Video Of The Week: The Noodle Slurp
The world lost a man of taste, adventure, and humanity yesterday. Anthony Bourdain was an inspiration to everyone in our family. He amplified our love of travel, food, adventure, and other cultures. We will miss him greatly.
Comments (Archived):
Will have to start using that expression now: ‘pop one of these whole suckers in your mouth’. [1] Bourdain was a tremendously compelling and entertaining person to watch on TV and it was obvious that he perhaps could take risks specifically because of not fearing the outcome (in retrospect). Obama also comes across great when he’s not on a podium and being a regular guy (and is funny as well). [2][1] Use to describe the demarcation point of, say, a generally scary task, or unknown path and direction for a particular action. As in ‘Maybe I finally pop one of those whole crypto suckers into my mouth’.[2] I guess that makes more sense than it doesn’t since you’d never get support as a politician if you were actually as stiff as you appear when scripted and not personally likeable.
Viet Nam noodles and fried foods with Maillard browning in sweet, sour, hot fish sauce — FINE. Of COURSE it’s good — it hits hard on most of the essentials inGray Kunz and Peter Kaminsky, The Elements of TastePlease, Please, PLEASE give me very, Very, VERY good details, WITH accurate measurement in milliliters and grams, accurate descriptions of ingredients, in good, say, YouTube videos. And for ALL the other standards in Asian food.I finally got to where I could do an okay Moo Shi Pork, just by imitating, guessing, and trying, but some actual, good INSTRUCTION would have been 10+ times faster.Some Asian foods have a LOT of flavor, and especially a lot per dollar. I’d like to do that in my kitchen. But for the instructions, TV food show entertainment writers, directors, and producers need not apply. Similarly for cook book writers, editors, and publishers who publish formula fiction about food without being instructional.Yes, I got and read Kitchen Confidential long ago. Interesting read. Uh, wash your hands both before and AFTER eating in most restaurants.For Bourdain, he had a lot going for him and a lot to live for. He could have opened a bistro on nearly any street in nearly any major city of the world and done okay. He could have written more books, done lots of YouTube videos, done some more TV shows, etc.Then there’s the guy in that video who (1) pushed and signed the Iran deal, (2) returned frozen Iranian assets plus some a lot more in cash, (3) stood by during the growth of ISIS, (4) bowed to China, (5) was big buddies with Castro, (5) in spite of running huge Federal budget deficits, was really slow, essentially a failure, at getting the US economy going again after the 2008 bubble burst, (6) was totally “in” with the flim-flam, fraud, scam of CO2 from humans causing “global warming” and, oops, “climate change”, (7) severely throttled US coal and oil exploitation, (8) was eager to see US electric utility rates “necessarily skyrocket”, (9) wasted big bucks on absurd nonsense such as wind and solar for power for the US electric grid, (10) did nothing about the growing US foreign trade deficits, (11) pushed the highly illegal immigration and accepted the highly illegal “sanctuary cities” nonsense, (12) with ObamaCare did all he could to sabotage the US health care system, (13) dumped on the two best US allies, Great Britain and Israel, (14) did the “sequester” which weakened US national security, (15) tried to force the US military to take in “trannies” and pay for their surgeries and continuing pharmaceutical treatments, (16) encouraged BLM and their threats of violence, (17) tried to have boy and girl K-12 students sharing showers, (19) did nothing about the massive river of dangerous drugs flowing into the US from Mexico or from China and elsewhere and through Mexico, (20) did nothing about the North Korea work with nuke weapons and, to deliver them, rockets with international range, (21) signed on to the Paris Accords as part of sabotage of the US economy and, really, much of the world, (22) supported the “globalists” in their efforts to import cheap products and cheap labor, (23) never got annual GDP growth as high as 3%, (24) had the radical greenies in the EPA going around destroying nearly everything they could find, etc., (25) put up with Hillary’s Russia uranium pay to play scam, e-mail security violations, Benghazi lies, (26) put up with or directed the dirt against Trump by Brennan, Clapper, and Comey, (27) put up with Russia taking Crimea and eastern Ukraine (“Tell Vladimir that I will have more flexibility after the election.”), and (28) apparently Obama, Holder, and Preet Bharara did a totally dirty pool dirty politics attack on Dinesh D’Souza.Why would Obama do (1)-(28)? One explanation would be that the deeply, profoundly, bitterly hates and despises the US and did everything he could get away with to hurt the US.Viet Nam noodles and Bourdain? Terrific! But why ruin that with “GD America!”.
Do you know how politics works? It’s about compromise. Besides, what’s so bad about budget deficits? Surely you don’t believe that Obama wanted to sabotage the US.
