Alton Brown has new digs over at AltonBrown.com. (And yes, Slashfood is the un-official Alton Brown fan club - why do you ask?) It's very pretty, and has a couple of nice features: the Where's AB page, so I can commence stalking him across the country, and a fawning section about Shun knives (which I have just decided are my favorite knives ever, although it's quite clear Alton is getting a kickback or two here).
Notably missing, however, is the blog. Under the previous site design, Alton had kept a journal which was updated infrequently - but still made me deliriously happy. A month ago, or so, I noticed he'd put up a sad-looking post explaining that he'd turned off comments and stopped asking for photos when some people sent him nasty and offensive stuff. I can only imagine the removal of the blog was a way to remove the man a layer or two from his unbalanced fanbase. It seems a little whole-hog to take away the blog entirely, though - you couldn't do it with comments turned off, Alton?
12-13-2005 @11:23AM James Yu said... Sarah, I totally agree with you. I loved his posts, infrequent thought they may be. It was always something I looked forward to.
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12-13-2005 @1:26PM Xunil Penguin said... well, yea, his blog is gone .. but did you notice the mention of a video podcast? Woo! even better .. You should know how much writing a blog takes out of you. I think the addition of pseudo-live action makes the lossof the blog acceptable.
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12-13-2005 @3:44PM Punisher2k said... He is on MySpace which has blogging capability and you can subscribe to it. He hasn't added anything but he's on my friend list now.
http://www.myspace.com/altonbrown
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12-13-2005 @6:18PM yelena said... there are actually two alton's on myspace./ not sure which, if any is the real alton so i added them both. i can't find the url for the second alton, but if you type his name into the search bar it'll come up.
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12-13-2005 @8:38PM steven said... This may have been a factor:
From Alton Brown's Rants and Raves!
Thursday, October 20, 2005
Some of you may have noticed that the “contact” button is gone from my web site and that my rant calling for refrigerator pics is gone. Here’s why: although many of you sent in some really nice pics and insightful, fun emails some of you decided to send vulgar, nasty, frightening messages and images. I always knew there was ugliness and meanness out there but you know what, I don’t have to give you a place to put it. So, the portal is closed and will remain so. If you harvested the address, don’t bother using it because it will simply dump your mail into oblivion.
I’m disappointed, upset, disillusioned, and upgrading my security system. To those who wanted to play nice, I sure am sorry but life’s just too short to drink poison.
posted by Alton
3:45 PM
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12-13-2005 @9:19PM Sir Not Appearing in this Blog said... That sums up everything that bothers me about the Internet today. Sure, there's a lot of good, but sometimes it seems like there's a whole lot more ugly. People whose sole purpose in life seems to be to make everyone else as miserable as they are. People who think your computer is their plaything. Phishers, spammers, scammers and other breeds of scum.
Way back in the early 1990s, when the Internet was all but unknown outside of colleges and some larger corporations it was a different story. Spam was unknown. Email was a useful, even vital tool. Oh, how things have changed since then.
I don't blame AB one bit for taking his blog offline. Maybe he's just waiting to bring it back, or maybe it's gone for good. Either way, it's his call. I'm nobody, but I have to deal with a fair amount of comment spam on my main blog. I shudder to think what a high-profile celeb like him gets.
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