My name is Adam and I have been editing Bobby Flay’s television
programs for almost a decade. Here I am in a web series where I try out
Bobby’s signature recipes:
Technically, I cut Bobby because I edit him — I cut around the moments when he unravels, which he only does rarely, or when someone else talks. But in truth, he cuts me more deeply than I cut him. I think Bobby Flay is the most amazing person that has ever lived, and if it means he will pay attention to me, I would let him score me with a serrated knife, squeeze me with lime and rub my wounds with his signature 16 Spice Poultry Rub ©™.
When he’s not around, I ask myself, “What would Bobby do?” I’ve had problems being assertive in the past. Sometimes I sneak onto the set to practice his signature sidearm flour-toss and say things like, “Doin’ it up Bobby-style!” or “Have that fat intern bring me my hairspray!” It makes me feel strong and clear-sighted, like Bobby. Should I challenge someone whom I know is undergoing chemotherapy to arm wrestle? WWBD?
Yo, throwdown bro!
Another thing about Bobby is that he’s an AMAZING HOST. I have never been to his house, but I know that people who go there get called “bra” and are told to watch him do awesome tricks with beer bottles, like where he juggles two of them. He puts salt and ancho chilies on the rim of every drink he serves so that his guests’ mouths are scarred with his unmistakable heat and the next day, basting their swollen tongues with Neosporin and frozen limes, they say to themselves, Bobby is still in my mouth.
People say that I look like Bobby, except that you can see my eyes, and that I have eyes. I don’t think I look that much like him, but I do more now that he made me dye my hair 16 Spice Poultry Rub ©™ red.
Remember in the WWBD video, around the 2:30 mark, when he tells me to drink water? This is actually an inside joke between me and Bobby, because one time he waterboarded me until I called him “Eric Ripert.” It’s also an inside joke because I’m not allowed to drink water on set until he tells me to. On weekends, he calls to let me know when I can drink water. That’s why he tells me three times in the video: “Hydrate. H20. Drink water.” I did, I had three glasses of water, and then he forgot about me for the rest of the day and I fell off my bike because I was dizzy.
Sometimes my friends say, “You can do everything as well as Bobby Flay can. Look, you have made his signature michelada, which consists of pouring beer into a bucket of juice. You have made his grilled flatbread, and you did it without standing on a cutting board or threatening to take trophies away from people who only have one trophy.” That’s all crazy talk, as if a dog that’s been taught to sit could be better than a wolf that intuits how to masturbate with its paws.
“Mr. Pizza Guy,” Claire calls me in the video, visibly uneasy and defiant, as I bring out my flatbreads. Bobby is the only one who can be called Mr. Pizza Guy. Now he will deny me water for many days because of what you did, Claire.
The people who defined a “Bobby Flay” as a “douchebag” or “to Bobby Flay” as “(v.) to add unnecessary amounts of heat/spice to a dish (in attempt to mask mediocrity)” on Urban Dictionary are wrong. The verb “To Bobby Flay” means to dominate, to pull people into one’s own fiery orbit like a one-man planet Mars, the only other planet with mesas: volcanic, red, gassy, and unknowable.
A Black Balloon Publication ©