Lovemonkey Studios Blog

Can anyone guess what this is and why it makes me sad?

I’m not gigging a lot right now. Most of my time is taken up with teaching. I’m doing some stuff with the Austin Jazz Band, which is busier than I thought it’d be. They did put some pictures from a few gigs up on their website here. So that’s why my blog has been a little all over the place. I’m just posting what ever seems interesting at the moment. Like this weekend.

I went for a pretty epic bike ride on Saturday in Bastrop State Forest. I rode park road 1c between Bastrop State Park and Buschner State Park, and then back. I’m trying to get ready for the MS150 in April, and I had a reason to be in Bastrop with a few hours to kill, so what better to do? Or so I thought. For one, it was supposed to be 70 degrees. It never got above 54 (I have a thermometer on my bicycle computer.) Anyway, so it was chilly. The next problem was that I haven’t been riding a whole lot, so I wasn’t quite ready for the short, steep, downright nasty hills that I was to encounter. I had texted my brother that I was going Belgian all day. If you don’t get my reference, it’s to Belgian bicycle racing, which is about as nasty and hard as it gets. This picture gives you the idea.

Anyway, here’s a real thought process that went through my head during the ride:

Oh god. This hill is really, really steep. And it’s the third one. Oh, I’m tired. I hope I can actually make it. I think I will. But I might barf. I really think I’m going to barf. 10 more feet. Ok. I’m at the top. I’m going to stop for a second to see if I barf.

(at this point, another cyclist rode by, and told me about a shortcut that would cut out some of the” really nasty” hills upcoming. I know he said more, but I only remember “Shortcut” and “Really Nasty Hills”. Then he rode on.

Maybe I should sit down next to that tree. That looks good for a minute to see if I Barf. I really don’t want to. I’m miles from my car. Ok, this is a nice place to sit down. I can Barf downhill. I could also die, and it wouldn’t be a bad spot. I hope I don’t do that either. Actually, the worst would be Barfing and then Dying. Total fail.

So neither Barfing or Dying happened, and after sitting down for a few minutes, I felt better. I took the shortcut, which was over some really nice roads, and I very much enjoyed the rest of the roads. And I saw some good stuff! Like this awesome furry Donkey!

There was also a nice view right before I hit Buschner State Park:

And my total favorite moment! Right after the turnaround, I saw an Armadillo! I even hung out with him for a few minutes. I creeped as close as I could to get some pics, and he’d look at me, wiggle his nose and ears, and then go about his rooting through the leaves. I managed to get this picture, before I scared him and he took off like a bowling ball through the woods:

The ride was great until the very end, when a few really nasty hills made me almost barf again, and it took about twenty minutes of effort to avoid it when I finished. Still, It was a good day, which is what is so weird about something like cycling. Two big “I’m going to barf” moments, and I have nothing but good memories.

I saw this a while ago, and I wanted to keep it for posterity. This is from Saturday Night Live just before Christmas, I believe. Always remember kids: when in doubt, keep it cool.

I read this very interesting article in the New York Times about the way the White House is changing under Obama. The following quote caught my eye:

“Under Mr. Bush, punctuality was a virtue. Meetings started early — the former president once locked Secretary of State Colin L. Powell out of the Cabinet Room when Mr. Powell showed up a few minutes late — and ended on time.”

Maybe that’s the meeting where they decided to invade Iraq. Would of been good to have him in the room! You can read the article here.

The other thing is Gov. Rod Blagojevich. I love this guy! He’s like a third world dictator! The kind who wins elections with 102 percent of the vote and says “I guess the people just love me!” Here’s his quote:

“How can you throw a governor out of office on a criminal complaint and you haven’t been able to show or to prove any criminal activity? I’m appealing to you and your sense of fairness.”

Just 60 taped conversations! No big deal.

Quick Note: This post was mostly written almost a month ago, but it took me a while to finish it. Then I finished it, and it took me a while to get around to posting it. So finally, here it is.

I was flying from Austin to Kennedy to Burlington for Christmas with the LMF and the FLMMIL (Future Love Monkey Mother In Law.) Our Austin fight was held up for a few hours, and we were told that the Burlington connection was held up also. We landed at Kennedy around Midnight, and were promptly told our flight to Burlington had been cancelled, and we were bumped to a early morning flight for the next day. So here we are in New York, 9 hours to kill, and nothing to do. So what do you do? If you’re three adventurous people, one of whom had never been to New York, you go into the city! There were a few obstacles to overcome, however. For one, we didn’t want to carry all our carry-on bags all through the city. So we went over to Terminal four where the short term baggage storage was. This is where the fun, “New York” part of the story begins. As we were checking in our bags, the guy overheard us talking about getting a cab into the city.

“Hey” he says. “I know a guy who drives a car who will get you in cheaper than a cab.”

“How much?” I ask.

”Well, the cab is 55, but my friend will do it for 40.”

“So your friend has a car service?”

“Weeeelll, not really. He and I just have a side business going. Don’t tell anyone. I’ll have him here in 15 minutes. He has a gold Impala.”

So that’s how we found ourselves heading for Manhattan at 1:30 in the morning in a Gold Impala driven by Andrew, the nice young enterprising business man. The FLMMIL called it a “Gypsy Cab”. Our basic plan was to have him drop us off in Times Square and check that out. He told us to give him a call when we were done and he’d come pick us up. We were also going to have some food and maybe hit Rockefeller center to see the Christmas tree. That was the basic plan. Which was a good plan, with one possible flaw.

The weather. It was roughly 12 degrees outside, with a 25 mile an hour wind. So it was freezing cold. And I know cold. I grew up playing hockey in upstate New York at 6am in February. And this was really cold. The wind was coming down between the buildings like we were in a giant wind tunnel. Luckily we had met a guy in the airport who was coming back from a hunting trip (in Briggs, Texas nonetheless, which is 15 miles from where the LMF grew up.) He had all his hunting gear in his bag, and he was nice enough to loan out a few hats and gloves, which really helped us out.

We ran around for a few minutes trying to find something to eat, but surprisingly the only thing open was McDonalds. You know that whole “city that never sleeps” thing? I’ve never really found that to be terribly true. It’s hard to find much open in the middle of the night in New York, even in Times Square. We found a small grocery store that was 24 hours, and one of the people sitting at one of the tables told us about a place called the Cosmo Diner on 52nd and 8th that was open all night. So we finally had a place to go. Faced with the prospect of walking 8 blocks in the cold, we decided that it wasn’t worth risking frostbite, so we grabbed a cab to the diner. Finally, we had a place to relax, drink coffee, and eat good diner food. I was particularly excited to have a good New York Bagel. Yes, all three words should be capitalized. They’re that special. And the coffee was good too.

After the Cosmo, we had a few more stops to make. Our destination was Rockafeller center to see the Christmas tree. We walked for a bit, again freezing to death, but somehow we couldn’t quite find it. The Rockfeller center complex is like 3 blocks long and 2 blocks wide. So we took refuge in a Duane Reede and called Andrew the Gypsy cab driver to come pick us up. He showed up twenty minutes later and took us to the Christmas tree. Here’s the LMF and I in front of the tree:

So after the pictures, we got back into the Impala and headed back to the airport. I think we got in around 5am, and had our flight at Burlington at about 9. I got just a hour or so of sleep on the airport floor before catching our plane. Once we got to my parents house we all ended up sleeping for something like six hours. So that’s a four hour, middle of the night New York City trip. Maybe next time we’ll get a whole day.

This is just a few random thoughts on today’s festivities, mostly from a musician’s point of view:

1) I heard on NPR on the way to work that the Marine Corps brass band had to use plastic mouthpieces due to the cold. I didn’t know you could do that. I’ll have to ask some of my marching band friends about it.

2) I was not aware that Aretha Franklin’s voice was declared one of Michigan’s natural resources, but now I am, courtesy of Charlie Gibson at ABC. Does that mean they can hook her up to a power plant and power something? Sadly, Aretha sounded like she’s lost something. Maybe it was just the cold, but she didn’t sound like she used to. Which is ok. She is 66 years old.

3) The John Williams piece, with Itzhak Perlman, Yo-Yo Ma, Gabriela Montero and Anthony McGill was amazing. John Williams is one of my absolute heroes, inasmuch as he wrote the soundtrack to my and most of my generation’s childhood. The arrangement of simple gifts, which is a very simple melody, was completely out of this world. I could really hear the John Williams in it. Not to mention the performers were as good as can be in obviously rough conditions. The teacher sitting next to me was saying that he heard that Yo-Yo Ma was playing a ceramic Cello due to the cold. I can see that. You wouldn’t want to bring an expensive wooden instrument out in the cold. Not to mention the tuning issue. Being out of tune would be no fun, considering there were like eleventy billion people watching. Here’s a youtube of the performance if you missed it or want to see it again.

4) I think my favorite part was the benediction speech by the 87 year old Rev. Joseph Lowery. He used the chorus of a Big Bill Broonzy song called “Black, Brown, and White”, but changed it to a positive message. The original chorus was the following:

“If you was white, you’ll be all right
If you was brown, stick around
But as you’re black, oh brother, get back get back get back.”

