Alton Brown at the 2010 New York City Wine and Food Festival

First off, I’m loving the video quality from Vimeo! That’s how my video is supposed to look. Second, Alton is one hilarious motherfucker. The jokes didn’t stop there, and it wasn’t rehearsed; it was just him. He’s good.

I got inside late, walked down to the front row (in typical Hagan Blount fashion), and sat down next to my new friend Christina DiLaura and started shooting. I’m sure Alton has practiced acting and improv to death because he’s quite comfortable on stage. I’m in an improv class right now Monday nights in Chelsea at Magnet Theatre. Stage presence is certainly one of the aspects of my game that I need to improve before I get up in front of hundreds of people to present. I think I could probably hack it right now, but I know I’ll be better as I practice more.

A very interactive demo, here. Alton took a lot of questions and really engaged the audience. I went to Tyler Florence’s demo just afterwards, and though Tyler is a better cook, Alton was far more entertaining.

This white board was necessary to take up two minutes talking about the chemical makeup of alcohol, which wasn’t tied in to anything. I would have liked to know more about why the compound acts like it does because of the structure and component parts, but nope. Just a sketch.

Pretty sweet set. I am going to have to get a loft in Red Hook and get this setup going.

Alton cooled the ice cream with liquid nitrogen. Everyone has a gag – Alton’s is science. He could have been using the antigriddle for this, though… Co-branding idea for Cuisine Technology, perhaps?

Makers Mark Flambé.

The assistant prepares the Bananas Foster because Alton is a big, important TV star.

A fantastic camera personality – definitely respect this guy.

Advancing my career to this point is going to be a lot of fun.