Well that sucks.
I don't usually get upset over celebrity deaths (although Robin Williams bugged me) it's not like they care about me. But this dude seemed alright. I really liked that he wasn't all about cooking, his travel stuff was nifty.
I know there have been episodes of his shows where I have thought that he was having a rough day when he recorded the narration.
Yeah, agreed, several. But that was part of it, wasn't it? Whether it's the would-be Fellini directing him as if it were a post-modernist art piece, when it was just some simple grub cooked by Anthony in an Italian Villa (granted, an awesome villa, with a pool, etc.), or the Lebanon show where you can actually see the incoming artillery in the distance, the man held nothing back and dove in with all he had. Which I think is how he lived.
Probably my favorite set from Kitchen Confidential:
He was probably strung out, which is no longer funny but he writes it wryly. Needs a job badly and heads to an interview with a Scottish restaurateur, a sort of beef-baron of the industry. He's doing great in the interview and it gets to a point where the baron, in thickest brogue, asks Anthony: "So. What do you know about meat?"
Anthony pauses, and with truth to power, pops out "not a fu(king thing."
Needless to say he didn't get the job. He's a block or two away when his brain catches up with his feet, and he realizes the guy wasn't asking what he knew about him, but what he knows about meat, lol. "HE SAID WHAT DO YOU KNOW ABOUT MEAT?!!!"
-probably a fair question for a chef interview.
Forgive me, guys, if this is, whatever. I never met him but between Egullet, his shows and his books, I came to really love him and I know it's probably even selfish to say, when he's got family and other loved ones truly suffering tonight but this hurts really bad. It helps to recount what he brought to life, and that's how I would like to remember him, fighting. Even in a second act, as a serious jiu-jitsu student, mauling it out nearing 60 with a younger lion of a teacher.
I wish I could believe in some way to send him, with the grieving others, that I hope you've found peace, Brother. Maybe he hears, and maybe he has, don't know. But I humbly wish it for him beyond anything else.