Wake up your eggs.
January 29, 2010
When you don’t watch television regularly…who am I kidding? Even if you do watch television regularly, commercials are bizarre. It’s been a while since I’ve done a commercianalysis, and nothing depicts the cultural sinkhole that is Western society quite like commercials for processed meat.
In a world of anthropomorphic food, a Ben-Stein-esque egg takes roll of a class of bored, monotone student-eggs, all of whom are perplexingly named “Egg.” Suddenly and without warning, club dance music begins playing, a disco ball lowers, and a can of spam bursts into the room, supposedly to liven up the classroom. Two adolescent eggs collide with one-another in celebration(?), cracking and supposedly inflicting mortal wounds, which may or may not correlate to the image of a plate of scrambled eggs and cooked spam, which morbidly follows. Given the imagery, I can only surmise that the Spam company is pushing the idea to children that the addition of spam makes being cooked alive an attractive alternative to grade school.
Your friendeds are not my friendeds.
January 5, 2010
Once again, if you haven’t read William Deresiewicz’ article “Faux Friendship,” I highly recommend it.
I recall my first year of grad school being crazy enough without the complications of electronic social networking. As if I didn’t have enough reasons to feel old in my early twenties, on my first day I had a student abbreviate a discussion with me into another language (“Hey. Can we convo? LOL. Sorry, I like to abbrev.”), and soon after I felt the outward pressure of dealing with virtual friends—hereafter referred to as “friendeds.” After much prodding from my peers, I finally opted to give Facebook a shot, but only if I could assure that I could have all the privacy I wanted, and more. I resolved to only “friend” people that I had actual face-to-face interactions with, but my interactions on Facebook were limited until I discovered my personal Holy Grail: ultra-paranoid privacy settings. Thanks to the setting which removed my searchability on Facebook, I was free to happily enjoy all Facebook had to offer from the confines of my virtual cloaking device.
As the years have gone by, however, the ever-widening user base has had some undesirable results. While Facebook features (Facebook chat, applications, video, etc.) have consistently expanded, I’ve always had my private little wall that prevented “that one creepy guy from the coffee shop who I really never want to talk to” or “that obnoxious girl from my sophomore physics class,” or “my high school graduating class” from attempting to “friend” me. Sure, you can always ignore the friend requests, but can’t they just not know I’m there? Regardless, I’m proud to say that I’m still app-free and I have resisted the urge to upload video or engage in real-time chat. I also was completely invisible to all but those I actually wanted to communicate with. What’s nice, is that I have had that choice.
You can run, but you can't hide. At least not anymore.
As of December 10th, I can still opt out of search results, but I have no means to opt out of being “friended” by “friends of friends” if they happen to see my picture or name in a group or wall post. “But they’re your friends’ friends,” Facebook says. “Why wouldn’t you want them to be your friend?” Well, if you’ve got one Facebook acquaintance that’s “friended” all of Northwest Ohio—and we all have got at least one who has—then that opens you up to all of Northwest Ohio as a “friend of a friend.” My real friends’ friends are not mine, so why on Earth would the Grand High Facebook council assume that I want to have the friendeds of my friendeds be able to see me? Facebook friendeds of friendeds are exponentially further away from being actual friends. Sure, there might be some that are, but does that make it worth opening me up to all of the friends of a guy a met once at a conference in New York?
The painful truth is that social networks like Facebook and MySpace have the power to dictate social privacy trends. What makes Facebook different from myspace is its respect of privacy, which has steadily eroded with every new app. Every “feature” which enables users to share more establishes a new trend which eventually becomes a standard. Not only do these new features presuppose that people want to share as much as possible, they actually encourage people to make public things that they would have never considered to display in the past. As much as I hypocritically condemn the self-important web 2.0, whether or not you want to share pictures of yourself doing a keg-stand in a unitard isn’t my business. However, you make it my business by giving all of your pro-unitard-kegstand friends access to me.
I notice that every time I type “friend,” it means less and less until the word is almost meaningless. I wonder if having 1,283 “friends” on Facebook has the same effect on actual friendship?
“This information is name, profile picture, gender, current city, networks, friend list, and Pages. The overwhelming majority of people who use Facebook already make most or all of this information available to everyone. We’ve found that most people who do limit access just want to avoid being found in searches or prevent contact from strangers.”
-Facebook Blog
Coming to a clearance rack near you!
