"... Hunter S. Thompson and Iggy Pop and William S. Burroughs. The older me, the one who prefers wine to fizz, wishes [the author] had more to say about things like: a) the elite and vernacular food worlds pre- and post-Bourdain; b) how Bourdain walked a moral tightrope across the conventions of travel writing and reporting, no mean feat for a wealthy white man in skinny jeans; and c) the sense that he was at the vanguard, more so than even the most scrutinized actors, of a new type of American masculinity. Here was an outdoor, rather than an indoor, cat... "
Garner walks a moral tightrope reviewing a book that is not the book that he would like to read. To what extent is a reviewer obliged stick to whether an author did a good job of what he decided to do?
There's also this: "Bourdain grew into his looks; his was the kind of face that inspired Talmudic levels of study among women." And: "We learn he Googled the name Asia Argento — the Italian actress with whom he had a torrid, messy affair — several hundred times in the last three days of his life, after she rattled him by appearing in public with another man. Their text messages are printed in the book. 'You were reckless with my heart,' Bourdain wrote, before he hanged himself."
Rattled. Indeed. It sounds as though he had become an obsessive stalker.
By the way, I like the book title — "Down and Out in Paradise" — if it is a play — it must be — on the Orwell title "Down and Out in Paris and London."
“Sending everyone peace and loving healing regards from Malibu! The best sunsets ever thank God for the Ocean!” Lee posted on Instagram Saturday night, alongside a photo of a beach.
The post was made hours after The New York Times revealed [accusations from] Cuomo’s 25-year-old former aide, Charlotte Bennet, is accusing the 63-year-old governor of asking her inappropriate personal questions at work... days after another former aide, Lindsey Boylan, publicly accused the governor of attempting to kiss her on the mouth at his New York City office in 2018....
I'd say Sandra Lee is keeping her distance. This is a woman I had never paid any attention to until I was looking up Cuomo's Wikipedia page yesterday. I can't remember exactly why, but I suddenly needed to know where he went to law school. The answer is Albany Law School. Isn't that interesting?
I got to reading the "Personal Life" section. There was that marriage to the 7th child of Robert F. Kennedy. And then there was an 8-year relationship with Food Network host Sandra Lee. I was curious enough to click through to Lee's Wikipedia page, and that led me to some of the biggest laughs I've had all year. Lee has an approach to cooking that she calls "semi-homemade." In practice, this involves using lots of processed foods and combining them in ways so ludicrous that it kind of has to be a spoof.
The Italian actress and director Asia Argento was among the first women in the movie business to publicly accuse the producer Harvey Weinstein of sexual assault. She became a leading figure in the #MeToo movement. Her boyfriend, the culinary television star Anthony Bourdain, eagerly joined the fight.
But in the months that followed her revelations about Mr. Weinstein last October, Ms. Argento quietly arranged to pay $380,000 to her own accuser: Jimmy Bennett, a young actor and rock musician who said she had sexually assaulted him in a California hotel room years earlier, when he was only two months past his 17th birthday. She was 37. The age of consent in California is 18....
The documents, which were sent to The New York Times through encrypted email by an unidentified party, include a selfie dated May 9, 2013, of the two lying in bed. As part of the agreement, Mr. Bennett, who is now 22, gave the photograph and its copyright to Ms. Argento, now 42. Three people familiar with the case said the documents were authentic.
Bennett was a child actor, and he had played Argento's son in a movie.
Ms. Argento, who is divorced and has two children, was both a mentor and a mother figure to Mr. Bennett, the document says, and the two were intermittently in contact as he grew up. “Jimmy’s impression of this situation was that a mother-son relationship had blossomed from their experience on set together,” [Bennett's lawyer] wrote....
The script, based on a book by the pseudonymous writer JT LeRoy, depicts the grim relationship between a drug-addicted prostitute played by Ms. Argento and her son, played by Mr. Bennett and two other young actors. Ms. Argento’s character dresses her son as a girl to lure men, and the boy is ultimately raped.
In interviews and subsequent social media posts between the two over the years, they referred to each other as mother and son.
On May 9, 2013, the day they met for a reunion in her room at a Ritz-Carlton in Marina del Rey, Calif., she posted on Instagram: “Waiting for my long lost son my love @jimmymbennett in trepidation #marinadelrey smoking cigarettes like there was no next week.”
What depths of evil. I think it was child abuse just to use the boy in a movie with that story.
