Tuesday Tuneage
Iggy Pop - "Cold Metal"
1988

1) Conversation with a friend in my car in the late eighties while Iggy Pop's "Cold Metal" was playing on the radio:

BT: Hey, Iggy's singing about metal!
Friend: Isn't this Billy Idol?
BT: Nope, it's Iggy. He's singing about metal.
F: No, he's not.
BT: Uh, yeah. Listen to him: "Cold metal ..."
F: He's not singing "metal."
BT: Yeah he is. Listen. "Cold metal ...:
F: He's singing something else.

2) "Cold Metal" is from the album Instinct, which features Steve Jones of Sex Pistols fame on guitar. Iggy's next album, Home, would feature Slash and Duff from Guns N' Roses. Confusion reigns!

3) Cut to circa ten years ago, sitting with friends in bar. I declare Stooges Fun House album one of the greatest metal albums ever. I am told that the Stooges weren't metal, they were punk. I say that Fun House was their "metal" album and Raw Power was their "punk" album, kinda like how Kick Out The Jams was the MC5's "metal" album and Back in the USA was their "punk" album. This was like trying to convince a friend that Iggy was actually singing the word "metal" in a chorus of a song ...

The GOP Rogues Gallery

The goofballs who attend Tea Party rallies favor a certain sign in which President Obama is sporting war paint ala Heath Ledger/The Joker in The Dark Knight. But one look at Michele Bachmann in HD last spring prompted me to tweet that she looks much more like The Joker than Barack Obama does. This led me to wonder: Which classic Batman villains do the other Republican presidential candidates match up with?

Sure he's out of the race, but no other GOP figure says "cartoonish villain" like Donald Trump. And Trump = The Penguin. Wikipedia says that in the past twenty years, animated Batman series have depicted The Penguin alternately as "deformed outcast and high-profile aristocrat." Both of those descriptors match up with Trump.

Michele Bachmann = The Joker. Not only does she have the maniacal eyes and grin of The Clown Prince of Crime, she shows up on TV to taunt her opponents, which is Jokerish behavior indeed.

Mitt Romney = Mr. Freeze. Because he does seem to live at a below-zero temperature and he moves slowly, mechanically, like he's wearing a cryogenic suit.

Newt Gingrich = The Riddler. Gingrich is smart, but wants to show it off so bad that he trips up on his own smartiness, much as The Riddler gives Batman just enough clues to get caught. Wikipedia describes The Riddler as "a malignant narcissist with an enormous ego." Sound familiar, Newt?

Sarah Palin = Catwoman. Both Palin and Catwoman favor leather, and there is a dominatrix aura to both of them. According to Wikipedia, in the fifties Batman comics revealed that Catwoman is an amnesiac flight attendant. This of course matches David Letterman's description of Palin's "slutty flight attendant" look.

Tim Pawlenty = Harvey "Two-Face" Dent. I have a relative who has met Pawlenty and although she doesn't agree with his politics, insists that he is the nicest guy. But what nice guy leaves his governorship with his state facing a six billion dollar defecit? Pawlenty recently showed more two-faced behavior. On a Sunday morning show he slammed Mitt Romney, then the next night at a debate he backed off from his attacks. Unfortunately for Pawlenty, America will not believe in Harvey Dent.

Ron Paul = The Scarecrow. Wikipedia says that The Scarecrow is addicted to fear and some would claim that a politician obsessed with the usual conspiracy, uh, scarecrows such as the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, and the North American Union is also addicted to fear.

Rick Santorum = This specimen is such a shrill scold that he doesn't match up to any villians. But remember in that great scene from The Dark Knight where The Joker says that he can spot the squealers? You just know that a pud like Santorum would rat out anybody and everybody if it means he would escape unharmed.

Jon Huntsman = ? Huntsman hasn't yet shown which masked threat to society he mirrors. But have no illusions, once he starts kissing up to the GOP base, Huntsman will reveal his creepy, belongs-in-Arkham alter-ego. And as others have pointed out, he - like Romney - already looks like the stuffed shirt who would hand you a pink slip to the applause of the shareholders.

And now you're waiting for me to annoit Barack Obama as Batman, right? Nope, consider Obama's cool demeanor, his ace handling of his commander-in-chief duties (offing pirates was just a prelude to the taking out Osama bin Laden, the what-Pakistani-sovreignty? mission reminds one of Batman's "he has no jurisdiction" taking of Lau in Hong Kong), and his background in Chicago - where Christopher Nolan has set his Batman films - and the resemblance is obvious. Our president is Commissioner Jim Gordon.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Party - "In My Dreams"
1992

In my mind, there are two battling theories as to how I first heard a group of Mickey Mouse Clubbers do a cover of a Dokken tune:

1) It was played on a local radio show like Cosmic Slop or Crap From The Past and I was immediately drawn to it, as I considered the original an eerie minor classic from my college years.

or:

2) I heard it in my car while scanning the likes of Radio AAHS or Radio Disney, the only stations I ever listened to in the nineties that would have had this tune in rotation.

My gut tells me that option #1 is the more logical choice and normally I would write it as such, but the "heard weird cover version of pop metal song in my car" storyline is also compelling. This brings up an ongoing debate in nonfiction personal writing. One school of thought says that you should always try your best to write the truth, another says you should write things how you remember them. I go with the latter as I generally write on trivial matters and being lazy I don't want to spend time verifying accounts of trivial matters. Though I have been scolded a few times as I have gotten the cast of characters wrong in one or two of my old-days memories I have written down. This hasn't convinced me to do any fact-checking on my memoirs though, I keep writing 'em down in the way I remember 'em.

Anyway ... Dokken was eighties pop metal and The Party was nineties bubblegum dance pop and OF COURSE they do the song justice, so what if their preteen/tween fans are not haunted by The One That Got Away? Which leaves it to us adults to listen to "In My Dreams" (which artist? pick 'em) and do a shot with a beer chaser. Damn you, haunting pop music.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Replacements - "Can't Get Enough"
1984

In Jim Walsh's oral history of the Replacements, All Over But The Shouting, Roscoe Shoemaker explains that he had taped a Replacements set at a small show in Oklahoma City in 1984. Shoemaker says there were twenty to thirty people at the show at that they yelled out requests that the Replacements honored. Somebody seized/stole the tape and it went on to become a released by Twin/Tone Records in 1984. (Full disclosure: In this book, I relate two anecdotes about seeing the band in 1984 and 1987.)

Available at first only on cassette titled The Shit Hits The Fans, and then later something of an urban legend - unavailable in the pre-Internet ages, rumored to be a bootleg, this Oklahoma City set went on to become known among Replacements faithful as the "'Mats get drunk and play cover" live album. I scored a copy off of eBay ten years ago or so, the seller claimed it was a CD, by which he meant that it was a CD-R with the album title written in a kinda-fancy font on the disc. No cover art, no liner notes. I think I paid ten bucks.

A close listen reveals that The Shit Hits The Fans isn't quite the "they play drunk covers" of legend. While undoubtably drunk, the Replacements first half of the recorded songs is a mixture of originals and straightforward covers of Lloyd Price, Robyn Hitchcock, and The Jackson 5. The songs of legend happen after they wind up their original song "Hear You Been To College" - a slow blues - and people in the crowd yell "play white music!", "Lynyrd Skynyrd!", and "play some rock you fucking pumpkins!" Or maybe it's "bumpkins", which might make more sense, sounds like "pumpkins" to me though. I'm convinced it's the ignorant demand to "play white music!" that pissed off Westerberg a little or maybe more and which prompted him to unleash the band through a string of classic rock covers like "Saturday Night Special", "Breakdown", "Misty Mountain Hop", and "Takin' Care Of Business." Most of these they fail to finish, and "Iron Man" actually starts out as "War Pigs" until Westerberg starts singing "Iron Man." Funny stuff, and damn fun to listen to, also, though probably only to diehard Replacements fans. It's not exactly the stuff you'd play to someone unfamiliar with the band to win them over.

The best of the covers is that of Bad Company's "Can't Get Enough", in which they blister through it straight-on and even convince themselves to pull off the guitar solo. That beats being able to stand up straight most nights.

Tuesday Tuneage
Def Leppard - "Rock of Ages"
1983

How much do I love vintage Def Leppard? Too many reasons to go into here, so let me go with this: I regularly compare them to another fave - Mott the Hoople.

"Rock of Ages" is from Pyromania and like the rest of that album, it's hook-tastic and helped Def Lep get on the radio for those oh-so-long months before the deluge of radio greatness that was the year 1984 started. You have to remember: This was 1983 when crappy fop fellow Brits like Culture Club and all those New Romantic bands had Newsweek wondering about a New British Invasion. Def Lep were leftovers from the NWOBHM (New Wave of British Heavy Metal) who after their debut album were picked by Mutt Lange for him to work his wonders, and work his wonders he did. High 'N Dry was a hard rock classic, and Pyromania topped it. With radio (and not the office building on its album cover) the target in mind, Lange and Def Leppard unleashed song after song that landed on Top 40 and AOR radio. One of these was the chorus-heavy, Mott-reminding, anthem that was "Rock of Ages."

The great thing about the video for this tune is that it's a parody of so many insipid heavy metal/Dungeons & Dragons videos (see Dio, Ronnie Fucking James.) Though it is strange to see drummer Rick Allen with both his arms, his losing an arm in a car accident in 1984 would provide the opening for Mutt Lange to completely take over the recordings of Hysteria, create a dozen or so more Top 40 and AOR hits, and leave Def Leppard as the faces to tour behind his studio effort. (So goes the theory, just don't ask a Shania Twain fan about it.) Regarding Rick Allen ... sixties garage rockers The Barbarians also had a drummer with one arm and their most famous song is "Are You A Boy Or Are You A Girl", which sounds a lot like Def Leppard AND ... Mott the Hoople!

Hunter S. Thompson On Mitch Daniels

A few months back there was numerous postings on Twitter about the late Hunter S. Thompson, his ESPN.com column that followed the attacks on September 11, 2001, and his predictions on the post-9/11 Bush administration reaction. Some say Thompson nailed it correctly, all I know is that he was dead-on with: This is going to be a very expensive war, and Victory is not guaranteed -- for anyone, and certainly not for anyone as baffled as George W. Bush.

Imagine then my surprise this past weekend when I was reading Generation of Swine: Gonzo Papers, Volume 2, a collection of Thompson's columns for the San Francisco Examiner in the eighties in which I find him writing about Mitch Daniels.

Ah yes, Mitch Daniels, the governor of Indiana who top-notch Republicans were begging to get into the race because ... he wasn't Mitt Romney. Daniels recently decided not to run, so the GOP elite is now trying to recruit Texas governor Rick Perry ("Governor Perry ... have you met General Sherman?"), former Florida governor Jeb Bush (we are assured that Jeb is "the smart one", though there's a lot of room for improvement when it comes to the unnnamed individual who Jeb is supposedly smarter than) (and let's elect another Bush ... because after President Obama brings the troops home it's time for another Iraq invasion, right?), and New Jersey governor Chris Christie (insert fatboy joke already used on Minnesota GOP chair Tony Sutton here.)

Back in 1987 when Thompson was penning his column that mentioned Daniels, he was then a chief political adviser to President Reagan. And what was Thompsons' take on Daniels?

He is a flimsy little yuppie who looks like something that got rejected at birth, in the throes of some mixup at the hospital, when the mother had to choose between it and some healthy-looking fetus that turned out to be Patrick Buchanan.
   "Take the strong one," she said. "He will have a long life and be a comfort to me in my later years."

Tuesday Tuneage
Beck - "Mexico"
1993

I was going to claim that this one gets most of its charm from being mentioned by Greil Marcus in the discography of Invisible Republic, where I learned that Beck got the music from a folk song called "The Hills of Mexico." Then I was going to make fun of all the slacker elements of the song, complete with a snide aside at "lo-fi", but you know what? This song is absolutely charming; a goofball story with an ending to the story that is absolutely brilliant. Though it doesn't make me want to become a Scientologist, it does make me want to go for a Big Mac and normally I'm a two cheeseburgers guy.

Tuesday Tuneage
Barney Miller Theme
1975

Fish: The doctor said he was very lucky, the bullet just grazed him.
Barney: Where'd she hit him?
Fish: In the inseam.


Dietrich: I've always admired the Japanese outlook on death. The calm acceptance, the treating it as a part of life...
Yemana: [to Wojo] I dunno what he's talking about - personally, I'm going kicking and screaming all the way.
Wojo: Well, why don't you tell him that?
Yemana: I like my image.


Telephone Repairman: Are you really a cop?
Yemana: Yeah, why do you ask?
Telephone Repairman: Never seen a Japanese cop before.
Yemana: Ever been to Tokyo?


Scanlon: Harris! How's things down in Funkytown?
Harris: Oh, dey fine, dey fine!


Barney: [to former Det. Kelly] Hello, Kelly. What are you doing here?
Fish: Making friends.
Barney: How do you like Narcotics?
Yemana: They haven't helped him a bit.


Dietrich: Uh, Nick, there's no exclamation point on that typewriter.
Yemana: That typewriter's over forty years old.
Dietrich: I guess people didn't get as excited back then.


Stripper: In many parts of the world the naked female body is revered.
Dietrich: Yeah. My place.
Stripper: Fiji, Samoa...
Dietrich: My place is closer.


Dietrich: I knew a guy who when he got depressed would just put on his coat, leave the house, and just start walking.
Barney (to Wojo): See?
Dietrich: Sometimes for hours on end. One time he was gone for almost a whole day.
Barney: Yeah, some people just like to be alone. He came back, didn't he?
Dietrich: Yeah.
Barney (to Wojo): See?
Dietrich: The tide brought him in.


Dietrich: Swan Lake is one of the best ballets ever written. It's an artistic milestone!
Marty: Have you seen it?
Dietrich: I had hockey tickets.

Tuesday Tuneage
Scatterbrain - "Down With The Ship (Slight Return)"
1990

Scatterbrain was a metal band with a comedic twist, they covered Alice Bowie's "Earache My Eye" and I recall them sharing a bill at First Avenue with Ugly Kid Joe. Or maybe it was the Entry ... hell, yeah the Entry just feels right at this late date so I'm going with it.

"Down With The Ship" provides further proof - if you even need it at this point, the hip hoppers sure don't - that hard rock riffs make for great sampling.

Tuesday Tuneage
Ozark Mountain Daredevils - "Jackie Blue"
1975

When I shave in the late morning, I generally put on KOOL 108 on the portable radio in the bathroom. More times than not, I hear one of these songs: "Piano Man" by Billy Joel and "I Want A New Drug" by Huey Lewis and the News.

"Piano Man" is pleasant, but I got sick of it years ago. On my last listen, Joel drove me nuts ... he must have been pretty proud to own a rhyming dictionary back in '73, but who the hell drinks a "tonic and gin"? Do the Piano Man's buddies also like to order a "soda and scotch"? It reminds me of an establishment who try to gain respectability by billing itself as a "grill and bar."

"I Want A New Drug" is also pleasant, but I feel weird shaving with a razor and shaving cream as in the song's video, Huey uses an electric razor. (While on a boat!) (?)

The other day I must have been shaving at a different time than usual, because on KOOL 108 I heard the end of "Amy" by Pure Prairie League and then "Jackie Blue" by the Ozark Mountain Daredevils. Having not heard it in years, "Jackie Blue" was a knockout of a blast from the past. I love the soprano/falsetto/whatever-Italian-word-they-are vocals, the eerie guitar, and lyrics like: "you like your life in a free-form style." (Me too, but I can never get the free-form thing going! Where do I sign up to learn this?)

As an elementary school kid, I lived in a golden age of Top 40 radio in the mid-seventies. This tune is further proof of that. Which makes it such a great soundtrack for shaving. And good thing on that recent morning I finished shaving as the Ozarks wrapped up, as the next song up was by the dreaded Supertramp. Still haven't figured out with them if it is a guy or a chick singing.

Tuesday Tuneage
Go-Go's - "Vacation"
1982

The decline and fall of a staycation, April 13-24, 2011:

1. I'm going to get so much done. Read a book, watch a Netflix movie every night, get caught up on my magazines, write every day.

2. Hey, I don't have to work tomorrow or the day after or the day after. Time to pour myself a drink and celebrate.

3. Damn this cheap scotch doesn't taste too bad when you're halfway into the second one. Cut with club soda of course. You know else I'm going to do on staycation? Go check out the Foshay observation deck, go to the Science Museum, go the Minnesota Historical Society, and definitely check out an art museum. I think it's time to switch to beer ...

4. I listened to Secret Treaties last night? What's that can of Premium doing next to the stereo? Did I feed the cat? Damn, I'm hungry. I was going to go to Lowbrow or Burger Jones tonight but I gotta spend my dining dough on a greasy breakfast and lots of coffee at Curran's pronto.

5. Okay, I'm going to watch that highly-acclaimed miniseries on my streaming Netflix. Oh wait - this episode of How I Met Your Mother on WGN is a classic. Cool, they're showing four episodes in a row tonight.

6. It's nice out, I should bike down to Roadrunner and check out what's come in on vinyl. Hmmm, it does look like it's clouding up. Might be best to pour a microbrew and listen to The Best of Uriah Heep.

7. I've watched the Twins and/or the NHL playoffs on TV seven days in a row. Tonight let's make it eight.

8. I had forgotten how much fun making a beer can pyramid is.

9. In your face, iPod Touch! That's four consecutive victories in Hearts!

10. Boy, that Sid Hartman sure is a character.

11. Crap. I don't want to go back to work tomorrow.

Tuesday Tuneage
Guided By Voices - "Teenage FBI"
1999

I'm not at all qualified to write about Guided By Voices, not being a card-carrying member of the cult and having never even checked them out live. Plus after all these years of hearing the hype, what finally got me to go to my iMac the day after Christmas and buy a GBV album? Hearing their atypical polished "Glad Girls" on a rerun of How I Met My Mother, it played as montage music while Ted did something romantic and/or world-embracing. Then I chumped out by settling on the one-disc anthology Human Amusements At Hourly Rates rather than getting a real album, rationalizing it because Allmusic.com wrote that it's the equivalent of GBV leader Robert Pollard making me a mixtape of his best work.

But I write because I write. So, thirty-two songs on the disc and which one do I present to you?

"Teenage FBI" because I love the title, it's got hooks galore, and the lyrics start out as an ahhh-romance cliche than throw in some Fed-level 21 Jump Streeters at the end of the chorus, all in a buck-thirty-nine.

And speaking of that Allmusic.com review, it sums up the appeal of Guided By Voices on Human Amusements - an album whose vast majority of songs now seem to be on some sort of shuffle in my brain during many waking moments - perfectly: "77 minutes of great hooks, hummable melodies, man-sized guitars, and general rock geek bliss." No argument here.

Four Random Memories Of Frozen Fours

I wrote this up in honor of tonight's Michigan vs. Minnesota-Duluth title game. Go Bulldogs! And don't worry, none of these involve the University of North Dakota:

1984: Due to my folks moving from Grand Forks to Chicago in March of my freshman year, I moved into Walsh Hall at UND mid-second semester. I had only been there a couple of weeks when on a Saturday night I wandered down to the basement commons area to get a pop from the vending machine. I saw that the Minnesota-Duluth vs. Bowling Green final was on ESPN on the big TV in the little viewing lounge. There was just a few minutes left in the third, so I grabbed a seat and joined the three other guys - complete strangers - there to cheer on UMD's inevitable win. But Bowling Green scored late to tie it up. And then for four overtimes and well into the night we cheered on our WCHA brethren Bulldogs, who eventually lost in the fourth OT.

1988: Maine and Minnesota were favored all season to match up in the title game, I think Sports Illustrated even bothered to cover college hockey midseason for a page or two and declared the matchup all but inevitable. But the Black Bears and Gophers were upset by relative unknowns Lake Superior State and St. Lawrence in the semifinals. An obviously frustrated Maine and Minnesota matched up in the third-place game that ended up being a brawl-filled mess. I didn't see it, but I think the officials may have even called this game early with how nasty it got. The NCAA got wise a year or two later and eliminated the third place game altogether.

1990: I didn't have cable and nobody wanted to watch the game with me, so I walked to the Park Tavern alone and watched Wisconsin dismantle something called Colgate. I foolishly gave up booze for Lent back then and recall drinking near beer in bottles. Ugh.

1991: I was at the Boston University vs. Northern Michigan title game at the St. Paul Civic Center. The game went to three overtimes and after two, some Badger fan out in the concourse yelled to the delight of his buddies: "... And after two overtimes, Wisconsin is still national champion!!"

Tuesday Tuneage
The Rulers - "Wrong 'Em Boyo"
1967

Tonight on Album Club, we tracked The Clash's London Calling, which features their version of "Wrong 'Em Boyo." If it weren't for my many readings of the notes at the end of Greil Marcus's Mystery Train, I wouldn't have known that "Wrong 'Em Boyo" was a cover of a tune by the Jamaican rocksteady band The Rulers. The Clash even went so far as to use The Rulers' "start with 'Stagger Lee', stop, and then start a different song with a different beat but tells kinda the same story" move. Yeah, that move.

If the Clash's version of this song is burned in your brain, it takes a couple, three listens to get the vibe of the Rulers' version. But it's worth a few listens and is a lot more fun than most folk music. Weirdly, "Stagger Lee" celebrates the shooting of a guy named Billy (ouch) and I still can't get enough of its multitude of versions, whether it's Lloyd Price's chart-topping version from 1959 or by some rocksteady guys from Jamaica. Go Stagger Lee!

My Latest Fortune Cookie Said: "Writing Is A Craft Not An Art."

The writing mind game can be a tricky one for some of us. There are writers who can hammer out solid writing "using a trash can to set my laptop on" as my friend Jim once claimed, while some of us - yes, my hand is raised - are fussbudgets who need the right desk at the right height, the right chair, the right music, coffee at the right temperature, not too full of stomach, but not too hungry either, etc.

After all these years of writing, I still can't do much for creating at my apartment. Too many distractions: Day job (my accounting office is at home also), TV, email. Plus I haven't done a good job of creating a comfortable writing space. I have a desk, but it faces a wall and while that wall has a framed Van Halen Fair Warning LP cover, a Sergio Argonnes' "MAD Pictorial Map of the United States," a beautiful painting of Lester Bangs (by Alice DuBois), and a small bulletin board with writing notes tacked to it; I still feel boxed in. It's a space to rewrite and edit in, and to do original writing in short bursts; but it's not a place to catch the muse for a long period of time.

Hence the need for a coffee shop. There isn't much else for public spaces that offer caffeine plus a table and chair to use for writing. And my fave neighorhood coffee shop closed last week. Its chairs and tables were reminiscent of something used in the library of a high school or public college. The rest of the place provided bohemian comfort to go with the just-right lighting. The brick wall, the bikes and accessories hanging on the walls. Copies of bike and music magazines on the shelf of the coffee counter. An always-trusty paperback of Bangs's Psychotic Reactions And Carburetor Dung on the shelf. A PBR sticker on the wall of the bathroom. For six months or so this was my place to write. Now I have to find a new coffee home.

The prior coffee shop, the one I regularly went to for fifteen years or so until last fall, lost its appeal. There was this old guy who was there every afternoon that I went there. And while I have seen his photo in the paper being linked to one of the many local Ponzi schemes, his real crime is the amount of cologne that he wore. That oldster stunk up the room. I couldn't concentrate any more, and every little thing about that coffee shop started to bother me.

It's a similar situation to another coffee shop in my neighborhood in which I can't get good writing done. There it's not an old shyster who gets to me, it's some aged hippie. He has a weird habit of grinning at people -and his grin is evil - or trying to lock their eyes in for some contact. Otherwise he stares at his laptop and is quick to close it when you pass his table. Plus, I've seen him rummaging through my apartment building's dumpster; which means he's on the same level of civility as the neighborhood squirrels and racoons, but not up to the level of the neighborhood crows - those guys rule. I'm pretty sure he doesn't like me, maybe it's because I have a crew cut and look like a square. I got the same vibe one night years ago at the late Viking Bar with the West Bank hippies, though then the haircut was short back and sides. Hey comrades: I'm small in stature and totally nonthreatening. Plus, the sixties are over man! The other problem with Evil Hippie Guy's coffee shop is the general atmosphere. It's noisy, it's busy. It's kid-friendly (hence noisy and busy.) It's hippie-friendly, there's lots of notices on the board about new age stuff, and lots of stuff about being eco-friendly. I just want to write, I don't want to save the world.

So now the search for a new coffee place starts. It's rumored there's a new place opening up down the street soon, maybe that will be it. I just want to write someplace cool, a place that IS NOT too loud, hippie-ish, obsessed with going green, or being kid-friendly. I want someplace dark, where they have rock 'n' roll on, where the folks talk about booze instead of composting, where people smoke out on the sidewalk, where when it comes for my time to leave I want to walk or bike home and print off the notes I had been typing and attack them with a red pen. You know ... a writer's coffee shop.