If you’re reading this, chances are you’re already familiar with Alpana as the likeable, easy-on-the-eyes host of PBS’ “Check, Please”, sommelier extraordinaire, and fledgling author. Now next to seeing the restaurants themselves on “Check, Please” being discussed, dissected and analyzed, my favorite part of the show is discussing, dissecting and snarking on that week’s assorted gaggle of reviewers, as there is almost always one of the bunch who is clearly mental, who sports the Anne Heche crazy eyes, and a possible Arkham Asylum escapee whose very first act of uncaged freedom is to hightail it to PBS studios where they can sit down with Alpana, sucking on Sauvignon and singing the praises of the frites at their local brasserie.
That said, Alpana clearly knows how to womanhandle various, er, ’personalities’, so she clearly has the chops to meet head-on my own brand of crazy. Oh, yeh, one part I left out. I was going to meet Alpana with my mom….
Now, mind you, mom is cool, and mom, she digs her some wine, but I was afraid I’d have that vibe of ‘40-yr-old-virgin-living-in-his-mom’s-basement’ vibe clinging to me like the stink of Hai Karate.
So mom and I get to Binny’s some time after lunch, glossy signage of a blown-up, Glamour Shotted Alpana greeting us at the door. A clerk points us towards the back of the store where they have set up an ad hoc tasting, finger foods in the requisite stainless steel chafing dishes, and Alpana dishing copies of her book “Alpana Pours” and fielding wine questions. I look around, crowd thinner than I had expected and, NO MIDDLE AGED SONS WITH MOMS IN TOW!
Mom and I, we navigate the line, dodging the two-fisting, half in the bag female divorcees who seem to comprise the largest part of the turnout here, and wait our turn.
And before you know it, there she is, her voice just as singsongy, smile as genuinely genuine, personality just as effervescent. Before I know it, I’m standing a couple feet in front of her. The exchange goes something like this:
Me: Mumble, mumble….like your show, mumble, mumble…I like TV, like wine, something, something.
Alpana: That’s….nice. That’s nice you like my show that’s played on the TV and that you like wine.
In retrospect, I could have had index cards prepared. E.g., “What do you think of the influence Robert Parker has had, ill or well, on the wine world?” or “Do you think biodynamics is a passing fad or will it radically reassess the winemaker’s approach to the land and to the vine?”
But no, I was tongue-tied and star struck like the worst Jonas Brother’s fan club treasurer. Just when the needle passed the awkward stage, mom appears from behind “Oh, him, he’s just got a crush on you”. I could have crawled into an empty Nebuchadnezzar right there.
All credit to Alpana, who continued smiling but I could see one of her hands slip down under the signing table, no doubt reaching for her pepper spray she brings to these events “just in case”.
Had she Secret Service on her payroll, I would have had a hood tossed over my head, wrists strapped and body lobbed into the back of a black van only to be plunked down into a 4x8 cell at Guantánamo II, which has been secretly built right under the White House!
Mom, antsy to meet her, nudging me aside, to Alpana: “So, tell me, what’s the deal with those synthetic corks?”
What did I get from my pain and suffering? Dear readers, I got this nice photo op here (note, the gap between our bodies, big enough to drive a semi comfortably through):
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