Eating, Drinking, and Smoking Across the Globe
Our favourite celebrity chef is at it again. Premiering tonight on the Travel Channel is Anthony Bourdain: No Reservations. I am not entirely sure how this will differ from A Cook's Tour as it seems the premise is pretty much identical: Tony Bourdain, chef and writer, travels to interesting and exotic locations (like New Jersey!) to eat, get pissed, and crack-wise. Not that I am complaining as this is certainly a winning combination as far as I am concerned. Should be good viewing - hopefully they play it on Discovery or FoodTV or come out with a book tie-in as I don't get the Travel Channel. So if you happen to get a chance to see it let me know how it is.
rgsc.
PS. Bourdain will also be appearing on tv in fictional form in Fox's Kitchen Confidential beginning on September 18th. The show seems promising - Darren Star is the executive producer, Bourdain himself is a consultant and has said that the pilot is "pretty good" (not a ringing endorsement, I know, but at least he is still willing to be associated with the project) and it is following Arrested Development which is a pretty great timeslot to have. However, it is Fox, the people who bring us the horror that is Stacked and who have a tendency to cancel good shows.
posted by Rgscarter @ 3:45 PM
6 Comments:
Let's not forget the Simpsons...I figure Fox succeeded because they were so desperate that they would let almost anything on (maybe they still are?). SO they let the horrible on with the daring.
There really is little middle ground with Fox, I think. Either the shows are really good or train-wreck terrible.
I must admit that some of my favorite shows are/have been on Fox, Simpsons being the most obvious. In the book "Planet Simpson" the author Chris Tucker (Queen's Grad - Hoo-rah!) makes the convincing claim that the Simpsons really saved Fox in its early years and catapulted it from a third-rate network that needed to play re-runs to survive into a full-fledged network that could keep up (almost) with NBC & CBS etc. That was a huge gamble on Fox's part but I think you are right they were desparate and thought that the animated show at least wouldn't be as expensive as a live action one.
But they do have some horrible horrible programming (which the Simpsons wonderfully lampoons) such as "When animals attack people who have had extreme makeovers [ok, that is ABC] inside buildings that are being demolished" or some such. And then they go and cancel really really awesome shows such as "Undeclared" or even "Family Guy" which was only recently brought back due to the huge sales of the DVDs, and there was a huge amount of talk about "Arrested Development" not being signed again despite the great critical acclaim.
At least they give shows a chance to be daring even if they yank the rug out from under it too soon.
Not to mention the fact that the pollute the world with their right-wing mumbo jumbo...don't forget that! Their shows are pretty good but their motives are bad...total control of our brains...Ruper Murdoch
http://www.outfoxed.org/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rupert_Murdoch#Recent_activities
Have you seen that "OutFoxed"? It sounds good. I try to block out the fact that FoxNews exists - I seem to recall hearing statistics that the majority of Fox News viewers believe that Saddam had WMDs, even long after Bush admitted they were working on bad intelligence - referred to in the Doonesbury stips about the show - all all kinds of other crazy crap. Heh. Turd Blossom. Anyway, Fox news gives me the creeps. I love it when Murdoch is made fun of on the Simpsons - they know they can do pretty much anything they want and can get away with it 'cause Fox still needs them.
Isn't Kitchen Confidential based on a best-selling book of the same name?
One of my colleagues at work is reading it...supposedly it is all about coke in the kitchens, or "no, that is not sugar that you see me sniffing off that knife"
(I know, knife might be a far stretch...but just trying to think of something similar to a mirror...knife works right? it has a shiny surface.)
Yup - well I think "based" is being used pretty loosely - inspired perhaps is a better word.
Kitchen Confidential (by Anthony Bourdain - who also writes fiction of the gangster-in-a-kitchen variety which is apparently of varying quality and who has written a short history on Typhoid Mary which is pretty cool) is a fantastic book. It is part expose on the crazy crap that goes down in Kitchens, part guide to all you need to know about cooking like the pros and part biography.
Its not *all* about coke in the kitchen but that is a part of it...and I imagine snorting off the knife isn't too far of a stretch.
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