THENASTYBITS (20 page)

Tail, to be exact. A single, crunchy, black stinger—lodged prominently up front. Perfect.

The morning began early with a journalist, at the Tiong Bahru market; we met over coffee and
cbtvee kueh,
a savory rice cake with dried vegetables. This was quickly followed up by curried fish roe, spicy
sotong
(squid), and prawns at the casual eatery, Nasi Padang River Valley on Zion Road, and then a full-on meal of chicken tikka, fish head curry, Mysore mutton, side dishes, and Kingfisher beer at Banana Leaf Apollo restaurant in Little India. (Everything is eaten off a banana leaf with the hands.) The food was tasty and fiercely spicy, and I wished I were hungrier. Then I was hurried over to the Imperial Herbal Restaurant near Raffles to meet another journalist.

Here's the downside to having written a book about eating adventurously around the world: People want to feed you stuff. And not just any stuff. They want to see you nibbling on the nether regions of unusual beasties. They want to photograph you chawing on small woodland creatures previously believed to be indigestible. They want to dazzle you with turtle parts you didn't know existed, chicken feet, hundred-year-old eggs, snake snacks, fried bugs . . . and they want to watch you eat every little bit. At the Imperial, I was honored with a whole cooked turtle, then urged by the owner to try the gelatinous fat ("the best part—very good for you"), alligator soup, sea cucumber, and a plate of fried scorpions cooked into shrimp toast. The scorpions sat proudly atop golden brown squares, fried into aggressive attack position, tails raised threateningly. I ate as much as I could, and as I was in an "herbal" medicinal restaurant, inquired about something for my aching throat. Over an aromatic, herbal tea—which did help somewhat—I was given a holistic checkup by the resident herbalist. He took first one wrist, then the other in between thumb and forefinger, and concentrated gravely. He asked me to stick out my tongue before passing judgment. "Good," he said. Yin and Yang were pretty much in alignment.

Maybe a bit too much yang on the left side—where my throat felt like it had a baseball lodged in it. I just wanted to know if it was a tumor. Apparently my karma was out of whack. But then, I knew that already. Finishing the last jellylike hunk of turtle, I got a text message on my phone from New York.
Dee Dee Ramone is dead.
I nibbled distractedly at another scorpion toast, feeling myself sink into a deep, dark depression.

Before returning to the hotel, I waddle around Singapore, a kooky, unbelievably clean, very crowded expanse of lush vegetation, stately colonial-era houses, and magnificent trees poking through and between vast, multileveled modern shopping malls and new office buildings. It's the world's largest food court, with major chains like Mickey D's, Starbucks, and KFC sandwiched between vendors selling fish balls and curries. There seem to be a Prada, a Ferragamo, an Hermes, and a Burberry on every corner and millions of people shopping shopping shopping. No cops in sight. Not a one. I am surprised by the seeming total invisibility of police presence. I guess the famously severe penalties really do discourage potential violators. I do not, by the way, necessarily see the widely publicized policy of caning as a bad thing. The rotten American kid who received a few desultory whacks for vandalism a few years back should have gotten another ten, just for stupidity and bad manners. After Clinton appealed to the government, his number of smacks was reduced—unfairly, I think, as his alleged coconspirators from Hong Kong had to bend over and take the full freight. While I'm in town, Singaporeans keep warily inquiring what I think of this, expecting, no doubt, for me to be appalled. But I can think of no punishment more appropriate for, say, the Enron bunch, than a public caning (after being stripped of all their assets and sentenced to a little prison time, of course). All those investors and employees who lost their life savings while their bosses cashed out should at least have the pleasure of seeing Lay, Fastow, Skilling, et al. publicly bent over a sawhorse and flogged with a rattan pole. Even the pillory would seem appropriate—as these weasels will still, inevitably, remain rich. It would be a feel-good event for everybody. In fact, while we're at it, a few whacks for people who order egg-white omelettes, no butter, no oil, might be enlightened policy . . .

