Even if the channel by which it reaches you is a TV channel.
That, unsurprisingly, is how Anthony Bourdain entered my consciousness.
Now, I won’t presume to know the first thing about the “real” Anthony Bourdain. And my only slightly less pedestrian thought is that probably no one else should either.
I sure don’t mind admitting, though, that whenever, in the last ten years or so, I’ve been channel-surfing and lighted on Bourdain’s performed self—his TV self—I’ve always stopped for a minute or fifteen or sixty to take some instruction.
Instruction in how to comport oneself among strangers. In the value of being smart without being pretentious. In how to age without getting old. In the importance of asking good questions of others, then shutting up and actually listening to their answers.
Also: in how to be male without being grotesque.
He was, in a way, the Mr. Rogers of my adulthood, reminding me not only to get out and see the neighborhood but to be decent and well behaved in the company of the neighbors.
We see now the clue that was always right there in his TV show’s title.
Anyway…it’s sad: Anthony Bourdain, gone way too soon.
The good news is he was famous. So his face and voice get to stick around. And keep providing instruction.
