Book Report: A Cook's Tour by Anthony Bourdain

A Cook's Tour: Torgo disapproves

I only finished reading this book so I could write this.

What a terrible book. Not just bad. Not just a bad book. But a book so full of awfulness -- no, that's not it. It's not just that it's terrible. It's that it's a good idea: modestly successful chef travels the world in search of the perfect meal. And Anthony Bourdain squanders it.

Why does this book suck?

First, it's a tv show. I've never seen it, but I guess when he pitched the idea to his publisher, they said no. Then the Food Network signed on, and the book was a go. He's up front about his corporate whoredom right from the get go. At first, I thought that was nice. He's being open.

But he only is open about it so he can spend 1/3 of the book whining about how hard it is to be a tv star and about how bothersome having a camera crew follow you can be. Never once does he acknowledge that without the tv show, there would be no book.

And there is no book. He goes to 30 or so places around the world and yet he writes the sloppiest, most haphazard, most poorly edited collection of ramblings and garbage imaginable.

I'm not sure if he goes to Vietnam once or 5 times. But he keeps ending up there in the internal chronology of the book. And every time he's there he fawns over Graham Greene's Quiet American and Coppola's Apocalypse Now.

Saigon. I'm still only in Saigon.

Yeah, I get it. I saw that movie, too. It was good. You're not the movie. You're not Graham Greene. You're a damn chef eating noodles and running out of adjectives by page 5.

Then there's the smoking. Ok, I know a lot of chefs smoke. Doctors smoke, too, at least outside of every hospital I've been around. It's not that he should know better. I'm not going to get morally superior. I wanted to complain about how he can't possibly taste things as well because he's a chain smoker in his middle age and by god his tongue must be like an ashtray in a Nevada truck stop. But no, that's not it.

It's that he whines incessantly about how hard it is to be a smoker. God, who cares? He hates San Francisco because he can't smoke anywhere here (and this is near the end of the book, so I'm not upset with him over this -- in fact, he credits the best chef in the world as being the guy who runs the French Laundry over in Napa).

I don't think you get the right to be condescending and smug if you're a piece of crap writer. At least not with your prose. Be smug in the kitchen.

And then there were two

I know this blog has mostly become book and movie reviews as of late, but, well, we have kids, as in plural, as in, if we had one more, they'd outnumber us.

Fortunately, they're pretty good kids. But there have been a couple of times when they're both crying and it's just me or just M-N. This is the most difficult moment in parenting I've ever faced.

We had a friend in MA who said if the baby just won't stop crying but is perfectly fine, put him somewhere safe, like his carseat or crib, close the door, and go sit on the porch with a beer.

Another friend said that when her oldest gave her hell, she'd put him in the bath and sit there with a glass of wine. She'd do this up to three times a day.

One of my MFA teachers told me his wife's doctor recommended, when she was nursing and had a fussy baby, to drink beer.

So we're celebrating the fact that M-N isn't pregnant anymore with alcohol. Not a lot, really, just a glass of wine here, a beer there. I've never appreciated alcohol more than with two under two.

That sounds bad. It's not really that bad. Beer just tastes much better.

I've never been much of a beer drinker. I like Corona and other beers that are kind of watery. There's a supermarket by our apt. with a huge selection of domestic and foreign beers. As in, one whole aisle of each. So I decided to branch out and get another Mexican beer, since I like Corona. So far, so good.

M-N, meanwhile, likes her wine. She's careful about timing it and limiting herself and all that medical advice junk, but honestly, a little wine never hurt anyone and she went 100% dry (and decaf) for the pregnancy, even though doctors say that isn't necessary.

Movie Review: Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine: Torgo approves

Add this to the list with About a Boy, Love Actually, and Napoleon Dynamite of movies that culminate with a far-fetched, plot apex scene on a stage. It's become the small movie equivalent of the big game at the end of a sports movie.

I was thinking last night, after watching this movie, about how Shakespeare plays all follow the same basic structure and you pretty much always know what you're in for, in terms of body counts in tragedies and happy couples in comedies, and how things will get where they get. The joy, presumably, is in the characters, the dialogue, the nuances.

Little Miss Sunshine is typical and ordinary to the point of being a letdown. It's a group of misfits, an unhappy family, on a road trip. Once it's established what each character's flaw is, it's clear how they will fail. It's also clear that everyone will be "redeemed" by the pageant, though not by winning, but by coming together as a family.

Fortunately, it's full of a bunch of actors I like. Alan Arkin is great. I thought he was great in Glengarry Glen Ross and So I Married an Axe Murderer (his scenes are terrific in that movie). Steve Carrell is good, too. The little girl is surprisingly strong.