The next morning, I'm up early to go to the Tekka wet market to shop, then to the Butter bean Bistro, to cook for another journalist. There is no part of me that doesn't hurt, and it's been quite a while since I've stood behind a stove. I dread having to prepare food from unfamiliar ingredients, in an unfamiliar kitchen, with unfamiliar tools—but the bistro is remarkably well equipped with mise en place, and I manage to soldier through a workmanlike meal of steamed razor clams and pasta, followed by a roast lemon and herb chicken with vegetables and citrus beurre blanc. Foolishly, I eat my own food, using up valuable storage space I should be reserving for professional purposes. A few hours later, we're on to a faux Spanish restaurant in a new-made-to-look-old food court for sangria and another interview, then to Geylang, where yet another journalist waits for me at a Chinese joint. Ilangoh and Bee Ping, who have been escorting me around, eating what I've been eating, and waiting for me in the freezing bar watching the World Cup in between events (Mexico loses to the USA, which does not make me happy, as this means my cooks back in New York will be getting savagely drunk), look bleary-eyed and tired as we enter the last place on the itinerary. A platter of roasted duck stuffed with cured egg, some chicken, soup, and rice await. Ilangoh and Bee Ping ignore the food. I am barely able to speak. I can't even drink my industrial-size Tsing Tao beer. My eyes swim around in my head like drugged minnows, and my stomach is in full warning mode, signaling "one more thing, Tony—and it's curtains." I know what the penalty is for publicly urinating in Singapore. What, I wonder, is the penalty for lurching into the street and spraying vomit into the gutter? Then collapsing into a gibbering, crying, spastically shaking heap? I don't want to find out. For the first time in a book tour of thirty-two American cities, God knows how many countries, countless interviews, and equally countless meals, I break things off after only a few minutes. "I'm sorry, man," I rasp. "I just can't go on. I'm dying here. I need sleep." I have no idea what I said to the journalist—though I think I remembered to slag Jamie Oliver before slumping into my rice.

It's a twenty-hour flight back to New York, with a short layover and plane change—and I ain't eating no plane food. I don't care that the food is designed in consultation with Gordon Ramsay. Unless I see him pushing the trolley down from the galley himself, I'm not touching it. The man next to me scarfs every course like it's his last fucking meal: appetizer, main, cheese course, desserts, and even port. I'm loaded with tranquilizers and liquor and am still awakened every time the flight attendant leans over to serve the guy another course. I eye his utensils, hoping to shank him with his butter knife—but it's plastic.

The next meal I have is a bowl of noodles at Narita Airport in Tokyo, something light and soothing and thankfully reptile-free. I'm sitting in the corner, trying to get down a little broth between puffs on a cigarette, when an American tourist recognizes me from TV. He's been traveling in the East for a long time, he tells me. He's eaten many strange things. He wants to talk about the delicious rat he had in China. The braised dog he was served only a few nights ago. The delights of tree grub. My cigarette doesn't taste so good anymore. I feel the blood leave my head and the room swims and when (as Ross Macdonald once said) I go to brush something off my cheek—it's the floor.

THE
DIVE

THE SINISTER INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT
Consultant Group

that hired me gave me an extra day in Greece to kick back after the travails of singing for my supper the previous night. I don't remember asking for it, but I've been working like a rented mule, making television all over the Med for so long that, hell, I guess I can use the extra beach time doing sweet fuck-all. Things could be worse. Thirty minutes of talking over dessert and I pick up a fat check and then it's front-of-the-the-plane back home. Not a bad deal, especially when you consider I was still slinging hash only five years ago. The company drones and their wives all shipped out this morning, so here I am, alone again, on the deck of a ludicrously luxurious resort on a Greek peninsula, looking out at the Aegean Sea, smoking duty-free Marlboro reds and waiting for my Negroni to arrive. There are a few very dodgy Russian shipping types and their underlings around—Speedos, thick necks, and thin watches—but otherwise it's just me: the nearly lone resident of a mammoth, empty resort.

