Darkest Hour – "Convalescence" (2005)

I've fooled myself into believing

That nothing ails me

Nothing can kill me

In the last 2 or 3 lines, I told you about the fabulous cheeseburgers served up at the Sunshine General Store, a tiny grocery store in rural Montgomery County, Maryland:

Sunshine General Store

They’re just like the ones my grandmother used to make:

Recently I sat myself down at the store’s lunch counter after a long walk along the Magruder Branch Trail in Damascus, Maryland.  

After I scarfed down my cheeseburger, chips, and Dr. Pepper, I was in need of a pit stop before I hit the road.  Sunshine's bathroom came equipped with a sign that offered some helpful advice:

(No worries!)

Then I hopped in my car and headed to Manor Hill Brewing, a rather posh new farm brewery that’s a short drive from the Sunshine store.

These days, personalized cornhole boards are de rigueur at the better breweries and wineries in this part of the country:

I sampled three of Manor Hill’s brews while sitting at a table that was next to the brewery’s stock of malts:

Manor Hill’s next-door neighbor is "The Fox and The Firefly Farm."  I have a feeling there’s a story behind that name, but I have no idea what it is.  (Be my guest – Google away.)

My next stop was Waredaca Brewing, which is located on a 220-acre horse farm that offers horse boarding and riding lessons, but is known is primarily as an “eventing” barn.  (Eventing is an equestrian triathlon that combines dressage, cross-country jumping, and show jumping.)

So its only appropriate that the beer tasting boards at Waredaca incorporate horseshoes:

After I had finished my tasting at Waredaca, it was time to pick up my usual Friday night pizza and head home to check out the newest “Orange Is the New Black” and do a little blogging before heading to bed.

Something woke me up at 3:45 am.  That “something” turned out to be the urgent need to get to the bathroom and engage in some projectile vomiting, the likes of which I had not experienced in many years.

My younger son had picked up a bad stomach bug a few days earlier – I had head him ralphing vociferously several times that night – and he had passed it on to me.  

The vomiting spell gave way to a nasty bout of shivering, followed by a day of back and joint aches and a profound feeling of lassitude.

I’m back to normal now, but I’m not sure I will ever be able to eat another Sunshine General Store cheeseburger again. 

I know that the cheeseburger wasn’t the cause of my violent, middle-of-the-night upchucking . . . but the feeling of it going through my gullet in the wrong direction isn’t going to be easy to forget.

* * * * *

If 3:45 am isn’t the darkest hour of the day, it’s close enough for government work.

Darkest Hour is a metal band – more specifically, a melodic death metal band – that was formed in Washington, DC, in 1995.  

Darkest Hour

In interviews over the years, the band’s members have listed these bands as among their influences:  Dark Tranquillity, Minor Threat, Earth Crisis, Bad Brains, Black Flag, Government Issue, Scream, Shadows Fall, Bleeding Through, Eighteen Visions, Every Time I Die, Entombed, Dismember, Sacrilege, The Crown, Metallica, Megadeth, Slayer, Anthrax, Iron Maiden, Dream Theater, Carcass, Arch Enemy, Killswitch Engage, Sick of it All, Dead Kennedys, Soilwork, Danzig, Venom, Exodus, Discharge, Cro-Mags, Integrity, Edge of Sanity, Mayhem, Emperor, Ulver, Testament, Death Angel, Pantera, Cannibal Corpse, and “just about every Scandinavian [death metal] band.”

“Convalescence” was the single from Darkest Hour’s fourth studio album, Undoing Ruin, which was released in 2005.

Here’s “Convalescence”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon:

Josefus – "Five'll Get Me Ten" (1970)

Five’ll get me ten

You’ve been doing it again

Most iPod models – the Touch, the Nano, the Classic, the Mini – have touchscreens that display the name of the song you are listening to and the name of the artist who performed it.

But the humble iPod Shuffle, a tiny device that retails for only $49, doesn’t have a touchscreen.  If you don’t recognize the song that’s playing on it, you are S.O.L.

The iPod Shuffle

That’s a big problem for me because I’m constantly downloading obscure and unfamiliar songs from my public library and then listening to them on my iPod while I’m walking or riding my bicycle.  

So it’s not unusual for me to hear a song that I want to feature on 2 or 3 lines but I don’t know the song’s name and I don’t recognize the group performing it.  I can identify that song by looking on my computer when I get home, but most of the time I forget to do that.

My new Shuffle has a feature called “VoiceOver.”  If you hear an unfamiliar song on your iPod, you just hit the VoiceOver button and a computer-generated voice tells you the name of the song and the name of the recording artist.

We all know computers are stupid, and the chip responsible for VoiceOver is no exception.  It reads at about a 3rd-grade level, and that’s being generous.  

When I hit the VoiceOver button while today’s featured song was playing, the computerized voice told me that the name of the song was “Five Ell Ell Get Me Ten,” and that the name of the group that recorded it was “Ho-Say-Foos.”  

Josefus

Josephus (which is pronounced “Joe-See-Fuss,” not “Ho-Say-Foos”) was formed in Houston in 1969.    The band released two albums in 1970, and then broke up.

“Five will get you ten” is an idiomatic expression that’s derived from betting.  It describes an even bet – here, a bet in which each party wagers five dollars.  The winner will walk away with ten bucks – hence, “five will get you ten.”

I was listening to “Five’ll Get Me Ten” while walking on the heavily-wooded Magruder Branch Trail in Damascus, Maryland, today.

The Magruder Branch Trail

It was very hot and steamy, and the trail – which follows the course of a tributary of Great Seneca Creek – was muddy in spots.  I was shvitzing like a Airedale by the time my Fitbit buzzed to tell me I had reached my 10,000-step goal.

After changing shirts and replenishing my precious bodily fluids with some cold H2O, I headed to the nearby Sunshine General Store for the best cheeseburger in Maryland – a fat ground beef patty cooked on a grill with American cheese, onions, tomato, and a big pile of dill pickle chips on the side:

Add a jumbo bag of sour cream and onion-flavored potato chips and a 20-ounce bottle of Dr. Pepper, and you’ve got an all-American lunch.

The Sunshine store is a great place to get a cheeseburger or a breakfast – it’s open from 5 AM to 5 PM six days a week (and from 6 AM to 3 PM on Sundays) – but there’s not much else to buy there.

This shot captures pretty much everything for sale at the store other than cold drinks and chips:

Here’s a closeup of the cereal aisle of the store:

Have a yen for Italian?  Here's the selection at Sunshine:

Here's the personal care section:

Don't forget to pick up something for Rover and Fifi from the pet food aisle:

In the next 2 or 3 lines, I’ll tell you about the two new farm breweries that I visited after gobbling up my cheeseburger.  I’ll also tell you about the very unpleasant surprise that awaited me later that evening.

Here’s “Five’ll Get Me ten”:

Click below to buy the song from Amazon: