Anthony Bourdain RIP

[Lang Spoon]

Shoot everyone with a title or over a 1000 acres. Or at the very least expropriate with no compensation. Damn ECHR might get in the way though.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

There have been cases of wolves attacking people in Europe though, done nothing to help their reintroduction in Norway. And Norway has a fuck load more empty space, forest and less basterd fermers than Scotland.

Lynx at least are proper wallflower shy, just compensate the fermers when their bloody flocks get thinned out.

I wish I could find it, but a friend of mine who is a sheep farmer sent me a short piece about the unending misery of being a sheep farmer, because essentially they spend all day every day, from the moment of their birth til the moment you sell them on, trying to kill themselves, and you have to try and stop them. Lynx and wolves didn't enter into it. The only line I can remember from it is "If a sheep could die twice, it would."

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Most deer estates lose money as the cost of maintaining the deer herd is too much. This is why we need WILD LYNX.

Most deer estates lose money because they're not run remotely as commercial enterprises, but are instead a summer place for rich cunts who like playing a laird. Also I would be extremely sceptical about the reported viability of anything in the countryside. One of the first item on the agenda for an independent scotland has to be land reform. There's no reason to stick with the feudal bullshit that they've got going on currently.

I am 100% with you on the lynx's though.

[Lang Spoon]

There have been cases of wolves attacking people in Europe though, done nothing to help their reintroduction in Norway. And Norway has a fuck load more empty space, forest and less basterd fermers than Scotland.

Lynx at least are proper wallflower shy, just compensate the fermers when their bloody flocks get thinned out.

[ad hoc]

This.

I reckon wolves would be good too. Like lynx they steer clear of people.

(bears on the other hand don't mix well with people)

[Lang Spoon]

Damn right. I'm not sure wolves are a good idea for Scotland but aye on the lynx.

[EIM]

Most deer estates lose money as the cost of maintaining the deer herd is too much. This is why we need WILD LYNX.

[Lang Spoon]

I agree they need to be managed but deer stalking doesn't kill the right animals, chinless bastards and rich tourists want to kill magnificent stags, not the surplus females, young, sick or old animals. We artificially maintain way too many deer cos of the money deer stalking brings in. Deer shot for venison rather than sport does a bit better at keeping numbers down, but these estates primarily exist for "sport".

Basically deer sheep and grouse moors are The Enemy.

[BallochSonsFan]

He went deer hunting with the vile AA Gill on that pretty poor Glasgow ep, if there's one form of hunting that's unsustainable and heavily contributes to much of the Highlands being a vegetation denuded wet desert, it's bloody deer stalking.

I'd argue the opposite. Deer have no predators in the UK. Deer populations in Scotland have to be managed because deer herds can be incredibly destructive to habitat that other animals and birds need.

But I agree completely about AA Gill. Was never a fan of his writing.

[Lang Spoon]

He went deer hunting with the vile AA Gill on that pretty poor Glasgow ep, if there's one form of hunting that's unsustainable and heavily contributes to much of the Highlands being a vegetation denuded wet desert, it's bloody deer stalking.

[BallochSonsFan]

He shoots a pig on camera in the Louisiana episode so he's clearly not a totally virtuous person but then he never claimed to be. He also had some dodgy guests (Ted Nugent IIRC).

I don't really have an issue with him killing an animal on camera. If you're a meat eater (I am) then you need to accept the fact that an animal dies for the meat you eat. You hope that by supporting high welfare farming and eating more of the animal that you're at least contributing towards it having as good a life a possible. I don't like the romanticising of it. Bourdain was really prone to romanticising guns and gun culture, hunting and hunting culture and engaging in the kind of nonsense that Hemmingway would have been proud of regarding how manly guns make him feel.

[Satchmo Distel]

He shoots a pig on camera in the Louisiana episode so he's clearly not a totally virtuous person but then he never claimed to be. He also had some dodgy guests (Ted Nugent IIRC).

