Tag: coffee

rhinoceros

Behind me two women talk about their “awesome” pastor. In front of me another woman reads with the Life Application Bible and a Josh McDowell apologetics text called “A Ready Defense” stacked next to her. The parking lot is full of ichthyomobiles.

The groupthink is dreary. I feel like the last one in Orange County who’s not an evangelical Protestant Konservative Kristian Klone.

meetings with remarkable men

I have renewed faith in the coffeehouse experience. The last two nights when I’ve stolen an hour from the on-call stuff, once each at D’s and at Kéan, have been fruitful. Last night I talked to an artist about his art, how to survive financially, meditative practice, the difficulty of explaining things, and a lot of other topics. We both learned a lot. Tonight, I shot the shit with an airline pilot about travel, cities and their virtues, the madness of money, aviation, and the local criminals. We were joined by another friend of his who did some kind of airport work and I mostly listened as they discussed money, sex, and cars.

I learned a lot and met some interesting people. Yay coffee houses.

Wild and Wooly Semiautomatic Truck Bomb

I went to Kéan today to get more coffee beans. They have the La Lucie, meaning the real La Lucie the way it used to be. Recommend you pick some up if you’re local and like that dark roast Zimbabwean thing.

Neurofeedback today. Brainwaves are getting better (higher beta, lower theta, less gap between).

I thought for two hours that I had lost my “check card” VISA. I hadn’t. It was caught in a snag in a jacket pocket, having fallen out of my wallet.

I read most of the rest of Hardcore Zen today. It’s a damned good book. Thanks, hweimei for the recommendation!

At the angle I can see her, my sleeping cat currently looks like a fuzzy spheroid without features.

L’apres midi d’un dorque

Idling at Kéan with Mike (used to have a big black beard Mike) today, I saw a stream of Newport Beach stereotypes including:

  • 85-year-old man with perfectly trimmed white beard parking a brand new $200,000 200mph Porsche Turbo sports car, which I then observed to have an automatic transmission
  • A young woman of classic magazine cover head-turning beauty accompanied by two rich and tough-looking beefy older guys. The three of them were having a business meeting, no doubt about her career. They toasted one another with Bubble-Up. The two guys looked serious the way Mafia guys look serious. She looked depressed, which in someone with her looks comes out as a pouty, puppyish yearning look. She smiled once, revealing 47 very bright white teeth.
  • This woman’s Ghost of Newport Past showed up, too: a 14-year-old future model, all dressed up in fluffy sweater and tight jeans and slightly-too-grownup heels. Same perfect model face. Her mother was identical and 35, with a very hard and focused look to her.
  • An assortment of very large expensive cars with grilles on the front that looked like BIG MONSTER FANG TEETH MOUTHS. Each of these cars was larger than the others. Several very large diesel trucks driven by small, finely-built men in pressed jeans are included in this category.
  • One 80something gentleman all covered in liver spots and combover who was trying to guide in his friend Mike to the place. He kept getting the names of things wrong, and telling Mike that he wanted to meet him at Plums but they had an hour wait “even after I told them who you ARE”. There were at least five of these calls. Two other people showed up to sit with Liver Spots but Mike never showed. His dog, an ancient cocker spaniel named Annie, was doing about as well as he was and kept walking into things like brick walls and trees and then harrumphing.
  • An outrrrrrageously Italian employee of Kéan. This guy was maybe 30 and looked a lot like Antonio Banderas. He was wearing the kind of lacy, frilly shirt that only guys from the Mediterranean can wear. He was slightly sweaty and had a huge 500,000 watt grin and whooshy airy hair that he held back with a headband. I don’t know how he carried it off, but he was every housewife’s dream European waiter/lover. Jean-Luc!

Kéan Coffee. Verdict: yum.

I’ve had their espresso two days running and it’s really good. Not just dark and bitter like Charbucks or the Diedrich chain. It’s strong and dark and a little bit sweet and really, really, really good.

I bought some beans and I just drank a whole effing pot of the decaf. I haven’t had just-roasted coffee this good in years.

Congratulations, Martin. This is some seriously good coffee. Now don’t screw it up this time!

Martin’s New Place

Kean Coffee, Martin’s new venture, is scheduled to have a “soft” (unadvertised) opening tomorrow. Mary’s managing the place, for those who remember the 17th St. Diedrich from 1997 or so.

Who’s going to be there tomorrow, and when? I was thinking I’d stop by in mid afternoon and/or late afternoon, maybe at 2 and/or 5.

Simulcast to

Pier Paolo Fettucine

I made dinner tonight consisting of: seared New England jumbo scallops; tricolor rotini pasta with fresh garlic and olive oil; and fresh green beans with butter and fines herbes. I do like to cook a good meal.

Went to D’s and Ruba in turn. I’m trying to get used to Movie Guy Dan’s way of telling a story which is in fits and starts with lots of digressions that go nowhere, and fragmented narrative that’s always getting derailed. Plus twitches. He’s just enough older than me that his “back in the day” stories are all about the big kids who were cool that I couldn’t hang out with, so I’m always hungry for the tale. But damn, it’s a frustrating conversational style.

Ruba was the usual trance-inducing mess. Fifteen-year-old rebel teenagers, twentyish blown-sideways-through-life people playing pool and smoking with “what the fuck happened” looks on their faces, and a rotating cast of alarming old men. The guy I call “Super-Catholic” was there. He’s a sixtyish guy with close-trimmed grey hair who wears Mr. Rogers cardigans and sensible shoes. The one time I overheard his conversation at D’s he was trying to get some college guys excited about the Catholic Church in a very Reach Out To The Generations With Youth Group Training way. He alarms me.

The pool playing and the weird lighting and the excess caffeine and the general Ruba atmosphere put me into a trance state in which I watched a rogues gallery play pool to an increasingly peculiar soundtrack: Billy Squier’s “In the Dark”, Van Hagar, Lionel Richie’s “Stuck On You” (worst song ever), and a long painful set of Easy Rockin’ Hits concluding with “Don’t Worry, Be Happy”. All for the benefit of the manager, a perky Middle Eastern lady in her late fifties. The kids weren’t impressed. I was pretty shocked when that awful Hungry Eyes song from “Dirty Dancing” came on. It’s like she was trying to clear the joint with music that I found painfully unhip twenty years ago.

I like watching people play pool. The rhythm of it, and trying to predict the shots, and watching them try to predict the shots, all of it. I like Ruba generally, because I’m such a complete outsider there that I don’t feel left out. I can just watch the circus go by in awe. Rich suburban boys with tough-guy neck tattoos, part-time porn stars, defrocked college athletes, half-reformed skinheads, dorkwad normals huffing on hookahs, teenaged girls trying to look older and more sophisticated, and every kind of almost-loser Orange County has to offer. There’s nothing like it.