January 3, 2010
With every consumer product, whether it be music, clothing, food, or what-have-you, there is a mastermind and a target demographic. When the item is released upon into the public, someone had to have been the brainchild to say “This is exactly what I had in mind! People will love this.” This idea is particularly baffling to me when I hear about large-scale productions such as The 41 Year Old Virgin Who Knocked up Sarah Marshall and Felt Superbad About It or Stan Helsing and realize that people had to conceive these films and put forth significant, time, effort, and money to producing them. Perhaps, like the dozen incarnations of Coke and Pepsi that came out in the late ’90s, they’re just banking on one very specific demographic, but these poorly conceived, humorless cesspools dressed up as “parody” consistently tank at the box office and rarely make enough money to warrant their production. Why do these things happen? Why?
I bet Rahm Emmanuel bought one.
If you’re going to produce something of questionable market value, do so on a small scale. Case in point, Obama family paper dolls. Sure, the obvious question is “why is it necessary to produce paper dolls of the Obama family?” Action figures, Barbie dolls, and bobble-heads I can almost understand, but cut-out paper dolls? I have to wonder whether little Sacha and Milea Obama are happy or horrified at what must inevitably be poor depictions of themselves in two dimensions. When it comes down to it, I guess I’m just curious who’s buying these things.
By the same token, who the heck is reading this blog?
Ok, ok, ok, fine. I’ll do it.
January 1, 2010
It’s 11:45pm on January 1st, and I was really thinking I wouldn’t do anything as ridiculous as National Blog Posting Month, but…yeah I’ve got no explanation for this. Perhaps it’s my need to put something on my list of accomplishments for 2010, since 2009 was a pretty accomplishment-saturated. So here I am, cranking out some sad semblance of a blog post with ten minutes to go in the inaugural day of a new decade.
The theme for NaBloPoMo this time around is “BEST.” I don’t know what that means, and I don’t care to investigate. I still firmly believe that encouraging mass daily blog posting is not healthy for our society (note the category of this post), and I in no way condone or support NahBlowPoeMoe by participating. In fact, by some form of twisted logic that only makes sense to me, my participation in NawBlewPooMew is a form of protest. Perhaps this year we will come to our senses as a species and find real ways of communicating with each other that don’t involve self-obsession.
…like there’s any historical precedent for that.
*grumble* I’ll see you tomorrow.
“When people think you’re dying, they really, really listen to you, instead of just…”
December 14, 2009
Have I seen this place before?
I chilled in the cleverly named Ugly Mug before a lax Wednesday night gig at Burdigala Wines. In spite of their following the PDX coffee shop paradigm to a tee (chalkboard menu, Stumptown coffee, secondhand furniture, local artwork, microbrew, kooky color scheme, free Wi-Fi, vegan menu, *yaaaaaaawwwwn*), I had a pleasant stay. I was there for nearly two hours and didn’t see one Mac (well, except mine). They are nice enough to provide power strips for laptop users, which, in my experience, is a sign of cafempathy. They did get into the spirit of the season with a community diorama auction, with proceeds going to a local charity. In this season, and particularly in this day and age, it’s nice to little snatches of humanity as we gradually lose touch with physical community. Of course, it’s also difficult to build a diorama as a Facebook group.
Dioramas: because anything that ends in "o rama" must be awesome.
As I sit back and proofread my latest stroll through blogsville, I realize two things. First, I need to stop making up words and use a thesaurus. Secondly, it doesn’t take a college level of critical analysis to realize that my “reviews” are short on criticism and long on complain-ism. This would trouble me more if it weren’t for the fact that this is a blog, which is essentially a web surfer’s license to rant. I recently read William Deresiewicz’ article “Faux Friendship,” which examines the new phenomenon of the social network “friend.” While I do not necessarily fall in line with Deresiewicz’ nostalgia for old world friendship, his article confronts one of the most common misconceptions about the world of Web 2.0. Web 2.0 does not foster collaboration, it fosters self-obsession with collaboration and correspondence as mere byproducts.
Hm, I think I think this post got derailed a bit. Look, a new Coupland book!
As a Facebook “user” with my privacy settings set to ultra-paranoid, it’s been some time since I’ve actually logged in and participated in any real facility. The heyday of my Facebook activity was when I was actually having face-to-face contact with most of the people I was “friended” with (to differentiate from “friends with”). I’ve found that my Facebook interactions merely reflect my actual interactions, in the sense that the only people I send messages to are people I would otherwise be communicating with personally. What is sad is that if it weren’t for the convenience of Facebook, email, or text messages, I might actually be calling them.
