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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Jun 11, 2018 - 04:24pm PT
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Thanks for posting that. He sheds some light on stuff that is out of my frame of reference. Things I don't understand and so never would have thought about without reading that.
Unless one has dealt with the burden of addiction it is hard to relate to the demons being dealt with.
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rockermike
Trad climber
Berkeley
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Jun 12, 2018 - 12:12am PT
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I had never heard of Bourdain before he died and I know nothing about drugs nor fame... but the essay, while well written, doesn't ring true to me. Have other, perhaps closer friends expressed a similar understanding of his struggle? F*#k I know as they say.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Mill Valley, Ca
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Jun 12, 2018 - 08:03am PT
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Unless one has dealt with the burden of addiction it is hard to relate to the demons being dealt with.
Same is true for depression.
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Mungeclimber
Trad climber
Nothing creative to say
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Jun 12, 2018 - 11:45am PT
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"The Normal Existential Angst of the Mundane" (TM) can be too much to bear. That article points right to it without using that label.
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Jun 12, 2018 - 04:38pm PT
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Lot of armchair psychologists here.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Mill Valley, Ca
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Jun 12, 2018 - 05:20pm PT
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Lot of armchair psychologists here.
And you are...
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Toker Villain
Big Wall climber
Toquerville, Utah
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Jun 12, 2018 - 05:23pm PT
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lacking enough info to make assumptions.
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Hardman Knott
Gym climber
Mill Valley, Ca
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Jun 12, 2018 - 09:15pm PT
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Thank you for enlightening us.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 13, 2018 - 07:59pm PT
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A man certain about what is right and wrong.
Oftentimes, THAT brings great pain and suffering--not only for oneself but also for others.
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johntp
Trad climber
socal
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Jun 13, 2018 - 08:07pm PT
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Lot of armchair psychologists here.
What I posted as a recovering alcoholic is not armchair. Any addiction, substance abuse, depression or any other mental illness is something no one else can grasp.
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Gorgeous George
Trad climber
Los Angeles, California
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Jun 14, 2018 - 01:07pm PT
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Anthony Bourdain wrote:
"Americans love Mexican food. We consume nachos, tacos, burritos, tortas, enchiladas, tamales and anything resembling Mexican in enormous quantities. We love Mexican beverages, happily knocking back huge amounts of tequila, mezcal, and Mexican beer every year. We love Mexican people—we sure employ a lot of them. Despite our ridiculously hypocritical attitudes towards immigration, we demand that Mexicans cook a large percentage of the food we eat, grow the ingredients we need to make that food, clean our houses, mow our lawns, wash our dishes, and look after our children. As any chef will tell you, our entire service economy—the restaurant business as we know it—in most American cities, would collapse overnight without Mexican workers. Some, of course, like to claim that Mexicans are “stealing American jobs.” But in two decades as a chef and employer, I never had ONE American kid walk in my door and apply for a dishwashing job, a porter’s position—or even a job as a prep cook. Mexicans do much of the work in this country that Americans, probably, simply won’t do.
We love Mexican drugs. Maybe not you personally, but “we”, as a nation, certainly consume titanic amounts of them—and go to extraordinary lengths and expense to acquire them. We love Mexican music, Mexican beaches, Mexican architecture, interior design, Mexican films.
So, why don’t we love Mexico?
We throw up our hands and shrug at what happens and what is happening just across the border. Maybe we are embarrassed. Mexico, after all, has always been there for us, to service our darkest needs and desires. Whether it’s dress up like fools and get passed-out drunk and sunburned on spring break in Cancun, throw pesos at strippers in Tijuana, or get toasted on Mexican drugs, we are seldom on our best behavior in Mexico. They have seen many of us at our worst. They know our darkest desires.
In the service of our appetites, we spend billions and billions of dollars each year on Mexican drugs—while at the same time spending billions and billions more trying to prevent those drugs from reaching us. The effect on our society is everywhere to be seen. Whether it’s kids nodding off and overdosing in small town Vermont, gang violence in L.A., burned out neighborhoods in Detroit—it’s there to see. What we don’t see, however, haven’t really noticed, and don’t seem to much care about, is the 80,000 dead in Mexico, just in the past few years—mostly innocent victims. Eighty thousand families who’ve been touched directly by the so-called “War On Drugs”.
Mexico. Our brother from another mother. A country, with whom, like it or not, we are inexorably, deeply involved, in a close but often uncomfortable embrace. Look at it. It’s beautiful. It has some of the most ravishingly beautiful beaches on earth. Mountains, desert, jungle. Beautiful colonial architecture, a tragic, elegant, violent, ludicrous, heroic, lamentable, heartbreaking history. Mexican wine country rivals Tuscany for gorgeousness. Its archeological sites—the remnants of great empires, unrivaled anywhere. And as much as we think we know and love it, we have barely scratched the surface of what Mexican food really is. It is NOT melted cheese over tortilla chips. It is not simple, or easy. It is not simply “bro food” at halftime. It is in fact, old—older even than the great cuisines of Europe, and often deeply complex, refined, subtle, and sophisticated. A true mole sauce, for instance, can take DAYS to make, a balance of freshly (always fresh) ingredients painstakingly prepared by hand. It could be, should be, one of the most exciting cuisines on the planet, if we paid attention. The old school cooks of Oaxaca make some of the more difficult and nuanced sauces in gastronomy. And some of the new generation—many of whom have trained in the kitchens of America and Europe—have returned home to take Mexican food to new and thrilling heights.
