I first read Kitchen Confidential while in New Zealand on a working holiday visa. I'd gotten a job washing dishes at a spot were I was hoping to bartend, and his book made that decision feel romantic and exciting (rather than depressing). While I'd worked in restaurants before, I'd never worked in the kitchen. It was a different planet from the front of the room.. Bourdain captured it better than I ever could, and I highly recommend reading his account.

I only stayed back there a few weeks, but it's a few weeks I'll never forget. Night after night, I hustled like mad between a gauntlet of chefs (hollering, "backs!" to let them know I was behind them so they wouldn't slice or scald me), grabbing steaming pans before they could even yell "pots!" It was controlled chaos with some of the craziest people I'd ever met. While the rest of the staff dined on big bowls of pasta for pre-shift meals, the dishes got steak - and we earned every bite.

The cooks were a different breed, and seeing them handle a dinner rush up close was a thing of beauty.I re-read Bourdain's book a few years ago, and it brought me right back to that kitchen and those chefs. I moved on to bartending after my brief dishwashing stint, and I saw the affection in their eyes for the new dish and the scorn for me moving to the other side - and part of me felt a pang of regret (but not enough to go back).

I miss those chefs, that chaos, those hard-earned steaks, and the post-shift beers with people you'd survived something with. I miss the bar manager I had right after, who responded the same way every time I asked if a drink should have a lemon or a lime in it. ("Put 'em both in everything, mate. It helps fight the scurvy.") And I'll miss Anthony Bourdain, who I didn't know but somehow felt like I did.

Raising a glass of Kool-Aid (non-electric, but thanks) to Tom Wolfe, who wrote the book that set me on a course of exploring too many books and bands to mention.

I was fifteen or sixteen when I first picked up The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test (from my high school library no less), and its wild tale wildly told opened up possibilities of writing that I hadn't considered until then. I started listening to The Dead, wearing terrible tie-dyes, and using ellipses and exclamation marks like crazy. (I stopped with the punctuation because only he could really pull it off). The tie-dyes took longer to shed.

I'm going to put his other great reads on my list to check out soon. Here's to Tom Wolfe and his electric writing.

 

I love photo caption contests. My favorite site for them is the Nashville Cream blog over at the Nashville Scene, which offers one up every few weeks or so. I've entered maybe ten of them in the past few years and somehow won three times, and I'm more proud of that than I should be. But there's just something about having a caption match up with a picture in a funny way that feels so...right. And, you know, prizes.

Had a chance to interview UK's Shame, a great young band that lives up to the hype they've been generating. Check it out in Performer Magazine 

Here's to staring at blank white pages, adding words to them and then obsessively reworking them until they're just right (or just right enough). It's good for the soul.