The Misery Machine - Anthony Bourdain: The Last Punk Rock Chef

Episode Date: September 27, 2021

This week in continuing with our September series on suicide prevention awareness, Drewby and Yergy discuss the life, career, and eventual death of famed chef, author, and television personality Anthony Bourdain - a personal hero of Yergy's. A very special thank you to Levi for supporting our show as our highest tier patron! Levi's Fundraising Page: https://gofund.me/6b9e4f07 Support Our Patreon For More Unreleased Content: https://www.patreon.com/themiserymachine Buy Us A Coffee! https://www.buymeacoffee.com/miserymachine Join Our Facebook Group to Request a Topic: https://t.co/DeSZIIMgXs?amp=1 PayPal: https://www.paypal.me/themiserymachine Instagram: miserymachinepodcast Twitter: misery_podcast Discord: https://discord.gg/kCCzjZM #themiserymachine #podcast #truecrime Source Material: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anthony_Bourdain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Medium_Raw_(book) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brasserie_Les_Halles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asia_Argento https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kitchen_Confidential_(TV_series) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gordon_Lish https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Cook%27s_Tour_(TV_series) https://radaronline.com/p/real-anthony-bourdain-heroin-drugs-sex-abuse/ https://www.twincities.com/2021/07/14/anthony-bourdains-addiction-to-asia-argento-overtook-last-year-of-his-life-new-documentary-shows/ https://www.imdb.com/title/tt14512538/?ref_=ttfc_fc_tt https://blog.resy.com/2021/07/les-halles-owner-philippe-lajaunie-shares-his-memories-of-anthony-bourdain/

Hi, we're the Miser Machine. I'm Yerney. And I'm Drewby. And this week in light of suicide prevention month, we're covering somebody that definitely means a lot to both of us. And that's Anthony Bourdain. It actually is July 19th right now, and it's been two years since we started recording our podcast. Yes, we're recording this ahead of time, but I know this is a case that we're going to do in the near future. Because we're going to see Roadrunner today. It's in theaters here in Portland at the Nickelodeon Cinema. And if you're listening on YouTube, please hit like and subscribe. this is the best way to help and support our channel's growth. Without further ado.

The life and death of Anthony Bourdain. Anthony Michael Bourdain was born in Manhattan on June 25, 1956, to parents Gladys and Pierre Bourdain. His younger brother, Christopher, was born a few months after. His father was Catholic and his mother was Jewish. Tony stated that though he was considered Jewish by Judaism's definition, quote, I've never been in a synagogue. I don't believe in a higher power.

But that doesn't make me. any less Jewish, I don't think." End quote. His family was not religious either. At the time of Tony's birth, Pierre was a salesman in a New York City camera store, as well as a floor manager at a record store. He later became an executive for Columbia Records, and Gladys was a staff editor at the New York Times. Tony's paternal grandparents were French.

His paternal grandfather immigrated from Arcahont to New York following World War I. Tony's father spent summers in France as a boy and grew up speaking. speaking French. Tony spent most of his childhood in Leonia, New Jersey. He felt jealous of the lack of parental supervision of his classmates and the freedom they had in their homes. In his youth, he was also a member of the Boy Scouts of America. In the 1970s, while attending high school at Dwight Englewood School, Tony became the boyfriend of Nancy Pocke. He described her as a bad girl, older than him and part of a druggie crowd. She was a year above him. He graduated one year early in order to follow Nancy to Vassar College since they had just started admitting men. He studied there

between the ages of 17 and 19. The couple married in 1985 and remained together for two decades. Tony's love of food was kindled in his youth while on a family vacation in France when he tried his first oyster on a fisherman's boat. He worked in seafood restaurants in Provincetown, Massachusetts, while attending Vassar, which inspired his decision to pursue a cooking career. He later attended the Culinary Institute of America, which was about a 15-minute drive from Vassar. Addicted to cocaine, LSD, heroin, and crack, even as his career in the kitchens of New York progressed. He later described his 20-something self as, quote, selfish, larceness, druggie, loud, stupid, insensitive, and someone you would not want to have known. I would have robbed your

medicine cabinet had I been invited to your house, end quote. Adding that, he would comb the shag carpet for paint chips and the hope that they were falling crack bits, smoking them anyway. Tony later wrote of his experience at a trendy Soho restaurant in 1981, where he and his friends were often high. Tony said drugs influenced his decisions and that he sent a busboy to Alphabet City to obtain cannabis, metacolone, cocaine, LSD, psilocybin mushrooms, sycobarbital, two in all, I hope I said that right, amphetamines, codeine, and heroin. He later success. kicked his drug addictions, all of them, replacing them with a huge appetite for alcohol, arguably, which is another drug addiction. But by his early 40s, he had wasted so much money on drugs that he

went to sleep each night in mortal terror because his cash flow problems were so severe. In the mid-1980s, Tony began submitting unsolicited work for publication to between C and D, which was a local literary magazine. The magazine eventually published a piece of that he had written about a chef who was trying to purchase heroin on the Lower East Side. Wonder if this is kind of a biographical short story. In 1985, Tony signed up for a writing workshop with Gordon Lish, who was a writer and an editor who championed many American authors. In 1990, Tony received a small book advance from Random House after meeting a Random House editor.

His first book, A Culinary Mystery, Bone in the Throat, was published in 1995. He paid for his own book tour, but he did not find success with it. His second mystery book, Gone Bamboo, also performed poorly in sales. In 1998, Tony became an executive chef at Brasserie Lael. This was based in Manhattan, and at the time, the brand had an additional restaurant in Miami, Washington, D.C., and Tokyo. Tony remained an executive chef there for many years, and even when he was no longer formally employed at Laos, he maintained a friendship with a restaurant, which described, him as their quote, chef at large. In 2000, Tony finally made his mark in the literary world where he published Kitchen Confidential,

Adventures in the Culinary Underbelly, which was an expansion of his 1999 New Yorker article, Don't Eat Before Reading This. The book became a New York Times bestseller and shot Tony into overnight stardom. So this is a little note to you aspiring writers out there. You're going to fail with your first couple books more than likely before you get any success with future works and this is what I hear time and time again. And not only that never give up because Tony was well into his 40s before he even got success. This idea and I grew up being told this like, oh, you have to make something to your 20s or nobody's going to want you anymore. It's not true.

Not at all. So Tony later published a hypothetical historical historical historical typhoid Mary, an urban historical, about Mary Malin, an Irish-born cook, believed to have infected 53 people with typhoid fever between 1907 and 1938. In 2001, Tony wrote a cook store, which is an account of his food and travel exploits around the world, written in conjunction with his first television series of the same title, which ran from 2002 to 2003 on the Food Network. A cook store found Tony and the producers, Chris Collins and Lydia Tenaglia in Japan, Vietnam, Cambodia, Portugal, Spain, France, Morocco, Russia, Mexico, the U.S. and the UK.

In the documentary Roadrunner, Tanaglia noted that it took several episodes for Tony to finally feel at home in front of the camera and that he was often shy and had a difficult time talking to people. In 2005, Tony and his wife, Susan, divorced. I think that was like kind of the appeal of Tony, and we obviously get into this later, but the thing I noticed right off the bat is that he just seemed like a normal person with a camera pointed at him and then he almost kind of felt uncomfortable in front of the camera, but he was just making do with it. So that very, very first Japan episode of a cook's tour, he couldn't figure out what to say to people. He'd eat the food and he'd just be like, wow, this is great. And like, couldn't

keep eye contact. It was actually, like, I could relate to that so much. Things change when you have a camera on you. I still relate to this. So when we do our, you know, video intros, I have no idea what to say half the time. I am so uncomfortable. So, like, I totally get it. We don't even have scripts for intro videos. We just kind of sit there and be like, all right, what are we saying? And sometimes it takes a couple takes, but yeah, I mean, it happens to me too, even, I don't know.

Maybe some people are just naturals, or maybe it's just a thing you have to get your reps into. But it was noticeable with Tony, but it wasn't noticeable in a bad way. It was endearing. It was endearing, that was the right word, because he seemed just like a real person, and you could relate to that. So in July of 2005,

he premiered a new, somewhat similar television series. Anthony Bordane, no reservations on the travel channel. This one is my personal favorite. As a further result of the immense popularity of Kitchen Confidential, the Fox sitcom by the same name, aired in 2005, which the character Jack Bordane is based loosely on Tony's biography and persona. I'd actually never heard of this. I guess I don't really pay attention to Fox sitcoms. In 2006, Tony published The Nasty Bits, a collection of 37 exotic, provocative, and humorous anecdotes and essays. Many of them centered around food and organized into sections named for each of the five traditional flavors, followed by a 30-page

fiction piece titled A Chef's Christmas. The book was dedicated to Joey, Johnny, and Dedy of the Ramones. He declared fond appreciation for their music as well as that of other early punk bands, such as the Dead Boys, and the Voidoids. He said that the playing of music by Billy Joel, Elton John, or The Grateful Dead in his kitchen was grounds for five. However, Billy Joel was a fan of Tony's and visited the restaurant. I didn't know that was the thing. I also like the dead boys and Stiv Bader's other bandlords of the new church, R.P. So in July of 2006, he and his crew were in Beirut filming an episode of No Reservations,

and I remembered this one very well. When the Israel-Lebanon conflict broke out unexpectedly after the crew had a film for only a few hours of footage for the Food and the Travel Show. Tony's producers compiled behind-the-scenes footage of him and his production staff, including not only their initial attempts to film the episode, but also their firsthand encounters with Hezbollah supporters, their days of waiting for news with other expatriates in a Beirut hotel, and an eventual escape aided by a fixer,

whom Tony dubbed Mr. Wolf after Harvey Keitel's character in Pulp Fiction. Tony and his crew were finally evacuated with other American citizens on the morning of July 20th by the United States Marine Corps. The Beirut No Reservations episode, which aired on August 21st of 2006, was nominated for an Emmy Award in 2007. In 2007, Tony published No Reservations Around the World on an Empty Stomach, which served as a companion to the show of the same name. On April 20th, 2007, Tony married Octavia Busia, a mixed martial artist.

