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Second year after his death, many have missed Bourdain, if only because there’s no one sufficiently literate to engage food culture and its articulation.
Not a reasonable substitute is watching Gordon Ramsey on the latest NatGeo TV series doing onsite cooking. For him it’s about enduring the Bourdain-like stunts, but being more about wanting to drive whatever Land Rover is available in situ. Ramsey is more Andrew Zimmern in eating unpleasant foods, but there just isn’t that sense of being well-read, even if we know Ramsey owns a Ferrari. Bourdain had no need for one.
“You never truly know someone until you enjoy a home cooked meal with them” — Anthony Bourdain.
According to Anthony Bourdain, a New Guinea former cannibal told him that humans taste like pork.
The Sexy Liberal Podcast Network — us02web.zoom.us/...
From earlier diaries:
For those of us with disordered lives, one appreciates the ideations of others. His biography reminds us that amidst the arbitrary nature of career and fame, the real matters of personal meaning are still closely held.
Unlike so many memorial media pieces constructed from fragments for other celebrities, it would be important for so many “fans” that CNN’ production not be mawkish, even as it’s the same network that contributed to the rise of POTUS 45*.
I grieve for him if only because he typifies a generation and an attitude that eclipses so many in our generation. At one moment it did seem like the liberals would be lost at the first turn, but in the US, it devolved as it has now, to sectarian political cultism.
A while back, I decided that we would interview a job candidate at Bourdain’s former restaurant, Les Halles in NYC simply because we needed a place that wasn’t too extreme but also had cultural significance, so I understand the decision-making process behind even lunch. Considering NYC eateries, I still get confused about what constitutes a good choice of NYC restaurant, even as my budget is nonexistent.
If between 10 and 12 nerds all agree that one particular place is fascinating—go there. Plus, some advanced planning can help you stick to your budget, especially when it comes to high-end eateries. If there’s a particular restaurant you’re interested in, check out its menu online before you go. That way, instead of blowing your budget on a really expensive dinner, you can grab lunch. time.com/...
It wasn’t even the confounding tragedy of his suicide, that he might choose to end a life so seemingly enviable.
Rather, the thing that made his death so terribly traumatic to so many was the loss of connection.
It was the loss of a real, if fleeting, sense that Bourdain somehow found time and space for an actual human moment with every person who ever cooked him a meal or even interrupted one to ask for a selfie.
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“We chalked it up to being tired,” says one person who worked with him and who asked to remain anonymous. “But the excitement of the road just wasn’t there for him anymore.”
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For the fixers who worked for Bourdain during the 16 years he was on television, he was always a figure apart—the famous, adored “talent” who remained engaged in the world and demonstrated the value of trying to truly connect with it. It would be an added tragedy if the very thing that made Bourdain so beloved by them, and by so many others—his ability to experience the world and connect with it authentically—was also the thing his astonishing success eventually eroded. Over the years he worked with him, Walsh saw Bourdain’s shadow, saw how he could turn dark and brooding–no more than the rest of us, he adds, but it was still there. But he didn’t expect this ending. “I didn’t worry about him,” Walsh says. “He seemed so powerful, so strong of will. Bulletproof.”
www.vanityfair.com/...
He quoted Lenin as saying: “On the train of the revolution we will lose the liberals at the first turn.”, but this Lenin quote is more important to understanding him: “Any cook should be able to run the country.”, even as both are misquoted:
We know that an unskilled labourer or a cook cannot immediately get on with the job of state administration.
- Will the Bolsheviks Retain Government Power? (1917); this is often misquoted as "every cook must learn to govern the state" or even "every cook can govern the state."
The train of history makes sharp turns and those who are not skilled riders fall off the train.
- As quoted in Dorothy Healey, California Red: A Life in the American Communist Party(1993), p. 81.
- Variant: "When the train of history makes a sharp turn, said Lenin, the passengers who do not have a good grip on their seats are thrown off." Whittaker Chambers, The Revolt of the Intellectuals, TIME magazine, January 6, 1941.
en.wikiquote.org/...
This below was probably the last interview with Anthony Bourdain and doesn’t change how many fans felt about him, because one can see his sadness. It’s fairly long and worth your time.
Bourdain Confidential: "I find, again and again, just by spending the time, by asking very simple questions, people have said the most astonishing things to me."
Published on Jul 15, 2018 6:00PM EDT
Maria Bustillos @mariabustillos
BOURDAIN: Well look, you know, you got two options here. One you’ve got, somebody who is going to be make compromises and concessions, and the other’s Pol Pot!
If you wanna burn down Washington to the fucking ground, you know, I’m with ya. I’m just waiting for a mob to assemble. I don’t quite see that happening. And who will be leading this charge? Because if Susan Sarandon is anywhere among the joyful revelers, I’ve clearly chosen the wrong pony!
Bourdain was a very private man but there were things about him that could be intimated from his work. One of these things being that the real person, the man underneath, was troubled in some secret way, and that he needed to hide that trouble, to dress it up for public consumption.
I wonder whether this is not just one more bad thing about exceptionalism, the thing we are in fact not really getting away from. Parachuting in to enjoy the hole in the wall is still parachuting in. What if you still end up in the good hotel, the big house, the apartment on the 60th floor? Maybe it’s the exceptional, special people with no faults, the people who have to perform “authenticity” flawlessly, all the time, for everyone, who are, who must be, the most troubled of all.
Did anyone ever ask him what that moment meant, or when it really happened? I wanted to, but I felt constrained, like it would be intrusive and rude to ask: Did you really almost drive off the edge of an unbanked road in Saint Martin? When? Why? How many times did you think about killing yourself? I think maybe your real friends knew something about that, but maybe not enough.
Even now with all I knew and have learned, I could believe anything about this gifted, passionate man’s death. Outrageous stories of every description came out after the reports of his suicide in an Alsatian hotel, and I could believe any one of them. I could believe that he was taken out by a hostile government or by some political enemy. That he just judged himself very hard one night and chose deliberately to end it. That he had a wild moment of uncontrollable panic. That he had a broken heart. Any of these things, or none of them.
popula.com/...