And here’s what the Reverend said:

“We ask you to help us work for that day
when black will not be asked to get back
when brown can stick around
when yellow will be mellow
when the red man can get ahead, man,
and when white will embrace what is right”

4) This is most likely going to be one of those “Where were you…” moments in American history. I was working, but today at school they changed the schedule and the whole school gathered and watched to whole ceremony. It was fun to watch it in a big crowd, but I did see a few kids doing homework throughout the whole thing. There was a huge laugh when Rev. Rick Warren said “Sasha!!” with such zeal.

All being equal, I feel better about the world than I did when I woke up.

Here’s what 87 dollars American can get you nowadays. This is an 87 dollar bottle of allergy eye drops:

Here’s the same bottle with two of his friends, who were free samples given to me by my Allergist when I saw him last December:

the indignity of this was so great that the bottle on the right lept 3 stories to his death just after this picture was taken.

And now, here’s the 87 dollar bottle inside a standard shot glass:

Supposedly, this is a one month supply. We’ll see.

I sometimes feel like I have a charmed life. Maybe everyone feels this way, but it’s those little things that happen that have nothing to do with money, or status, or anything but knowing someone who knows someone cool. That’s what happened to me today.

I’ll just unroll the story as it went. We were driving from the LMF’s home municipality of San Sebastián to the municipality of Maricao, about 20 miles of driving, but close to an hour in the car because it’s all twisty mountain road. Here’s the google map (I just discovered these embeddable google maps. Awesome):

View Larger Map

So the approaching awesomeness is that we were heading to Maricao to visit the LMF’s great aunt Sica and her husband Juan. Juan owns a three acre farm in the mountains where he grows Papayas, Starfruit, Oranges, Chironga (Grapefruit-Orange hybrid, only found in Puerto Rico), Breadfruit, Bananas, Plantains, Peppers, and, most importantly, Coffee. We were originally going just to visit and walk around his farm, but it quickly changed into a guided tour of how coffee is made! It’s quite complicated, but we took pictures and videos of the whole process, so I’ll walk you through.

Our journey starts with the humble coffee plant. It seems to be somewhere between a bush and a tree, and has little red berries on it, called the cherry. Here’s some coffee plant cherries:

These little champions are all picked by hand. They’re actually edible, and I popped one into my mouth. Not the tastiest thing ever. Somewhat sour, and tastes nothing like coffee. But I digress. Inside of this little bean are usually two coffee beans. The beans are removed from the cherry, washed, and then dried, because inside the cherry they are a little slimy. After all that is done, they look like half a peanut, as you can see in this photo:

At this point we were told that the beans can be stored for a very long time, years even, and not lose quality. This particular batch was about a year old. Once the beans are in the peanut stage, then they have to be husked. The actual coffee bean is still inside this shell, and needs to get out. So that’s where the meat grinder comes in. The beans are fed into a meat grinder on a loose setting, and ground. This removes the husk and leaves the beans intact and spits it all out into a nice little pile. I got to help in this part, and we shot a nice little video (with narration by the LMF) of the beans getting husked.

After all the beans are husked, they need to be sorted out from all the husks. For this, Juan used a small pan and had a little wrist technique. The best I could tell, he would flip the beans around in the pan and angle it just right so the husks, which were very light, would fall out of the pan onto the ground, leaving the heavier beans in the pan. A little like panning for gold, but without the water. We watched Juan do this, and he really had it down. I however, wasn’t so good at it. As a matter of fact, i was mostly concerned with dumping half his crop onto the ground. So enjoy the following two videos: First of how awesome Juan is, then how lame I am.

Next in the process comes the roasting. I didn’t get to see this, but Juan roasts the coffee in a big cast iron pan on an open fire. He told us that it’s much better to do it outside, because the smoke from coffee roasting is very bad for your lungs. If it’s done just right, it only takes about ten minutes, but you have to keep the coffee moving in the pan or it burns. I did take a picture of Juan’s roasting pit, so check it out:

Once the roasting is done, the coffee has a much shorter life. According to Juan, it’s only good for about a week. This is most likely the reason quite a bit of coffee you get in the U.S. is pretty bad. Most of it has been roasted and has sat around for six months in a warehouse, most likely somewhere like Secaucus. And obviously the last step after roasting is the grinding! For this, we went back to the meat grinder in the kitchen, this time on a much finer setting, and started grinding the beans. I cannot begin to describe the smell, but for a coffee freak like me, it was glorious! Here’s the grinding video:

I just realized I misspoke. The last step is not the grinding. Obviously, the last step is the drinking! After we ground the beans, it was made into Cafe Con Leche, which means Coffee with Milk. That’s the way Puerto Ricans drink their coffee, with warm milk added. Add a little sugar, and what all this work added up to was, by far, the best cup of coffee in my life. This picture is right before the glorious moment where my life changed.

