-Expert Commentator Mike Vilshire
-from Marina del Rey, Ca.
-It is now 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, October 22 on Christmas Island in the Pacific Ocean. The East Coast, Europe, Africa, and Asia have all entered Saturday, with only the West Coast, Alaska, Hawaii, and Enitewok still on Friday.
So it seems pretty safe to say that we're pretty much out of the woods when it comes to Harold Camping's doomsday prediction for Friday.
But the day and the week leading up to it was so hectic that from a Feast Fest standpoint, you might actually have believed the earth was ripping apart at the seams.
Exhibitions were staged, water mains broke, exhibitions were delayed, exhibitions were restarted, water mains broke again, exhibitions were delayed, exhibitions were restarted, exhibitions scored lowly, Brianna Galen-Ames announced a possible return, a conference was held, Galen-Ames, Dall, and Pertovsky were booed and heckled, another conference was held, Galen-Ames was booed again, a meeting was held, they'll try to make the Head Chef table fit five in a couple years, another conference was held, Galen-Ames was booed, Galen-Ames stormed out, Galen-Ames broke her ankle, Galen-Ames returned home, Mei Okoworth left, European expansion was announced, Lynn Avi gave up her 2014 LaLa exhibition, Zurich was listed as the most likely Euro-expansion city, the Kitchen Pass lottery was staged, the Ticketline went down for maintenance--twice, and Vanderbilt won the Managerial Award.
So, given all that...I'd say Mr. Camping can take some solace in the fact that if he referred to the world of Feast Fest, yes, well, that world nearly did come crashing down this week.
Meeting & Conference Week is always busy, tiring, and full of headlines, but much more so than usual this time around. By Friday, most of the Galen-Ames drama had quieted, but the final day of M&C Week flurried with intense meetings, gavelbanger debates, and rapidfire conferences that left nearly everybody with a headache.
How 'bout we eat at Thank Goodness it's Saturday instead?
Galen-Ames dominated the news of Feast Fest Tuesday through Thursday, but other little things kept popping up, the biggest of the little being the announcement of the potential plans for making the Head Chefs' Table a five- or six-chef station in the near future. The Mason duo nodded at each other, remembering the days of 2004 and 2005 when there was just as much controversy over having two head chefs, let alone six. And the 2010 addition of Jim McAllister to the Head Chefs' table, to take effect in November, required nearly as much logistical and contractual dentistry. Yes, the apostrophe move to the right from Head Chef's Table to Head Chefs' Table was successful, but now that several years have passed under that designation, FF leaders seem to think that the title is a limitless one. If they're gonna have six up there, they might as well rename it "The Head Chefssssss' Table." Or how 'bout, since it would contain all six chefs who are known to even the most clueless FF viewers (apart from those on the lower tiers of power and with lower NCA ratings), "The We're Better Than You And There's Not A Thing You Can Do About It Table"?
Now, please understand it is not remotely my intention to disparage the wonderful toptier cooks in the Mason duo, Jim McAllister, Lynn Avi, Joe Pasik, Jan Stephan, Lisa Choi, and others. (Speaking of which, why haven't the flare-ish talents of Choi been thrown into the six-member Head Chef Panel discussion?) They are some of the best chefs in America, perhaps even the world, or at least some of the best outside Paris, France. It is just that there is a reason that the setup is the way it is. I can see and accept having Jim McAllister as a Head Chef; heck, I could even lobby for the elimination of the designation of Head Sous-Chef, seeing as whoever holds that position is/was/will be a de facto second (from 1995 to 2004), third (from 2005 to 2010), or fourth (beginning in 2011!) head chef. But to rid the event of the other upper echelons seems to me purely discriminatory--segregational, even. It says to the crowd, "These six chefs are important. These others aren't." Which is not true at all; though some chefs have more power than others and take on different tasks than others, when the DigIn bell rings at 7:02 p.m. on November 24, 2011, it will be--mark this--all 61 chefs who have, in their own proportion, equal to that of all the others, contributed to the meal that ends up on the plates of the some 1,500 Dining Hall attendees and some 2,750 Beachview Resort Room Service orderers.
Now, attention must be turned to the matter of Brianna Galen-Ames. Scarcely has there been a three-day period where one Feast Fest entity, certainly not a chef, has been reviled so much and for so long. But mark it down in the recordbooks, friends, from her naive speech Tuesday to her post-conference broken ankle Thursday, Brianna Galen-Ames was etching her name as the first ever Public Enemy #1 of Feast Fest to be a chef. Granted, a former chef, who will not be participating this year. But she participated in FF 2010, and will probably rejoin the event for FF 2012. Boos echoed long, loud, and hard from small crowd at Conferences, and they were also tossed at any of her supporters or anyone who even spoke her name. Jim Dall, Head Scouter, likely would have been booed anyway (put it in perspective: the Head Scouter to a chef is like a publishing company editor to a writer or like the Continental Congress to Thomas Jefferson when they were revising the Declaration of Independence), but his undying support for Galen-Ames (he doesn't really care about her, of course, he just wants the money she'll bring) further alienated him from the crowd.
However, the popular reactions to Galen-Ames led the Scouting Department to take a "mess-with-the-bull-get-the-horns" approach, and Jim Dall was fiery at a Conference Thursday, instead of meek like he had been on Tuesday. He yelled, "You need to understand how vital the re-addition of this chef is to this event. You'll regret your actions later, because this chef will bring more money and more wealth to this event, which will in turn bring much more to you in your contract deals, which means everything in an economic climate such as this. So, for the welfare of all of you, I believe that you all need to stop insulting this maven and begin thanking her for the way she will enhance the quality of your lives." English translation: "We like her because we're greedy. We don't like you because you're not greedy and subsequently you don't like us or her so subsequently we don't like you. Now sit down and shut your pieholes."
Dall's words could not sway the crowds, however, simply adding fuel to the fire.
Another question to be asked is of William Vanderbilt, who, despite normally being a great activist for the chefs, seems to have sided with Dall on this one. His show of support for Galen-Ames and Dall, and his failure to respond to the concerns of other chefs, has led to a steep decline in his popularity this week. It was not enough to see him lose the Managerial Award, but get this--just because of how he acted in this week's brouhaha, a couple chefs booed when they found out that their great leader, the one who has risen this event to its ultimate heights, the one who has made them millionaires, the one who has made this the greatest and largest culinary event in the world, had won the Managerial Award.
So maybe the immaturity of Galen-Ames and Dall is a creeping virus, now beginning to infect everyone involved at Feast Fest.
In a microcosmical sense, perhaps poor old Harry Camping was right.
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