"It’s like any beautiful thing you have to maintain and protect. And then you also have to consider who gets it after you’re gone. And so even books and records, which I… books in particular, I have a lot of books that I really love. When I acquire one that I really love it’s difficult for me, because I think about… who does one pass this on to?... As much as I look at houses sometimes and think wow, that would be really nice, if that were my house, I know that I would be miserable. It would be… cleaning out the… the gutters, and you know, what about the pipes freezing, and if you own a home it means you have to vacation in the same place every year. I’m a renter by nature. I like the freedom to change my mind about where I want to be in six months, or a year. Because I’ve also found you might have to make that decision… you can’t always make that decision for yourself, you know… shit happens."
Said Anthony Bourdain, last February, in a long interview conducted by Maria Bustillos, which I was mostly interested in reading because she set it up with a question she wanted to ask:
I decided to ask him about the matter of luxury. Because through his television work—“Parts Unknown” especially—Bourdain showed Americans a different way of thinking not only about food, but about travel and tourism. About looking at ourselves as one part of a larger human story, in stark contrast to the conventional notion of travel: Americans casting themselves as “exceptionalist” democratic superstars in a drama, with the rest of planet Earth as their Tour Guide co-stars, and plenty of violins in the soundtrack.
I'm interested — as you may know — in the critique of travel. I couldn't find much in that interview on that subject, though, and I settled into his contemplation of the opposite of travel: home.
Travel is the negative space that defines home, even as death defines life.
How did the most ubiquitous man in America for eight years virtually disappear?... He has mostly opted out of liberal America’s collective Trump-outrage cycle. Though he reads the Times and other newspapers, he doesn’t follow daily Trump developments on Twitter or watch television news. He is upset by the administration’s actions, and he’s confided to friends that what worries him most is the international order, the standing of the office of the presidency, the erosion of democratic norms, and the struggles of people who are suddenly unsure of their immigration status or the future of their health-care coverage. Still, in conversations with political allies, Obama insists that today’s domestic mess is a blip on the long arc of history and argues that his own work must be focused on progress over time — specifically on empowering a new generation of leaders. He says his legacy is not what concerns him. (“Michelle and I are fine,” he tells those who ask about it.) And while he often says he misses the day-to-day work of fixing people’s problems, he has even less patience for day-to-day politics than he did as president.
In fact, in private conversations, Obama rarely mentions Trump at all.... One of Obama’s friends repeatedly described the former president as newly “Zen-like,” a striking descriptor given that Obama’s impossible calm has been a hallmark of his entire time on the national stage. To those who’ve known him longest, his confidence in the decision not to wade back into the political muck is the product of the same hyper-self-aware posture he’s had since childhood, growing up straddling worlds and then writing a book about himself in his 30s....
He's aloof. That was always the case. That's kind of what we liked about him, those of us who liked the man who — in my observation — is considered the most likable person to become famous in our lifetime. We're just experiencing the full dimension of coolness. It's not always to your liking, even if you were one of those people who really liked it.
But I think Obama should be allowed to eat his waffle, go to restaurants and be left in peace, write his books, experience down time, and stay out of the fray. He may seem political useful, but that's because he's avoiding being used, and that's exactly what he should do.
ADDED: That waffle video won't work in the embedded form. You can click through and see it at YouTube, but for a workable embed, here's Obama eating noodles in Vietnam with Anthony Bourdain:
"Perhaps because of my primate heritage I've always been partial to tree dwelling animals. Bonobos look like they have a pretty good deal, but they're a little too hyper for me. Althouse in a previous blog post really blew the lid ofd squirrels. Nothing much to recommend their manic, futile lives...... Of all tree dwelling creatures I'm most enamored of the sloth. They show an economy of effort in their struggles with existence, and their sad eyes demonstrate a zen awareness of the underlying futility of those struggles. I don't know how much say you're given in your choice for the next manifestation, but I would be comfortable with reincarnation as a sloth. Why wait? The way that that Kafka guy became a cockroach, I have evolved into a sloth. I don't cling to a tree branch, but I spend a lot of time on my posturpedic mattress. You can changer the position of the bed without ever leaving it. In some ways it's slothier than a tree branch."
Squirrels don't have the brainpower to think of committing suicide. They don't even have the wits to think of not bothering to get food and just to waste away because what is the point of all this skittering around collecting nuts? They don't even think of scampering to another spot on the globe to see if the nuts taste different somewhere out there. And they don't think of throwing themselves off a high limb and ending it all. I have seen from my window squirrels falling from high in a tree. They hit the ground and immediately get up and run. Run run run. Get get get. It never stops until death snatches them. They don't go hurling themselves into the arms of death. It's just not a squirrel concept. I know. I read their mind from my vantage point here at the computer in front of the big window looking out on the trees.
The post had been about how to use all the mesclun from the garden, the potential to make a smoothie, the related need for a frozen banana "squirreled... away in the freezer," and a video of an squirrel — a Viennese squirrel — getting fed a banana. I only brought up suicide in the comments because Loren W Laurent, dragging in the demise of Anthony Bourdain, said:
The squirrel doesn't need to travel the world, compulsively looking for new tastes to satiate the hole in the self of wanting more.
“Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer.” This is how I’ll remember Tony. He taught us about food — but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him. pic.twitter.com/orEXIaEMZM
I am stunned! So soon after Kate Spade, a cultural icon who seemed to embody joy in life and simple happiness. Similarly, I associate Bourdain with the power to seize upon life and exuberantly suck the marrow of pleasure out of everything. What is the darkness on the other side of the face we loved because we saw vistas of happiness?
What happened? I'd rather believe it was one of those accidental deaths by hanging. Perhaps he had some terrible ailment that led him to declare the end to life. I hate thinking that a man who exemplified energetic pleasure-seeking was actually not enjoying himself at all.
"As a customer on my days off, I hated it because it was crowded, and my hate was only enhanced by my knowledge of the actual food costs versus the inflated menu prices. Later, as an unemployable drug addict, The only jobs I could get were as a brunch specialist (because no one else at good restaurants wanted to cook eggs) which is why the smell of home fries will always smell like shame and defeat to me... [A]ccess to unlimited mimosas seems to invite a crowd inclined to all varieties of douchery."
Tweets Alec Baldwin — reported in HuffPo — after doing an interview in which he said that he'd been hearing "for decades" that Harvey Weinstein had raped actress Rose McGowan and, when asked why nothing happened, Baldwin said, "What happened was that Rose McGowan took a payment of $100,000 and settled her case with him, and it was for Rose McGowan to prosecute that case." He added that taking a settlement instead of seeking criminal prosecution may "set back the cause of change."
Criticizing Baldwin were Patricia Arquette...
8 women went to lawyers who basically told them they didn't have a hope in hell in court against a multi millionaire. That's why they settled
... and Asia Argento
Alec Baldwin mansplaining 'the cause' for women everywhere....
Baldwin meekly defended himself...
It was never my intention, in my public statements, to “blame the victim” in the many sexual assault cases that have emerged recently/I simply posited that the settlement of such cases certainly delayed justice, though I am fully aware that those settlements were entered into w the understanding that settlement is wise, intimidated into believing so.
... and signed of with a projection of empathy. ...
My heart goes out to all such victims. My goal is to do better in all things related to gender equality. Au revoir.
Argento kicked him on the way out — "We won’t miss you, bully boy." And Baldwin could not let her have the last word. He said she'd "run out of paint or men" if she painted all men the same way. Then Argento's boyfriend Anthony Bourdain defended her, and Baldwin — with a man to smack at last — tweeted: "You should stick to eating worms and keep your mouth shut."
Here, watch the original interview that set off this back-and-forth:
I don't think Baldwin has anything to be ashamed of there, but I can see why the women are sensitive. He's gently (but clearly) accusing them of wanting to further their careers. I'll paraphrase and avoid the subtlety: These women put their career first, and accepting money and silence may have been better for them, but it protected Harvey and meant that many other women would be victimized as they had been, that the system, within which they sought favor, would continue, and that they willingly became part of that system.
I'm sure it hurts to hear that. If you've had a painful experience, you may feel justified in doing what will work out best for you personally. But look at the evil that rolls on and on when each victim does that. It would take some unselfishness and courage to do otherwise, and Baldwin was gently and intelligently observing that the dismal story of Harvey Weinstein — like so many Hollywood scripts — lacked a strong heroine.
By the way, Alec Baldwin, despite his difficult morning, went on to perform in last night's "Saturday Night Live." He played Donald Trump in the cold open (which fell flat with the audience)...
... and then stooped to playing Tony Bennett singing about — I'm not kidding — diarrhea and constipation:
The turning into Jean-Claude Van Damme has to do with jujitsu. And the couple broke up.
Bourdain had an earlier wife. He broke up with her because of television:
“She identified television early on as an existential threat to the marriage,” Bourdain said. “I felt like the whole world was opening up to me. I’d seen things. I’d smelled things. I desperately wanted more. And she saw the whole thing as a cancer.” If you watch episodes of “A Cook’s Tour,” you can sometimes spot [the first wife, Nancy] Putkoski hovering at the edge of the frame. She had no desire to be on camera. She told me recently that her ideal degree of fame would be that of a Supreme Court Justice: “Almost nobody knows what you look like, but you always get the reservation you want.”
There are easier ways to get a reservation, but if you do use the become-a-Supreme-Court-Justice method, make sure to be one of the liberal ones.
