{"id":1445,"date":"2009-12-31T13:44:27","date_gmt":"2009-12-31T18:44:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/?p=1445"},"modified":"2010-01-01T15:58:14","modified_gmt":"2010-01-01T20:58:14","slug":"1445","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nicomuhly.com\/news\/2009\/1445\/","title":{"rendered":"Year In Hr\u00c3\u00bdvj\u00fa"},"content":{"rendered":"
I am, like many people, totally addicted to Anthony Bourdain’s show No Reservations<\/i>. When I was 18, my friend Liz and I went together to Bangkok kind of on a whim, and we totally were relatively chilled out about eating food off the street. No Reservations<\/i> has made mainstream the idea that it’s OK to eat street food wherever. I stand by this; I ate some wild things off the street in the last two weeks in Cambodia (including a really ill-advised sun-dried clam covered in chili sauce and salt…), and the only time I got tummy trouble was off a plate of bruschetta (which, it must be said, floored me: I had to cancel two appointments which is very unlike me, but really, y’all, I was beyond Immodium). But: I want to know who’s writing the music for this show. Everytime Bourdain waxes poetic, it gets very, very, Philip Glassy, to such an extent where one wonders if an intellectual property lawyer should get involved. I know it’s hard for TV and film composers: you get footage, and usually it’s been temped with one of three things: Thomas Newman, Philip Glass, or Massage Parlor Ethnic Putumayo Potpourri, and then your job as the composer is to imitate that to the best of your ability, with two weeks to do it and a bunch of angry people screaming at you talmbout is it done yet. <\/p>\n Dear Editors of Film. Please stop temping films with the same shit. Call me. I will send you other things. The soundtrack to Glory<\/i> was great in 1988 or whenever that was but you have to quit it now. Let’s innovate, let’s branch out.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n But for reals, #thatsillegal to oscillate with minor 3rds, and flesh it out with i and VI back and forth. <\/p>\n Another thing I love about No Reservations<\/i> is that it captures, with film, some of the insane stuff that happens when you travel alone but don’t have time to photograph. A baby monkey came into my hotel room and stole a jackfruit, no picture. A huge monkey shat on a woman on Street 240 in Phnom Penh and she grabbed a piece of tissue out of her back pocket and wiped it off and continued on her way. No picture. A man in drag screamed at me from the entryway of a bar, “Durian have Pie! Durian have Pie!” presumably meaning that drinks were half-price? No photo, or video. <\/p>\n As I write this, I am on the last day of a five-day cruise <\/a>from New Orleans to Cozumel & Progreso and back again; inasmuch as I travel so much, I’ve never really hung out with my boyfriend’s family, so this is a sort of trial-by-fire where I willingly go aboard a boat with them for the better part of a week. Has anybody ever been on a cruise before? I had not. I had heard tell throughout childhood, and certainly everybody I mentioned it to made a very specific (and sort of French?) sudden intake of air. I read that David Foster Wallace essay<\/a> which is fantastic. I took a video of a thing that happened at a port of call:<\/p>\n