Aaaaannnd...Iiiiii'm.... Ready to Take a Chance Again

...Ready to put my love on the line...with you. (Thanks Barry Manilow for the opening song)

Okay, so as I'm sitting here sweating out the Cleveland Indians Game 3 in the series with the Yankees, I was blazing through the channels, dealing with sub-par Monday night programming when I stumbled upon No Reservations. After deep consideration, I decided to stick with it--Tony's in Brazil (in a re-run), drinking caipirinhas and feasting on traditional Brazilian dishes in Sao Paolo...and he was a different person. Despite being hung-over from an over-abundance of caipirihnas, Tony was happy, he looked healthy and content and was drooling all over the food as he chowed down in a tiny dining room of a local woman, decorated with multiple crucifixes and a wall painted orange.

And here's where I've decided: Tony requires the new and exotic to be happy. He's a 50-year-old chef with ADD who thrives on traversing lands that serve as homes to bugs (and spiders) the size of your head. He's happier--and edgier--drinking a cocktail in Peru made from yuca fermented with spit than being content eating delicious meals made with fresh but conventional ingredients somewhere in the contiguous United States. He sneered at Las Vegas. He mocked Cleveland. (I'm not sure what he did in South Carolina, but my guess is that if he liked it, he treated it as an exotic "other country.") Why? Because they were not "authentic" (gasp...I hate that word) in the sense that they were nothing new to him. He seems most impressed when he's just floored by the surroundings because they're new and so different and they kick his ass in someway. Thus, when he's in Cleveland, he has to find the sewer surfers and suck Twinkie cream from a warehouse pipe--because in some way those things will assault his senses...or his sensibility.

But, whether I'm just rationalizing (very possible) or really on to something, I have a question: Tony...why does the local experience of people around the United States require a sneering while local experiences of other countries are the "real thing"? If a place doesn't beat all 6'5" of the lanky you--yes you, Tony--then is it not worthy...or is it just what you consider fake...or commercial...or (gasp) touristy? And we all hate all of those things sometimes (my personal beef is with Walmart but who's counting) , but does it mean that they're not real? Does it mean the food or the atmosphere or the people who create it are somehow less?

As I watch the start of the next episode, Tony's on a mission to find the real Puerto Rico. He said it himself--the Puerto Rico only found by hanging with the locals. And while I get and actually agree that we cannot take an already touristy place (like Cleveland?) at face value to understand the "real" experience of it, what I don't understand, then, is the lack of interest--or abject disdain-- for the "real" experience of people living in Las Vegas or Cleveland or South Carolina (or wherever). Is it because it's not real--or it's just not exciting?

If "exciting" and "real" are what Tony's after, then I think the show needs a name change--because those obviously constitute "Reservations."

But, just for the record Tony, we're friends again.