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Mugshot Monday - “Aranesp (Darbepoetin Alfa)” Coffee Mug at Longfellow Grill w/ Longfellow Grill Blend by True Stone Coffee Roasters

Say what? Is that a tri-handle coffee mug?! Okay, there’s a lot going on here with this photo. Let me try to explain.

I stopped at the Longfellow Grill this morning to do today’s Mugshot Monday — it is actually the birthplace of what has become “Mugshot Monday” when my wife and I had breakfast there on a Monday back in 2009. I’ll leave that story for another post, but the thing to point out is that Longfellow Grill serves their coffee in random coffee mugs they find.

So I thought I’d leave today’s mugshot up to destiny.

I stopped in, was greeted by a nice guy named Magno, and asked if I could get a cup of coffee at the bar. I also asked if he could choose the coolest coffee mug he had.

He brought out a cup of coffee in this coffee mug:

Aranesp (darbepoetin alfa)

Yo, this mug has three handles! And a name I can’t pronounce. What is Aranesp, you ask? Drugs.com has the answer:

Aranesp is a man-made form of a protein that helps your body produce red blood cells.  

It sounds like it’s some really potent stuff, used to help patients being treated with chemotherapy or dialysis.

So I explained to Magno that I needed to take a photo of myself and the coffee mug and looked for a signature background. I decided to sit in front of a really cool painting of a car and a motorcycle by Erik Sletten on the East wall.

A curious server named Gil asked what I was doing and offered to help out with the lighting by moving some of the painting’s spot lights. Cool. Matt stopped by, too — he’s a Longfellow Grill manger. We started speculating about what Aranesp was. Gil googled it on his phone, thinking it might be a kosher performance enhancer used by athletes. By the end of the chat, Matt actually offered that I take the coffee mug home with me! How cool is that?

The only other thing left to explain about this photo is my hair. What is up with my hair? Well, I’m growing it out because my 5-year-old said it was time, which is really awesome. (Back-story is here if you’re interested.) I’m in the ratty “Top Gun” meets “Skate Punk” phase right now. Oy.

• See the entire Mugshot Monday Facebook gallery at www.MugshotMonday.com, or read more posts like it on this blog.
  
• And if it’s Monday, and you are drinking something from your coffee mug, post your own Mugshot Monday on Tumblr or Twitter — use the hashtag #mugshotmonday on Twitter.