This is basically a comfort movie for people who watch a lot of semi-independent movies. It's nothing original or daring, but it's competent and funny.

Movie Review: In Good Company

In Good Company: Torgo approves

It's formulaic, predictable, sure, but in a comfortable, competent way. Dennis Quaid is perfectly cast, as is Topher Grace. Grace has the harder role. He has to be both obnoxious and sympathetic. He does that well.

I haven't been in the business world that long, but I do know the business knowledge here feels like it was written by a creative writing major and not someone who knows anything about business other than from the outside, or else by a committee determined to dumb-down the content.

It could have been a more intellectually stimulating movie, but as is, it's funny and enjoyable.

Post for Julie

Dear Julie,

No baby yet. In the hospital, though, and I don't think they'll let her leave until he's born.

-Torgo

How to piss off a pregnant woman

If you live far away, ask her if she's had the baby.

If you see her in person, ask her when she's due, then when you hear she's due imminently (or is past due), say anything at all other than "due dates are totally made up and don't mean anything."

Based on my limited experience, pregnant women love to know due dates right up until they get close, then there's far too much pressure to have that baby on or near that date, despite the fact that the date is, truly, bogus.

We realize this more and more every day. Sure, doctors and midwives will tell you the date is made up, but then if you're late, they start freaking out.

What is a due date? I know more about this than I perhaps should. When you find out you're pregnant, you go to the doctor or midwife. They ask you when your last period was. Then they turn a little wheel and determine, based on that wheel, what your due date is. When you go for your first ultrasound, they can theoretically measure the baby and more precisely determine the date.

But that's all bunk. The first process has a bunch of weak spots. It requires knowing the date of the last period, knowing the length of your cycle (which varies from woman to woman, something I certainly didn't know), and relying on a wheel which is based on the premise of rigid consistency in a universe built on chance and chaos.

The second process requires an accurate measurement, a compliant fetus, and a growth rate that is consistent for every baby.

Tonight we had frozen pizza for dinner. The box said to cook the pizza at 400 degrees for 18-21 minutes, but to watch it closely, because ovens vary. The pizza is created by machines to be cooked in a machine, and even then they don't know how long it takes. Why should anyone know what day a baby should be born?

Movie Review: Bram Stoker's Dracula

Bram Stoker's Dracula: Torgo disapproves

Oh, what a terrible movie.

It's not just bad, it's awkward, disappointing and sad. There are so many awful things here:

1) It's shot in LA. Despite at least half of the scenes taking place out of doors, every scene seems like a soundstage. And not a good one, more like on SNL, when they're clearly on a stage in front of a backdrop.

2) It's entirely unjustifiably pretentious. There are enough boring camera tricks and uninteresting special effects shots and quick cuts and layered images and bad transition shots to fill a dozen high school senior project movies. Francis Ford Coppola seems to think he's creating a visual masterpiece. He's not.

3) Keanu Reeves. I read that Coppola regrets casting him. Good. He did this after "Bill and Ted's Bogus Journey" (which I remember liking). I thought he'd be perfect for the role of Jonathan Harker after reading the book. I neglected to realize he'd half-heartedly attempt a British accent and a level of seriousness he just can't pull off.

4) Winona Ryder. They changed a bunch of the book to make it a love story between Mina and Dracula. Ryder's Mina, though, never seems like someone to make me join the undead and wait 400 years for. She's just not that interesting.

5) Soft core porn. I have no problem with nudity. I'd rather movies have sex than violence. But Coppola comes across as a juvenile boob-freak here. Look! Boobs! Is this supposed to be a romantic epic? Why, then, is that wolf raping Sadie Frost? Couldn't that have been implied and not just casually captured on film.

6) Accents. Not just Keanu. Why make a movie where Gary Oldman and Anthony Hopkins, who are British, have to use Eastern European accents, while Reeves and Ryder (and Tom Waits, who's always cool), who are American, have to use British accents, while Cary Elwes, who's British, uses a British accent, even though his natural accent sounds fake? Add in Bill Campbell as a goofy Texan (which is true to the book) and it's a hodgepodge of silly sounds -- Oldman is the only respectable one.

7) Gary Oldman. He's so good in a few scenes that it's easy to forget how bad everything is. Like the book, he's at his best in the beginning, at his castle. The movie makes the mistake of showing him often in England. I discounted the book for keeping him out of the rest of the book, but maybe that was the right call. Once he's been established, there isn't much room for him to progress. And Coppola has no idea what to do with him. And Ryder brings him down.

Ok, that's enough of that. Lastly, Rainster just wrote about Army of Darkness. If anything, Coppola steals Sam Raimi's playbook but where Raimi is openly silly, Coppola is accidentally silly.