The couple's daughter, Ariane, was born in 2007. Atabia appeared in several episodes of No Reservations, notably the ones in her birthplace of Sardinia, as well as Tuscany, Rome, Rio de Janeiro, and Naples. Along with his wife, Tony practiced Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu and earned a blue belt in August of 2015. He won gold at the IBJF, New York Spring International Open Championship in 2016, and the middleweight master five, which is the age 51 and older division. So another thing that I found really interesting when we went to go see Roadrunner is how they had noted that he again was trading one addiction for another. So he had cut down on his drinking. He had quit smoking for his daughter, which we'll get to. He was known to be a heavy smoker.

In a nod to his two pack of cigarette a day habit, chef Thomas Keller once served him a 20-course tasting menu, which included a mid-meal coffee and cigarette, a coffee custard infused with tobacco that was served with foie gras. So like I said, he stopped smoking for his daughter and then picked it up later in life, but he took his vices and then put all of his energy into martial arts at that point in time. In 2010, he published Medium Raw, a bloody Valentine to the world of food and the people who cook. It is a memoir and a prequel to the book Kitchen Confidential. In it, Tony gave his opinion on many of his fellow television chefs, most of whom he argues are not chefs at all due to never having worked in a restaurant and how the restaurant industry has changed in the 10 years since Kitchen Confidential was published. Yeah, he used to hate on people

like Paula Dean, Rachel Ray. He had to like open a feud for a while with Emeril. I hear it. A lot of these people don't really know what it's like to be a person working in a kitchen. You know what it's like. I do. I mean, I was never a, I did some prep cook work, but I was never a line cook. I was mostly as a dishwasher, but I did that for many, many years. It was my first real job in high school. Even though I hated the work, I love the people who owned the restaurant so much that even when I was working at the call center with you, I'd be going back and helping them out, even though it was for minimum wage. I just, I appreciated helping them out and I kind of love being around them. Yeah, my first job was, it was in a fast food restaurant, but, you know, nothing beat hanging out

in the grill and just that culture in there. Yeah. I mean, you come to appreciate it, even though part of you kind of hates it. I hate it. Yeah. I hated being sweaty and sticky and gross. I hated the work. I hated the layer of grease all over all of my clothes and shoes. But still it was... And somehow I kept coming back to it despite despising it and race. I'll never be able to explain it.

So the Travel Channel announced in July 2011 that would be adding a second one hour 10 episode show to be titled The Layover, which premiered November 21st, 2011. Each episode featured an exploration of a city that can be undertaken with in an air travel layover of 24 to 48 hours. The series ran for 20 episodes through February of 2013. Tony executive produced a similar show hosted by celebrities called The Getaway, which lasted two seasons on Esquire Network.

In 2012, Tony co-wrote the original graphic novel, Get Jero, along with Joel Rose and illustrated by Langdon Foss. In May of 2012, Tony announced that he would be leaving the travel channel. In December, he explained on his blog that, his departure was due to his frustration with the channel's new ownership, using his voice and image to make it seem if he were endorsing a car brand, and the channels creating three special episodes consisting solely of clips from the seven official episodes from that season.

He went on to host Anthony Wardane Parts Unknown on CNN. The program focused on other cuisines, cultures, and politics, and premiered on April 14, 2013. The band Queens of the Stone Age composed and performed the theme song after being featured on several episodes of No Reservations. President Barack Obama was featured on the program in an episode filmed in Vietnam that aired in September of 2016. The two talked over a beer at a local Vietnamese restaurant. The show was filmed and is set in places as diverse as Libya, Tokyo, the Punjab region, Jamaica, Turkey,

Ethiopia, Nigeria, Far West, Texas, and Armenia. Between 2012 and 2017, he served as a narrator an executive producer for several episodes of the award-winning PBS series, The Mind of a Chef. It aired in the last months of each year. Tony appeared as himself in the 2015 film The Big Short, in which he used seafood stew as an analogy for a collateralized debt obligation. He also produced and starred in Wasted, the story of food waste. Over the years, Tony made several appearances on a variety of different television programs such as The Taste, Top Chef, Bizarre Foods with Andrew Zimmern,

also would do shows together, like crossovers. So one would have their show, and then the very next show of the other would continue what they were already filming. It was pretty cool. Miami Inc. Yo Gabba Gabba, The Simpsons, Archer, and Sanjay and Craig. It's weird to think he was on Yo Gabba Gabba. I didn't know that until we saw Roadrunner. Yeah. Tony also hosted Raw Craft, a series of short videos released on YouTube. The series followed him as he visited various artisans who produce various craft items by hand, including iron skillets, suits, saxophones, and kitchen knives. Tony said having to be away from his family for 250 days a year working on his television shows was a strain, and unfortunately in 2016, he and Ottavia separated, sending Tony into a deep depression.

