Today was a very busy day for Decker’s Daily Coffee. I set the alarm- something I seldomly do- to meet our fellow College Agency friends, Kelly and Becca, who were raising awareness at JMU about sexual assault.  Even though Decker’s Daily is a for-profit organization, I treated Kelly and Becca for just being, well, awesome.

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 That, and their GPS took them to a ballet store when it should have brought them to the coffee shop.  When GPS Units Attack should be a television show on Fox.  I remember when Gwenn and I had our first GPS, and on our way to a talk we ended up in some dark alley by a river, led there by a single lane dirt road. “I don’t think this is the college that we are supposed to be speaking at,” I said.  Travel snafus are the worst, especially at the hands of rebel GPS units.

After the morning coffee with Kelly and Becca I came home and crashed out for a couple of hours.  Later in the evening, I was back at the same shop for a special Decker’s Nightly.

With the economy in shambles, my coffee sponsorships in 2010 have been few and far between.  Which is totally cool, even though the mocha mooching makes me happy.  But, last night, my dry spell ended: I had a very special sponsorship from a young musician named Mason Taylor, and the story of how I bummed a drink off of him is pretty cool. 

Ten years ago, when Mason was in high school, he heard Gwenn and I speak.  Turns out he’s friends with my cousin, Bonnie, and when I somehow came up in conversation he recognized my name and story.  Which, really, is my greatest hope in dedicating a decent portion of my life to raising awareness about HIV- the hope being that these brief encounters I have with strangers will stick.  When Bonnie let Mason borrow my book, he wrote a very kind blog entry about me.  Check it out on Facebook here.


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Here’s Mason and I cheesing out: thanks to cousin Bonnie for bringing her swank camera and snapping the photo.

After reading his blog entry/book review, in which he created a word- “unputdownable”- to describe My Pet Virus, I thought it was kind of funny that he had a link of my first Synthetic Division EP, Tainted Goods, which he’d found at Plan 9 records shortly after I spoke at his high school a decade ago.  To be described as a good musician by Mason is a high honor, because after the sponsorship and cyber introduction, I got to find out what he does... which is rock.  So, without further ado, I give you the first ever Decker’s Daily Band of the Month, a’tris.  Here they are performing their song, “Automatic Doors”, which is, in his own word, unputdownable.

Enjoy!

  

Automatic Doors from AirPlay Direct on Vimeo.  Buy the a’tris album, Lensing, on iTunes.  Visit the band at atrishq.com and follow Mason on twitter at @atris


Positively Yours,

Shawn



Shawn on:    Shawn’s Sick Days in 2010: 6  Shawn’s book    Decker’s Daily Coffee

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