Coffee & cake at the Ugly Mug
Unfortunately, the issue of self-obsession goes far beyond our social networking habits. Now Google and Yahoo are returning Twitter and MySpace feeds as search results, under the guise of “real-time” search. I’m reminded of an in-class exercise in which students dissected the Google privacy policy, uncovering the not-so-subtle way that the information age erodes privacy standards under the guise of “improving service.” I don’t believe search engines are out to get us, we’re out to get ourselves, literally. Real-time search gives our information age data-diet what it’s been craving the most—a healthy dose of “us.”
Of course, I could make the same excuse for self-obsession that I made for friendship. As the world changes, it’s no stretch that the words that describe it would change along with it. Perhaps “selfishness” needs redefinition. How about selffriendness?
“…instead of just waiting for their turn to speak.”
Home is where the hotte is.
December 3, 2009
I hope someone got a bonus for coming up with "Hotte Latte"
So I returned home for the holidays to make the discovery that yet another bikini coffee hut has emerged in Lakewood with the addition conversion of Hotte Latte (KD’z Espresso) on Gravelly Lake Dr. This now makes two on a less than half-mile stretch of Gravelly Lake Drive, and four in a 1.5 mile radius. Classy!
While I’ve been a coffee shop bum for a good portion of my life, I’ve been a bookstore bum for significantly longer. My bookstore loitering goes back to elementary school, when I used to hang around the B. Dalton Bookstore in the Lakewood Mall where my mom worked in the evening. When B. Dalton–and eventually the Lakewood Mall–went the way of the dodo, I eventually migrated my loitering to the hip and happening new Barnes & Noble (now with free WiFi!) in the late ’90s.
The store. The myth. The legend.
The Lakewood Barnes and Noble was officially my very first coffee shop, and I’ve been a loyal patron since it absorbed the Lakewood Mall B. Dalton bookstore. Actually, I wouldn’t say “patron” as much as “cousin.” I can point out where the humor section was located spanning back five store re-designs, and recall the day I discovered the magic of cinnamon twists. It’s also where I fell in love with graphic novels, bought countless Christmas gifts, reunited with long lost friends classmates, and was the site of the first and only time I ever asked anyone on a date (asked a barista out for coffee).
Lately I’ve branched out to check out some Lakewood’s other coffee offerings. I had initially not given Forza a fighting chance. In the last ten years they’ve thrived and expanded in the greater Puget Sound area. I’ve only had a chance to stop by their Bridgeport Way location for a cup o’ joe on the way out of town, and I was intrigued by their “relaxed atmosphere of dark African mahogany wood, Italian
All that and flat panel tvs? Now they're just showing off.
porcelain tiled floors and comfortable chairs near a warm fireplace.” I didn’t stay, but if I did I imagine it would be like like an afternoon of light coffee and masterpiece theatre. I’ve not decided whether or not the knowledge that there are nearly two dozen afro-mahoga-Italia-porcea-firepla- comfy-chair locations makes it lose a bit of it’s luster. Then again, as we all know I’m not above being reined in by marketing.
If you’re feeling at all generous this holiday season, please consider a donation to the support the families of the rather horrific incident of violence at a Lakewood-area Forza. This kind of thing shouldn’t happen anywhere, let alone a coffee shop.
“Why you bringin’ up old stuff?”
October 17, 2009
Life’s been pretty hectic, so no new material sadly. An associate (actually two) of mine, however, recently reported purchasing a Nintendo Wii and having wicked fun with it. Regardless of whether or not I believe the Wii is wicked fun or not, this prompted me to revisit one of my favorite posts from the old Extroverted Introversion site, which I’ll likely be putting a wrecking ball sometime soon. Anyways, without further ado, I present:
Top 10 Wii-related accidents (as reported by wiihaveaproblem.com).
1. Crack in television
2. Hole in window
3. Wiimote-shaped dent in wall
4. Shattered 4-inch PDA screen
5. Severed blade from ceiling fan
6. Broken chair from Zelda fishing
7. Hole in mother-in-law’s china cabinet
8. Four stitches in index finger
9. Black eye on girlfriend
10. Bruise on infant son’s head
Impressive, but not nearly as impressive as the Playstation3-related incidents (as reported by juliosus.com):
1. Impregnation of virgin girlfriend.
2. Sold nuclear weapons to North Korea.
3. Psychological trauma suffered by PS3 deconstructing the nature of your reality and existence during a par-4 in Tiger Woods 2009.