Tony was known for consuming exotic local specialty dishes, having eaten black-colored blood sausages called Musta Macara. Finland, sheep testicles in Morocco, ant eggs in Mexico, a raw seal eyeball as part of a traditional Inuit seal hunt, and an entire cobra, beating heart, blood, bile, and meat in Vietnam. Bourdain was quoted as saying that a chicken McNugget was the most disgusting thing he ever ate, despite his fondness for Popeye's chicken. He also declared that the unwashed warthog rectum he ate in Namibia was the worst meal of his life, along with a fermented shark known as Ha-Carle that he ate in Iceland. Tony was known for his sarcastic comments about vegan and vegetarian activists, considering their lifestyle rude to the inhabitants of many countries he visited. He considered vegetarianism,

except in the case of religious exemptions, a first world luxury. However, he also believed that Americans eat too much meat, which we do, and admired vegetarians and vegans who put aside their beliefs when visiting different cultures in order to be respectful to their hosts. Tony advocated for communicating the value of traditional or peasant foods, including all of the varietal bits and unused animal parts not usually eaten by affluent 21st century Americans. He also praised the quality of freshly prepared street food in other countries, especially developing countries compared to the fast food chains in the U.S. Regarding Western moral criticism of cuisine in developing countries, Tony stated, quote,

let's call this criticism what it is, racism. There are a lot of practices from the developing world that I personally find repellent, from my privileged Western point of view. But I don't feel like I have such a moral high ground that I can walk around lecturing people and developing nations on how they should live their lives, end quote. With regards to criticism of the Chinese, Tony stated, quote,

the way in which people dismiss the whole century's old cultures, often older than their own and usually non-white, with just utter contempt aggravates me. People who suggest I shouldn't go to a country like China, look at or film it, because some people eat dogs there, I find that's racist, frankly. I understand people first, their economic living situation.

End quote. Regarding the myth that monsoidium glutamate in Chinese food is unhealthy, Tony said, quote, it's a lie. You know what causes Chinese restaurant syndrome? racism. Oh, I have a headache. Must have been the Chinese guy, end quote. He championed industrious Spanish-speaking immigrants from Mexico, Ecuador, and other Central and South American countries, who are cooks and chefs in many United States restaurants,

including upscale establishments regardless of cuisine. He considered them talented chefs and invaluable cooks, underpaid and unrecognized, even though they have become the backbone of the U.S. restaurant industry. Tony was noted for his put-downs of celebrity chefs such as Pauline, Bobby Flay, Guy Fierry, Sondra Lee, and Rachel Ray, as I spoke about earlier, and appeared irritated by both the avert commercialism of the celebrity cooking industry and its lack of culinary authenticity. He was outspoken in his praise for chefs he admired, particularly Farron Adria, Juan Mari Arzac, Fergus Henderson, Jose Andres, Thomas Keller, Martin Picard, Eric Rappare and Marco Pierre White, as well as his former protege and colleagues at Brasserie Lael.

He also spoke very highly of Julia Child's influence on him. I hope I said everybody's name right. I'm really not the best at pronunciations. I just don't know all of those chefs' names. I've only heard of like Thomas Keller maybe before. So something not a whole lot of folks know that I found really interesting that's connected to Julia Child in a way is that. Anthony's mother, Gladys, she actually profiled Julia Child in France back in the 70s.

And she was actually the person that got one of Anthony's first works published the tell-all in the newspaper. Tony met Italian actress Ozzi Argento in 2016 while filming the Rome episode of Parts Unknown. Argento alleged in October 2017 New Yorker article by Ronan Farrow that she had been sexually, assaulted by Harvey Weinstein in the 1990s. She also said that she had consensual sexual relations with him multiple times over the course of the next five years. After being criticized for her account in Italian media and politics, Argento moved to Germany to escape what she described as a culture of victim blaming in Italy. Argento delivered a speech following the 2018 Cannes Film Festival, calling the festival Weinstein's Hunting Ground, alleging that she was raped by Weinstein and Cannes when she was 21. She added,

quote, and even tonight sitting among you, there are those who still have to be held accountable for their conduct against women, end quote. Tony supported her during that period, becoming an outspoken advocate for the Me Too movement. He became a vocal advocate against sexual harassment in the restaurant industry, speaking out about celebrity chefs Mario Battali and John Bess, an accused Hollywood director Quentin Tarantino of complicity in the Weinstein sex scandal. On August 19th, 2018, the New York Times published allegations that Argento sexually assaulted actor Jimmy Bennett. Argento had first met Bennett when he played her son in the 2004 film The Heart is deceitful above all things when Bennett was only seven years old.

The alleged assault occurred in 2013 when he was two months past the 17th birthday in a hotel room in California where the age of consent is 18. Argento was 37 at the time. According to Bennett, in their encounter, Argento gave him alcohol, performed oral sex on him, and had sexual intercourse with him. Argento had quietly arranged a $380,000 non-disclosure settlement with Bennett in the months following her revelations regarding Weinstein. Bennett said when Argento came against Weinstein, it stirred memories of his own experience in 2013. Argento denied the allegations, claiming that she never had a sexual encounter with Bennett and that when he made a request for money to her, Tony paid him to avoid negative publicity. Following Argento's denials, a photograph of her topless in bed with Bennett was published, as well as her alleged

