Category: coffee

Monday’s Theme Music

Preparing to depart the coffee shop yesterday, I bused my table. Looking into the roasting room, I saw one of the Noble employees back there. My jaw dropped.

He’s a spitting image of Chuck Negron of Three Dog Night back in the late 1960s.

640px-Three_Dog_Night_1969

Negron, Wells and Hutton of Three Dog Night in 1969

Thinking about that as I walked the town, I went through a few TDN songs – “Eli’s Coming”, “One”, “Joy to the World”, “Mama Told Me Not To come”, and “Liar”. The song that arrived to stay in the stream was one where Negron was the featured lead vocalist. That would be TDG’s cover of “Easy to Be Hard” from Hair.

Not only was it fittin’ to have Negron, the secret coffee roaster (maybe he cloned himself) singin’ a song, but the song whose lyrics fit these times of rollbacks in how we treat one another to the point of open hostility and cruelty.

How can people be so heartless
How can people be so cruel
Easy to be hard
Easy to be cold

How can people have no feelings
How can they ignore their friends
Easy to be proud
Easy to say no

Especially people who care about strangers
Who care about evil and social injustice
Do you only care about the bleeding crowd
How about a needy friend
I need a friend

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Cheers

Love the bumper stickers in the video.

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Coffee Wizards

Noble Coffee Shop baristas wear long black aprons, which lend them the appearance of coffee wizards as they slip around behind the counters and cases, brewing drinks, dashing out to the roaster and grinder to create more.

Judging from this cuppa, it’s wonderful magic at work.

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Not Necessarily

Is three times a charm? Not necessarily when novel writing.

I’m into draft number three of the current novel in progress (NIP). I call it number three, but I’ve rewritten and rearranged the first five pages about one billion times, and do the same for the first fifty pages at least six million times.

Fast writer, aren’t I?

I suspect those numbers are exaggerations for effect, although it seems like they’re true. I know of some days when I undid when I did he previous day. Makes me think of the novel blues.

I woke up this morning with a gleam in my eye.

Had a masterpiece in my head, I will not tell a lie.

Rushed to the keyboard, to get it all down,

then the muses abandoned me, made me feel like a clown.

Oh, yeah, I have the stumbling through the story, struggling novelist blues.

And if you wrote like me, you’d probably be sufferin’ them too.

Come on, sing along as you write.

As with everything writing, I remain mostly passionate and hopeful, depending upon the hour, day of the week, which way the wind is blowing, and other important portends such as a crow cawing from the top of a tree.

Got my coffee. Time to continue writing like crazy.

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Daydream

Things that are dark in flavor appeal to me. I like dark meat, dark chocolate, dark red wine and port, and dark beers like port and stout. I try – and often fail – to keep an open path to my taste buds. That means sampling offerings that don’t appeal to me based on familiarity and comfort. But I’m such a creature of ruts and routines that varying my choices becomes a challenging exercise.

Daydream is part of that.

Daydream is a Noble Coffee dark blend. As dark as an Italian roast in appearance, it’s not as sharp and bitter as an Italian or a French roast. Its flavor is smooth and fresh to my taste buds, toying me with mild nuttiness.

I do try others at Noble. Each day, they offer a blended dark and a unique, single origin that’s a lighter roast. True to form, the light roasts are revealed as winy and bitter to me. Some, though, have a terrific grapefruit juiciness, a taste that my taste buds like to have in IPAs, red blends, and Pinot Noirs.

Ultimately, it’s a world of choices out there, a distant shout from those early days at work, sipping Maxwell House re-heated in the microwave.

Got my brew, time to write like crazy, at least one more time.

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Tuesday’s Theme Music

Heading downtown after dressing, started singing a bastardized version of ZZ Top’s “Tush” (1975) from my childhood’s end: “Lord, take me downtown, I’m just looking for some coffee.”

Yeah, not as lyrical. Tried other things, and thought caffeine worked best. The things your mind ends up doing to kill walking time. It’s a good upbeat walking song, simple but steady with some guitar riffs that talk to me.

So, here’s the real deal (the song, that is).

 

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Monday’s Theme Music

Time for a little Neil Young. Call out to him for being naturalized as a U.S. We used to live in the same neighborhood, broadly speaking, on the California coast. A friend was his primary supplier, so the story goes. A little club wasn’t far where he liked to play for small crowds with no announcement, so the story goes.

1989 saw him bring out “Rockin’ in the Free World”. The song provides so many mocking lines drawing attention to our cultural hypocrisy:

We got a thousand points of light
For the homeless man
We got a kinder, gentler,
Machine gun hand
We got department stores
and toilet paper
Got styrofoam boxes
for the ozone layer
Got a man of the people,
says keep hope alive
Got fuel to burn,
got roads to drive.

h/t to AZLyrics.com

Yeah, that’s rocking in the free world. That Trump used the song during his POTUS campaign without irony nauseates, but then the Trumplicans bastardize the meaning and intention of everything that they touch, subverting without sparing, heavy of hand and cruel of ideas.

I’m part of the hypocrisy in my comfy white land, something the feeds my perpetual self-damnation. Too weak to walk away from the cushiness, I’ll just do some marchin’, protesting, donating, and votin’, hoping to change things, even though that’s not been working for lo’, these many years since Bush I.

Guess I’ll just keep rockin’. Pour a little CBD into my coffee, please. My joints are hurtin’. “I try to forget it, any way I can.”

 

 

 

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Gackpage

Gackpage (floofinition) – A period of serial puking or regurgitating, particularly by a housepet in the early morning, usually while humans are still in bed.

In use: “They heard the gackpage happening and could discern from the sounds which animal it probably was, forcing them to walk carefully and watch the floor when they finally climbed out of bed. It was hard to do without coffee.”

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Friday’s Theme Music

Looked in the mirror this morning…

Yeah, big mistake. Reminder: never look in the mirror before medicating with coffee, Michael.

My father’s image started replacing my image about ten years ago; now his father is replacing his image in my mirror. After reflecting on that (hah! get it? yeah, I thought you did), I drifted toward the day’s beginning where the cats awaited the feeding rituals. Thinking about what needed to be done today and tomorrow, I drifted toward a spot of sunshine peeking over mountain, and through the trees and window. With that, a 1979 Kinks song flushed into the stream.

Woke up this morning, started to sneeze
I had a cigarette and a cup of tea
I looked in the mirror what did I see
A nine stone weakling with knobbly knees

I did my knees bend press ups touch my toes
I had another sneeze and I blew my nose
I looked in the mirror at my pigeon chest
I had to put on my clothes because it made me depressed

Surely there must be a way
For me to change the shape I’m in
Dissatisfied is what I am
I want to be a better man

Superman, Superman, wish I could fly like Superman

h/t to Genius.com cuz’ cut and paste is easier than typing.

Here’s the song, “(Wish I Could Fly Like) Superman”. Dig that bass line.

 

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