4. Near-appointment to highest position in the Holy Catholic Church.
5. Created, destroyed matter.
6. Impregnation of virgin boyfriend.
7. Following a power outage, powered self using electronic energy of inhabitants of household while simulating an imperceptibly similar virtual reality to keep them oblivious to their enslavement.
8. Defeated Chuck Norris in unarmed, hand-to-hand combat. Ate him to absorb his power.
9. Demanded animal sacrifice before loading game data.
10. Deletion of Turbografx 64 from past or future existence.
“…a bold effort perhaps to do away with the grind of random button mashing, but in practice its really only replacing it with random stick waggling.”
“Yahtzee” Croshaw
Awareness, concentration, and balance…for your Chihuahua.
October 3, 2009
I’ve added a new post category entitled “cultural sinkhole,” as I feel the need to document further evidence of our cultural decline. Since I’m already a regular contributor to it, the least I could do take a few photos for posterity. Once you know what a embarrassing fascinating spectacle our society has become, it doesn’t take much effort to see evidence of it everywhere. Actually, it’s incredibly easy.
I’ve really got no transition for this, so…
It's a combination between bewilderment and anticipation. Yoga for guinea pigs (guineoga) can't be far behind.
“It was lunacy,” Ms. Apro recalled. “Peanuts, my retired racer greyhound, didn’t participate at all. Instead, I did downward-facing dog while he ate the most treats he’s ever had in a 60-minute period.”
NY Times article on Doga.
Wherever you go, there you are.
October 1, 2009
While there’s all kinds of reasons not to love franchising, it does allow you to get on a plane in New Jersey, land in Singapore, and still be able to satisfy your Double Whopper with cheese craving. Sure, I’ve never had that craving myself, but there’s something to be said for dependability. With so many franchises, regions must establish their individuality by filling in those spaces between with local flavor. The danger, however, of too strong a sense of identity, is that the local flavor falls into monotony that could make even Starbucks feel fresh (and by the way, this new Via tastes better than their normal brew…).
Masks. How expectedly random. The conveniently located power strip, however, is quite original.
The Portland condition seems to be defined by a push toward the kooky side of liberal. In fact, some locals run the risk of throwing their back out trying so hard to be individuals. Unfortunately, when everyone is weird, the dude on the corner decked out in LL Bean stands out. In the effort to become hip and 3dgy (because “edgy” just doesn’t cut it anymore), many Portland…ok, ok, Northwest coffee hotspots have begun to feel blandly predictable. The bouquets of event flyers, local artwork, eclectic color schemes, veggie vegan food selection, Voodoo doughnuts, chalkboard menus, and yard sale tables and chairs have all become…routine. What else can you offer me?
Have I been here before?
The clever places manage to follow the PDX template, but find unique ways to fill it in that aren’t always as obvious as “weird.” Tiny’s Coffee on MLK wins by being serving up a helping of accommodating eclectic with a side dish of eclectic accommodating. While my first impression of Tiny’s was all that I would expect, upon closer inspection, they found unique ways to color within the lines. I had more electrical outlets than I could ever need (Seriously. Over a dozen), a menu more than happy to serve carnivore needs, lots of floor space with plenty of tables, arcade pinball, and an ATM in the corner which was also a nice touch. The layout also does some fascinating work with levels that I don’t quite understand (“Is that a window? Is that a window? Is someone watching me from up there?”). Tiny’s certainly has the Portland look and feel, but has an identity all their own…well, except for the other Tiny’s on Hawthorne.
That coffee table looks suspiciously like a baby grand piano.
Elevated Coffee on way north MLK took a whole new route altogether. Like Tiny’s, they serve Stumptown Coffee (*yawn*), offer free WiFi (no-brainer), and adorn their walls with art (actually, you can’t really go wrong with that). The main difference is the decor, and I’ll be honest here: It’s been some time since I’ve seen such a well-decorated café. The black and white scheme and new(!) furniture stopped just short of swank, and settles nicely into sleek. The internet terminals , bookshelves, and local art provide a personable balance to the white baby-grand piano in the corner that provides a dollop of chic. Arts-wise, Elevated Coffee reaches out to the jazz-ish crowd, with shows on Saturday and Sunday, and I may just break my futon again just to have an excuse to stop by and stare at their decor. Seriously, this place is gorgeous.
…if only they could do something about that Twitter foolishness.
Busty Baristas, on Steilacoom Blvd.
