Sunday, June 29, 2008

"Kitchen Confidential: Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly" by Anthony Bourdain




I first heard- and continue to hear- Anthony Bourdain's voice as it narrated his adventures on the Travel Channel's No Reservations. On the show Bourdain travels around the world, providing his take on local food, drink, culture, and drink. (Yes, I know I mentioned drink twice. So would Tony.) What struck me most about the show was Bourdain's honesty. When he was amazed or impressed by something or someone, he gave them due respect and was genuinely interested. When he found something disgusting or- even worse- boring, he let us know by smoking in the background and poking fun.

That raw honesty is the ugly/beautiful part of the book that made Bourdain famous, Kitchen Confidential. In the book he describes his career from making a few dollars at a seafood place to running the kitchen in New York's Les Halles, and all of the painful, sometimes psychotic, sometimes rewarding steps in between. The book is not really biography, but working in a restaurant is more than a job: it's a subculture, it's a duty, it's a life. So when Bourdain describes his work, he is describing the greater part of his life. And while doing so, his voice comes through crystal clear. Bourdain has an attitude and a way with words that are real and translate well off the page.

I personally identified with much of the book, even if I am not leading exactly the same life as the pirate-crew of cooks Bourdain often describes. Even before reading the book, I described my job/life to others as abnormal and necessarily separate from the people we were serving. When normal people eat dinner, we're working. When normal people go to bed, we're getting off work and having a drink. When normal people get up for work, we're often on somebody's floor. It's as base and strange as Bourdain describes, but it's ours, and in a sick way we're proud of it.

But, as usual, greater notions came to me through the book. As I said, I identify with parts of the book but I am not as dedicated to "The Life" as Tony and his crew are. They work longer hours, doing much harder work, for less pay. There's an entire culture of people who do their work every day with no immediate satisfaction other than a well-cooked plate of food that will be gone in twenty minutes. They don't have nice houses or their names in lights. They have their jobs and a place where they can say, "I do this well." And that's enough. There's more to the job than that, of course, some good and some bad, but that part of it, at least, has nobility to it.

As for Bourdain himself, he has long been a hero of mine. Reading about his drug-ridden past, great failures, and lessons hard-learned has not diminished this in the least. If anything it has only boosted my esteem. Someone who's gone through all of that and come out standing on the other side probably knows a thing or two.

Saturday, June 28, 2008

Play's The Thing

A friend of mine posted the following selection on his blog the other day. It's from a book called "The Conservative Soul" by Andrew Sullivan. (I hope Paul doesn't mind my reposting all of this!)

The freest society is the one in which the quintessential, ultimate activity is play. Security is guaranteed; Work is done; the wealth that freedom creates enables leisure; and leisure begets play. When we play games we suspend for a time the burdens of practical life- of earning a living, feeding our bodies, getting enough sleep, saving our souls. We engage in activity that has no point; and those who play games merely to win them miss the point of playing. Games help us restraint, prudence, and cooperation that are central to democratic life. They teach us activities that lead nowhere but where they are.

My response to this came quickly, surprising even me. This is the comment I left:

I’m afraid I must disagree. I do believe that games and fun have value, at least on a personal level, but describing gameplay as ‘quintessential’ and ‘ultimate’ in society seems to defeat the point a little bit.

People banding together for survival and success- forming cities and countries and what have you- is one thing, but for the goal of a free society to be play removes them from earnest, hard, and important work of survival- the very reason they came together in the first place.

Which brings me to another thought- who is he talking about? I know America is a great industrial country that has given its citizens every opportunity to live a comfortable, healthy life, but are we to take that for granted while much of the world is still working- not playing- very hard for food and shelter? It seems shallow and careless to place ‘play’ on such a pedestal. And some may say that countries like America have earned their leisure, but we all know we’re not in our own little bubbles. We are connected to our factories and businesses abroad; if we insist that we are playing on the merit of our own work, we must admit that we’re doing so on their work as well.

Though I’d like to avoid hyperbole (as well as an over-used comparison), I would like to point out that this was very much the attitude of the Romans before the Empire fell. Days-long parties, feasts of bacchanalian proportions, and of course the infamous vomitorium were all play and fun, and they were all symptoms of atrophy in a breaking society.

I agree that games have their place, and that we need to have fun. Of course I do. But for that to be our goal, our quintessence, our height of living … doesn’t sit well with me.

What was surprising about this was that I didn't even know I felt this way! I just started typing and it snowballed out of me. I suppose it has something to do with the fact that much of what I've been reading and thinking about lately has given me glimpses into lives very different from my own. Perhaps there will be more on this later. I just wanted to share this and see what other people's reactions were.

One final note, however: Paul has an excellent blog, a fave that I check daily. You should check it out, too: http://paulalanrichardson.wordpress.com/

Thursday, June 12, 2008

My Only Friend, The End

From a news report at KLTV News ABC:

"An elusive group just outside of Abilene, Texas is claiming the end of the world is coming in less than a week.

The House of Yahweh recently gave ABC reporter Brian Ross access to their west Texas compound. Yahweh leader Yisrayl Hawkins says a nuclear holocaust will come June 12th and only members of his group will be saved.

All group members change their last names to Hawkins and live in the compound.
Local authorities claim the group is dangerous and practices polygamy. Shane Dee, the local district attorney, says there's no way to describe the group except as a religious cult. Yisrael Hawkins disagrees. "I don't control their mind in a witch-like fashion that the world is speaking of, to where I have some sort of power over them. I merely teach the laws to them."

Hawkins has predicted a doomsday twice before. He's also accused of having two dozen wives, and is facing bigamy charges.

You can see more of the Brian Ross interview tonight (Friday) on 20/20, airing tonight on KLTV 7 at 9:00 pm.
Cathryn Khalil / ckhalil@kltv.com

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So that's it guys. Nuclear holocaust today. Quit your job and don't bother with that 10-day forecast.

My favorite part would have to be, "Hawkins has predicted a doomsday twice before." Once you miss that first one your credibility really begins to wane on those others. I wish him luck, though- third time's a charm, Hawky!