Situational Awareness Fail

This morning, Calmer Half decided that I needed a nice break after a 55 hour week, and took my limping self down to the Nashville Farmer's Market. We got excellent tomatoes, nice soap, wonderful cheese, and an eggplant that I have low-carb plans for.

We also stopped to get second breakfast, because we are Hobbit fans, and the food court area looked good and smelled better. Low-carb plans survived past two different stalls of bakeries selling their wares, but were arrested at the sight of a third table. A burly man with ponytail, goatee, and tattoos, wearing eyeliner and a velvet burnout scarf, was selling cheesecake. Glorious cheesecake. Huge slices of cheesecake, with ingredient lists like "apple cinnamon moonshine" and "raspberry chocolate truffle".

Yeah, no diet plan survives first eye contact with huge slices of raspberry chocolate truffle cheesecake. As soon as we got within five paces of that table, I knew we were doomed, and any protests would only be formal tokens before surrendering to calorific bliss.

I did wonder about the eyeliner and the beautiful scarf - the man did not flounce in the slightest, and well after we walked away with two slices of heaven, I remarked to Calmer Half that it would not surprise me if the chef batted for the other team, but it also wouldn't surprise me if he were straight with a lot of theater background. After all, in America, vendors are constrained by culture to wait until you approach their table to make their sales pitch, and his appearance was certainly arresting enough to make me stop long enough to see the cheesecake and fail a willpower check. (Unlike South Africa, where they will physically drag you to their stall, and engage in fistfights with other vendors trying to do the same.)

A quick look at his website and a news article about him revealed the answer, and made me perform a full classic facepalm. I'm in Nashville. Which is full of musicians. Some theater, my cheesecake-padded rear end - he's a Master Pastry Chef with "a few albums" out.