[Hot Pepsi]

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Bourdain's shows. The best ones are absolutely fantastic. Tony gives you an uncompromising, warts and all glimpse at a place and it's people. His worst shows tended to be really contrived. It wasn't unknown for Tony to become holier than thou and to talk down about the typical every day reality for a lot of people in the places he visited. I think he was probably at his worst when he was doing shows about North American cities and regions. He could appear very arrogant when he was on very familiar ground. The North American episodes of Parts Unknown are the ones I tend to skip when I find myself watching the series on repeat viewing. Tony and his friends indulging themselves in Montreal or Quebec and generally acting like self-indulgent brats just isnt my thing.

I can't say that I remember seeing the infamous Romania show but his one in Glasgow was just horrendous. Sitting in the Rogano restaurant pontificating about Glasgow poverty with so called comic Janey Godley was almost a parody of the city. When they moved that episode to a highland shooting lodge, it allowed Bourdain to engage in some 3rd rate pseudo-Hemmingway garbage. Having just finished the London episode, I'd also suggest that Mark Peter White (because Marco Pierre is pretentious nonsense) and going for a pint with Nigella in some posh London gastro-pub is hardly showing viewers the real, recognisable London.

Those criticisms aside? When he got it right it was often exceptional viewing.

In retrospect, I don't like is aggressive carnivorism and defense of the indefensible, like faux gras.



I know what you mean about his North American episodes. I recall that in one of his later seasons he went to Buffalo and other rust belt cities and admitted that he used to think that those places were simply missing out on the real culture happening in New York but now he realized those places have their own culture and don't need to anyone else telling them they're doing it wrong. On the one hand, it was great to hear somebody on a foodie show say that, but on the other hand I was a bit appalled that a guy as well-travelled and well-read as he was didn't understand that until fairly late in life.

Of course, a stereotype of hipsters with some grounding in truth is that they'll give every benefit of every doubt to the cultural products of other countries, especially poorer countries, but be quick to shit all over New Jersey, for example, or the suburbs, even though that's where so many immigrants, as well as the best cheap restaurants, actually are.

Guy Fieri, the Man vs Food guy and Andrew Zimmern, I think, did a better job of showing that fly-over America actually does have its own food culture apart from 7-11 and McDonalds. It might not be for everyone and it might not be very fancy - although it often is - but it's not because those people don't know better.

Padma Lackshmi's show is specifically trying to talk about racism and the mistreatment of immigrants while showing off subcultures and regions, but instead of just going for the obvious ones, she's gone for some that might be overlooked as specific communities. Like she did a nice episode about German-American food traditions in Wisconsin, and a recurring theme in that episode was that a lot of stuff that we just think of as generically American or even just plain "white," came from immigrants who didn't always have an easy time of it. That is not to say, however, that she makes a false equivalence or goes in for any "white people are victims of racism too" bullshit. I thought that was well done and I could really relate to it.

[ursus arctos]

That is indeed rather egregious.

The film appears to have a number of issues.

[Nefertiti2]

https://twitter.com/tamigraph/status/1415746389703729153?s=20

[RobW]

I love Bourdain's visits to Montreal and Quebec, but then I love Montreal and Quebec.

Yes! That was one of my favourites.

[Flynnie]

I love Bourdain's visits to Montreal and Quebec, but then I love Montreal and Quebec. He's just living it large in what is possibly his favourite place outside his beloved New York City. The only other place that seems to come close for him is Buenos Aires. He's great on San Francisco too, which is high praise from me because I will shit on anybody's portrayal of San Francisco if one second of it feels phony. He is one of the few people that gets that the heart of San Francisco is not some dilettantish, hippie town.

That said, I think his NYC episodes are a little underwhelming. That's the kind of bad Tony that rants about hipsters despite being the Platonic ideal of an older hipster and he seemed to kind of struggle at explaining his own backyard (although his New Jersey episode of Parts Unknown is great).

Also, bizarrely, I don't believe he ever did a Boston episode on any of his shows despite doing a fantastic Massachusetts-NOT-Boston episode of Parts Unknown.

[RobW]

I hadn't realised it was the anniversary of his passing yesterday. I watched the Mexico City episode which was good and as a result bought some mezcal and figured I ought to eat more Mexican food.