admission of sex with him in a text message to model Rain Dove. In the screenshots, Argento reputally stated, quote, I had sex with him and it felt weird. I didn't know he was a minor until the shakedown letter, end quote. In a letter published online in September 2018, Argento's attorney admitted there was a sexual encounter but claimed Bennett sexually attacked Argento. It's been suggested that Tony had become addicted to Ozzy Argento in the same way

that he was hooked on heroin earlier in his life. He would do anything for her, including things that would potentially hurt him personally and professionally. In an email to a close friend Alison Mosshart, who fronted the band The Kills, Tony revealed that he knew his relationship

with Argento would end very, very badly. Tony also believed that he destroyed his relationship with his ex-wife and daughter. He also started talking about wanting to quit Parts Unknown and began burning bridges left and right. One way that Tony was apparently burning those bridges was by involving Argento in the production of Parts Unknown. He hired her to direct the show's Hong Kong episode,

which upset his longtime crew and upended a process that the show had been perfecting for years. This included the firing of longtime cinema, cinematographer, Zach Zamboni, who happens to actually be a Maine native that has been working with Tony for years. He's from Milo Maine, which is actually a little bit north of Bangor. So after sacking Zamboni, none of his crew felt safe and they wondered who might be next. In early June of 2018, while in Straussburg, France, filming another episode for parts unknown with his frequent collaborator and friend Eric Repair, Tony became furious over tabloid photos that

implied Argento was cheating on him with a French reporter. On June 8th, repair became worried when Tony had missed dinner and breakfast. He subsequently found him dead of an apparent suicide by hanging in his room at Le Chambar Hotel at Kaisersburg near Colmar. The public prosecutor for Kolmar said Tony's body bore no signs of violence and the suicide appeared to be an impulsive act. He disclosed that Tony's toxicology results were negative for narcotics, showing only a trace of therapeutic non-narcotic medication. Tony's body was cremated in France on June 13th of 2018 and his ashes were returned to the United States two days later. When interviewed about the incident and the documentary Roadrunner, Eric repaired disclosed that he no longer talks about what he found in that

hotel room. In the days following Tony's death, fans paid tribute to him outside his now-closed former place of employment, Brasserie Lael. Cooks and restaurant owners gathered together and held tribute dinners and memorials and donated net sales to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline. The restaurant later became a mural dedicated to Tony. In August of 2018, CNN announced that it would broadcast a final posthumous season of parts unknown, completing its remaining episodes using narration and additional interviews from featured guests, and two retrospective episodes paying tribute to the series in Tony's legacy.

In June 2019, Eric R. Perre and Jose Andres announced the first Anthony Bourdain Day, as a tribute to Tony. Anthony Bourdain Day is now celebrated annually on June 25th. In the same month, the Culinary Institute of America established a scholarship in Tony's honor. A collection of Tony's personal items were sold at auction in October of 2019, raising $1.8 million, part of which is to support the Anthony Bourdain Legacy Scholarship at his alma mater, the Culinary Institute of America. The most expensive items sold was his custom Bob Kramer, Steel, and Mealsh. meteorite chef's knife, selling it a record $231,250. In 2021, Roadrunner, a film about Anthony Bourdain was released.

It was directed by Morgan Neville and featured many of Tony's friends, family, and former crew. As you know from watching our pre-recorded video intro, we of course went to see it early this summer. One of the most touching moments in the film was when longtime friend and former owner of L'Ael, Philippe La June, learned Tony's passing and he decided at that moment to move to Vietnam permanently as a nod to the time the two shared there. So yeah, I know me personally. I had a hard time doing this. We had to take a little break for me. But I remember I had gotten up the morning that he had died. I found out online that it happened and it was extremely, it was heartbreaking for me. I had just lost five different classmates

in under a month. And this was just kind of like, you know, the nail in the coffin, basically. I totally had a complete breakdown. I texted my boss and let her know that I was going to be a little bit late, kind of what was going on. Didn't really get into specifics on it. But I went to work, started crying at my desk, and they sent me home. I actually got bereavement that day.

And, yeah, out of any celebrity death that has happened to date, Tony's death has completely affected me the most. And I think a lot of it is, and why so many people relate to him so much, is he's just like an everyday person, completely non-pretentious. He, like many of us, suffered from imposter syndrome. He never once really thought that he deserved all the attention that he was getting. A lot of us who can't afford to travel the world extensively kind of got to see the world through his eyes. So as somebody that never really, like I knew of him, but I never really got into his work because I just assumed anything that he did involve some sort of cooking show and learning how to cook and not realizing it was something completely and utterly different.

So everything that I learned about him was after his death and through Yergi's introduction. And I really do see the appeal of being in every man and being put in these situations that most people will never ever. get to see themselves. I think there's something absolutely relatable with that because up until that point, most people who were putting these types of travel scenarios that were reporting from these places that were reviewing cuisine from these different areas. Most of these people, these hosts, they seemed like television hosts. They seem unrelatable. They seemed like they spent a lot of time in front of the camera. And Tony was just a regular guy. And I can't think of anyone else similar to him in that way when it comes to the types of things he was covering.

