3 Reasons To Buy Outside Magazine This Month: Bourdain, Grylls and Survival Thrills!

In an effort to save money and cut down on the crushing weight of daily information overload, I canceled all my magazine subscriptions this year. Oddly enough, I started getting Rolling Stone and the IKEA catalog on a regular basis for no apparent reason.

In any event, I was positively stoked to find the cover of this month’s Outside magazine graced with:

1. A shot of Bear Grylls with the headline “Exclusive Interview: Man vs. Wild’s Bear Grylls Comes Clean”
2. A teaser for “How to Survive: 75 Skills that Will Save Your Life”
3. … and “Anthony Bourdain Roasts Rachel Ray”

Fantastic! And all for less than $5 US? Perhaps magazines aren’t so evil after all.

The interview with Bear and his crew is clipped a bit short, but you can pick up on the rest of it via the Outside website.

Tony admits his travels to Asia changed his entire outlook on life. He and his wife plan to move there within the next few years. The interview with him is great and worth the magazine’s $5 cover charge alone. A few choice bits:

Tonight he’ll take aim at Rachel Ray. “She’s got a magazine, a television empire, all these bestselling books – I’m guessing she’s not hurting for money,” Tony will say, his voice rising. “She’s hugely influential, particularly with children.

“And she’s endorsing Dunkin’ Donuts?”

A pause.

“It’s like endorsing crack for kids! I’m not a very ethical guy. I don’t have a lot of principles. But somehow that seems to me over the line. Juvenile diabetes has exploded. Half of Americans don’t have necks. And she’s up there saying, “Eat some fuckin’ Dunkin’ Donuts. You look great in that swimsuit – eat another donut!” That’s evil.”

Throughout the run of No Reservations and previously on A Cook’s Tour, he’s flirted with the notion of “going bamboo” – the concept of a traveler becoming so hypnotized by a new foreign culture that he simply never returns home. Evidently that’s exactly what he’s doing.

No one will ever understand, or fully get, or be able to share … There’s no describing this. The only people who understand me now are the people in my crew. I stepped outside of my life and not all of me could come back. I’ve defected, I’ve betrayed, I’ve crossed some line. I can go back and fake it, but there’s always going to be a piece of me that expects that of life. Visuals that lush. It’s like the movies, only better.

God, how I long for that feeling.