It’s a country I feel particularly attached to and grateful for. In nearly 30 years of cooking professionally, just about every time I walked into a new kitchen, it was a Mexican guy who looked after me, had my back, showed me what was what, and was there—and on the case—when the cooks like me, with backgrounds like mine, ran away to go skiing or surfing or simply flaked. I have been fortunate to track where some of those cooks come from, to go back home with them. To small towns populated mostly by women—where in the evening, families gather at the town’s phone kiosk, waiting for calls from their husbands, sons and brothers who have left to work in our kitchens in the cities of the North. I have been fortunate enough to see where that affinity for cooking comes from, to experience moms and grandmothers preparing many delicious things, with pride and real love, passing that food made by hand from their hands to mine.
In years of making television in Mexico, it’s one of the places we, as a crew, are happiest when the day’s work is over. We’ll gather around a street stall and order soft tacos with fresh, bright, delicious salsas, drink cold Mexican beer, sip smoky mezcals, and listen with moist eyes to sentimental songs from street musicians. We will look around and remark, for the hundredth time, what an extraordinary place this is.
The received wisdom is that Mexico will never change. That is hopelessly corrupt, from top to bottom. That it is useless to resist—to care, to hope for a happier future. But there are heroes out there who refuse to go along. On this episode of “Parts Unknown,” we meet a few of them. People who are standing up against overwhelming odds, demanding accountability, demanding change—at great, even horrifying personal cost."
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Chaz
Trad climber
greater Boss Angeles area
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Jun 15, 2018 - 05:57pm PT
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Anthony Bourdain's gone. But Guy Fieri's still with us.
Beam me up, Scotty. No signs of intelligent life down here.
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MikeL
Social climber
Southern Arizona
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Jun 16, 2018 - 07:39am PT
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xCon,
Anyone’s dying regrets is worth reading.
I'd say that most of ours will be about those we love and loved.
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Brian in SLC
Social climber
Salt Lake City, UT
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Jun 17, 2018 - 09:05am PT
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Binge watched CNN last night and their showing of Parts Unknown episodes.
We ended with Borneo from Season 6 from 2015. I'd seen it before but to re-watch in light of his passing...made it even more...dark.
Amazing.
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donini
Trad climber
Ouray, Colorado
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Jun 17, 2018 - 09:15am PT
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I will certainly miss his show
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Largo
Sport climber
The Big Wide Open Face
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Jun 17, 2018 - 10:53am PT
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Just read KC again. Guy had a be-bop style that only drifted off course when he goosed the gonzo element too hard. Such a blast to read. Looked forward to every session like a fine meal.
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fear
Ice climber
hartford, ct
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Jun 25, 2018 - 12:20pm PT
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Hard to say, but you can say for sure you won't find any Pharma ads for new black-box warning bearing psych meds on those article pages.
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High Fructose Corn Spirit
Gym climber
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Jun 26, 2018 - 10:03am PT
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"In the words of Nietzsche, 'He who has a why to live can bear almost any how.' People are constantly striving to reach their potential, and when they think they can do better, it often creates a feeling of uneasiness. Contentment is found when one feels they are making the best decision in their current situation. In previous times, global communication systems such as the Internet, television, and phones did not exist. Because of this, people were refined to their immediate environment, making one’s meaning relatively clear. An example of this is a child that was born into a family on a farm. The child was most likely going to work on the farm throughout his life because his family needed him in order to keep the farm running efficiently. If on the odd chance he did have the ability to leave the farm, his other options were limited to a select few. Now, with virtually all information globalized, people see and have access to unlimited opportunities and paths in life, giving the impression that fame and fortune are only right around the corner. Although this wide variety of choices is beneficial to some, it can leave the common person overwhelmed, always questioning their current path. This questioning occurs because they are constantly comparing themselves to a select few ultra successful individuals. Although these outliers seem to be in no way different from you, they are usually products of a combination of the right timing, genetics, and environment. In my opinion, the constant display of these extremely successful people’s lives across a global scale can easily lead one to believe that they are not living up to what they could or should be. This envy causes frustration and disappointment, which most definitely play a role in the growing depression and suicide rates across the world. The bottom line is that people need both concrete meaning and direction in their lives, and this becomes nearly impossible with the overload of information and opportunities we now have access to. But we can create our own sense of meaning through the realization that each person’s life is unique. If people can learn to step back, not be so comparative, and focus on what we as individuals can control, we can live happy and meaningful lives."
Sean Montaigne
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sBZi4Qb_59s
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