I remember the first time I stumbled across Anthony Bourdain’s show, “No Reservations”, on the Travel Channel. I was in bed, nursing a bad cold with a home remedy that involves chasing shots of NyQuil with a cold martini and a bowl full of green chile soup. (Don’t knock it: it works wonders for clearing the sinuses!)

I’d spent most of the day thumbing the remote in search of something — anything — that could keep my attention diverted from the phlegm rattling around in my chest, the build up of snot that made my head feel like it was going to explode, the sweaty fever that kept me half-delirious most of the time (although, it is possible that the martinis had something to do with that state).

After realizing that I couldn’t take one more “very special episode” of the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air on Nick at Night, I jammed the remote toward the TV and found myself listening to a man who looked very much like an unholy cross between Lou Reed and Joey Ramone. He was getting an arm tat from a Samoan man, right there at a massive dining table surrounded by jungle foliage and flying insects with stingers as large as the needle piercing his skin.

Frankly, I had no idea if he was a byproduct of my delirium or not but, what the heck, it was entertaining. So I kept watching.

As it turns out, that night was a Bourdain-a-thon: five episodes, back-to-back of a show featuring a guy who — as it became quickly apparent — had a foolhardy desire to seek out strange foods and even stranger experiences. “No Reservations,” I quickly realized, meant no compunction about eating, say, raw liver at a roadside restaurant that had never heard of sanitation inspections, much less commercial refrigeration.

I was hooked.

A few days later, when I’d returned to my senses, I ordered Bourdain’s book, “Kitchen Confidential“, in which he exposes some of the seamier side of the restaurant business: the criminal derelicts who whip out Michelin star-rated food in between bouts of sex with waitrons in walk-in coolers, the testosterone-fueled scene behind the kitchen door where hungover cooks view oozing blisters and gaping knife wounds on their hands as signs of prowess.

Before long, I was making a point to spend my Monday evenings watching Bourdain’s show. It became a ritual around the Venomous Household: get the Big-Eyed Boy bathed and in bed, grab a martini, settle down on the sofa for the culinary TV equivalent of reading Hunter S. Thompson. Fun stuff.

Unfortunately, as with every good thing on television — and with every television personality whose primary claim to fame is, indeed, their personality — Bourdain has lately become more of a product than anything else. Why, just the other evening I tuned in again to watch an episode in which he toured Shanghai, China. I’d looked forward to learning more about Chinese food than what I can find at the all-you-can-eat buffet down our street.

And, sure, there was a 10-second clip featuring Tony eating sliced heart at a hole in the wall that had never heard of commercial ice machines, much less health inspections or hair nets. But every couple of seconds one of those highly-annoying pop-ups appeared on the screen to inform me of the free wallpapers, pictures, videos and more of Anthony Bourdain.

The man, I learned, even has his own Wiki. Look, when you’ve got your own Wiki you’re about as commercial as laundry detergent, and just about as “sexy” or “dangerous”.

All of the Bad Boy appeal, the gonzo-style food porn, the vicarious thrills of watching someone else booze and dine their way through countries I can’t afford to visit is gone. Bourdain — who has been on my “list” for over a year now — is about as much of a “rebel” as the middle-aged guy next door who likes talking about his glory days of boozing and bedding countless women in between flipping his kid’s burgers on his backyard grill.

He’s not on my list, either.

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