Live Blogging the Food Network: Alton Brown

Alton is spazzing about vanilla. I don't think there's a better verb for what Alton does than spazz, except maybe 3-D spazz: he spazzes in every dimension. He attacks a thing with science, with sketch comedy, with fact, with lore. He's the fixed, terrier-like obsession of Jeffrey Steingarten with the incontrovertible knowledge of Harold McGee. Don't get distracted by the gimmickry-- we can all learn from Alton Brown, that spiky, gosling-haired goof. He takes nothing in a recipe for granted, seems to reexamine the basics of everything. He heated the cream for his creme brulee just now in a plug-in hot-kettle!

Right now he's doing a sketch where he's sitting in a limo between a fake movie executive and an oversize fake vanilla bean that looks like a black man's testicle.

Got to love this wacktard. Oh now he's using a power drill to core pears and screaming at the pear to die. Crazy bastard.