Verse 208

I find myself in an interesting spot in today’s culture when it comes to the celebrity landscape. Some people possess — or fake — cultural detachment as a badge of indie coolness, I suppose. For me, I don’t think there’s any one factor that has led to my celebrity isolationism. A lot of it boils down to a lack of curiosity or experimentation. Once The Wonder Years went off the air, ending a multitude of family sitcom arcs that I grew up with, I just sorta turned off the TV.
Now, I know I’m painting with a bit of broad brush here, but from my perspective the mid 90s transitioned from a personal age of cultural engagement to just the opposite, though it took years to fully happen. The titanic albums of Pearl Jam and Smashing Pumpkins slouched into the era of Binaural and Machina. The Papa Roaches and Smashmouths of the world took collective dumps on the so-called alternative rock landscape. The dynamic topography of cinema experienced a mass cauterization of creativity with reboots and superheroes. There must have been massive studies done in Hollywood two decades ago that quantified that bad movies about characters the public already knows outperform the same type of bad movies about characters the public doesn’t know. Even now, they’re already starting to reboot the remakes from twenty years ago. Just what I need — more Charlie’s Angels trailers.
Television has had the most interesting path in recent history. In the nineties, Springsteen sang about 57 Channels and nothin’s on. Cable television multiplied that figure by a factor of ten in short order to close out the decade — only for the very notion of ‘channels’ to become half buried in the sands of streaming services another fifteen years later. Somehow, we now not only have the honor of paying for cable, but also for Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime, the Ugandan Wildebeest Softcore Adult Streaming Service, and Kim Jong Un’s 25-hour per day tribute to The Munsters. The new era of ultra-competitive television began to attract a higher level of talent to the smaller screen than had previously been experienced. It showed, so I’m told. Binge watching became a cultural phenomenon and, as usual, it left me happily in the dust.
As I stated earlier however, I’m being quite general. That said, I’m apt to spend more time searching for old Tic Tac Dough or The Joker’s Wild episodes in the Hulu search bar than for The Handmaiden’s Snatch or whatever other critically acclaimed content that has insufficiently garnered my interest to watch an episode. Some of the new content has found an audience in me though. I found the mouthbreathers of Stranger Things to be entertaining. The same goes for the travails of Frank Underwood in House of Cards, especially in the beginning of the series. But what the streaming services have collectively made easier for me is the consumption of other cable programming that I perhaps would never have seen.
In that vein, there has been no celebrity personality so prevalent in my daily life over the last ten years as Anthony Bourdain. Considering his celebrity status, considering the shock not only of his death but by his cause of death, and considering how well-known and well-liked he was in various circles (writing, food, travel, television, etc.) I feel comfortable acknowledging that you, as a reader, can easily find hundreds of better-written and more insightful eulogies to Bourdain’s memory than mine. I write this not as a topical Verse, but rather from the challenging perspective of trying to reconcile the notion of personal loss with the distant Xanadu of American celebrity. And I do believe I have one great insight to share.
My wife was a huge fan of Bourdain’s and introduced me to No Reservations about ten years ago when she and I first met. She and I watched from different perspectives — she of a foodie and I of a longing traveler. This gave rise to The Layover, which was just a hair more travel-heavy without losing food focus. His final show — lasting eleven seasons and still ongoing — was/is Parts Unknown. While continuing to merge food and travel, it’s easy to see the continuation of a great narrative arc. He delved deeply into culture and oneness. He became a guide — not just a narrator. Before you knew it, he was in Vietnam with then-President Obama mid-episode. He began weaving deeper and deeper patterns, uncovered socio-political landscapes, wandering the Earth as a transistor to those in his audience and always returning from afar (or not so afar) with realistic, authentic, non-judgmental insights into the human condition.
Anthony Bourdain is today’s Ernest Hemingway. That’s a massive claim and there’s no more fertile ground for hyperbole than remembering someone within the first few days after their death. Yet the more I consider my claim, the easier it becomes to see. Bourdain and Hemingway globetrotted first as a means of practicing their basic crafts — Bourdain as a chef and Hemingway as a journalist. They gained their respective breaks through their early achievements in writing. They claim towering, generationally-stentorian voices of greatness by virtue of their quest to plumb the human condition. They both used the most effective mediums of their times to practice their art. Fundamental simplicities of culture denoted by labyrinthine pleasures of food, sport, landscapes, and traditions were central features to both. And to close their circle, they both denoted great pain and lifelong struggle by ending their own lives in their early 60s.
Unabashed by the pseudo-silliness of mourning a person I’ve never met, I sadly acknowledge the loss of Anthony Bourdain. It’s universal to measure our family and friends by the impact they have on our lives. Bourdain’s contribution to my life is significant — very nearly as significant as Hemingway’s. After all, I read Hemingway’s classic The Sun Also Rises 17 Junes ago. Two months later, I boarded a plane by myself for the first time and irrevocably changed the entire trajectory of my life.