I mean, you've got Andrew Zimmern, but they were two very different people, and I always preferred Tony's style way over Zimmern's. And I haven't seen any of Zimmern's stuff. So, again, this was something that I didn't really know about or have a whole lot into. But reading up on him, watching his stuff, watching these episodes, it's something that, And again, I'm not somebody that watches a whole lot of TV, but I do wish it was something that I was acquainted with prior to his death for sure. So one of my favorite episodes was definitely the main episode of No Reservations. And I shared that with Drewby.

So it was really interesting. Zach Zamboni had got him to come up to Maine. And he initially went to Portland. And he went to Jay's Oyster Bar, which is a pretty popular restaurant over on commercial street. over on like the wharfs. Then he went to another restaurant. What was it called? You had friends that worked there. It was street and company. Street and company. And he was wondering why Zach Zamboni even brought him there because it was miserable. And it just kind of goes to show like Portland has one of the biggest restaurants per capita in the entire country, I believe it is. I think it's

still the case. Yeah, but it just goes to show how like silly and pretentious like everything can be there. Having lived there and having lived here in Louisville, I mean, just a lot of Portland restaurants, they're pretentious. They serve you really small portion sizes and it costs a whole lot for a little. And you're paying for, I don't know, this prestige. I just don't understand it. I don't appreciate a lot of Portland restaurants. And I'm sure if a lot of people local were hearing that, I would catch a lot of flack for that.

But I'm just not impressed. There's more exciting restaurants here in Lewiston, Auburn. and more things that I can eat. You would think in Portland they'd be really adaptable to my allergies, but there's not a whole lot of options for me there, as there is in Lewiston-Auburn, which is considered more rural and more regressive in ways. So I don't know, I'm kind of over Portland for a number of different reasons

between mass gentrification and just... And honestly, I just don't care what Portland people think. Yeah, well, I mean, Portland people aren't really a thing anymore. Portland people are out of state people that own condos. Like there's no Portland punk scene anymore. There's none of those people that I knew and hung around with back in the early 2010. So it's just a completely different place now. So then Tony went up to Rocklands and he ate over at Primo, which is kind of like a nose to tail type of restaurant,

which I found really interesting, but we don't really eat pork. So it's not like I could ever drag Druby in there. But one place I found really, really interesting was Conte's. And it was this old Italian fisherman who freaks out and throws the pan around and apparently is like one of the best seafood chefs around. Now, unfortunately, Conti's closed. And I've tracked John Conti down to like three or four different restaurants in the meantime that have now closed. So if anybody in the Mid Coast area is listening and knows where he might be operating out of, I'd love to know. Yeah, I'd love to know too.

If he's not retired, I mean, he seemed like he was an older gentleman when that, episode came out, which was almost 10 years ago. It was a long time ago. Yeah, so a lot of things change here within 10 years. And lastly, the most heartening thing about that episode was when he actually went up to Zach Zamboni's family's camp up in Milo. He went around snowmobiling and got barbecue in some random converted. I don't know what it was. It was some sort of shack out in the woods that you could only like access through snowmobile trails. I thought that was pretty cool. And you went up to update camp and they cooked a bunch of random meat on a grill. And the most main thing ever was they were cooking some moose and they called it the mystery moose because they didn't know where it came from,

which is so a main thing. Well, when you get a moose, like that's a lot of meats. You start sharing it with friends who then start sharing it with other friends. So sometimes it's really, you know, you don't know where the moose came from. Yeah. So we put a call to action out on our last episode and on our social media for folks to, if they wanted to, share their Tony memories and what he meant to you with us so that we can share it on the episode. And we got a response back. It's from our friend Jamin, whom we met in Las Vegas.

And he wrote us quite a bit. So I'll start it off. Basically, what I wanted to send you guys was that belief is stronger than anything. Every war that's been ever fought on earth was fought over belief. people will kill each other over belief and people will kill themselves over belief unfortunately I think many suicides are committed based on an inaccurate belief

we sell ourselves on some subjective bullshit that we aren't as good we can never be X, Y or Z there is something wrong with us and ultimately that we and the world will be better without us and he continues that's a lie we believe the lie those thoughts become fact and nothing else matters there is no longer logic and reason

I've heard the analogy that at the moment of suicide to your brain, it's like being inside of a burning building. You are burning or jumping, and there is not a third choice. The worst part is, with just a little change and just a little time, things can get better, but it's completely inconceivable that it could. It's that third choice when standing in the burning building. Nothing matters. There's no more reason. This horror belief has taken over.