Do you know how politics works? It’s about compromise.Politics can also be about facts, rationalism, and leadership.Do I actually “know” how politics works? Not all of it!E.g., a while back Disqus contributor pointsandfigures gave an overview of recent Chicago politics. Seehttps://disqus.com/home/dis…andhttps://disqus.com/home/dis…the first with the description of Chicago, and the second with a link to a movie,michaelmadigan.comBesides, what’s so bad about budget deficits?It depends: Depending on circumstances, such deficits run from just ruinous up to desperately needed, high quality medicine. But if run large deficits, then need a good reason, good execution, and good results. For what Obama did after the crash of 2008, he had the reason but failed on the execution and results.Surely you don’t believe that Obama wanted to sabotage the US.Looks that way to me. See my (1)-(28). I don’t have solid proof, but …. Due to what Obama did trying to hurt the Trump campaign, he may end up wearing an orange jump suit along with Comey, Brennan, Clapper, Rice, and Hillary.
Demons won this round. RIP.
As i said recently, it’s about the monster inside. Everyone has one.Bourdain and Spade were members of the church of media capitalism, where to worship is to be worshipped.
It’s sad and ironic that many of those that teach us so much about enjoying life (thinking many comedians and artists here) are also the most torturedThey are all gleaming examples to give more than you take from this short life
Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity (Simone Weil)Such a shame Kate Spade, Robin Williams at least highlight the reality, one timely interruption would have changed the frame
.It is a powerful lesson for all of us to realize that everybody is living with their demons. I see this in veterans I know all the time. Guy seems wrapped a little tight, but you never really know why.It is incumbent upon all of us to smile, pump a little sunshine into the world around us, and to come running when you hear a desperate call to action.Sometimes, all a person needs is to know that someone cares at that instant and that there is an alternative even if it isn’t a perfect one. Take a second and pray with someone. It works.God bless us all.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
Amen.
Agree.Suicide rates alarm me–amongst teens especially. In general there is a 25-30 % rise in suicides between1996-2016.Scary and puzzling.
That age group? Vulnerable people with little ability to cope combined with more information out there to make them feel inadequate in some way is the simple explanation.I was reading something about North Korea today. The people there know they have it bad but were more unhappy once they found out exactly how bad they have it. Otherwise they learned to live with it. That makes sense that it would be the case it’s human nature. Happens even to people who buy big boats. They feel great until they see a guy ‘in a bigger boat’ (not me but I have heard that many times).Social media highlights a somewhat unreal world and image of others being happy and having things great (and you don’t). Obviously that is going to impact people that have borderline coping skills. When we were growing up all we had was ‘keeping up with the Joneses’. Typically of course not bad enough to take your own life.What does seeing what others have (that you don’t) do exactly? Well for one thing it creates people striving beyond what would be their baseline abilities and qualifications. This was always the case but now it’s amplified.
.It is virtually impossible to force ourselves to BE HAPPY, but we have an inexhaustible ability to prevent ourselves from BEING UNHAPPY.JLMwww.themusingsofthebigredca…
But Why?So many unanswered questions.
yup–stats on increase in suicides are truly unnerving.
What happens at the depths of a human mind is a secret for the ones outside. A soul in pain through a dark moment, an impossible memory.. who knows.But there is this pattern and correlation nobody likes to talk about, present and past use of drugs and impaired judgement.So many good people gone for this reason.
I said on Twitter yesterday that Anthony Bourdain went from someone I liked to someone I loved when he brought his show to Detroit, a city I know very well. There’s been a lot of media coverage of Detroit in the past ten years, most of it one sided. Show a little of what the locals call ‘ruin porn’ and lament what happened to this once great city.But they miss the real story, what’s truly great about Detroit is its people. The same types of folks that powered the famous arsenal of democracy that won World War II are still there. Bourdain made the episode less about wrecked buildings and more about its people.He was travelling in the eastern part of the city, worst among the worst, with the shows ‘fixer’ and he burst into tears. ‘How was this allowed to happen, I’ve seen countries destroyed by war that aren’t as bad’, he implored. It was all true and no one ever came to the rescue until a trio of billionaires saw the potential of a profit and started rebuilding downtown.How do I know he understood the city? Here’s a short piece he wrote afterwards on his blog: “Detroit is “where nearly everything American and great came from.” “I love Detroit. I love Detroiters,” he said. “You’ve got to have a sense of humor to live in a city so relentlessly fucked. You’ve got to be tough — and occasionally even devious. And Detroiters are funny, tough — and supreme improvisers. They are also among the best and most fun drinkers in the country.”Add to that the best music audiences in the world and you pretty much have captured the city I grew up in as succinctly as it has ever been done.
A lot of chefs are opening up places in Detroit, because they cannot afford to do it in other major cities where the expense cuts profit margins or it’s too competitive. Bankruptcy was good for the city of Detroit.
the idea of people leaving this life on their own terms and at the time of their own choosing is not necessarily something to lament or be shocked about. Suicide is not always about being depressed. life does have its limits. sometimes people want more than it has to offer.we are not immortal.
