Alton Brown Has a Very Hairy Chest

Noticeably so.

Scott and I met him yesterday at Wild About Game, a food event that included a wild game cookoff of which Mr. Brown was a judge. I kept asking people working the event, "when do we get to meet Alton Brown?" And since no one knew, I just followed a waiter to the judges' room and peeked in. There he was! He had a shitload of food to taste, so Scott and I took off for awhile and got back just when the last dish was being presented. We waited outside the room and when he stood up I ran over to the door and pounced on him! He was visibly startled by my sudden presence.

I nervously asked, "would it be totally inappropriate if I asked you to sign this?" and presented my old copy of On Food and Cooking, an early food science tome by Harold McGee. He looked at the book, looked at me, and said, "You want me to sign this? Are you sure?" He sort of oohed and aahed over it for a minute, and I joked he could sign it "McGee" if he wanted. He sat down and started writing:

Then he glanced at my tattoo and said he'd never seen a girl with DNA on her arm before. I was really nervous and shaky, which is strange because he seems pretty normal. I felt that I'd already bugged him enough so I didn't bother asking for a picture with him. Then I thanked him, shook his hand and giddily ran back to my table. Yay!

I wanted to send him another thank you, but it seems that people have been sending him rude things on his site, so he's disabled the contact part of his page. Oh, well.

Now I just have a figure out a way to meet Tony Bourdain....