The whole process, to me, is stunningly complicated. I really wonder who in the world figured this all out. But I’m very glad they did. My mind wouldn’t really function at all without coffee. And what’s so crazy is that after all this work Juan sells his coffee for $4/pound. Considering stuff like this would go for $15 back in the states, it’s an astonishing deal. And in case you didn’t notice in any of the pictures or the videos, Juan is doing this all one handed. He lost one hand in a accident at a book binding factory about forty years ago. It’s really hard to believe, but Juan is just that much of a badass.

I did see other amazing things at Juan’s farm, or on the way there and back. I’ll put in a few pictures as well, with some brief comments. For starters, I got to play with a Machete:

Juan also showed me how to use a Machete to cut banana bunches off the main stalk. This one shows what a banana stalk looks like on the tree. And doesn’t the purple part look creepy, like some kind of weird alien plant?

Speaking of weird alien plants, Juan had one pineapple which was really bizarre looking. Why does it have a purple color to it? I didn’t get a chance to ask.

Here is the world’s smallest snail:

And this is the view a few miles away, during the drive home. This was taken just down the road from the tiny bar with all the naked lady posters on the wall, and the most incredible view from the balcony, which is the second picture:

As you can imagine, it was an amazing day. I’m not really sure what else there is to say, other than Juan was also nice enough to give me a bag of coffee to take back to the states with me. It’s funny, because he put it in a old flour bag, so I have this feeling like I’m smuggling drugs. Ah well. To each his different crack!

Puerto Rico is going to be a fun place to spend New Year’s eve, and the island takes on a very festive quality. Here’s a few examples of some of the things I’ve seen.

1) When I was here last summer, I ate a wonderous thing called Lechon. A Lechon is a whole pig slow roasted over a fire. It’s usually available in small towns on Sundays, and it’s the most amazing pig I’ve ever eaten. And since it’s New Year’s Eve, I’ve seen at least two Lechon stands on the side of the road. If I wasn’t having dinner at the house of the LMF’s aunt, I’d be all over that. The photo below is the one I had last summer. The other half of the pig was on a table, where they were cutting him up with a table saw. Amazing stuff, and this pig has died a noble death for the betterment of humanity.

2) The fireworks have been going off for a few days, but as new years approaches, the frequency is increasing. We’re now hearing booms every five minutes or so. It’s a little unsettling, as they tend to sound like gunshots. I’m a little nervous to see what midnight is actually like.

3) The LMF was asked to sample a espresso cup half full of the water the pigs feet are being boiled in. ‘Nuff said.

4) I’m going to try a first for this blog. Whoever reads this, try and hazard a guess as to what’s in that blender. It is more spectacular than you can possibly imagine, and I can’t wait to find out what it tastes like. Charman is disqualified, because I told him. Everyone else is free game. Who ever wins I’ll send a small bottle of Don Q rum. But honestly, no one is going to win. It’ll never happen. One quick hint: It’s going to go on sandwiches, apparently.

Anyway, happy New Year’s everyone. I’ll post the answer in a few days.

UPDATE: I’ll declare my mom the winner. The actual combo is Spam, Cheeze Whiz, Mayo, and pimentos. Gross, yes. But quite tasty.

I’ve been writing a series of posts over the last month about strange things that keep happening to me, but this might take the cake. I was walking in downtown Burlington today when I saw a squirrel run in front of me. He was carrying something large and dark in his mouth which caught my attention. I immediately wondered what it was, so I investigated further. It turns out this little guy was carrying half an Avocado in his mouth! I was totally astonished. Keep in mind it was twenty degrees out. And Burlington, Vermont isn’t exactly the Avocado capital of the world. So where did this industrious guy get it? I saw a Mexican place nearby, but it was about six blocks away down a big hill, probably out of range for even the most robust squirrel. I did manage to get a few pictures. I got a little too close and he left his avocado in the tree and ran away to a nearby bush. I felt guilty about that, but hopefully he went back and ate it. So check this out:

So squirrels eating avocados seem like a totally obvious sign of global warming. But it was twenty degrees, so we’ll see.

UPDATE:

It’s not just avocados.

more animals