Dude... I Know You

On the rare occasion I meet a famous person, I usually do my best to just ignore them... or appreciate them from a distance. I feel that if I can't walk up and say something that would make them stop in their tracks and say, "Wow... thanks for saying that," I figure it's not worth bothering. Fans must come up and talk to famous people all the time, starting pointless conversations that they have had dozens of times since breakfast.

However, when I meet someone that is famous but nobody knows is famous, but I know who he is... well, that'll get me going.

Bill is a guy who hangs out at Bob's. He's in town from Tokyo. We got talking tonight and I found out that he does voice work in Japan. "Oh... so you speak great Japanese." "Nope. I just do English work. You know The Food Network?" "Sure! I love Iron Chef. It's one of my favorite programs." "Well there you go. I do the voice of Kenji Fukui."

Kenji Fukui is the principal commentator... the "man in the middle" in Kitchen Stadium, answering to "Fukui-san", sending his on-the-scene reports back to the booth, as it were. Anybody who watches the show will immediately know who I'm referring to. If you're watching the show for the first time, well he does all the commentary at the beginning of the show, the voice of the person who sounds like he is closest to the action, and the signature phrase right at the end, "Whose cuisine reigns supreme???"

Well, I had no problem talking about... gushing about... Bill's work. One of the reasons Iron Chef is so enjoyable is the voiceovers. The complete Americanization of the commentary, and it was my utter delight to find out that most of that comes directly from Bill's mind - that he never listens to what the real Kenji Fukui is saying, but he makes up his own commentary. (He says that Kenji, translated into English, is a terrible bore.)

Really, anybody that watches Iron Chef with any regularity knows that the reason why the program is so popular in America is that it is 5-Star cooking savoir faire crossed with NFL playback commentary... commentary that is thought up by a guy who happens to be the guy sitting across from me at Bob's Bar-Be-Que.