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- Monkey Monday #4
I CAN’T SEE YOU BUT IIIII SEE WHAT YOU’RE SAAAAAYIIIIINN 🦅 sorry I’ve got this song stuck in my head I’ve had it on repeat ALL WEEK. Happy Monkey Monday friends, hope all is good in the hood! Today we’ve got some fall break shenanigans, some music (shocker) and yeah we will see what else, as of writing this I’m not sure what exactly will be in this issue! Have a great start of your week!
Monkey Monday #4 Loading…..
Fall Break (feat. Lord)
Fall break! Why do we have it? I’m not sure! But what I am sure of is I took my boy Lord home to stay with my family and I, and it was really great! So most of this segment is going to be some of the things Lord got to try for the first time.
 Shoutout B-dubs! | Since this is Lord’s first winter in the United States, we needed to go shopping. So we drove to an outlet mall near my hometown, went to the Columbia store and got some winter gear (and some vikings gear). On our way back, we were getting hungry, so I decided to take him to Buffalo Wild Wings for the first time. He got some wings with some pretty hot sauce, but he said he eats hotter food in Ghana all the time. |
The next morning, we went to church as a family, and then it was time for the Minnesota Vikings game (which is Lord’s favorite team)! We got suited up for the game, and then proceeded to watch the Lions rip up the Vikings to hand them their first loss of the season. It was still a good time! |  SKOL!!!(We lost) Shoutout Vikings! |
 Lord devouring his first omelette. Shoutout Forget-Me-Not Cafe! |  Placing a pin where he’s from. First one from Ghana! Shoutout Ghana! |
 Shoutout my dog who’s a good sitter. | After breakfast at Forget-Me-Not on Monday morning, it was super nice outside so we took Diana for a walk! In Ghana, they don’t have the same seasons as us, they’ve got the dry and the wet seasons. So all the leaves changing colors was a first for Lord. He wanted a picture with Diana and the lake. |
Our last night home, Monday evening, we took Lord to a local Mexican restaurant, where he got to try Mexican cuisine for the first time. He ordered the Pollo Loco, which is shrimp, chicken, rice, cooked veggies, topped with an amazing cheese sauce! He enjoyed it very much. |  Shoutout Rancho Grande! |
 We absolutely demolished this fried ice cream, shoutout fried ice cream! | It was a great weekend with Lord! Of course, there were tons of other stuff we did, like jam on guitar and bass, sing some songs, watch Phineas and Ferb, take naps, Yard work, but it would be a really long column if I included everything! Shoutout Lord! -Nate |
Pick of the Week
This week I’m recommending an album very close to my heart, I’m Wide Awake, It’s Morning by Bright Eyes. I discussed this band in some detail last week, so if you want some lore check out issue #3.
This is my favorite Bright Eyes album, and likely my favorite album period. We jump right in with At the Bottom of Everything, a weird, unsettling, classic Bright Eyes intro with lots of strange dialogue, to scare off anyone unprepared.
The second track, We Are Nowhere and It’s Now, is where the real meat and potatoes of this album starts. A devastating, modern folk rock ballad. Then we flow into Old Soul Song, another banger, and then Lua, one of my favorite songs of all time, I’ve definitely shed a good amount of tears to this song (well the whole album in general, but this one gets me going).
The whole rest of the album just rips me apart, especially Land Locked Blues, and Poison Oak. Bright Eyes has put on a masterful display of isolation, sorrow, dread, regret, while simultaneously being filled with hope. This is Bright Eyes at their best.
This may not be the thing for everyone, but give it a listen!!! (And don’t get scared off by the first song!)
-Nate
Is it Ripe?
DUUUUUUUUUUUDE THIS THING ROCKS!!! You ever play Motorstorm: Pacific Rift on the PlayStation3 when you were 9 years old? No? Well this album sounds exactly how this game looks:
MOTORSTORM
Doesn’t that look awesome? If you don’t think so, YOU’RE WRONG! This album is AWESOME AWESOME AWESOME!
Alright, on a serious note, it actually is really cool. I listened to this for the first time back in 2022 I believe, and I really liked one song on it, but never really gave the whole thing another shot. That was until this month! I was really in a drought of upbeat, boomy music. I’ve listened to so much Deftones in the past year that I’ve really been needing something new for the gym. Then I remembered GLOW ON.
And just like with the Big Thief album from last week, I’m so glad I gave it another shot. This thing is absolutely filled to the brim with energy. It’s like if the Rip It energy drink was an album. It’s heavy and groovy, with driving, booming, anthemic riffs, while still maintaining a fun, light atmosphere. It’s like if Bring Me The Horizon wasn’t emo, but a bunch of dudes jamming in a garage on a sunny day.
