Attention! Travel Channel...Call Me!

Dedicated readers of CCB, you’ll be happy to hear that it is once again safe to climb into your beds wearing your Batman pajamas (emblazoned with the phrase “Batter Up” across the crotch) and listening to Mussorgsky’s “Night on Bald Mountain” on your iPhone.  Sleep away, Northwest Oklahoma, sleep away!

The escapee/walk-off/wayward club member from the William S. Key Country Club in Ft. Supply was captured yesterday!  He was found about four miles north of the Woodward County/Harper County. Wait…huh? 

Dude hit the road Thursday night…gets captured Monday afternoon and that’s all the further he got?  Hell, I’d have been sitting in a bar in Anacortes, Washington in that amount of time (where most outlaws, societal rejects, and people who want to disappear wind up – I know, I used to live there).  Guess he was making his way to Kansas.  It’s cheaper up there you know!

Actually, I had a real conversation last night with a real unnamed city official with keen insight into the club membership walking off the 19th hole.  According to CCB’s unnamed source, Oklahoma law may be part of the problem.  Apparently, there’s an automatic tack-on to a sentence when someone escapes or attempts an escape.  CCB’s unnamed source wasn’t certain if it was five or ten years, but it’s automatic, no questions asked.

The real puzzlement for Country Club management is why a person would walk off the 19th hole when they had only had six months or so remaining on their sentence. It seems that a lot of them do it because there’s nothing for them on the outside.  Most are career petty criminals with zero prospects.  Prison/correctional center/country club is all they have, it’s all they know.  Why would they leave? 

Apparently, a lot of these take the walk so they can stay in. 

Okay, so there you have it.  Mystery solved.  Real news is kind of depressing. I think I'll stick with fake news from now on. People manipulating the system so they can remain in the system.  Sad, sad, sad.

But, I digress…

So on Sunday, Cousin Fred and I were sitting around watching a mini-marathon of CNN’s “Parts Unknown” with Anthony Bourdain.  If you’ve never watched the show I would highly recommend it. 
I became a big Tony B fan when he was on the Travel Channel with his show “No Reservations”, which Travel Channel still runs with some regularity. 

For those of you who have never watched or just skipped over it, I have to tell you that both shows are definitely worth watching.  Bourdain is a chef by training, a skilled writer bordering on genius, and he has a snarky sense of humor that I find delightful. 

In the Travel Channel shows, he would move all around the world, exploring “cuisine” in various locations while bringing a fresh sort of geo-political perspective of the lunacy that is this world and interspersing that with snarky comments about his hosts. I recall seeing a "Pearls Before Swine" comic strip years ago wherein the characters were talking about Anthony Bourdain.  The gist of the strip was, "He travels the world, eats like a pig, he smokes, he drinks, he ridicules his hosts, he cusses.  He's living the dream!"

Since moving over the CNN with “Parts Unknown” it’s been pretty much the same format, though with slightly less emphasis on the food piece. 

Turns out I sort of ran into Anthony Bourdain years ago.  We were in Atlantic City, NJ staying at one of the hotels along the Boardwalk there.  I sitting on a bench waiting for the wife who was shopping.  Some guy came out of one of the hotels and sat on the bench next to me.  He was smoking…a lot.  Kind of acted nervous about something.

The wife comes out of the shop and I see her burning holes through the guy.  After we walked away, she said, “You know who that is?”

No doubt interested, I respond with, “Who?”

“The guy sitting on the bench next to you.”

Me, “Oh, no.”

The wife, “That’s Anthony Bourdain.  He’s a chef on TV.”

Me, “Huh. Can we go back into the casino now?”

I have to admit, I became an instant and rabid fan of “No Reservations” when I started watching it.  It was well produced and very entertaining.  I was sorry to hear the Travel Channel announce that the show was ending.  They didn’t tell us that Bourdain was jumping ship to CNN at that point. 

A friend of mine sent me an email and suggested that I should apply for his job.  He pointed out that I had probably been in every country that Bourdain had visited, which is true…and then some.  I have also sampled weird crap…let’s see there was the shared bowl of fermented mare’s milk, little birds fried to a crispy critter state with feathers and legs still attached, jellyfish, beer and borscht for breakfast, lamb in more ways that I’ll ever be able to recall, plum wine that was easily 150 proof, the list goes on. 

Yeah, I could definitely do this.  Hey, Travel Channel if you’re reading this and are looking for someone to replace the guy who goes out of his way to eat weird stuff (Andrew Zimmern) let me know.  I’m available.

Or, if you’re Anthony Bourdain, we should talk.