Holy Top Chef, Batman!!!

Wow. Yesterday was really fun, but started out rather embarrassingly. See, I forgot that I took a day off at work. I knew Top Chef was coming to Madison, but figured that since Orpheus and I had not been successful in getting online tickets, we were not going to get into the show. Apparently, however, I asked for the time off before tickets became available. So, I came in, and thirty minutes into a day I was sure would be one of the hardest I’d ever done, my supervisor comes up and says,

“So, Aeffchen, why are you here today? Come over to my computer… See? It looks like you have today off.” I played it cool, asked to go upstairs and call around…. Cleared spending the day together with O… And then, got the hell out. Once I reached O’s place, we quickly decided to hit Gotham for bagel sandwiches for breakfast, and signed up for overflow seating beside the Top Chef trailer on MLK St. just off the Capital Square. We didn’t get into the first show, and then had to walk all the way back to Orpheus’ place, and move my car… We went back, wandered around the small Wednesday Farmers’ Market taking place on the drive leading up to Monona Terrace (the Frank Lloyd Wright-designed, but not FLW-executed, disaster of a convention center on Lake Monona), and didn’t get into the second show, either… So we went back to O’s place after moving my car, then tromped back out for the third show. After a great deal of finger-crossing and nail-biting, my name was called from the overflow list, and Orpheus and I mounted the steps into the mysterious Top Chef Tour trailer… And climbed into a very comfortably air-conditioned, miniscule hall with 40 production chair set up so the audience could see what the two presenters were making inside the tiniest kitchen area I’ve ever seen.

The celeb chefs we saw yesterday were Dale and Stephanie, from the third and fourth seasons of Top Chef, respectively. Dale, of course, is a sexual interest for both O. and myself, and, as he entered the kitchen, Orpheus undid a gratuitous couple of buttons on his shirt… I never liked Stephanie much on the show, but in person, she’s pretty cool. They had worked together before Top Chef, and are both Chicago-based chefs, so it was really neat to hear their kitchen banter while they cooked. Nothing terribly juicy came out, but apparently Hung was a smug chump in real life, too, though they did say he wasn’t nearly as asinine as the production team made him out to be. Really, most of the time, they were just talking about how they didn’t know their own schedule for the next day while filming, and how less than 2% of what was filmed ever made it on-screen. The camera crews were with them until the last person went to sleep every night. How horrible! Oh, yeah… And they totally had no-sex clauses in their contracts.

The neat little tomato/fruit salad with half-homemade ravioli (made with wonton wrappers, as they didn’t have enough room for a pasta machine) and shaved goat cheese in a balsamic vinaigrette was quite good, especially considering that they were chatting it up and taking questions the entire time they were cooking. Afterwards, we hung out in line, and got autographed photos for free of both of them. Orpheus asked Dale to sign his chest, which Dale, prudently, I think, refused to do in public with so many kids around. Stephanie signed O’s photo “Orpheus, I TOTALLY would’ve signed your chest!!! Love, Stephanie” It was really cool. Plus, pretty early in the day, O. had found a wad of cash on the street corner with over $60. I felt a little bad about it, but we drank pretty damned well, yesterday, so all wasn’t lost. Plus, we went out to dinner at my favorite bar/restaurant, and had my fav. pulled pork sandwich in town. Yay, Nottspil!!! Unfortunately, our order was f@#$ed up by the waitress the first time, and they rushed our order for the correct sandwiches through the kitchen… Mine was perfect, but O’s gave him indigestion as it was swimming with pork fat. They usually press the meat to drive out as much of the grease as possible.

When it got time for him to live-blog the DNC last night, Orpheus kicked me out of his apartment. I wandered up to the square AGAIN, and read at the Torando Room for a bit. O. got me a book called World War Z: An Oral history of the Zombie War at the library, yesterday. It has me super-excited, and I even got hit on (I think) by the world’s hottest over-forty bartender because of the book. He engaged me in a smoldering discussion of zombie cinema. It was nice. Oh, and Orpheus and I actually managed to have some short-winded but much needed buttsex yesterday, thank God. It was, all told, a pretty awesome day.