THE MONKEY

Listen to THE MONKEY by Dave Bartholemew.

Here's one that so nearly made it onto this past Christmas CD (in fact, after typing that opener, I had to go back and make sure it WASN'T on the CD!). I had it on most of the time I was organizing songs, but at the very last minute decided to take it off, since I didn't feel like it fit well enough in the spot I was trying to fit it into. Even so, it's a cute, fun song. Last time we were up in Maine, for Amy's dad's birthday, I went into this gift shop of the lobster pound we were having lunch at, and totally and completely incongruously, the shop had a fairly huge collection of random and obscure CDs for sale. Groups I just had never heard of from the 40s, 50s, and 60s. I ended up getting about $80 worth of CDs, hoping for some gold. I got mostly not-gold, but The Monkey was on one of the comps, and it was an immediate hit in the car, when it came up on the trip home (around Hartford, IIRC). So that's the story of how I got the song. Afraid you'll have to google for any REAL info about it, as I am heading out now...

Friday Maine blogging

Just for old time's sake! The Times this morning has an article on Maine microbreweries, and Doug from the Atlantic Brewing Company is featured. Those were the days, huh?

We spent that night in Bar Harbor, the home of our last two microbreweries. The first, early Sunday afternoon, was the Atlantic Brewing Company, home of the ubiquitous Bar Harbor Blueberry Ale, among others. The blueberry brew is a little sweet, and it ships to 21 states.

At the brewery, in the Town Hill neighborhood near Acadia National Park, the company’s owner, Doug Maffucci, was tidying up the grounds, which include a modern warehouse, a barbecue restaurant and a landscaped beer garden.

Mr. Maffucci, 51, a trim Colby College graduate, was at his most animated when he described the little details of the grounds, which was once an apple and dairy farm. “What I love is watching it be full of people, they’re sitting here enjoying it,” he said, “and they’re not even realizing why it’s comfortable. They’ve been driving, or they were in traffic, or they got their lobster dinner about two hours late, and they just sit down and go, ‘Aaaaah.’ ”

Aaaaah.