[BallochSonsFan]

I have a bit of a love/hate relationship with Bourdain's shows. The best ones are absolutely fantastic. Tony gives you an uncompromising, warts and all glimpse at a place and it's people. His worst shows tended to be really contrived. It wasn't unknown for Tony to become holier than thou and to talk down about the typical every day reality for a lot of people in the places he visited. I think he was probably at his worst when he was doing shows about North American cities and regions. He could appear very arrogant when he was on very familiar ground. The North American episodes of Parts Unknown are the ones I tend to skip when I find myself watching the series on repeat viewing. Tony and his friends indulging themselves in Montreal or Quebec and generally acting like self-indulgent brats just isnt my thing.

I can't say that I remember seeing the infamous Romania show but his one in Glasgow was just horrendous. Sitting in the Rogano restaurant pontificating about Glasgow poverty with so called comic Janey Godley was almost a parody of the city. When they moved that episode to a highland shooting lodge, it allowed Bourdain to engage in some 3rd rate pseudo-Hemmingway garbage. Having just finished the London episode, I'd also suggest that Mark Peter White (because Marco Pierre is pretentious nonsense) and going for a pint with Nigella in some posh London gastro-pub is hardly showing viewers the real, recognisable London.

Those criticisms aside? When he got it right it was often exceptional viewing.

[Nefertiti2]

this tribute from a UK based Burmese food writer on Bourdain in Burma

https://twitter.com/meemalee/status/1402551921173536769?s=20

[ursus arctos]

He wrote about that

Maybe the best single example of this was the ROMANIA show, where absolutely everything was fucked up beyond all hope or recognition: wrong fixer (the inexplicably addled Zamir), unfriendly populace, officials looking for backhanders, and guides with other agendas who did their best (in the hope of portraying their country in a desirable light) to ensure that absolutely every genuine moment was quickly smothered under a thick scrim of artificiality, falsehood and staginess. It was a nightmare to shoot. An utter failure on all our parts—and yet it became a timeless classic of Travel Gone Wrong—unintentionally hilarious. It may have made all of us Public Enemies in Romania (and the subject of scandal and speculation in their national press)—and it may have been terribly unfair to the country and to the many Romanian expats who tuned in, looking to see something beautiful of their beloved homeland…
But it was an accurately gonzo—if unflattering– account of what it’s like to make an utter failure of a show, a masterpiece of incompetence on our part—and misguided good (and bad) intentions on the part of some of our hosts. It was at the same time our greatest failure as professional travel and food television producers—and our greatest success as technicians—and absurdists. We might never be able to repay the good people of Romania for our offenses against their national pride; but no small number of them recognized at least the worst of their country. I can assure you, by the way, that what we DIDN’T and could NEVER have included in the show would have been even more painfully hilarious. To this day, in the hours after a shooting day, veteran crew members sit in hotel lobbies around the world, and tell the young ones about what really happened there.

[ad hoc]

My first experience of Bourdain was just after I moved to Romania and there was a social media explosion of anger at his visit here - he hired a Russian fixer to take him round and he played up the Dracula shit heavily, and had all these unlikely encounters with people in traditional folk costume. I remember back then watching that and thinking "who is this jerk?" It took ages before I watched other things he'd done and realising that he was great in pretty much all ways. I still have no idea what happened in that Romania show, and how he allowed himself to do something so beneath him. I'm in two minds about whether I'd like to see that episode again

[G-Man]

Oh, Bourdain absolutely is the greatest food traveller of all time. There is no contender in sight.

[Gerontophile]

I met him once, fleetingly, and he was nothing more than ... inclusive. He had no idea who I was. But he asked the right questions. And for that, I will die on the hill of "greatest food traveller of all time", and if such a thing does not exist, well, there you go, he fucking invented it.

I have HBO Max, and I am gagging on the Kenyan* horsehair.

*It wasn't. I can't remember which country. Might have been Namibia, so apologies to all.

[Nefertiti2]

He died three years ago


A tribute here

https://twitter.com/NicholsUprising/status/1402384241539887105?s=20