And, also on the subject of television, I was interested in this:
“Parts Unknown” films two seasons a year. Even first-class travel can be punishing after a while, and Bourdain acknowledges that although he may still behave like a young man, he isn’t one. “I think you’re officially old at sixty, right?” he told me, soon after his birthday. “The car starts falling apart.” However, TV stars forge bonds with their audience through habitual exposure, and it can feel risky to take a break. “It’s a bit like ‘Poltergeist,’ ” Nigella Lawson, who was Bourdain’s co-host on “The Taste,” told me. “You get sucked into the TV and you can never get out.”
By the way, I love Bourdain's book "Kitchen Confidential," and I was fascinated to learn that it was inspired by one of my favorite books, “Down and Out in Paris and London” (by George Orwell). The New Yorker quotes Orwell's statement that cooks are “the most workmanlike class, and the least servile.” Here's the whole passage from Orwell:
Undoubtedly the most workmanlike class, and the least servile, are the cook. They do not earn quite so much as waiters, but their prestige is higher and their employment steadier. The cook does not look upon himself as a servant, but as a skilled workman; he is generally called 'un ouvrier' which a waiter never is. He knows his power--knows that he alone makes or mars a restaurant, and that if he is five minutes late everything is out ofgear. He despises the whole non-cooking staff, and makes it a point of honour to insult everyone below the head waiter. And he takes a genuine artistic pride in his work, which demands very great skill. It is not the cooking that is so difficult, but the doing everything to time. Between breakfast and luncheon the head cook at the Hôtel X would receive orders for several hundred dishes, all to be served at different times; he cooked few of them himself, but he gave instructions about all of them and inspected them before they were sent up. His memory was wonderful. The vouchers were pinned on a board, but the head cook seldom looked at them; everything was stored in his mind, and exactly to the minute, as each dish fell due, he would call out, 'Faites marcher une côtelette de veau' (or whatever it was) unfailingly. He was an insufferable bully, but he was also an artist. It is for their punctuality, and not for any superiority in technique, that men cooks are preferred to women.
The waiter's outlook is quite different. He too is proud in a way of his skill, but his skill is chiefly in being servile. His work gives him the mentality, not of a workman, but of a snob. He lives perpetually in sight of rich people, stands at their tables, listens to their conversation, sucks up to them with smiles and discreet little jokes. He has the pleasure of spending money by proxy. Moreover, there is always the chance that he may become rich himself, for, though most waiters die poor, they have long runs of luck occasionally. At some cafés on the Grand Boulevard there is so much money to be made that the waiters actually pay the patron for their employment. The result is that between constantly seeing money, and hoping to get it, the waiter comes to identify himself to some extent with his employers. He will take pains to serve a meal in style, because he feels that he is participating in the meal himself.
I remember Valenti telling me of some banquet at Nice at which he had once served, and of how it cost two hundred thousand francs and was talked of for months afterwards. 'It was splendid, mon p'tit, mais magnifique! Jesus Christ! The champagne, the silver, the orchids--I have never seen anything like them, and I have seen some things. Ah, it was glorious!'
'But,' I said, 'you were only there to wait?'
'Oh, of course. But still, it was splendid.'
The moral is, never be sorry for a waiter. Sometimes when you sit in a restaurant, still stuffing yourself half an hour after closing time, you feel that the tired waiter at your side must surely be despising you. But he is not. He is not thinking as he looks at you, 'What an overfed lout'; he is thinking, 'One day, when I have saved enough money, I shall be able to imitate that man.' He is ministering to a kind of pleasure he thoroughly understands and admires. And that is why waiters are seldom Socialists, have no effective trade union, and will work twelve hours a day--they work fifteen hours, seven days a week, in many cafés. They are snobs, and they find the servile nature of their work rather congenial.
"... insulting and belligerently interfering with my crew by petulantly flashing his cell phone camera directly into their eyes while they were working ('I’m a journalist! I’m allowed!'), this guy was drinking himself stupid. It was only through their infinite mercy—and perhaps no small amount of pity for this elderly and shambolic creature, that my crew did not punch his face in. They were sorely tempted. Anyone who attended the event will surely recognize which particular steaming dribble of ordure I’m talking about."
The Oxford English Dictionary says that "shambolic" grew out of the word "shamble," perhaps influenced by "symbolic," and it means "Chaotic, disorderly, undisciplined." It was "Reported to be ‘in common use’ in 1958," but the first quote provided is from 1970:
1970 Times 18 June 9 His office in Printing House Square is so impeccably tidy that it is‥a standing reproach to the standard image of shambolic newspaper offices.
For a second there, I grasp at the theory that Three Dog Night really is behind "shambolic," but the song only goes back to 1973.
ADDED: If you're going to kill all those camels for the environment, why not do the fully conservationist thing and eat them? Anthony Bourdain shows how it's done in Saudi Arabia:
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