Alton Brown is less nerdy now
Sep. 14th, 2019 10:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
breakinglight11I've been watching the new episodes of Good Eats that Alton Brown has been putting out lately. I'm enjoying them, as I've always enjoyed the show. They're definitely as high quality and embody the same approach as the original. But I am struck by how different Alton himself seems.
His old persona basically screamed GEEK. He wore bowling shirts and had mad scientist hair, he embraced his corny sense of humor, and he did lots of cutesy bits, like involving a fictionalized version of his family and broad silly caricatures. I think it was likely part persona— at the time, geekery wasn't as mainstream and he may have felt like that level of self-effacing awareness about it may have been necessary to make people interested in food from a scientific perspective. But clearly he thought this was the right way to present himself for his work.
Now... he's much more conventionally "cool." He dresses better. His jokes are a lot less cheesy. There a lot fewer "bits," and even the few he has tend to be lower-key. His whole bearing is a lot more serious and less silly, more conventionally masculine in persona. I know he always was into things like knives and motorcycles, but now it's a little more pushed to the forefront. It's not exactly like night and day, but he's clearly become a different person, or at least settled on a different persona, by this point.
It's been many years, and of course people grow and change over that time. It sounds like he went through some challenging life stuff, including a divorce and a crisis of faith, in the intervening time. Of course that would leave you different. But it makes me a little sorry. I always like his unself-conscious nerdery, that he was not embarrassed to like silliness and geeky science and dumb jokes. Now he's just a little more like everybody else.
I mean, whatever. If he prefers people to see him now as Low-Key Daddy Dom (heh) rather than Food Geek, there's nothing wrong with that. But I miss the slightly sillier and more unique persona.
His old persona basically screamed GEEK. He wore bowling shirts and had mad scientist hair, he embraced his corny sense of humor, and he did lots of cutesy bits, like involving a fictionalized version of his family and broad silly caricatures. I think it was likely part persona— at the time, geekery wasn't as mainstream and he may have felt like that level of self-effacing awareness about it may have been necessary to make people interested in food from a scientific perspective. But clearly he thought this was the right way to present himself for his work.
Now... he's much more conventionally "cool." He dresses better. His jokes are a lot less cheesy. There a lot fewer "bits," and even the few he has tend to be lower-key. His whole bearing is a lot more serious and less silly, more conventionally masculine in persona. I know he always was into things like knives and motorcycles, but now it's a little more pushed to the forefront. It's not exactly like night and day, but he's clearly become a different person, or at least settled on a different persona, by this point.
It's been many years, and of course people grow and change over that time. It sounds like he went through some challenging life stuff, including a divorce and a crisis of faith, in the intervening time. Of course that would leave you different. But it makes me a little sorry. I always like his unself-conscious nerdery, that he was not embarrassed to like silliness and geeky science and dumb jokes. Now he's just a little more like everybody else.
I mean, whatever. If he prefers people to see him now as Low-Key Daddy Dom (heh) rather than Food Geek, there's nothing wrong with that. But I miss the slightly sillier and more unique persona.
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}