RIP Anthony Bourdain

[tigeraid]

This one hurts. Another hero of mine gone. A great storyteller and filmmaker, an advocate for the poor and downtrodden, introducing North American people to the idea that there are actually other people and cultures in the world. Feel awful for his wife and little girl. :(

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/anthony-bourdain-dead

[Rare White Ape]

Oh wow. Very sad.

I saw one of his TV shows once and was instantly gripped. He had a great style.

[Tom Servo]

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck

[MR2 Fan]

:(

I loved his insight to various places, he was definitely not your typical show host.

[Tom Servo]

Really nice post about him on Twitter at https://twitter.com/toastasaurus/status/1005069391938060288



I met Anthony Bourdain only once, while waiting in line at a food festival. Instead of hello he said "hey kid, you hungry?" and it was like I'd bumped into an old friend. He spent the ten minutes listening to me talk about the home country of my parents, Trinidad & Tobago, with the utmost engagement. Like an ambassador studying up, ready to go. I wanted him so badly to visit there. I felt I could trust him to see what I saw in Trinidad, as if the heart of the country would be safe in his hands as a person and traveler. You trusted him with Your Heritage.

We left the line with longanisa in hand. He clinked his beer bottle to mine and thanked me for my time like he'd had an appointment with me all along. I watched him slope off to happily try another line hoping so hard he'd visit my people. He did, ultimately. My whole family watched it. Practically the whole island did. It was like the president visiting your home country. We all watched as Tony Bourdain spoke of the island as if he'd fallen in love with it. I hope he did.

I think many of us trusted him to do that, to fall in love with the places we came from and to understand why we lived there or why we left there. We trusted him to see us as people first. Not curiosities.

Sometimes I like to pretend that my ten minutes convinced him to visit. But that was his charm, really, that he met passion with passion. That he understood the complexity of people just as well as he understood the complexity of food. Sometimes the strange thing about the architecture of fame is that you almost feel someone you admire is the totality of their being. The parts of them that change you are the parts you focus on, and whatever pain he battled was not part of that.

I'm sorry that such levels of pain is a country we shared. We have all lost an ambassador today. Anyways, I guess that's all I wanted to say. Goodbye, Anthony Bourdain. Thank you for visiting my beloved island.

[dodint]

That's cool, he botched the Pittsburgh trip in Parts Unknown so I'm glad that isn't the usual experience. I heard he did well with the WV episode.

[Crazed_Insanity]

This is madness... Mass shootings and celebrity suicides... Sigh...

Poor little girl indeed. I hope she'll grow up to live a fulfilling and long life!

Hope Anthony will finally be able to rest in peace now...

[Tom Servo]

That's cool, he botched the Pittsburgh trip in Parts Unknown so I'm glad that isn't the usual experience. I heard he did well with the WV episode.

Out of curiosity, how so? I know I wasn't sold on the Los Angeles episode, though I chalked that up to trying to cover one of the biggest cities in the world in an hour episode.

[MR2 Fan]

I don't really watch the ones he does in the U.S., it's just more interesting when he went to other countries.

I liked his Korea, Vietnam, Italy and of course Japan episodes on his various shows. I also remember the Beirut episode where they got stuck when conflict broke out and had to be rescued by the US military.

[Tom Servo]

https://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/1005117568913412098

[FaultyMario]

Yeah, soft diplomacy has lost big.

RIP

[MR2 Fan]

I do wonder if suicide rates overall have gone up since the orange idiot took office

[Tom Servo]

CDC says that they're up 25% since 1999, but it sounds like those stats only go up through 2016.

[Crazed_Insanity]

I think suicides went up 10% or something post Robin Williams.

Currently there'll probably be another wave post Kate Spade and Anthony...

What's really shitty is that as we advertise about suicide hotlines for people to seek help more and more, the simple fact that we advertised about it will cause suicide rates to go up.

Anthony talked about daughter giving him reasons to not kill himself, but I guess power of love just isn't great enough to overcome this sickness/epidemic...

Anyone suicidal on this forum reading this post? Just makes sure you procrastinate it til later okay?

[dodint]

Out of curiosity, how so? I know I wasn't sold on the Los Angeles episode, though I chalked that up to trying to cover one of the biggest cities in the world in an hour episode.

Some Yinzers just didn't like it because it wasn't a postcard to the city. I was let down because the stuff covered was just completely irrelevant to the city and I thought an opportunity was missed. From memory he started the show in Bloomfield playing boccie which was ruined by a thunderstorm, pretty on point. The rest of the show was misplaced or flatly misrepresented:

-Did a whole segment on WWF style wresting (could have been anywhere).
-Did a segment where he drove to another county and had dinner in a barn with some restaurateurs who have gentrified some downtown neighborhoods. Mehhhhhhh, bad setting.
-A segment on how hockey fans (read: white people) ruined the hill district (read: black people) by building an arena. Except the arena was built as an opera house in 1961 and the NHL didn't come to Pittsburgh until 1967. (Misrepresentation)
-Final segment was them going to another county and watching a demolition derby.

Just a really underwhelming collection of unconnected stories that didn't have anything to do with Pittsburgh at all.

[speedpimp]

Loved No Reservations and Parts Unknown. RIP.

[neanderthal]

RIP a true ambassador of humanity to all humans.

A flawed but good dude who never stopped showing us that we are all the same.

[Tom Servo]

I'm trying to imagine what his reaction would be to Alex Jones claiming that he was actually murdered by globalists because he was about to come out as a Trump supporter.

[Tom Servo]

Bourdain appearing on Jonah Ray Rodrigues' parody of Parts Unknown: https://twitter.com/jonahray/status/1005109320785072128

[Tom Servo]

The Critic Whose Olive Garden Review Went Viral Remembers How Anthony Bourdain Spoke Up For Her (https://www.buzzfeed.com/juliareinstein/marilyn-hagerty-anthony-bourdain-olive-garden?utm_term=.fvgGAyRpYJ#.xaMRl1WeGo)

[KillerB]

I'm far more bothered by this than any celebrity death I can think of prior to this. :(

[Crazed_Insanity]

Really? Robin Williams hit me harder...

These suicides are as baffling as mass shootings imho. Ones directed inwardly and the other directed outwardly. Don't think celeb suicides have less death count, they usually result in huge bumps in suicides nation wide... :(

[MR2 Fan]

Bourdain had drug problems in the past, perhaps that contributed to the situation.

[dodint]

The idea that he did it because his girlfriend Asia whatever was seeing some reporter on the side is pretty funny. Women, amirite?

[Tom Servo]

From what I gather they had an open relationship, so that would be a little surprising.

[dodint]

Yeah, that's what I meant by 'funny', should have said 'absurd.' Supposedly she's taking some heat for it on social media which is unfortunate given how hard of a time she's probably having right now.

[Tom Servo]

Ahh, sorry, misread. Total agreement then.

[Tom Servo]

It doesn't really fit here, but it's the same vein. Jonathan Gold was like our local Bourdain. Not as brash, not as good on TV, but a good writer and one who believed in the democracy of food. He was the first one in LA to not eschew fine dining, but to put it on equal footing with a food truck. It was just about the food, and because of both him and Bourdain, I've had amazing meals I would never have had if it weren't for them. Memories of smells, tastes, and company. He died today, at 57, of pancreatic cancer.

http://www.latimes.com/local/obituaries/la-fo-jonathan-gold-obit-20180721-story.html