Dear Tony,
I wasn't going to include you in one of my close encounters of the celebrity kind, but since you've gone and killed yourself, I now feel compelled to do so. If I had a chance to give you some parting words, it would only add up to three:
WHAT THE FUCK
That is not a question, but more a statement. You can answer it if you want. oh, wait. You can't, can you? Friday morning I heard the news like everyone else that you, author//TV host/culinary bad boy Anthony Bourdain had died in France at the age of 61. Was it a heart attack? An accident of some sort? Nein and nein. You hung yourself like Kate Spade did earlier in the week. How trendy of you. And your best friend Eric Ripert discovered your body. Now if that doesn't say "thank you for being a friend", I don't know what does.
Sorry. I'm not showing the proper amount of respect for a celebrity death. But I'm pissed. I'm hurt. I'm so fucking confused. And you made my wife cry, you asshole..
But why should I be upset? I didn't know you. We weren't friends. I saw you once and spoke to you-or toward you, as it were- for a brief moment in time, but we had no real connection in the world.
Or did we?
I followed you from the very first episode of A COOK'S TOUR on the Food Network. Previously, I would watch cooking shows in passing, most of them boring as borscht since they were performing demonstrations like trained seals for the unwashed or endlessly rattling off recipes to the ether. When your show debuted, I saw a too hip for the room dude traveling the countryside, foreign and domestic, developing our culinary palettes and telling a tale or two along the way in a snarky, yet reasonably compassionate, articulate tone. It was transformative. I never looked at food, let alone the world, the same way again. You brought awareness to the fact that food does indeed matter. Where it comes from. Who cooks it. Who eats it.
I wanted more so I picked up your first book KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL and another lightning bolt went off. I had been attempting to put a book of my own together about the movie-going experience in my life. After reading your tome, I suddenly knew how to do it and thus, my book IN THE DARK was born. I could claim you were its Dutch uncle and it wouldn't be far from the truth.
Certainly that could have been the case when I visited South Africa in 2002. So many times in that adventure of a lifetime, my thoughts turned to you, especially on safari in Kruger Park when I had my own epiphany about life itself. I had several Anthony Bourdain moments on the other side of the world. While.I should have claimed those as my own, but you, fellow traveler, informed that Cherney Journey enough to not only live in that moment, but to also chronicle the entire experience in another book, PLEASE HOLD THUMBS.
(Here's some delicious irony for you to nibble on as an amuse bouche while waiting for your table at the Purgatory Cafe: While you kick-started my earlier books, your death derailed my writing this weekend. It seems I was too bummed over your sorry dead ass to write something of my own. Well, there's this. Gosh.Thanks, pal.)
So I'm eternally grateful to you. Your work inspired me. You inspired me. You went on to several others shows, NO RESERVATIONS on Travel Channel and PARTS UNKNOWN on CNN among others (THE TASTE not withstanding) that gave us some some the finest hours of, not just food and travel shows, but television itself in the last two decades. You promoted the food of chefs known (David Chang, Gabrielle Hamilton, Ludo Lefebvre) and not so well-known (Edward Lee, Sean Brock, April Bloomfield) on THE MIND OF A CHEF that you produced. You continued to write and have your own publishing imprint through Harper Collins. You began to produce features like recent documentary of chef Jeremiah Tower.
You had begun to create an empire and to make it all the sweeter, gave back to the world as a force of good in an increasingly intolerable society. Maybe you didn't invent food culture. But you sure as hell made it cool.
You came to Portland in what I believe to be 2006 to promote your latest book THE NASTY BITS at the Heathman Hotel. I discovered then you were shooting an episode of NO RESERVATIONS in our fair city, just on the cusp of being a food destination all its own. I brought a copy of your LES HALLES COOKBOOK from your time as head chef of that now-closed French bistro in New York and stood in line for a signing. I wanted him to autograph it for my wife who couldn't be there, at work at a downtown cafe herself.
I know I wanted to say a few words myself and anxiously waited my life in the queue when finally, over the rising decibels of the din I spoke.
"I wanted to thank you. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL inspired me to write my first book. About movies."
You stared back without recognition. You may not have heard me. Maybe it didn't register. Could be book tour/TV show fatigue. I don't know. A blank stare is a blank stare no matter the reason. And without a word.
Uncomfortably, I readjusted and recalled something I read in the Portland Mercury that day.
"Oh, by the way, Marky Ramone is in town."
Suddenly a bell went off. As you well know, Marky Ramone is the last surviving member of The Ramones, your all-time favorite band and a friend of yours.
"Really? Where?"
"A club called Dante's. He's playing there tonight."
With that, you turned to say something to some lackey, maybe as a reminder of what I just said. With that, you grinned back at me with a nod. I was dismissed.
And that was that.
It's important to me to openly show gratitude to those who have made an impact on my life and was glad i was able to do so with you. It didn't register a blip on your radar, but it meant something to me. I hope you got together with Marky that evening. For that, you could thank me, but you never will, especially not now.
I just finished reading ROBIN, Dave Itzkoff's excellent bio of Robin Williams, another celeb that hung himself (what is this-a fad?) and another death that hit me right where I lived, pun so very much intended. I usually chastise those who take such things so personally, but here I sit, cocktail in hand after my wife and I both toasted your bloody self, and I'm gob-smacked and sucker punched in the soul by what is such a heinous act. I can't condone it. I won't, even though it too has crossed my mind more than once in this lifetime. I don't understand it in myself and I don't in others. I recognize that darkness. It's taken another, someone I happen to inexplicably care about very much. And what I feel is absolutely nothing compared to those in your personal life that you left behind including your eleven year old daughter. Suicide isn't just a personal act. There's a lot of collateral damage that's left in its wake.
