When I sit to write I have a maddening habit of standing up immediately and pacing around the room, cracking my knuckles, turning down the volume of the music in the background and turning it up again. I fidget endlessly before I can muster a word. It's not particularly easy to get started on something, even when the subject and content have been incubating in my brain for a period of nano seconds.
There, I did it again, I just got up to get a glass of water even though I'm really not thirsty. I think it's called writers block but seeing as I'm neither a writer or blocked, I consider it an idiosyncrasy of my wickedly awesome and highly likeable personality. Boy, ha, if you could be sitting right next to me at this moment you'd be witnessing a spectacular feat of awesomeness that may never be surpassed by anything... ever... in the history and future of the universe.
I also tend to meander aimlessly around the particular subject I want to write about until I can land in a soft cuddly pillow of fluffy verbosity that transports me to an information super highway of genius that flows through my fingers like the salmon of Capistrano.
...another glass of water. Annnnnnd, I'm gonna have to pee soon.
Initially, I wanted to write a concise review about my incredible experience at the 2011 California Brazil Camp in Cazadero, California but I always seem to have a hard time writing about something directly without adding a pinch of bullshit to entertain myself in the exhaustive and frustrating process of doing this for YOU. I know, I know, I'm supposed to write for myself and not my audience but it's difficult when various world leaders and B-List actresses are pounding on my firewall attempting to give me a trojan horse. What the hell does that mean anyway? Is it sexual? Gross... Gorbachev is decidedly not sexy.
Regarding sexiness, in the most heterosexual way possible, I am utterly infatuated with Anthony Bourdain.
Stood up again and walked outside. 5th time in less than 30 minutes.
I recently heard a podcast by Joe Rogan in which he interviewed Bourdain for well over two hours. There are several reasons why this is awesome (3rd time I've used that word or some semblance of if in this blog).
- The podcast is uncensored
- Rogan asks him questions that all of us regular dip-shits would want to ask him
- They are drinking
- If you are a regular viewer of his show, you get the sense that he wants so badly to tell the audience what really happened behind the scenes but he can't.
- He does on the podcast
- What Bourdain says in the first 5 minutes of the podcast is astonishing
Hear for yourself: http://vimeo.com/28919149
To paraphrase:
(In responding to a question that he's an overnight success)
"I was 44 years old, standing by the deep frier in the kitchen... I had no ambition other than to cook and earn the advance back on my book (Kitchen Confidential)."
Fast forward approximately 12 years later and he has (in my estimation) the coolest life/job on the planet. Go ahead, I dare you to listen to the podcast and tell me anything that sucks about what he does.
Of course, I'm biased. This is my blog. I'm allowed. If given the choice to be in the biggest rock band in the world or have the life of Bourdain... no question, I'd choose the latter.
Since I have neither, I'll indulge your rampant curiosity regarding my life.
Approximately three years ago, the dissolution of a relationship that lasted through the majority of my twenties was in it's beginning stages. My ex was a kind, caring, and amazing woman that supported me through all the good and bad of our quarter-life together. I wasn't happy and, I've now realized I was never going to be happy -- there was something that was missing. After hearing Bourdain's story, I'm guessing that he too had an insatiable cultural curiosity and walking home in the wee-hours of a NYC morning smelling of frier grease wasn't exactly filling that crevasse. However, all of his cumulative experience leading up to that impossible moment that he wrote that book and was "discovered" was instrumental in him being "discovered."
It is now October 7th, 2011. As I try to conclude this post that I started editing on 9/27, I came across a video of the recently deceased Steve Jobs. In it, he tells three stories that have had tremendous impact in his brilliant lifetime. I do not possess 1/100th of the eloquence as he, so I will not attempt to summarize. Please watch:
Of particular note to me is something that I was trying to touch on when I started this post -- Jobs speaks of "Connecting The Dots:"
Leave it to the most influential artist of our generation to take the words out of my mouth and make sense of it all.
I recently heard a podcast by Joe Rogan in which he interviewed Bourdain for well over two hours. There are several reasons why this is awesome (3rd time I've used that word or some semblance of if in this blog).
- The podcast is uncensored
- Rogan asks him questions that all of us regular dip-shits would want to ask him
- They are drinking
- If you are a regular viewer of his show, you get the sense that he wants so badly to tell the audience what really happened behind the scenes but he can't.
- He does on the podcast
- What Bourdain says in the first 5 minutes of the podcast is astonishing
Hear for yourself: http://vimeo.com/28919149
To paraphrase:
(In responding to a question that he's an overnight success)
"I was 44 years old, standing by the deep frier in the kitchen... I had no ambition other than to cook and earn the advance back on my book (Kitchen Confidential)."
Fast forward approximately 12 years later and he has (in my estimation) the coolest life/job on the planet. Go ahead, I dare you to listen to the podcast and tell me anything that sucks about what he does.
Of course, I'm biased. This is my blog. I'm allowed. If given the choice to be in the biggest rock band in the world or have the life of Bourdain... no question, I'd choose the latter.
Since I have neither, I'll indulge your rampant curiosity regarding my life.
Approximately three years ago, the dissolution of a relationship that lasted through the majority of my twenties was in it's beginning stages. My ex was a kind, caring, and amazing woman that supported me through all the good and bad of our quarter-life together. I wasn't happy and, I've now realized I was never going to be happy -- there was something that was missing. After hearing Bourdain's story, I'm guessing that he too had an insatiable cultural curiosity and walking home in the wee-hours of a NYC morning smelling of frier grease wasn't exactly filling that crevasse. However, all of his cumulative experience leading up to that impossible moment that he wrote that book and was "discovered" was instrumental in him being "discovered."
It is now October 7th, 2011. As I try to conclude this post that I started editing on 9/27, I came across a video of the recently deceased Steve Jobs. In it, he tells three stories that have had tremendous impact in his brilliant lifetime. I do not possess 1/100th of the eloquence as he, so I will not attempt to summarize. Please watch:
Of particular note to me is something that I was trying to touch on when I started this post -- Jobs speaks of "Connecting The Dots:"
Leave it to the most influential artist of our generation to take the words out of my mouth and make sense of it all.
"Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish"
As I continue to try to find whatever I'm searching for in this life, his poignant words touched me in (yet another) time of questioning my chosen direction.
I'll have to postpone (yet again) the Cal Brazil Camp review til another day. For now, pictures will have to suffice.
Winter is almost here!
I'll have to postpone (yet again) the Cal Brazil Camp review til another day. For now, pictures will have to suffice.
Winter is almost here!
ADEUS