My discreet "bungalow" has its own gym, steam room, whirlpool, a heavy bag (which I've found is a lot of fun to punch), a beach ten feet away, view of the Greek islands—and a wide-screen TV that would be right at home chez MC Hammer. Naturally, I'm misanthropic. But the Negronis are helping considerably.

I'm coming off the toughest, most maddening, frustrating shoot of my undistinguished television career, a frantic ten-

day bounce through the outlying islands of Sicily (all of them lovely, by the way). I was not with my usual close-knit dysfunctional family of producers and shooters. Camera One, Todd, is still new and I've yet to really get to know him. Tracey, whom I've worked with a lot, was along, but no Chris or Diane— instead, the nice but indecisive producer, Global Alan, and an annoyingly hyperactive assistant. It was a bad mix, and our local fixer, an aristocratic lout/bullshit artist (let's call him Dario), ensured that about fifty percent of our carefully planned scenes evaporated in front of our eyes.

"The helicopter . . . she no coming. The weather. Is too windy . . ."

"The helicopter she coming maybe ten minutes . . . okay, maybe she no coming today . . ."

"The sea urchins . . . fisherman say they no more . . ." "The restaurant closed today . . ."

"The giant turtles . . . they-a sick maybe. No coming. We cannot shoot. . ."

The Greek amphitheater at Taormina, in which we'd planned a scene extolling the glories of antiquity, was booked with a film festival, meaning that it was jammed with modern festival seating, a spanking new stage, and a JumboTron screen.

Mount Etna was socked in with clouds. Zero visibility.

The "squid fishing scene," in which I was to head out at night with a local fisherman to later triumphantly haul my still-wriggling catch onto the heaving deck for the cameras, ended with me desperately pinning a dead stunt-squid to a hook and feigning a catch. After two hours of waiting futilely aboard a violently pitching scum-boat, the entire crew was green and engaged in projectile vomiting. Poor Tracey, though heroically still shooting, looked ready to die.

Dario: "The moon. She no good for squid tonight . . ."

No shit.

My on-camera subjects were equally disastrous. In Trepani, at the salt flats, the only drama was whether my dining companion would die of old age before the scene was over. He could barely eat without drooling, and appeared ready to nod off halfway through. The "adorable squid fisherman's family" with whom I was to share my "catch" of the night before in a "rustic, home-cooked Sicilian meal" hated my guts on sight. We were two hours late (after waiting futilely for the turtles) and they just sat there throughout the meal, glaring at me.

All these disasters left our increasingly desperate shooters with no alternative but to try and squeeze entertainment out of my every embittered, drunken utterance, my every nap, walk, and private moment: "C'mon, Tony! This is a scene! The 'I'm stuck in the airport and can't find the bathroom' scene! It's comedy gold!"

Sicily was stunningly beautiful. But as is becoming a recurring theme in my life, so much useless beauty unspooled in front of my eyes like a half-observed, half-felt movie. Just out of reach. Can't stop. No time to really look or breathe it in. Pantelleria, a tiny volcanic island off the coast of Tunisia: black lava petrified mid-flow into wild, jagged, majestic shapes; crystal-blue sea; green vineyards; olive trees; my house a thousand-year-old Arab-style
damoussa
with white-domed roof; the sirocco from Africa blowing constantly but gently. You can smell the continent, the spices, feel the Sahara in the air—and I was off all day making fucking television.

Yet, I learned something important about myself in Sicily. (And I'm not being melodramatic here. Really . . . Okay, maybe I am.) One afternoon, Dario, the useless "fixer," took us for an impromptu cruise on his yacht. It was intended as a quick substitute scene to make up for the ultralight that couldn't land. ("Too much-a wind. Sea. She is . . .too rough.")

Try to visualize it in Antonioni black-and-white: Dario and his bored aristo friends and their mistresses—all in their tiny little bathing suits and wraparound sunglasses—and me and my Ugly American crew, at sea on a seventy-two-footer, sails up. Islands in the distance, a clear day. A few miles out, Dario gestures to the high, sheer cliff face on the shore of a nearby island, a magnificent edifice where waves pound against rock and coral.