Jason Peterson - Writer

I write books and music & write about books and music. If you can't find me, look under a pile of paperbacks or guitar picks. slimchancepress[at]gmail.com

Home Archive for 2018
There aren't many restaurant jobs I haven't worked - well, except for the most important one: cook (if only you didn't have to be a good cook to be a cook). But name almost anything else, and I've done it. Dishwasher, busboy, host, waiter, bartender. Some were terrible, some were a blast, and all were made cool in hindsight after reading Anthony Bourdain's Kitchen Confidential. 


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.

I've posted my three winning entries below for posterity's sake:

Sometimes life imitates art, and sometimes it imitates Art.

This remains one of my favorite pictures I've ever seen. I don't know if it's the seriousness of the guy, the weirdness of the moment, or how much I wish I were there to see this in person, but it's all amazing. I really hope his name is actually Art.
The Old Man and the Sea (of sadness)

When I was in college and practice-teaching 8th grade English in a local school, my instructor assigned me to teach The Old Man and the Sea. One night as I walking to a party on campus, I ran into a student of mine, drunk as an 8th grade skunk. "Mr. Peterson," he said, swigging from a bottle of Boone's Farm. "The Old Man and the Sea sucks!" I thought about that kid when I saw this picture.
"Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn."

The week of this contest, a guy tweeted that every New Yorker cartoon could be captioned with "Hi, I'd like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn." I figured the Scene people would've read about it too and take this as a meta caption contest joke. I'll be honest - I don't think this one deserved to win. But I got a signed John Prine album out of it, so I'll take it.

Like
Roger Ebert entering those New Yorker cartoon caption contests, I'm going to keep plugging away, hoping for a win but enjoying trying to think of just the right caption.

And if you run across a contest, give it a shot. Do it for art, and for Art.

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.
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I write books, songs, and this bio! Likely to be crushed by my TBR pile.

Agent: Stephen Fraser at The Jennifer De Chiara Literary Agency

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