Turnstile really utilizes what I like to call the “Fire Boom": If you’re at a live show, and there is a huge, exploding, atmospheric, echoey breakdown accompanied by the pyrotechnics shooting pillars of fire, thats what a Fire Boom feels like. These guys use it a LOT. Almost to an extent where it feels like a gimmick. And honestly, that’s where the shortcomings of this album lie: the tracklist is very consistent with the sound given across each song. Admittedly, there are a few exceptions like UNDERWATER BOI, ALIEN LOVE CALL, and NO SURPRISE, but only the first of those 3 songs I actually like.
Basically, if you like the sound they give, you’ll like pretty much the whole thing. But otherwise there is not much of a sonic variety.
Favorite Songs: BLACKOUT, HOLIDAY, ENDLESS, FLY AGAIN, WILD WRLD
-Nate
Ripeness: 8.5
Interview Time!
This week, we’ve got an interview with RA Juan!
Parin’s Palette
Valentino’s Pizza & Subs
Aristotle once said, “Anotha Monday, another column of Parin’s Palette.” I work at a pharmacy and am fortunate enough to have a great colleague. He recommended a local pizza shop, Valentino's Pizza, so that’s what I have been eating this week. My normal meals have been two pizza slices with an order of garlic knots. This costs roughly $9.50. Good food is good, but good food that’s cheap? That’s even better. I’ve been eating more penne pizza recently, and this place does it perfectly. The slices are HUGE and the garlic knots are great too.
Pizza
My fourth time here I tried a cannoli. Unfortunately, this was not cheap. The cannoli runs your wallet for a solid $4.50. A singular cannoli. The cannoli was average and the presentation was weird with the icing strip on top of it. Was it worth four dollars? Absolutely not.
Canoli
Overall, I’m giving this place a
7.38711235/10
Ballboy Ben’s Ball Update
The Lions are good at football! Yeah, I know it sounds strange, especially if you’ve been living under a rock for the last 3 years. The Detroit Lions have infamously been one of the laughingstocks of the NFL for YEARS. But as of writing this, they have a record of 5-1 and have the second-best odds to win the Super Bowl (second to the Kansas City Chiefs...of course).
So...what changed? Well, they simply got better players, coaches, and management. Easy as that...
It all started in January of 2021 when the Lions hired a fella named Brad Holmes to be their General Manager and another fella named Dan Campbell to be their head coach. I gotta say...they have done really good things together and have turned that pitiful franchise into a great team. Also, Dan Campbell is honestly one of the most handsome head coaches in the league, which obviously helps team success!
Some of the players the Lions drafted in the last few years include Aidan Hutchinson, Jahmyr Gibbs, Sam LaPorta, and Brian Branch. Depending on how much you follow football, you may have never even heard of these guys. All you need to know is they are very good players! They are good people too. I would surely let Sam LaPorta date my daughter (if I had one, I do not currently have a daughter...).
All in all, this team is really good right now and it’s cool to see another NFC North team be successful! It’s been a good NFL season so far and it’s only going to get better!
They beat my precious vikings ☹️ -Nate
Ashley’s Fuzzy Friends
Guinea Pigs!
Nobody knows for sure why Guinea pigs, who are neither pigs (they’re rodents like rabbits) nor from New Guinea (they’re originally from the Andes mountains) are named this.
Guinea pigs purr when they’re happy, and may even make little hops in the air called “popcorning” when especially excited!
Guinea pig popcorning!
With patience, Guinea pigs can be taught a number of tricks. Being social animals, they usually enjoy bonding and play time with their owners.
Slam Dunk!
Guinea pigs, like humans, are unable to produce their own vitamin C, and need a diet that provides it instead.
Guinea pigs don’t sleep much but take very short naps throughout the day. In total, their naps equal about 4-6 hours of sleep per day!
Brenden’s Big Boy Buffalo Barber
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This is my man Brenden, we go way back. You know what also goes way back? The appointments he makes with his barber cause my boy needed a CUT!
He desperately needed someone to show up and save his head, someone with a mastery of the art of the clippers, finesse with the blades, precision with the trimmers. Instead, he got Barber Nate!
We made it pretty quick, because he was in a rush to get back and take care of his dogs who were home alone 🙁 (ladies, he’s single!)
“I usually just walk into Great Clips and tell them to run a two on the sides and trim the top.”
 | So that’s exactly what I did! Ran a two on the sides and back, and trimmed up the top, leaving a little bit of fringe in the front. His hair quality is really similar to mine, so it was fun being able to cut my own kind of hair while being able to see what I’m doing. |
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I did a tiny bit of lining up on the sideburns, I wanted to go around the whole beard too but he was in a rush. Not my cleanest work, and I would’ve liked more time to clean up the little things, but he and I were both content! I hope he comes back to me in a couple months!
-Nate
Verse Of The Week
And He said to all, “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up his cross daily and follow me.”