Experience and logic lead me to believe that everyone comes from somewhere. Not everyone’s “somewhere” is truly somewhere. For many, your somewhere is a nowhere. My somewhere, Lakewood, Washington was formerly a nowhere until it became a somewhere separate from Tacoma, a nowhere, in 1995. I love my somewhere, because it has character. It’s got all the fun of Tacoma (voted the “Most Stressful City in America” by BestPlaces.com in 2004), with a classiness that is uniquely its own. How classy is Lakewood? When discussing Lakewood, you may hear words like “s**tty,” “f**king scary,” and I’d rather chew off my **** than spend thirteen minutes in Lakewood.”
Don’t let the praise fool you, though. Lakewood’s classiness has a more…questionable side. When I heard that Lakewood had opened its third bikini
"You gotta' sell it."
coffee shop, I was moved to investigate. I know what you’re thinking, “wow, what a profoundly progressive city Lakewood is. I’d like to raise puppies there.” Being forward-thinking, however, comes with it’s share of complications. People love coffee, and bikinis are worn by women, so it’s logical to combine the two, right? Well the issue isn’t as straight-forward as you might think, and I’d like to take a moment to really examine the bikoffe phenomenon.
Now, since we are not in Back to the Future II, coffee does not just make itself. At many critical junctures of the coffee making process, a human barista plays a key, if not critical role,
Hot Chick-a-Latte, on Custer.
manipulating the grounds into coffee and even providing some light conversation in the process. The bikini barista, however, throws a troubling kink…y snag into what should be a smooth interaction with what would normally be a fully-clothed, coffee serving person. Let’s say I order my vanilla latte, and I’m waiting patiently for her to prepare it. Is it courtesy to ogle the non-bikini clad portions of her body? I’d like to say no, but perhaps the bikini changes the rules. Is it now rude not to look? I’d like to say that you should simply ignore the bikini and act natural, but the simple fact of the matter is that no one acting natural wears a bikini when performing non-bikini related activities.
The small talk situation has an unusual flair to it as well, since you’re not sure how to handle the elephant in the room uncommon lack of clothing. When one finds
Bikini Bottom Espresso, on Bridgeport Way.
themselves confronted with a bikiniista, the first impulse may be a witty comment with thinly veiled sexual innuendo, i.e. “I’d like a hot steamer, and afterward perhaps I’ll order a drink.” In the case of the bikiniista, the impulse is there, but then you can’t assume that just because she’s wearing a bikini that she’s “asking for it.” Being a gentleman, I would prefer not to be lewd, but what do I say? Does the bikini warrant a comment at all? What about the tattoo? Can I mention that? I considered “you must work out,” but, again, you’re being a bit presumptuous assuming that 1) she okay with you ogling her, and 2) she actually does work out. And what if she doesn’t work out? Then you’re making a sarcastic comment that the bikini is not flattering on her “unrefined” body.
"NO BIKINIS," says Annette's Grind
Surprisingly, the bikoffee concept has yet to gain universal acceptance. There are those who look with scorn upon the noble, yet often misunderstood world of brewing bikini bods. Some call it exploitation, despite the fact that the girls are clearly serving coffee from the safe, enclosed confines of a wooden booth. Others demand to know why it’s only women populate the bikini coffee establishments, when it would be laughably absurd for men to serve coffee in bikinis. I could see a case to be made, however, that the hiring practices of bikini coffee shops discriminate by only hiring women. This likely would not hold ground since, from what I understand, bikibrewing requires certain specialized skills not found in men. This is an unquestionably touchy subject, since down the road from Bikini Bottom Espresso (Nickelodeon lawsuit in 3…2…), Annette’s Grind rages against the bare body machine by advertising “NO BIKINIS.”
As a final note, let it be known that while retrieving the pictures of theses establishments, I saw several patrons drive up to support their local bikiniistas. Most of these customers were women, which leads me to believe that not only does the bikoffee shop serve coffee, but likely serves up practical fashion advice. How will you know whether a one- or two-piece bikini is most appropriate for steaming 2% milk? I kid. If anything, this demonstrates that people want coffee, they will likely stop at the first coffee establishment available to satisfy this coffee craving, and the baristas could be wearing anything from aprons, to bikinis, to live tarantulas.
Now, if you’ll excuse me, Swine Flu Espresso has just opened up across the street and I’m craving a chai like it’s nobody’s business.
“Oh geez! I spilled syrup on myself!”
-Bikiinista A to Bikiinista B, while preparing my Vanilla Latte.
***12/3 update – With the addition of Hatte Latte on Gravelly Lake Drive, Lakewood is now sporting four bikoffee establishments. Words fail me.***
