Anthony Bourdain’s America is Pretty Much AFFotD’s America

“Fuck no, I’m not foreign, I’m American, you assholes.”

~Anthony Bourdain

We at AFfotD know of a few “celebrity chefs” out there.  Guy Fieri likes to put Jack Daniels on everything, so he’s alright by our book.  Wolfgang Puck speaks with a silly accent, so we hate him.  The same should go for Gordon “fucking” Ramsay, except for the fact that Kitchen Nightmares is brilliant and if we ever said otherwise we suspect that the crazy soccer-playing Scottish bastard would hunt us down and harvest our livers for pate.  And we’re conflicted on Rachael Ray but that’s just because our male staffers have spent the last three years trying to figure out if they find her attractive or not.

One person we never really paid much attention to was Anthony Bourdain.  He has a foreign sounding name, and while he has a popular Food Network TV show, we mainly had heard of him through his best-selling books.  And we at AFFotD never read books unless it tells us to kill Europeans, so even if Wikipedia says that your writing is “peppered with F-words,” sorry Tony, we’re still not going to read it.  But we apparently were foolish in leaving this guy out, because even though we’ll never remember how to spell his name, this Bourbon Bourdain guy.

Because we found this.

That link is a SFW summary of a Playboy interview that Bourdain recently did.  For those of you raising your eyebrows saying, “Oh, sure, your staff was totally just reading Playboy for the articles, italicized sarcasm” we just want to say for the record- our staff members that read Playboy do so solely for the pictures of naked women, this was just an instance where we saw the guy talking smack about Vegans and were suddenly enraptured.  Then we did some digging and found that he’s a hard drinking, chain smoking, former heroin user (we’re not endorsing Heroin by any means, and in no way are we implying that doing Heroin makes you more American…but that being said…Lou Reed, you know?).  To make a long story short, he seemed pretty damn American.

While we won’t go as far as to say he’s American enough for a Fun Fact of his entire life (at least not yet) we’ll at least throw him a bone by giving him one for his awesome views.

Anthony Bourdain’s America is Pretty Much AFFotD’s America

Okay, except for the excessively ripped jeans…

Anthony Bourdain swears so much he makes America Fun Fact of the Day look like America Fun Fact of the Day.  And he drinks so much he makes America Fun Fact of the Day look like America Fun Fact of the Day.  And he used to do so much heroin that it makes America Fun Fact of the Day go, “Yeesh, heroin?  Shit dude.”

What really is worth mentioning, apart from all the warthog rectums and fermented shark meals he eats in his quest to show us the fucked up food out there, Bourdain is pro-alcohol, pro-overeating (except for kids, which we begrudgingly agree with), and incredibly anti-vegetarian.  Also, it’s surprisingly easy to find a picture of him giving you the middle finger.

So instead of trying to delve into the man’s life, or try to figure out “what makes certain Chefs American and other Chefs boring” we’re just going to post a bunch of quotations from his Playboy interview and comment on how American each statement is.  So open your mouth holes and get your gullet ready for some knowledge bombs, America.

“I fully support your right as an adult to eat yourself to death.  I would greatly prefer that if you’re going to eat yourself to death, you enjoy yourself while doing it.”

Yes.  This.  This is what we’re trying to tell you, America.  This is why we have fried beer, fried salsa, and hypodermic needles filled with pork lard.  Get delicious, unhealthy foods and just go to town.  Anthony Bourdain knows what we’ve long suspected- every time a person asks how many calories are in their meal, a dedicated and loving family of foster parents instantly falls dead from a heart attack.  It’s called the Transitive Property, look it up.

“Sheep testicles are good, though I don’t like beef testicles that much.”

We don’t have much to add when someone says which animal’s balls taste better than others.  Moving on.

“Learn how to cook a fucking omelet.  I mean, what nicer thing can you do for somebody than make them breakfast?  You look good doing it, and it’s a nice thing to do for somebody you just had sex with.  I think it’s good for the world… If you’re a screaming, fucking asshole a woman would regret sleeping with, then you will probably never be able to make an omelet.”

Our female staff members demanded that both this quotation and this picture make it into this article, which our male staffers supported because A- they know how to make omelets and B- if a picture is worth a thousand words, the picture above is “Boner Joke” repeated 500 times.

As for the quotation, who said that chivalry is dead?  Making an omelet for someone you just had sex with sounds like both a welcome way to start the day and a good way to ensure you have sex in the future.  It’s a win-win situation, and we here at AFFotD are kicking ourselves for having not come up with this theory before.

“[Vegetarians] make for bad travelers and bad guests.  The notion that before you even set out to go to Thailand, you say, ‘I’m not interested,’ or you’re unwilling to try things that people take so personally and are so proud of and so generous with.  I don’t understand that, and I think it’s rude.  You’re at Grandma’s house, you eat what Grandma serves you.”

Thank you, Tony.  That’s a much more reasoned way of pointing out our “If you don’t eat meat your legal gender is ‘Bird Feed’” argument that we’ve been making.  We’ll take it one step further- being a Vegetarian is not only rude to cultures that center on meat, it’s rude to the meat.  Cows were invented by steakhouses in the 1700’s, and their sole purpose is to be eaten as a delicious steak.  Seriously, a cow dying and being turned into meat is like a Spartan Warrior dying in battle- it’s the only way they can truly find honor.  And Vegetarians want to take that away from them?  For shame!  And speaking of people who don’t eat meat…

“Being a Vegan is a first-world phenomenon, completely self-indulgent.”

Plus, being a Vegan can drive you to insanity.

“Caffeine and liquor together?  What’s the fucking problem here?  Unless you put teddy bears on the front and say it’s for kids, what’s the problem?  Kids shouldn’t be drinking this shit in the first place.  I’ll drink my Red Bull and my vodka in separate glasses.  Is that the problem?”

This was his response to Four Loko, and we stand by it fully.  We miss you, caffeinated Four Loko.  RIP.

Needless to say, we’ve found a new respect for Anthony Bourdain, the apparently American chef who knows how to do more than just cook Frenchy foods.  So for his lifestyle, and his willingness to go on a nudie magazine and swear up a storm, we at AFFotD salute him.  Keep on keeping on you crazy cooking son of a bitch.