Eight shows into production for our seventh season of No Reservations with a whole bunch more to come. That’s a lot of years of traveling around the world, stuffing food and liquor into my face. Eight shows shot already and ready to go–or still being tended to carefully in a nerdly warren of editing rooms. In between shoots, I’ve been bouncing around the country doing public speaking gigs, something that over time, becomes more like a stand-up routine than anything resembling a “talk”. Talk for two hours a night, forty or more times a year in front of a large audience, you quickly find yourself learning a skill set you never thought you’d want or need. You repeat yourself, like a comedian, working the same lines, adjusting the timing, changing a word here and there–altering delivery–and hopefully, slowly working out the old and trying out the new. Continue reading: BOTH ENDS BURNING »
Anthony Bourdain
February, 2011 Archive
BOTH ENDS BURNING
HERE COME THE WARM JETS
An island in the Amazon river delta:
I had fallen asleep feeling like somebody dropped a bowling ball on the base of my spine. I woke up in the middle of the night, awakened by something unidentifiable but decidedly mammalian scrabbling on the roof, unable to even crawl to the bathroom for a percocet. I couldn’t roll over. Moving my legs was impossible. I just lay there, near tears on the spongy bed in the deserted barracks-like eco-lodge, trying to slowly, slowly rock myself over onto my back.
No landline. No cell phone. No way off the island other than the privately chartered puddle jumper not due back for another two days. A satellite phone with spotty service the only communication with the outside world. Four hours by boat to even the nearest store. Finally, after 15 minutes of trying, I managed to heave myself onto my back but even raising myself onto my elbows was a challenge.
