Winter cricket and bridge thread - Held over by popular demand

He’s a producer/label owner now. Not a failure at it either… Drake and Nikki Minaj are the two biggest artists on it. Drake is basically the guy he got to be his front of house guy.

Probably got sick of touring because of stuff like this.

Well that’ll do it. Nice job Wayne.

I’ve been teaching intro writing and philosophy for a couple years now. At the end of each class, the students evaluate me on things like my lecture style, how much they learned from the class, whether I was approachable and accessible, and a bunch of other things like that.

One thing I’ve learned from these evaluations that has really impacted me is that no matter who you are or what you do, some people will simply not like you. As a new teacher, I sucked. I was disorganized, I spoke over people’s heads, and was just generally nervous and bad. I got some bad evaluations. Makes sense. Fast forward a couple years to this past all, and for whatever reason I fuckin’ killed it. I knew the material really well, I was excited to teach it, I returned graded work quickly, and we had a lot of really interesting discussions in and out of class. The class applauded and several students shook my hand and said how much they enjoyed the class on the last day. I don’t say this to brag. I still have a lot of areas that I can improve. But that class just all fell into place and I really think I did a great job.

With that said, about 3 out of 25 students thought I sucked. Not just that the class was boring or whatever, but they thought I was a bad person who wanted them to fail. This is something I have been reflecting on, not just for how this affects my teaching, but in terms of how I conduct myself in the world. I try WAY too hard to make people like me. I feel really bad if I find out someone thinks I’m dumb or rude. But I realize now that NO MATTER WHAT YOU DO SOME PEOPLE WON’T LIKE YOU.

And that’s fine.

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JFC - rich playboy-types are so mindbogglingly stupid. I’m going to somehow transcribe and post the entire chapter of Bourdain’s second book where he just eviscerates what he calls the “Euro douche and international fucktard set”

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I kind of like prog rock, but also I’m glad the prog rock bro phase of my life has passed.

Do it… I’d read it all the way through… Love that shit :+1::joy::joy::joy:

I found a few choice quotes here on a St Barths forum: Anthony Bourdain's Book | SBHonline St Barts Community Forums

“At his restaurant, for twenty five euros, one gets a few grams of cold unseasoned boiled lentils on a very large plate. Lentils. Thats it. About two tablespoons of them. With not so much as a carrot chunk or a limp dice of onion to distinguish them from what some street kid with a skateboard and a hackey sack is eating right now in a parking lot in Portland. Probable food cost? Maybe two cents. But feel free to season it with oil and vinegar. though. Provided complimentary”

“The French, who administer this playground of evil,who serviced the visitor,accommodated them, gouged them and f**ked them over in all the traditional ways and even a few new ones”

“a beach bar and music starts thump thumping and here comes the models with swimware for sale…or jewelry. It was a bottle service world…meaning you pay for the table, not whats on it. fiftyish men with potbellies hanging out over their speedos, dances with pneumatic breasted Ukranian whores - during brunch. Waiters looked at everyone with practiced expressions of bemused contempt”

“What my horrible holiday week on St Barths taught me was that this traveling strata of mega rich people, all of whom know each other, crave nothing more than the comfort, the assurance, that they are all going to the same lousy beach - usually narrow unimpressive stretches of oft reeking sand that would be unacceptable to any half seasoned backpacker - and to restaurants that serve food any food nerd with a website and a few bucks would walk sneeringly by”

https://www.sbhonline.com/bbv-fusionattach-128/1287775652-Screen_shot_2010-10-22_at_3.24.52_PM.jpg

Apparently this is the hotel/restaurant that he goes off on in the book. They turned away Madonna lol.

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Well shit - here’s the whole damn book: http://subwayreads.org/book/medium-raw/

Read chapter 3 - The Rich Eat Differently Than You and Me

One of the things I’d forgotten about seriously wealthy people, something I’d noticed during a brief previous exposure in college, was that the old-school, old-money kind of rich people? Those motherfuckers don’t pay for shit. They don’t carry cash—and even credit cards seem always to be … somewhere else, as if whatever small sums as might be needed are beneath notice or discussion. Better you pay. And pay I did. Days and nights bingeing on overpriced drinks, bribing bartenders to scoop us up in their private vehicles at end of shift and drive us off into the dark to wherever she thought we might stay that night. One crappy motel-style room after another that cost what a suite at the St. Regis would. More drinks.

