Dear Gordon Elliot,
You make me very sad. Truth be told, you really don’t, but you make me somewhat wistful, if wistful means a tepid mixture of reminiscence and regret. I miss your show, Door Knock Dinners. It was on back in the earlier days of the Food Network, when they were just trying things out. The game show, Can’t Cook, Won’t Cook was also on. That is a topic for another day.
On the show, you wandered around a town, scouring the parking lots and the side streets for someone passing by, accosted them and asked them if you can come to their house and make them dinner. I don’t know why that freaked people out. Women in sweat suits ran in the other direction and men in baseball caps just flipped their brims down. They didn’t realize what they were missing! If only they were willing, they would experience the culinary majesty of you making them a masterpiece…or at least something edible…out of the Twinkie, small portion of freezer burned casserole, a Dove ice cream bar popsicle stick, and McDonald’s mustard packets you had around the kitchen.
I have never sent this letter. I could. I found out that Mr. Elliot is alive and well and a produce of several food related shows, but alas, Door Knock Dinners is just a dim memory. I don’t even have a picture or a Youtube of the show. If I wanted to, I could probably write a letter to the production company and it might get to a publicist or his second assistant’s third assistant. How would it ever get in to his hands without someone else already deciding if he would read it or not, and at such a moment that it may persuade him to bring back my favorite cooking show of all time? It was all about spontaneity, persuasion, and ultimately, making due.
The only way I could think of is to find out where he is on social networks. In fact, I have been reading about and mulling over MyLife. It is a site that aims to deliver on the promise of helping you find people from your past that you want to find. It extracts information from various sites where they may have a profile. In other words, the people in question want to be found.
The question is: Was Gordon Elliot really a part of my life? No, I never knew him personally, but yes, he was. The zaniness kept me company through bouts of flu, bad roommates, bad cake, and a bad relationship. Of course, when I went through a streak of being healthy (how could I?) and worked a lot, I didn’t see as much of him. The show is now a distant memory, with the only content available occasionally being a clip of the Iron Chef edition of Door Knock Dinners. Could I potentially type him in and find out what social networking site was best to make sure that he would personally get my note? I don’t know. He doesn’t share a school connection or work affiliation with me, so it would take some doing to wade through the sea of Gordon Elliots around the world.
If you have someone that you legitimately knew in a two way situation (you knew their name, but they also knew yours), you could possibly benefit from the site. You might be surprised who has been wondering what happened to you, too.