On that note I'll leave you with this:
Thank you.
And fuck you.
I'm sure you understand.
I wasn't going to include you in one of my close encounters of the celebrity kind, but since you've gone and killed yourself, I now feel compelled to do so. If I had a chance to give you some parting words, it would only add up to three:
WHAT THE FUCK
That is not a question, but more a statement. You can answer it if you want. oh, wait. You can't, can you? Friday morning I heard the news like everyone else that you, author//TV host/culinary bad boy Anthony Bourdain had died in France at the age of 61. Was it a heart attack? An accident of some sort? Nein and nein. You hung yourself like Kate Spade did earlier in the week. How trendy of you. And your best friend Eric Ripert discovered your body. Now if that doesn't say "thank you for being a friend", I don't know what does.
Sorry. I'm not showing the proper amount of respect for a celebrity death. But I'm pissed. I'm hurt. I'm so fucking confused. And you made my wife cry, you asshole..
But why should I be upset? I didn't know you. We weren't friends. I saw you once and spoke to you-or toward you, as it were- for a brief moment in time, but we had no real connection in the world.
Or did we?
I followed you from the very first episode of A COOK'S TOUR on the Food Network. Previously, I would watch cooking shows in passing, most of them boring as borscht since they were performing demonstrations like trained seals for the unwashed or endlessly rattling off recipes to the ether. When your show debuted, I saw a too hip for the room dude traveling the countryside, foreign and domestic, developing our culinary palettes and telling a tale or two along the way in a snarky, yet reasonably compassionate, articulate tone. It was transformative. I never looked at food, let alone the world, the same way again. You brought awareness to the fact that food does indeed matter. Where it comes from. Who cooks it. Who eats it.
I wanted more so I picked up your first book KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL and another lightning bolt went off. I had been attempting to put a book of my own together about the movie-going experience in my life. After reading your tome, I suddenly knew how to do it and thus, my book IN THE DARK was born. I could claim you were its Dutch uncle and it wouldn't be far from the truth.
Certainly that could have been the case when I visited South Africa in 2002. So many times in that adventure of a lifetime, my thoughts turned to you, especially on safari in Kruger Park when I had my own epiphany about life itself. I had several Anthony Bourdain moments on the other side of the world. While.I should have claimed those as my own, but you, fellow traveler, informed that Cherney Journey enough to not only live in that moment, but to also chronicle the entire experience in another book, PLEASE HOLD THUMBS.
(Here's some delicious irony for you to nibble on as an amuse bouche while waiting for your table at the Purgatory Cafe: While you kick-started my earlier books, your death derailed my writing this weekend. It seems I was too bummed over your sorry dead ass to write something of my own. Well, there's this. Gosh.Thanks, pal.)
So I'm eternally grateful to you. Your work inspired me. You inspired me. You went on to several others shows, NO RESERVATIONS on Travel Channel and PARTS UNKNOWN on CNN among others (THE TASTE not withstanding) that gave us some some the finest hours of, not just food and travel shows, but television itself in the last two decades. You promoted the food of chefs known (David Chang, Gabrielle Hamilton, Ludo Lefebvre) and not so well-known (Edward Lee, Sean Brock, April Bloomfield) on THE MIND OF A CHEF that you produced. You continued to write and have your own publishing imprint through Harper Collins. You began to produce features like recent documentary of chef Jeremiah Tower.
You had begun to create an empire and to make it all the sweeter, gave back to the world as a force of good in an increasingly intolerable society. Maybe you didn't invent food culture. But you sure as hell made it cool.
I know I wanted to say a few words myself and anxiously waited my life in the queue when finally, over the rising decibels of the din I spoke.
"I wanted to thank you. KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL inspired me to write my first book. About movies."
You stared back without recognition. You may not have heard me. Maybe it didn't register. Could be book tour/TV show fatigue. I don't know. A blank stare is a blank stare no matter the reason. And without a word.
Uncomfortably, I readjusted and recalled something I read in the Portland Mercury that day.
"Oh, by the way, Marky Ramone is in town."
Suddenly a bell went off. As you well know, Marky Ramone is the last surviving member of The Ramones, your all-time favorite band and a friend of yours.
"Really? Where?"
"A club called Dante's. He's playing there tonight."
With that, you turned to say something to some lackey, maybe as a reminder of what I just said. With that, you grinned back at me with a nod. I was dismissed.
And that was that.
It's important to me to openly show gratitude to those who have made an impact on my life and was glad i was able to do so with you. It didn't register a blip on your radar, but it meant something to me. I hope you got together with Marky that evening. For that, you could thank me, but you never will, especially not now.
I just finished reading ROBIN, Dave Itzkoff's excellent bio of Robin Williams, another celeb that hung himself (what is this-a fad?) and another death that hit me right where I lived, pun so very much intended. I usually chastise those who take such things so personally, but here I sit, cocktail in hand after my wife and I both toasted your bloody self, and I'm gob-smacked and sucker punched in the soul by what is such a heinous act. I can't condone it. I won't, even though it too has crossed my mind more than once in this lifetime. I don't understand it in myself and I don't in others. I recognize that darkness. It's taken another, someone I happen to inexplicably care about very much. And what I feel is absolutely nothing compared to those in your personal life that you left behind including your eleven year old daughter. Suicide isn't just a personal act. There's a lot of collateral damage that's left in its wake.
On that note I'll leave you with this:
Thank you.
And fuck you.
I'm sure you understand.
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