Your friends, your family, all of it means less than escaping the fire, and that's how it happens. The worst part to me is that to have some knowledge of all the factors that can cause such beliefs to flourish. Lack of sleep, a shitty job, no social circle, not eating right, lack of exercise, community or hobby, all these things that could be changed. When you are in it, none of that is even imaginable. It's the equivalent of cheer up. And I think that was very perfectly said. How many people have killed themselves when if they just could have gotten better sleep or a

little support or a tiny taste of what progress feels like would have been just fine. That's the shitty part. Making a permanent decision about something that probably isn't permanent. So then he continues, this part below is from the post that I sent you. And we'll go ahead and share a picture as well. It's probably if you're watching on YouTube already up. But I think it really speaks to meeting Anthony and how money, fame, being talked, brilliant, and charming still aren't enough even in the event that our brains turn on us and launch an attack

against ourselves. We were incredibly lucky to have dinner with Anthony Bourdain, literally got to eat with him, pontificate, and even make him laugh over a really dark joke about European wine tasting better from all the dead bodies in the soil. We bought him a drink even though he was a millionaire, and he told us not to in that CNN is pain, but we told him, I know, but I want to feel what it feels like to buy you a drink. Such a cool night. So how could anyone kill themselves? Kate Spade, she's worth $200 million, has a daughter, Anthony Bourdain worth 20 million, getting paid to travel the world,

eat, get shit-faced and do his jujitsu and enjoy his new girlfriend and daughter, how could he do it? Those are logical thoughts. The scary part is when your brain turns on you and logical thoughts become illogical. Lies that you think about become truths. We are programmed for millions of years to not die.

We'll do anything to avoid being hurt, let alone die. Then your brain turns on you and your money, house, toys, and family means nothing. All you want is for that thing to die. Those voices and emotions overpower anything and everything in your entire world. It makes perfect sense all of a sudden. If you get it, you get it. If you don't get it, this makes no sense at all and is unimaginable.

I really wish there was some emergency service people could call where someone could pick them up immediately, get them to a safe place. Remove the stress of life, let their brain unravel, get some therapy, meditation or something to quiet the screaming inside. I bet the suicide numbers would drop dramatically. I think a lot of suicides are people just trying to escape the screaming, torturous thoughts, which are mostly fiction, that we start to believe until the noise and pain are worse than dying. Like how many people could be saved just by meditating or just by getting a better job, or just by doing something that feels progressive enough to quiet the noise?

So when we were about to do this part, I was really thinking, oh, I didn't make any comment. about suicide, what am I going to say? And then I read this and it sum things up really, really well. I really like the explanation. And I really appreciate Jamie getting that to us. Yes, I really appreciate that for sure. And, you know, it's true. When we see people commit suicide, we really approach it with all this logic.

And it's hard to approach with logic. You can take logical solutions with it. But to make sense of it logically, it's just, not something that you can do, which is why I'm really fortunate to not have lost anyone to suicide, because I feel like I would try to really unpack it logically. And I had talked about this in the Ronnie McNutt episode last year. Being a good friend really goes a very, very long way if you know somebody is suffering. Obviously, we can't do things like, you know, make somebody's living situation better or make their job better.

or make somebody go exercise or get a hobby, go out in the community, but you can be a good friend. That is something that we can do. I think of people who I know that were really, really close that I was willing to stay up all night with, just talk to, check in with every day. Those things go a long way. Do not underestimate the power of that, truly.

It seems insignificant, but really, when people feel like they have nothing left and no one that they can turn to, what helps a lot of support. and I know it doesn't work on everyone that's suicidal, but it is something we can do to help make a difference. We don't have to post these memes everywhere. We don't have to, you know,

splatter the suicide hotline number everywhere. We can just be good friends. And I really actually don't like when people do that. I think it's extremely performative. I went actually on a small rant about this, not specifically on this topic, but on meme sharing. That I really feel when people just do reposts and don't put in any sort of,

of work for the cause they're trying to bring awareness to, that it really, you're just making it about you and not really about helping anybody. And what qualifies as work can be debated from cause to cause. But in regards specifically to suicide, just posting the suicide hotline number, I don't think it does a thing. No, just check in with your people. Yeah, like, do you think somebody wants to call and talk to a stranger? I mean, some people do as a last resort do it.

It's not that I want that hotline to go away. But just because you put it up somewhere after someone dies doesn't mean you're saving a life, doesn't mean you're improving the human condition at all. You don't even have to openly talk about suicide. You can just be there for your friends that you know are suffering. And I know it's not always obvious. So that's why I say check on your strong friends. Seriously, check on your strong friends.

So why did Tony do it? I don't think we're ever going to know for sure. If you've seen Roadrunner, they stop very short at blaming the whole thing on Asia Argento. I'm not going to be as nice. I don't like her. I think the cheating kind of pushed it over the edge. I think he was already extremely depressed after he separated with Otavia. He was projecting to others that he thought they were bad parents.

There's a scene with David Chang in Roadrunner where he was telling him, that he was a bad dad, but really, I think Tony was suffering over the fact that he couldn't be there for his daughter like he wanted to, and he couldn't be that typical, you know, white picket fence dad. There's rumors out there that Tony and Aja had an open relationship. Who knows if that's true or not? But it really seems like there wasn't any sort of respect in it where either she wasn't being discreet or just having any sort of respect, you know, for the relationship.

that's kind of really what made him upset at that point. Weren't the rumors of the open relationship started by Aja when she was caught cheating on him? I believe so. So. I don't think anyone else ever corroborated that. Rose McGowan did. But who really knows what's going on with that? They were really close throughout the Me Too movement.

Rose McGowan was actually dating Rained Dove, who was the one that got the screenshots. That got the screenshots. That outed Aja as a rapist. as she is. She is. She is a rapist. It should also be noted, like, Tony has an addictive personality. When you give up an addiction, it's not like that space gets completely filled in.

