this was much better than my thoughts of ditching my wife after the sitter had canceled and venturing out in a blizzard to see the show on my own. I won't lie. This was a viable option in my head Thursday afternoon. Sorry, Ame. But we made it, together.


Walking up to the doorway of the theater, we were directed to another line to get our tickets scanned and I see a familiar face. Our tickets were scanned by Phillip Morris, the CEO of the theater. I recognized him immediately from having seen his picture in the paper. He had no idea who I was and I'm not sure how he could. I said, "They've got you scanning tickets?" and he replied, "I go wherever I'm needed." And I don't doubt him. He could have easily been backstage playing host to Alton or hobnobbing (yes I just wrote hobnobbing) with the donors that were probably there, but he was scanning tickets at door. I'm impressed, especially because I would have been backstage if I were in his position.

So we headed off to our seats for the show. The show opened with my only complaint of the evening. If you've seen any of the Good Eats episodes that involved yeast, you've seen burping/farting sock puppets portraying the roll of yeast. Started out as a cute joke, but should have ended much sooner than it did and went to the "Enough with the burping puppets" level.

Other than that, the show was extremely entertaining. Songs were great, stories were great, and Alton is pretty quick on his feet. Very funny too. Alton usually tweets out a picture of the crowd, but his phone broke so he encouraged the crowd to send out there own picture. Here's the one I snapped.


There were two impressive food displays. During the portion of the show titled, "The 10 Things I Know About Food" someone a few rows behind me shouted out the moral of the story before Alton had gotten there and by the way Alton looked over at me, I'm pretty sure he thought it was me. So, if you happen to see this Alton, it wasn't me. All in all, a very fun, laugh-out-loud show even if you aren't a food nut. My wife enjoyed it too. If Alton tours again, I would definitely buy a ticket.

On our way out of the theater, we were near Rachael, the woman that was picked out of the audience to assist with the second food demonstration. She was on her phone casually saying, "Oh, nothing much. I just got off the stage after making pizza with Alton Brown." What a great story to be able to tell.

Took a little while to get out of the garage but once the cars started moving, we didn't have to stop until we were out of the garage and turning onto Broadway. Not sure how that physically works in terms of traffic patterns, but it happened. Some sleet started coming down once we hit the Thruway.  Got home, the kids had been well behaved and the sitter was doing some homework while watching MTV. Apparently MTV is still relevant to the youth of today. I would have guess that ship had sailed. Anyhow, I brought the sitter home and the snow really started coming down on my way back to the house. And in the morning there was another foot of snow on the ground.

During the mess that was our Thursday night, the show got packed up and went to Hartford. And Alton got his phone fixed.


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