Common Style

Couple of Fridays ago played at Common Cafe in Umeda, Osaka. Couple of days earlier, I was able to get a couple of friends to back me up on bass and drums. It had been a long time since I sang/played with a full band and the first time with my original material. The place was full of friends and acquaintances, but that didn't comfort my nerves too much. Although we had never played together before, overall it went pretty well.

Pineapple Guts

One of the things I enjoy about the summers here is the mass amount of seasonal drinks that become available as soon as the temperature rises. I shouldn't expect anything less from the corporate marketing machines that fuel the local economy, but when I see "mandarin orange tea, limited time only", well, I always get suckered in. Actually, these drinks are not limited to the summer. Beer and tea companies also have "winter brews", and last fall I even saw a "changing of the foliage brew", which turned out to be a red lager.

This summer season my hands down favorite has to be "Guts! with vitamin B", a pineapple flavored sports drink that comes in at a shade under a one hundred calories. Granted, artificial pineapple flavor, but after my first sip of this refreshing elixir, my taste buds helped unearth a distant memory buried somewhere in the hamper of my mind.

Growing up in Puerto Rico there was a company named Old Colony that made two flavors of soda: grape and pineapple. School yard debates raged on which flavor was better. The prevailing sentiment was that grape was hands down the best, but yours truly was always a pineapple man. One thing my mates and I could agree on was that nothing was better than pooling our money, hitting the local bakery, grabbing a fresh from the oven loaf of garlic bread and chasing it down with your choice of Old Colony on a hot summer day.

Remember, Guts! is for men with passion!