Bourdain's Li.sts

Some of the lists from Anthony Bourdain's li.st account. (Li.st was a social list-making site) The website is unavailable, but these were recovered by three different people here, here, and here. (Links added by me)

Crimes Against Food

1. The Brioche Hamburger Bun: The hamburger bun is designed to ABSORB grease, not add greasiness to the experience. A proper hamburger bun should retain its structural integrity, playing its role as delivery vehicle for the meat patty until the last bite. The brioche bun, woefully unsuitable for this role, crumbles. God is against the brioche bun
2. The Third Slice Of Bread on a Club Sandwich: You know who invented the middle slice? Enemies of freedom. Their mission? Sap our will to live by ruining our sandwich experiences through “tectonic slide”.
3. The Half-Assed Muffin on an Eggs Benedict: You know it. The lazy cook toasts it under the broiler for a few seconds on one side, leaving the outer surface gummy and raw tasting and lacking the textural note your poached egg and Canadian bacon and sauce desperately need.
4. Slurry of Soy Sauce and Wasabi: If you immediately plop a big wad of wasabi into your dish of soy sauce, mix it around with your chopsticks? Your sushi chef loses all respect for you. Dip your nigiri into it rice side down? He hates you now. You may as well spit in his face. Seven years learning rice and you just shat in it.
5. Chicken Caesar: Why? They’re going to cook the chicken to shit anyway.
6. Truffle Oil: It’s not food. It’s not truffles. It’s lube .
7. “Kobe Meatballs” (ditto “Kobe Burger”): if you order either of these utterly fraudulent items at a restaurant or popular gathering spot for bro’s, all I can say is I’m truly sorry about your penis.

PERFECT ALBUMS

1. GET HAPPY—Elvis Costello
2. FRESH SLY—Sly and the Family Stone
3. DOGGY STYLE—Snoop Dogg
4. ROME —Danger Mouse and Daniele Luppi

SOME FILMS FROM THE CRITERION COLLECTION

1. MAMMA ROMA: 
Pasolini’s pioneering, brilliant, merciless and merciful story of a mother’s love, class war, and rough trade–persistent obsessions in his later work, came together in perfect balance in this early masterpiece. Magnani is, of course, riveting in the lead role, but the largely untrained non-actor cast bring a harsh authenticity to as unromantic a depiction of Rome as has ever been filmed.
2. PANDORA’S BOX
: Two words. Louise Brooks. Never has a more beautiful, intelligent, quirky, sexy, uniquely commanding character graced the screen.
3. UNDER THE VOLCANO
: Some books are unfilmable. Malcom Lowry’s dense, symbolism loaded masterwork took him his whole life to write and it stood to reason that there was no way that a two hour film could ever contain its sprawling, portentous, narrative, it’s linguistic pyrotechnics.
But John Huston did a VERY creditable job here–and Albert Finney pretty much puts his stamp on the role of the Consul forever. If you go back and read the book, you will always picture Finney. It’s a terrific labor of love, doomed to failure..yet it manages to squeak out a remarkable if necessarily compressed success.
4. IN THE REALM OF THE SENSES: 
It’s porn. People having sex. Real sex. On camera –and its perhaps the one time in the history of cinema where that’s interesting. Based on a true story of obsessive love, Oshima’s transgressive classic is beautiful without prettifying anything, graphic without being particularly prurient, romantic without illusion, and at all times deeply political.
5. RIDE WITH THE DEVIL
: is a terrific adaptation of the as-terrific Daniel Woodrell Civil War novel about guerillas war in Missouri and its aftermath. It’s also among Ang Lee’s best films, a criminally neglected classic, and a great performance by Toby Maguire. Hell, EVERYBODY is great in it. Beautiful writing and dialogue delivered flawlessly.
6. THIEF: 
Michael Mann’s cold, shiny early work with James Caan as a just out of jail master safecracker and an as wonderful Tuesday Weld in one of cinema’s great dysfunctional relationships. Watching Caan try and steal and buy and kill his way to the “normal” life he dreamed of in prison is both chilling and heartbreaking.
7. THE GREAT BEAUTY: 
No film in recent memory was the sensory punch in the gut that this one was. When I saw it the first time, I was devastated by its audaciousness, it’s lush, lush, gorgeousness–it’s yes–great beauty. What film has ever managed to be an “homage” to a classic Fellini film and manage ( arguably) to surpass the original? I think it’s the greatest film I’ve seen in a decade. Few film’s cinematography alone can make you cry. This one does.
8. THE AMERICAN FRIEND
: This quirky Wim Wenders film is, to my mind, the best adaptation from Patricia Highsmith’s Tom Ripley series and the only one to capture both the charm and humor as well as the darkness of its deeply sociopathic central character. Dennis Hopper is the amiably murderous Ripley–and Bruno Ganz his instrument.
9. CHIMES AT MIDNIGHT: 
One of Orson Welles’ finest works, a wildly influential adaptation of Shakeseare made for about ten dollars over the span of many years. This is filmmaking at its purest and best. The battle scenes alone are a master class in independent filmmaking on a budget.
10. THE SHOOTING / RIDE THE WHIRLWIND: 
two curiosities from Monte Hellman , two vaguely psychedelic Westerns with Jack Nicholsen well worth seeing for their sheer strangeness and as a reflection of interesting times. It’s worth remembering that the Psych Western was briefly something of a genre back in the day. These are two of the best.
11. DR. STRANGELOVE: 
My father loved this film so much, he couldn’t wait for me to grow old enough to watch it. I think I was 8 or 9 when he first showed it to me and it shaped my life. he message was clear: we are all going to die. It will be funny. Also: life is filled with the absurd and hypocritical and that too can be funny.
Peter Sellers, Sterling Hayden and Slim Pickens were highly regarded in my house. Their names were guarantees of quality as far as my Dad was concerned. But Kubrik was a God. Truly one of the great films–certainly the greatest satire. With so many epic, memorizable moments...”Purity of Essence” !

Four Spy Novels and One Not by a Spy

I like good spy novels. I prefer them to be realistic . I prefer them to be written by real spies. If the main character carries a gun, I’m already losing interest. Spy novels should be about betrayal.

1. Ashenden–Somerset Maugham: Somerset wrote this bleak, darkly funny, deeply cynical novel in the early part of the 20th century. It was apparently close enough to the reality of his espionage career that MI6 insisted on major excisions. Remarkably ahead of its time in its atmosphere of futility and betrayal.
2. The Man Who Lost the War–WT Tyler: WT Tyler is a pseudonym for a former "foreign service" officer who could really really write. This one takes place in post-war Berlin and elsewhere and was, in my opinion, wildly under appreciated. See also his Ants of God.
3. The Human Factor–Graham Greene: Was Greene thinking of his old colleague Kim Philby when he wrote this? Maybe. Probably. See also Our Man In Havana.
4. The Tears of Autumn -Charles McCarry: A clever take on the JFK assassination with a Vietnamese angle. See also The Miernik Dossier and The Last Supper
5. Agents of Innocence–David Ignatius: Ignatius is a journalist not a spook, but this one, set in Beirut, hewed all too closely to still not officially acknowledged events. Great stuff.