'Llectuals on the Peeb

"Summer reading you can watch!"

"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.

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/

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

All content © Copyright 2001 - 2008 WorldNow and KLTV, a Raycom Media Station.All Rights Reserved. For more information on this site, please read our Privacy Policy and Terms of Service."

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!

"The Pillars of the Earth" by Ken Follett

Ken Follett's "The Pillars of the Earth" is an epic historical novel that spans a generation in mid to late 12th century. The novel chronicles the lives of several 'ordinary' people- not kings or popes or crusaders, but monks, stonemasons, and local landowners- as they all take part in the construction of a grand cathedral, one of the most monumental undertakings of the medieval world. In the end, the lives involved are as grand and sweeping as the spires of the cathedral around which they are centered.

This book sparked my imagination in many ways. The subject of cathedral-building has always fascinated me, but somehow I never knew it. When I toured the cathedrals of Spain I was always mystified by their enormity. Great trees of stone would rise out of the floor and extend into the distant ceiling. And into this surface, this infinite canvas of masonry, would be carved the most intricate works of art. My mind could not grasp how men with simple machines and no modern technology could erect such a structure.

Unfortunately, I never pursued the question. I appreciated the beauty of it all, but once I left the building it didn't occur to do some research or figure any of it out. But the novel goes into depth on the subjects of masonry and stonecarving. What the builders of the day lacked in technology they more than made up for in knowledge and passion. They knew stone- how to carve it, how to use it, how it behaved under pressure and weather and time. This combined with the passion to do something superhuman drove them literally to greater and greater heights. I am anxious for my next visit to a cathedral, for I will now see it in a new and even more wondrous light.

I was also taken in very much the description of life in the Middle Ages. Even now, several days after I have turned the last page, I am still enchanted by the world of Kingsbridge and the way of life there. I had read about the harsh and violent reality of life in the Middle Ages in history textbooks, and I usually dismissed life in that era as terrible and virtually unlivable by today's standards.

But it wasn't unlivable. This is a fact because- get this- people lived those lives! What I took away from "The Pillars of the Earth", among many other things, was the fact that during some of the most violent, corrupt, and unfair times in Western history, people were living, loving, having children, and sharing their joys and pains with one another. It was a time when survival was never a certainty from day to day, yes, but for some that meant that every day alive was a joyful event. Every meal was a blessing because starvation was much closer than we know it to be today.

In this old world might made right, as the saying goes. Those who were the better swordsmen could look forward to rich lives, for they could kill and take whatever they wanted. Sometimes good men held a sword and checked the power of others, but even in these cases there were surely self-serving motives involved. Fairness was an idea for philosophers and holy men; it had no place in daily life. Those who decried the unfairness soon died, and those who lived in spite of it were tougher for having done so.

There is a lesson there, at least for me. We condemn any unfairness now with an air of enlightenment (although for many 'enlightenment' merely means killing and taking in a more covert and acceptable manner). Every once in a while I see or hear of people who demand that nothing bad happen to them on the basis that it would be unfair, and nobody should be treated unfairly. They take this view as a sort of cover-all. The truth is it takes courage to live in a world that is inherently unfair, and it takes character to treat other people fairly in spite of it. Those two characteristics will probably take you the farthest, because, now as in the Middle Ages, there is little or nothing protecting you from the cruelties of the world except for yourself.

As usual, however, I digress. The fact that the story arouses all of these thoughts and feelings in me goes to show the remarkable job Ken Follett does crafting his characters and telling their stories. For a short time (or perhaps not so short, depending on how long it takes you to read a thousand-page novel) you live with them, fall in love with them, share their pain with them, and die with them. The book takes you away; can you ask for anything more?

To Keri- great Christmas gift! Thank you!

Where my servers at?

Preach on, man, preach on.
Music Video: “Tip Yo Waiter”

"Slaughterhouse-Five" by Kurt Vonnegut

Not since Slaughterhouse-Three has master of horror Kurt Vonnegut come out with something so diabolical.

Kidding.

I had been curious about "Slaughterhouse-Five" long before I read it, flipping through a few pages while browsing at Barnes & Noble or even watching about ten minutes of the 1972 movie- only ten minutes because it's a very confusing plot if you don't know what's going on from the beginning. I'd read reviews or descriptions saying that it was, in a nutshell, a humorous anti-war book with touches of science fiction and philosophy. But what finally prompted me to pick it up and read it was a recent episode of LOST in which one of the characters becomes "unstuck in time", an idea borrowed directly from Vonnegut's book.

Becoming unstuck in time is exactly what happens to Billy Pilgrim. The idea behind it is that while we imagine time to be a linear sequence of events, we are actually just living out moments in a cycle to be repeated over and over again. Billy Pilgrim, instead of living his moments consecutively, jumps from one to another at random- at one point he is a young man in World War II, and the next he is an married and attending his daughter's wedding.

While Pilgrim is jumping about in time I thought a lot about how fate and free will would be affected by time being a cycle, going in a loop. If everything returns from whence it came, do we have any choice about where we're going? Can we affect it? Billy Pilgrim can't, and he seems to accept it pretty easily. As he goes from watching the horrors of the Dresden fire-bombing of WWII to more relaxed years of old age and family life and even his death, he seems to just be along for the ride.

Death, in fact, is probably the most interestingly handled idea in the book. After every mention of death- from the death of a dog, to genocide and mass murder, to individual deaths of soldiers, to even the main character's own death- is the phrase, "So it goes." Every death in the book seems even and inevitable, and with that simple phrase, okay.

The book's strong anti-war message is probably best described in a part of the story when, due to his unfixed position in time, Billy Pilgrim watches a war movie in reverse. It is the most direct imagery in the book, and it was also beautiful, in a way. If you only read a small part of this already short novel, I'd recommend that one.