all dressed up and no one to stalk

I really hate it when I get taken.

And by taken I don’t mean brought somewhere.

I mean scammed, conned, swindled, cheated, bamboozled, hoodwinked… you get the idea.

Last night I bought a $100 ticket to attend the Art Melt preview party in Baton Rouge with the sole intent of stalking meeting Chef John Besh.  Silly me thought he would actually be there because this is what the main page of the event website looks like:

 
And this is what it stated on the ticket:

 
John Besh is a well-regarded New Orleans celebuchef who has his own television show on TLC (Inedible to Incredible), so they capitalized on his name and made it seem like he would actually be there.  (Otherwise the restaurant name would have been listed, right?  Not HIS name and HIS photo — which makes you think he would actually be there.)

And they also made it seem like that there would be FOOD for that $100 ticket.  I guess you could argue that there were edibles, but I hardly think postage stamp-sized canapés that are being passed around by waiters who barely make it two feet out of the prep area before starving art lovers paw everything off the plate can really be considered fulfilling the catering component of a $100 ticket price.

But enough of my grousing. Instead, since this was an "art" event, I will let my stellar iPhone photography skills tell the rest of the story through this photo essay:

Super-nice volunteer bartender who broke the bad news to us that there was no John Besh — and that the highly advertised "catering" was the tiny pass-around trays.

No lie, here's a photo.  See the hand coming into the picture?  That's some guy I don't know.  The crowd was so ravenous that they couldn't even wait for me to take a photo before scarfing down the few nibbles that were presented.

Very uncool event organizer who avoided talking to me even though I tapped him on the shoulder, waited patiently, and then ended up taking this photo to document his ignoring of me.

Can't you tell that I'm having a great time?

I had to resort to eating olives out of the bar condiment tray. (Seriously.)

The event started at 6:30pm, thus another reason I thought that for $100 there would be a decent food spread. After a couple of hours at the event I had taken in enough art, but not enough food.  So I had to then buy myself dinner at a locat restaurant.  As you can see I cleaned my plate.

But what about the art? you ask.

Well it's not a Louisiana art show without a painting of an old woman flashing her boobies in New Orleans.

Or an obligatory fleur-de-lis.

Or someone's interpretation of Katrina.

Finally, I wanted to thank my sister, Sharon, for being such an easy-going soul.  I wheedled her into going with me — and buying a $100 ticket too — and I feel really bad that the event was... well, what it was.