This morning at the annual SIGGRAPH conference I started to get texts and emails from people, telling me that the little sandwich stand in the convention center had my name up on its lunch board. It seems that various foods on the menu were named after assorted people in our field, and I was one of the chosen.
Other food selections were named Phong, Catmull, and so on. My name, for some reason, was at the very top of the lunch board, as you can see in the picture below, taken from an photo emailed to me by a former grad student:
I went there for lunch today and ordered a delicious peanut butter and banana sandwich named after Jim Blinn. When the lovely woman behind the counter realized who I was, she very graciously (and a bit shyly) presented me with a ceremonial peach. As you can see, the actual peach has a beautiful procedurally generated texture:
That’s sweet! (I mean the gesture of naming a dish after you, but maybe the peach too). Too bad they didn’t do a little more research to realize that they should have picked a vegan dish to go with your name. I guess the alluring alliteration won.
Actually, the story gets even better.
When I ordered the Blinn special (peanut butter and banana on cinnamon bread) the woman told me that it was one of two vegan dishes on the menu. She explained that they always make sure to have at least two vegan choices.
She said all this without having any reason to think it would matter to me. Then I told her that I was vegan and that I appreciated the variety.
After she realized I was the person the other dish was named for (conveniently, my name was printed on my conference pass), I think she realized that I don’t eat the item they named after me, and I suspect that’s one reason she gave me the peach.
Which makes her gift of the peach even nicer — it was a very thoughtful and personal gesture.
I suppose you could say it was peachy of her (but then you’d never go for such an obvious pun) 😉