You have to admire a show about food that contains the previous warning.

Thanks to the magic of Netflix streaming seamlessly to my fabulous MacBook and my lack of a deadline, I’ve been watching a lot of TV episodes with the zeal and power of a network program exec. Sherlock Holmes staring the wonderful late Jeremy Brett. Early seasons of The Tudors and Nip Tuck.

My most recent obsession is Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations. He’s testy, sardonic, likes a good drink (or four) and loves food.

I identify with his witty writing style (demonstrated in the series through voice-overs) and find myself fascinated by the variety of places he visits.

From Japan to Chicago, Venice to Russia. He goes, sees, eats and experiences it all–as long as there’s no tourist shop nearby. He wants to know about the locals, their customs and history.

The Miami episode connected with me as a lifetime Southerner. Why are people who live or were raised above Virginia or west of Tennessee so fascinated with alligators?

If you have ever lived in or spent considerable time in the coastal South, you would be aware that gators are not something you hope to see, or something interesting to point and stare at. They’re something you run from. Fast. While dialing on your cell phone and hoping to reach a big, brave guy named Zeke who’ll come with his even bigger shotgun and shoot the thing.

In fact, the true southerner litmus test is a negative answer to the following question…Have you ever paid to see a gator?

Bourdain, a staunch New Yorker, does–at least indirectly. Though he has the sense to go frog hunting instead of gator hunting. (Brave of him–not just because of the gators lurking in the glades–since the fishing on his show seems to always, hilariously go badly.)

He rolls with it, as he does everything. I’ve seen him eat everything from guinea pigs and raw baby seal eyeball (two separate dishes) to perfectly made baguettes, freshly picked fruit, filet mignon and caviar, plus a few frogs in between. (Oh, did I mention the frog hunting in Miami went so well, they deep fried several dozen?)

As horrified as you might be by the icky (sorry, no other word comes to mind), he reminds his viewers that these proteins are what people around the world have lived on for centuries. What they have to eat to survive. For many of them the supermarket is a concept as foreign and unlikely as Darth Vader sitting down next to you at your local Applebee’s.

What what I really take away from the series is that as different as we are in background, we’re–oddly enough–in the same profession, with the same struggles and obstacles.

While in Vegas–his first, somewhat reluctant trip–Tony’s looking for his Muse as intently as any fiction author ever has. He stares morosely at the computer screen. Types a sentence, leans back, sips beer (I prefer Diet Coke, but to each his own), types another few words, then sighs. Nothing. He picks up his cell phone, hoping somebody, anybody will call and distract him.

Later he’s sitting on the floor, surrounded by sheets of yellow legal paper and notes scribbled on the hotel pads. With nothing apparently making sense and deadline looming, he orders room service–the ENTIRE, freakin’ menu, mind you! (Apparently writing about food provides you with an unlimited food budget.) Full, he’s still struggling when, like a perfectly roasted pig falling out of the sky, a friend calls with a distraction–let’s go out. Tony’s out of that room like a shot from a pistol, and I thought, This guy is a WRITER.

He’s part of the exclusive club that includes people who use words to entertain and the people who like to read–where would any writer be without an audience, after all? I like that he’s somehow merged the medium of TV with the power of clever words, and I like that he distracts me from my own deadlines, even while he reminds me I have the best job in the world. That Muse is a flighty chick sometimes, but when she’s captured she really can make magic.

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