While I agree with your statement overall, I suspect this is not why Bourdain nor Spade chose suicide this week. I am sure both chose suicide to relieve emotional pain. But choosing suicide to relieve emotional pain is very different than choosing it to relieve physical pain or physical/chronic degradation.
there’s much to do to address the relief of physical pain and chronic degradation, and few countries are allowing lawful provision for a peaceful end (i know of Dignitas in Switzerland, where a number of British citizens have gone to end their lives in recent years, both young and old), but generally nation states baulk at the idea of permitting their citizens this option.i don’t know why Spade and Bourdain ended their lives. I’d never previously heard of either of them, and as i have written hear before it feels unsatisfactory to first hear of someone due of the manner of their death.
Bourdain was the singular person with whom I’d most readily swap lives. His existence was seemingly perfect.So this one rocks me. Need the rest of the story to make sense out of this.
He was a bon vivant with a dry wit and a ready curiosity and appetite for life’s adventures. His programs opened up pockets of the world for me and if you ever spot me in one of those bookshops filled with obscure cookbooks, it will because I saw it in one of his programs.RIP, Anthony Bourdain.
Ah, OT, but more important than noodles, Trump on the way to Singapore, just the first 3:45 ofhttps://www.youtube.com/wat…that is, until the guy stumbles in saying “here I must rest”!
I shed a tear today. I have been following since his first show Kitchen Uncovered. I would say one night a week during my son and my one hour of shared “underpants time” TV we watch him.
I am copying and pasting what I wrote in response to Gotham Gal’s “Why?” post:I can tell you why. The emotional pain is so great that the only way to relieve it is through suicide.I once thought that all people who committed suicide were selfish, but after a very difficult time in my life — from 2010 through 2012 — I came out realizing that I completely understood why people kill themselves. The emotional pain is so deep that suicide seems like the only thing that will relieve it. I knew — even in my worst despair — that I would not kill myself, but I understood why other people in the same situation might.Personally, I do not think that it’s mental illness. I think it’s that we live in a culture that doesn’t accept sadness as normal state. It is normal to feel sad about certain things. It is also normal to feel despair at times. What is not normal is that our culture does not embrace people who sometimes feel these things. Our culture does not honor sadness and despair. We don’t have community around sadness and despair.I also think that famous/celebrity type people may have fewer people they can expose themselves to. They have more at risk by showing their sadness or despair. I suspect that highly accomplished people have a harder time finding people they can trust and connect to — because of that it makes it so much harder to find an accepting community…At the end of the day, we are a culture that doesn’t respect sadness and does not provide community for those who feel sad. Sadness is part of life but our culture pretends it is not.
Susan, the US is often and in many ways an ugly, brutal, dog eat dog and may the devil take the hindmost, competitive, combative, nearly blood thirsty culture. As a result, the US has a lot of lost, defeated, hopeless people.We have some especially bitter battles going on now: We have (1) some privileged Republicans who dream of the Bushes, Reagan, back to Goldwater with cheap labor, low taxes, less “safety net”, run the world foreign policy, weak government, and politicians they can buy off. And we have (2) Democrats who want power and some versions of socialism, promising to make everyone much better off financially due to “redistribution” (only people who can’t do simple arithmetic can hope for that). Then a significant fraction of the people in (1) have become the Never-Trump people (partly because Trump has his own base not much like that Ryan and Romney count on and because Trump can’t be bought), and, (2) have become the obstruct everything Trump people.Numerically, both (1) and (2) are small: The privileged are a tiny fraction of the population, and so are the dedicated socialists.After (1) and (2), of what is left, that has Trump’s base together with a lot of people still making up their minds.But it’s a bitter war. It’s close to going significantly violent. Currently it’s only occasionally violent.In this war, there are already casualties, people being hurt, e.g., attacked at work by the politically correct (PC) partisans from the Democrat side.Trump may win the war: Enough of the privileged Republicans will see that Trump winning will throttle the worst of the Democrat socialists. Or the privileged Republicans hate what Pelosi, Schumer, Sanders, etc. want but have been willing to join them in fighting Trump. But the privileged Republicans now accept that they won’t get a Ryan or Romney in the White House and are seeing that, with the chances that Trump will, net, be good for business, are starting to accept Trump.While there’s no hope of moderating Pelosi, Schumer, or Sanders, a lot of people who have been voting Democrat are seeing that Trump and his crowd make more sense than Pelosi, etc. and are willing to vote for Republicans Trump endorses.So Trump is keeping his base and adding significant fractions of the privileged Republicans and people who have been voting Democrat. The Republicans regard Trump as good down to the least bad and, thus, have no one else to vote for. The Democrats are proposing nothing at all attractive and have no effective national leadership.So, starting after the 2018 elections, maybe we will see the US internal war die down. That, Trump with more seats in Congress and, thus, ability to get more done, and a better economy can help alleviate some of the worst ugliness of the US.
He was a pure joy to watch-a creative transporter who could cross borders and shed light on humanity…a vary giving man.
Bourdain and Obama are both great men.