Things tend to get a bit blurry but I never forget the date. 9/1/2012 is when I hit launch not really knowing what I was doing or even trying to accomplish. I didn’t know anything about social media or Instagram and still to this day hate Facebook. What was clear was that I was frustrated with the way that things were going in the industry and I wanted a way to do something about it.
It started with a simple conversation
My little brother is a great bike mechanic but couldn’t boil water to save his life and he was constantly calling me asking me how to do the simplest things like how to make rice. One afternoon I was sitting in my truck on Alki beach, getting stoned and he suggested I write a cookbook for guys like him who didn’t know shit about the Kitchen but that I should write it in the same blunt, bare-knuckle manner I did with him.
Great idea except for the fact that I’m a high school dropout with one of the worst attendance records in Newport News Public Schools history. I should also mention that I never passed freshman English. Despite the odds, I started writing and for the first few years I sucked.
The site just kinda happened
I had most of the first book drafted and I wanted to see if people would even respond to my work so I started a small WordPress site under the name of “Life in Randori” without any real plans. For some reason, people started reading and enjoying what I was doing and I started to give a shit about things like spelling and grammar.
The Joker created Batman
And Sysco made me since I’ve had to deal with the assholes and watch them help degrade and dumb down the industry over the years. I was drunk as fuck one night when I saw one of the trucks and out of pure hate and frustration I screamed the first thing that came to my mind “Culinary Anarchy”
It was one of those lightbulb moments that hit me like a brick to the face and stopped me dead. I got home and immediately looked it up to see who owned the domain and since no one else did, I bought it right then. Then I spent the next few months trying to build the site.
Right after I launched, I ended up moving to Hawaii to work as a Vegan Chef at a Yoga resort. Then back to Seattle, back to Hawaii, then Chicago I think? It’s been a blur.
Despite the odds.
I’ve gotten to do some really cool shit such as interview Brian Ritchie of The Violent Femmes as well as the guys from Reel Big Fish.
In an effort to make an impact, I also filmed a small indie food documentary despite having never filmed anything but amateur porn on my phone. Let me tell you, the camera does not add ten pounds but that’s beside the point.
Since we live in a more or less competition based society, I wanted to show people what would happen when we worked together. I called some of my friends and heroes and while they knew I was crazy, they also dug the concept. The other side of the coin was that I wanted to show that people could get along if given the chance so I wanted the dinners to consist of people who would never otherwise have the chance to sit down for a meal together.
Now, I should also point out that six days prior to the start of filming this, the site was hacked and we lost everything. While I had a lot of the original articles and recipes saved, it still meant that I had to rebuild everything from the ground up.
On that note, as soon as I got back from filming, I found myself at the point of some serious life changes as one major relationship came to an end, another began and then I found myself back on the road again, this time on the back of a motorcycle thanks to my longtime attorney Mike.
So where are we and whats next?
There’s no need to spoil the surprise or draw unneeded attention so all I’m going to say is that I’m in the middle of nowhere trying to rebuild and heal from the events of the past year. Plane and simple, I got my ass kicked and my eyes opened to a lot of very painful truths that I really didn’t want to face about both myself and the world in general.
That being said, I’m coming back stronger and wiser than ever before. There’s been a lot of fire and a lot of changes but, as with cooking, it’s part of the process in taking the raw material and transforming it into the final plate. I’ve had to clear away a whole lot of bullshit to allow myself room to grow and I, as I write this, am surprisingly optimistic about things.
As always, I’ve got several other projects in the works and time will tell what pans out and comes to fruition. Just because it’s a good idea doesn’t mean it’s going to work out.
So what can you do?
Just like most of you, I’m still living paycheck to paycheck while spending what little free time I have writing this. If you dig what I do and you want to help keep things going, the easiest thing to do is share the fuck out this site on social media and invite your friends to check out the page. If you really want to help, you can also buy one of the three books we have for sale. As always and, I really can’t stress this enough, please, please please, please,
Cook like you fuck
And then share this with the people you’re cooking for and fucking…