In retrospect, this seems inevitible

So I was sitting in my little burrow on Saturday morning around 9:45, wearing my pajamas, watching a DVR'ed episode of General Hospital: Night Shift from a couple weeks back, and contemplating the day ahead of me. I had just followed up my extremely healthy yogurt and granola breakfast with a chaser of 3 strips of bacon, when the phone rang.

"Ok," the caller said. "There's a book signing at 10:30, and it's open to the public." The caller gave me the location and some other details, and said "so, can you make it?"

I looked at myself in the mirror beside my bed, taking in my glasses, my slept-on hair, and my general aura of unbathedness. "Hell yes," I replied. "But I'll have to rush."

Thirty minutes later, I'd brushed my teeth, showered, washed and dried my hair, and thrown on some jeans, a t-shirt, and a cropped sweater. I grabbed the crucial book off of my shelves, threw it and my camera into a giant purse, and raced out the door. Flooring my tiny blue roadster, I sped my way downtown, got into a minor altercation with a parking garage attendant, and raced into the lobby of a moderately posh hotel.

My partner in food crime and I found each other. "No one is here," she told me. "It's hilarious."

And she was right. What you see above is the longest the line ever got--probably nine people at peak time; no more than 20-25 total.

We joined the line, and whispered giddily about what would be written in our books, and what we could possibly discuss with our target for that crucial 30 seconds while Sharpie traced its irrevocable pattern over white endpapers.

Finally, the lady of the hour emerged and said a few polite but standard words of greeting. Then she held up a fistful of Sharpies. "I have a variety of colors," she told us. "So if you want yours signed in a special color, or to match the cover of your book, just tell me!" We all laughed politely.

She was seated, and the line started inching toward her. From our position, about three or four people back in the line, we could hear the first signee introduce herself. "We've actually met before," the woman added.

We shot each other a look. A regular! I thought about the Food Network Groupies Retrodragon and I had seen at the Dave Lieberman signing lo those many years ago, and wondered whether it was creepier to see one Food Network personality several times, or several of them once.

Soon, it was my turn. "Hi," she said, and introduced herself.

"I'm Jordan," I replied, and pulled out my book.

"Oooh, you've got the real book," she said. Flipping the cover open, she started her inscription. "For J-O-R--" she wrote, and then she looked up.

"D-A-N" I finished, feeling vaguely embarrassed for her (because my real name is even more common and easier to spell than Jordan).

Finishing the inscription, she asks "Did you read it?"

"Oh yeah," I assure her (which is true). "It was really gripping," I add (which is also true, but only in the same way that a 7 car pile up on the Beltway is gripping).

"How many cocktails did it take you to get through it?" she asks with a wink.

"Several," I say emphatically. She laughs. Encouraged, I add "I actually had to switch to straight bourbon at one point."

She is so clearly delighted by this testament to the gritty realism of her life story that I get up the courage to ask for a picture on my camera (there was an official event guy clicking away at the periphery as well). She agreed, summoned me to the back of the table, and after handing off my camera to my accomplice, we posed, leaned our heads together, and. . .

No, I did not retouch this. Her boobs really are that low.

So yes. Oh my, oh me, oh yes. I met Sandra Lee. My enemy. My nemesis. A woman for whom my loathing is so great that I throw a party once a year to celebrate it.

The universe didn't explode. I managed not to hurl profanities, to call her a charlatan, or to tell her why I think she's personally responsible for destroying American society.

I was polite. But I still don't like her. This is one of the things my accomplice and I discussed while we were comparing inscriptions after the fact (she got an "XO" in addition to her loopy heart, which makes me feel somewhat slighted). "Do we still hate her?" She asked.

I hesitated. "I hate what she does," I began, "but she seems kind of . . . harmless."

We then spent a moment rehashing how very, very harmful she really is, what with all the booze and seasoning packets and prepackaged salt laden nonsense.

At first I thought that meeting her had defanged her in a way. It was odd that I hadn't been anywhere near as nervous talking to her as I was trying to fake my way through desultory conversation with Giada, or turning into a stammering idiot with Dave Lieberman, or becoming a huggable mute in the presence of Spike.

And maybe it was because she seemed so ordinary in a way, with her slightly unkempt hair; the weird hippie skirt she was wearing that didn't seem to go with her thick ecru sweater; her frankly odd conversation with my accomplice about how beads were falling off the aforementioned skirt; or the tiny crowd she'd attracted. There was no air of celebrity about her at all.

Worse, she was so clearly convinced that there was, or at least that there should be. She seemed rather irked by the sparseness of the crowd, and in conversation with my cohort, blamed Meryl Streep for her inability to acquire Twilight premiere tickets for her niece. It was either a staggering overestimation of her own importance--bish, plz, like Meryl fucking Streep knows enough about you to give a damn one way or the other--or an outright delusion (like when my grandmother used to maintain that Reva Shayne on Guiding Light was doing things just to piss her off).

None of this makes her likable, though it does make her maybe a tiny bit sad. After I left the signing, I had a stale taste in my mouth. I had an hour or so of feeling mean about some of the things I've said about her, like I'd been caught making fun of the slow kid at school.

And then I got another phone call from my accomplice, who was able to tell me about the epically clueless speech Aunt Sandy had given at the luncheon. And after hearing that--after getting the account of the canned crying and odd anecdotes and the bizarre recipe ideas that got mentioned during the speech (a Bloody Mary involving V8 and a Vlassic Pickle? Seriously?), my wrath was restored.

But that's not my story to tell.