You fill it with other things. Tony filled it with alcohol, filled it with smoking, filled it with Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu, and then filled it with Asha Argento. And then to have that taken away from him in the way that it was, or to just be hurt through that addiction in a way where that addiction no longer pleases you, I can see why that would drive someone to suicide. I actually watched an interview. It was a short one with Henzo Gracie, which was Tony's Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu coach in New York City.

And Tony used to fly in by helicopter and train. He was going there to train multiple days a week and was there just two days before he died, I believe Hensow said. I had assumed that Tony had stopped BJJ, had stopped doing any sort of exercise, but I guess he was training really, really hard, apparently training for another competition or something like that. And they had no idea at the gym that anything was wrong with him. So that was a bit surprising to me. I mean, just think of how travel could do things to your mind as well. Oh, for sure. I mean, just being on a plane by yourself does things to you.

Just how much we were out of it traveling to Vegas and then back. And then you're doing that all around the world quite literally. What does jet lag do to you constantly? You know, over 250 days a year. There was a moment of Roadrunner where he talked about when he's home, he felt like he didn't know how to be a dad. So he just did the only thing he knew how to do, which is cook and make a bunch of food.

And he felt like it just wasn't doing anything at all. And I felt very sad at that because he wanted to be there. He wanted to do something. He really did. He wanted to be a good dad. And he just, he felt like there was a barrier in the way of that, not for a lack of want, just a lack of ability or that the situation just prevented it. And you'd hear the pain in his voice.

It was just absolutely tragic to see that. And I'm sure that had something to do with this as well. I mean, what he couldn't or what he thought he couldn't do in his life, he is providing in death Arians, the. sole beneficiary of his full estate. So. And that's why some parents do kill themselves. There are other examples of this.

I don't have any that are coming to mind right now, unfortunately. But this is not an uncommon thought process when a parent wants to commit suicide to benefit their child. But at the end of the day, I think that he would have kept on going. I really think the Argento stuff really is. is what did him in. And I know you have very, very strong feelings and words about that. I had only heard the name.

I didn't know anything about her. I knew she was the daughter of a Dario or Jenna. Yeah. And that's all I knew. I didn't know about her raping Jimmy Bennett. And I'd say that she's, from how this reads to me, she's pretty disgusting, has her own agenda and motives. And we'll do whatever she can to benefit her selfish desires.

That's what it looks. looks like to me. Yeah, not going to really mince words about it. One last thing that I have to say because people mention this and it's like with anyone else beloved that dies, people want to ignore some negative things they may have done. And while I don't have a ton to say about Tony, the one thing that gets brought up in regards to the rape of Jimmy Bennett, it was Tony that paid the hush money. Now, at the end of the day is that his decision yes

do I think that he was in an abusive relationship and was probably talked into it yeah could it have been framed as well you know we need to have him quiet or else this hurts the whole me too movement think about feminism

think about all these other women that are being silenced I'm sure that could have been pitched to Tony in so many different ways I mean he may even felt like that he had to have done this or else he wasn't being a supportive partner or he wasn't being a good feminist. All those things could have gone through of his mind. And when you're in a relationship, you make excuses for people like that.

You convince yourself of the exceptions. And I'm sure a lot of people listening have been there through different circumstances, not like this. And again, it's not entirely forgivable. I concede that point. But not only that. he was never really public about big causes like that. And she kind of thrust this cause upon him. And he went very public with it in honor of her.

And then she does this. Yeah, I know. Now, like, as somebody who is not very outward about his causes or even about his personal life too much, and now he stuck his neck out like this, there's a form of self-preservation when it comes to your image. and there's also this feeling of are you betraying yourself, a lot of things. That was new territory for Tony. Wrapped into the fact that she was his addiction. What's your feelings on the hush money?

My feelings? It's like a mixed thing. Like I personally think that he should have ditched her there. Absolutely. I mean, in a perfect world. In a perfect world. But so many people stay with abusive people. Right.

Just based on everything I said, I can't really 100% fault him because she's an extremely predatory person. For sure. But at the end of the day, he does have some responsibility, but it's not something that I can squarely condemn him for. Right. So I kind of wanted to close this with one of my favorite quotes from Tony that I found. It goes, eat at a local restaurant tonight, get the cream sauce, have a cold pine at four o'clock and a mostly empty bun. Go somewhere you've never been. Listen to someone you think may have nothing in common with you. Order the steak rare. Eat an oyster. Have a nagroni. Have two. Be open to a world where you may not

understand or agree with a person next to you, but have a drink with them anyways. Eat slowly. Tip your server. Check in on your friends. Check in on yourself. Enjoy the ride. So if you appreciate this episode, please hit like and subscribe. This is the best way to help our channel share this video with someone that you know would appreciate it this is the best way to help us grow we also have a very wonderful group of people that have gone the extra step to support us on patreon so let's thank those people now yes so thank you eddie rowen markey holly serena carrie nil and koreen dcotta and kitty gen mo jenny robin tom cayley alex jaylexie Bailey, Steven, C. Asia, Amanda, Patricia, Alexis, Corrine.

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