Will It Be Like Chocolate Meeting Peanut Butter? – Anthony Bourdain’s “Get Jiro!”

I was always one of those people who, in high school, kept very separate groups of friends. I had one group for theater geek activities, one group for all things jock related, and another one for the things that neither of the either groups needed to see. It was a very well planned orchestration that I kept meticulously cordoned off, like one of those plates that lets you keep all your food from touching lest the squash touch the potatoes and all mayhem break loose.

These days, I feel much the same about my hobbies. Comics, Club-A-Wino-To-Death Night, and foodie pursuits all hold very meaningful places in my life, but they’ve been there as spaces for me to move in and out of. My fenced off little refuges have not come into contact with each other…until now.

Enter Get Jiro!, which will be written by television personality/chef/author, Anthony Bourdain and author Joel Rose with art by Langdon Foss, whose work has previously been seen in Heavy Metal.

Should I be getting excited or scurry back into the shadows in trepidation?

I want to be excited. According to Comics Alliance the book is:

described by Bourdain as “”…a gourmet slaughter-fest, sort of like ‘Fistful of Dollars’ meets ‘Eat Drink Man Woman'” and “‘Yojimbo’ meets ‘Big Night’ and ‘Babette’s Feast’, an ultra-violent slaughter-fest over culinary arcana,'”…the title seems like it will embrace the edgier aspects of Bourdain’s writing style. Judging from the ultra-detailed preview art Foss has posted at his blog, the title also looks to be a feast for fans of artists like Geof Darrow and Jean Giraud/Moebius.

Ok. I like Fistful of Dollars, Big Night and Geof Darrow. Indeed, the artwork looks pretty cool and speaks to my not-so-latent Japan-o-phile geekistry (which, admittedly, does cross paths with my foodie-ness):

It's like Twister. With knifes!

So, why do I want to run away and hide?

I discovered Anthony Bourdain through the Food Network when his show A Cook’s Tour debuted back in 2002. It hit all the right notes of exotic food, fabulously distant locations and punk ass snark I could ever have hoped to have seen combined in a television show. The same sort of Hunter Thompson-esque quality that made me seek out Warren Ellis’s Transmetropolitan compelled me to buy the book compilation of A Cook’s Tour, followed by Kitchen Confidential and The Nasty Bits. I jumped Food Network over to Travel Channel when he started No Reservations. And then, he released this special episode:

The fuck? Sure, it was to be expected that he’d been enjoying his new lifestyle, what with the television and book success. Hell, he was a brand now. But I always had enjoyed the sort of “punk rock/one of us” perspective he’d brought to his discussions about food. And that show? That was not “God Save The Queen”. That was Michael Jackson off in Neverland, having another chimpanzee flown in to the ranch with that week’s crate of glitter gloves. There ended my interest in the Anthony Bourdain franchise.

Who knows? The book may be brilliant, but Anthony Bourdain is played out for me these days. If he’d published it in 2004 or 2005, I probably would have been all over it. However, he’s about as ubiquitous as Gordon Ramsay on my tv these days. It feels like it’s mandatory for him to be on one show somewhere on basic cable on an hourly basis. Hell, he was even on Miami Ink. I’ve made my decision.

Comic books – you go over there. Foodie stuff – other side of the room.

Now I’m off to go find me a wino.