An Ode to Anthony Bourdain
It was one summer of discontented teenage angst when I struck my luck with Anthony Bourdain's Bobby Gold. During the reign of Tolkien, Salinger and Wallace, Bobby Gold seemed like a sad attempt at plot-making in those bookworm years, and it didn't hold my imagination for long. However, Bourdain's wit didn't fade from my mind as easily. A few years later, when we only got CNN and the likes on basic cable, I finally saw Bourdain in action. His wit slicing through like butter. Sun-bleached denim, salt and pepper locks, and the thin, tall gait of a man who knew what the hell was what. With BBC Food, my obsession with Anthony Bourdain blossomed. He could make his way through food like it was the most amusing thing in the world. Plus, his shows never felt like food specials. They were gritty travelogues and history lessons wrapped in American Wit. Here he was slurping down a beating cobra's heart to the chagrin of a loud audience, and there he was eating sushi off a color-coded conveyor belt. He was big on Japan. He could down Mexican street food like an hombre. And his shows were always unapologetic, honest anecdotes on the lives of all the hundreds of people he met. Over the years as I've grown older, he was still on television. The hair more salt than pepper, the suntanned wrinkles more prominent, and Bourdain, all the most wiser and less potty-mouthed. As I write this, I am painfully aware how I still have a couple more episodes of Parts Unknown queued on my Netflix. And as the years have whiled away, Bourdain had morphed with time for me: no longer merely regaling food tales from far away places, now my mandatory research on local dives whenever I travel to a new country. He is the scale of which I measure my success of sampling local cuisine. After all those years with you Mr. Bourdain, I wouldn't have wagered all those hundreds of hours that this is the way you would choose to go. While you traveled the corners of the earth and ate your way through entire cultures, I can't phantom what sort of demons you carried with you. For someone so cherished by a whole generation, I only wished you had once reached out. Here is to your life Mr. Bourdain, to your honesty, to your openness to accept all that you saw, met and ate, for cheering on the common man and reminding us all never to underestimate the value of sheer elbow grease. Here is to your insight, your cutting wit and your slippery way with words. Here is to a New York brat becoming an everybody kinda man. Your loss weighs heavy on me tonight.
It was one summer of discontented teenage angst when I struck my luck with Anthony Bourdain's Bobby Gold. During the reign of Tolkien, Salinger and Wallace, Bobby Gold seemed like a sad attempt at plot-making in those bookworm years, and it didn't hold my imagination for long. However, Bourdain's wit didn't fade from my mind as easily. A few years later, when we only got CNN and the likes on basic cable, I finally saw Bourdain in action. His wit slicing through like butter. Sun-bleached denim, salt and pepper locks, and the thin, tall gait of a man who knew what the hell was what. With BBC Food, my obsession with Anthony Bourdain blossomed. He could make his way through food like it was the most amusing thing in the world. Plus, his shows never felt like food specials. They were gritty travelogues and history lessons wrapped in American Wit. Here he was slurping down a beating cobra's heart to the chagrin of a loud audience, and there he was eating sushi off a color-coded conveyor belt. He was big on Japan. He could down Mexican street food like an hombre. And his shows were always unapologetic, honest anecdotes on the lives of all the hundreds of people he met. Over the years as I've grown older, he was still on television. The hair more salt than pepper, the suntanned wrinkles more prominent, and Bourdain, all the most wiser and less potty-mouthed. As I write this, I am painfully aware how I still have a couple more episodes of Parts Unknown queued on my Netflix. And as the years have whiled away, Bourdain had morphed with time for me: no longer merely regaling food tales from far away places, now my mandatory research on local dives whenever I travel to a new country. He is the scale of which I measure my success of sampling local cuisine. After all those years with you Mr. Bourdain, I wouldn't have wagered all those hundreds of hours that this is the way you would choose to go. While you traveled the corners of the earth and ate your way through entire cultures, I can't phantom what sort of demons you carried with you. For someone so cherished by a whole generation, I only wished you had once reached out. Here is to your life Mr. Bourdain, to your honesty, to your openness to accept all that you saw, met and ate, for cheering on the common man and reminding us all never to underestimate the value of sheer elbow grease. Here is to your insight, your cutting wit and your slippery way with words. Here is to a New York brat becoming an everybody kinda man. Your loss weighs heavy on me tonight.
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