Hey guys, it's Looch.
My most favorite thing I've seen this week
is the final episode of Anthony Bourdain's
"Parts Unknown."
Now, I know a lot of people, myself included,
that found it really difficult to watch the
remaining episodes after he passed away last
year, and I honestly feel like this is the
one episode I would say you can watch.
Yes, it's sad.
Yes, it's poignant.
But he's touring the Lower East Side of New
York.
It's so fitting and appropriate because it
was this decaying place for the better part
of the '60s, '70s and early '80s ...
MAUREEN STAPLETON:
"The Lower East Side ... this really sucks."
MARY LUCIA: But everything was happening there:
musically, art.
The people that he has in this final episode,
each segment, could make its own one-hour
special.
People like Harley Flanagan, who was in the
Cro-Mags, and before that was in a band as
a drummer, hard-core drummer, when he was
12.
But I just remember recently hearing that
he was in the news for having stabbed two
members of his own band at the CBGB Festival.
Anyway, he's clearly out of jail now.
But Fab 5 Freddy; Chris Stein; Debbie Harry;
Richard Hell, who still lives in the same
apartment; Danny Fields, who's basically responsible
for the Ramones and Iggy and the Stooges;
Jim Jarmusch, and different filmmakers; Lydia
Lunch -- the dinner he has with Lydia Lunch,
who was a musician and performer and actress,
could be, again, an entire series in and of
itself.
He's sort of the social anthropologist that
tries to find out: Is the Lower East Side
just romanticized beyond compare?
Because it really was just a haven for drunkies
for so long, and burned-out buildings and
squatting, and then it's become gentrified.
But as Jim Jarmusch puts it, which I think
is brilliant, is he says, "You know, New York
City has always been a cultural, changing
city, so if you're literally holding on to
something from 1978, you're in the wrong city."
And they visit a lot of different people;
you'll see.
It's so poignant, and of course, at the very
end, he meets with John Lurie, who was a jazz
saxophonist, and an actor in some Jarmusch
movies, and he makes him a couple of hard-boiled
eggs, and they cut out with Johnny Thunders'
"You Can't Put Your Arms Around a Memory."
It's sad and beautiful and amazing.
So check it out; it's on CNN.
It's the final episode with Anthony Bourdain.