A clue came to me on St. Barths as I lay on a chaise lounge, half drunk in the moonlight, various Gaddafis and their guests frolicking in the background. Perhaps it’s that they’re so ugly, these “beautiful” people. They wear the same ugly clothes, designed by the same misogynistic old queens—who must privately piss themselves with laughter seeing their older, richer clientele squeezing into these outfits … leading one to the observation that the style-makers themselves, the people who decide what the world will wear next year, who’s pretty, what’s “hot” and what’s “not,” are uniformly hideous beyond the lurid imaginings of Cub Scouts round a campfire. Just look at the guest judges on Project Runway or America’s Next Top Model—or at the front row of any fashion show—and you’ll get the idea: a dumpier, less attractive, more badly dressed bunch of customers would be hard to find outside a suburban Dress Barn. Rick James—in the ‘70s—could never have gotten away with what Karl Lagerfeld wears every day. He’d have been hooted off the stage. If Donatella Versace showed up at your door selling Amway products, you’d slam it and double-lock it—before calling the neighbors to warn them.

As I looked around the beach, I saw, in the jaundiced light of my unhappiness, the full extent of the horror of this Island of Dr. Moreau I’d willingly marooned myself on. The full spectrum of plastic surgeries gone wrong—right there in the open, curiosities of the flesh, which at a lesser income level would have been confined to the carnival sideshow: mouths that pulled to the side, lips plumped beyond credibility, cheeks filled with golf ball–like lumps, and foreheads frozen so tight you could play snare drum on them. Identical noses … eyes that refused to blink and could barely even close …

And there was my date for the night, in her thousand-dollar plain white T-shirt. Searching—once again—for her cell phone.

It makes sense that restaurant operators—and Robèrt—would prey on these people. They should. They are, after all, in the business of desire—of figuring out what fulfills their clients’ wants and needs. What they want on St. Barths—as elsewhere, I’m guessing—is to feel secure among others of their ilk. Secure that they’ve chosen the right place—the place everybody else in their set will choose. Secure that, if nothing else, everyone else in attendance will have bought into the shared illusion. Where no one will point out the obvious: that they’re too old and too ugly to be wearing what they’re wearing. That the surgery didn’t help. That they can’t—and shouldn’t, in fact—dance, ever again. That they’re eating food that the cleanup guy, who’s going to sweep up after closing, wouldn’t touch with rubber gloves and andirons. That the rest of the people on this planet, if enough of them knew who they really were—and how they’d made their money—would have their heads quickly on pikes.

He’s so fucking good. His read of this book on audible is incredible. Highly highly recommend.

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Adults elected Trump.

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I’e only ever read Kitchen Confidential, but after reading the first couple paragraphs of that thing Suzzer linked now I’m going to have to read whatever else he wrote.

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lol that’s awesome

Those books are the only two I know of where it’s just him ranting basically. The rest are his fiction books or cooking things.

Kitchen Confidential audio book is much more subdued as his show hadn’t taken off yet. But Medium Raw is him in his full screen persona voice and it’s glorious.

I guess that thing I linked is just the first 4 chapters - that makes more sense.

If that goes on for a while it might stick.

My Spanish teacher in Puebla was an American white guy from Denver with a weird thick Spanish accent. He said he started using it when he taught ESL because it made it much easier for the students to understand him - and now it’s stuck.

I wish the executives of Norwegian Air were on the flight that got shot down over Tehran.

Fucking douchebags.

Bourdain was one of the only celebrity deaths that has ever really hit me. He was a national treasure.

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Totally this.

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She’s got the Megan markle bug… :bug::joy:

He released a new album like a year ago? Maybe two. It was pretty good imo

Agreed. The rhymes and the production were both good.

My friends have travelled the world just working chefs jobs basically, anywhere they could get after leaving Uni in the 90’s and saying Fuck it I’m off… They come back every so often and tell the stories so I’ll be looking forward to these writings of Mr Bourdain as I was just getting into him when he passed away, like riverman says there’s very few celebrities that I’ve mourned for but he’s 1…

A shorter story of my pal who ended up in the south of France working the boats as a top chef getting £7,000 a week in hand, there was 3 of them who all new each other well and shared the stories of what happens on them and wow the sheer disregard or respect for humans these millionaires have is disgusting and the food they eat even more…
He said it was a nightmare on the boats and they lasted a week of literally 24 hours of cooking someone a late snack or the start of breakfast for the change of crew… Fresh daily food at 5/6am that they had to source from the local markets around France which tbh was the easy parts, log every transaction etc and never have a drink…
If caught using drugs or shit then it’s probably the local slammer in France as the contracts stated some truly horrible stuff as you guys can gather.

I think they took swabs and stuff from there employees and that’s why the wages are paid in cash… Some of our best chefs in the world are on these boats in and around these places then go on to better options… Some of the 2nd places of our show Masterchef have been seen there. :joy: Getting prepped for the business world, :roll_eyes:
And that Bourdain story sounds exactly spot on… :ok_hand: