Connections on The Brew; Exploration; Undertow

I posted new author Jay Friesen's "Connection: Sex and Praise and Worship" on The Brew.
Jay looks at the longing for connection in music and in the desire for sex.

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I went to meet a good friend at a place called Tipperary Inn in Dallas' Lakewood neighborhood yesterday. I got there a little early so I walked around and explored a little was well rewarded.

I found a little hole in the wall coffee shop called Coffee Co. The entire store was about the size of my apartment living room but looked like a farmer's market/mercantile in the middle of a coffee shop. There were only about two tables in the small place, possibly due to the coffee roaster that took up the front part of the store.

When I walked in, the owner was roasting some Columbian beans and it smelled amazing and slightly nutty. My first thought was, 'How does this guy stay in business?' I looked at his list of coffee beans and saw the prices were slightly higher. But he did have Jamaican Blue Mountain beans (one of the most expensive beans, next to the Hawaian Kona beans and the silly Asian-monkey-digested coffee beans). I thought I'd support the little guy so I bought a 1/4 pound of the Jamaican beans ($13).

By that time, my buddy showed up to the Irish 'snug' for a beer or two. They apparently call it a 'snug' because, unlike the more open pubs, this place had partitions between seats to give privacy to the patrons. Two seats at the bar had partitions with stained glass on either side to separate them from the other bar stools.

I had a Boddingtons (really flavorful and complex) and a some other kind (can't remember the name) that had 1776 in the title.

Either I had an empty stomach before hand or the two beers I had were pretty potent. So I walked over to a used bookstore, Paperbacks Plus. I refrained from buying anything, mostly because I'd already bought two books last weekend at another used bookstore (Blue Blood, a memoir by a New York City cop, and Attack Upon Christendom by Kierkegaard). But it was great to smell that used book smell when I walked in the door. It was good to follow the maze of bookshelf hallways and find so many books that you think you might read.

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I watched Undertow last night. Great style; has a choppy, unfinished look that seems to imitate the look and feel of the original Texas Chainsaw Massacre films (though Undertow is not a horror movie). Great Southern gothic tale. Not as dark and menacing as I thought it was going to be.