You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The People’s Republic of Starbucks.
I’m on my way to Lowes Home Improvement Center to buy house filters.
That sounds sexy in a home improvement kind of way, right?
It’s a gorgeous Saturday.
The sun is high in the sky and the thermometer peaking around 62.
I should be outside, walking the dog, or playing Frisbee golf or running my metal detector over the back yard looking for old beer cans buried by the contractor.
Instead I am driving in a car with the windows up listening to canned commercials on the local rock station.
“My head hurts,” I say aloud.
“I have a headache caused by a lack of caffeine, I think.”
Suddenly like a mushroom cloud in the Nevada desert, I see it.
STARBUCKS
The People’s Republic of Starbucks.
A cup of Joe may just be what the doctor ordered to brighten my head ache horizon.
“l’ll pop in quick and then get filters,” I begin to say pulling into the strip mall.
That’s when I see it.
“Whoa!”
As I pull up, the drive through line flows around the block.
There are 20 cars in line, stalled, stagnating, inching forward.
It looks like rush hour on a Monday morning.
WTF?
Is the line for Coffee? A Starbucks coffee? Is it really that good?
Life is Crazy.
People wait in line in their car in a traffic jam to buy a $4 cup of coffee.
What are they giving away? Free money? Plasma?
“The hell with that line,” I say. “I’m going in.”
I enter and I’m surrounded by the percolating vibe of cool.
The music rains down upon me with the latest collection of coffee shop chic, available at the counter for $11.
A woman gets in line behind me. She is holding a little white dog.
Her dog is cute and well-mannered. In fact, the dog is so calm, I wonder if it is sleeping with its dog eyes open. The little white dog is wearing a pink sweater that says happy Valentines Day.
I wonder what kind of woman brings her dog to Starbucks on a beautiful Saturday afternoon?
Is it her idea? Was it the dog’s?
Is it permissible?
She doesn’t have a cane? She is fully ambulatory.
This isn’t a service dog, I quickly surmise.
In fact, if anything, this dog is a toy, a muff, an extension of this woman’s need for companionship.
Is this dog her child? Her boyfriend? Just a dog?
“Cute sweater,” I say.
“She’s always cold,” she responds.
Even the dog is cold.
I laugh. It’s a female thing. It’s gotta be.
Her dog is like a little human. It snuggles in the crook of her arm, quietly, as if it always come to Starbucks and this is normal.
Before I can ask another inane question, the line moves.
I smile and look at the man behind the register.
“Next, can I help you?”
He is tall, brimming with Starbucks enthusiasm.
“Welcome to Starbucks.”
He is the poster child for good counter etiquette.
He is smiling, his white shirt perfectly starched, his green apron brimming with pride.
This man is the human equivalent of a perfectly brewed pot of special blend.
He is bold and smooth and roasted to perfection.
“I want something chocolaty,” I say.
I stare at the menu on the wall.
My eyes are bad and it appears as a big chalk smudge. Either there has been a drive by shooting here, or my eyes need to be checked, yet again.
“How about a Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème,” he says with alacrity.
He is overflowing with joy. I feel like he is about to start singing a hymn with the Tabernacle Choir.
“Venti?” The effusive barista asks.
I listen to the Starbucks-ease flow from his lips.
It’s like a caffeinated version of Italian.
It’s a percolated dialect of Swahili.
Somehow chocolate and coffee have been removed from this sentence, run through a linguistic Starbucks filter of specialized vernacular and replaced with branding terminology created by the Starbucks Matrix.
“What does all that mean?” I ask neciently.
“It’s a creamy blend of rich mocha-flavored sauce, chocolaty chips, milk and ice. It’s topped with sweetened whipped cream and mocha drizzle.” He says with a smile on his face as bright as the noon day sun.
He eyeballs me, secure in the knowledge that I am a Starbucks Virgin, or at the very least an occassional patron.
I don’t even pretend to know what any of that it is.
I smile and say “OK.”
Then add, “Medium Please.”
He smiles. “of course.”
He writes it down with the enthusiasm of a roller coaster rider, arms up, awaiting the next 90 degree hill.
Crème Frappuccino Blended, I think to myself.
In the Starbucks Matrix, normal words are replaced with spectacular branding that conjures images of vivaciousness and bliss.
Starbucks-ease is a language of entitlement. It is a language spoken by a growing group of coffee soldiers who will fight for their brand.
The barista is well versed having attended the university of Starbucks.
He is a motor mouth of Starbucks speak, taught to embellish, trained to describe encouraged to welcome me into the cathedral of higher coffee consumption.
“It’s blended with ice and milk and it’s so soothing on the pallet,” he says. His words are accentuated with caffeinated complexity and multi-syllabic marketing metaphors.
As I listen to this percolating professor, I cannot help but think that Coffee is no longer coffee. It is a way of life, a journey for caffeine starved Americans who like to stand in line and over pay for a product that your grandfather spent a nickel on.
Starbucks economic model is based on addiction.
Feed the monkey of a growing populace that cannot self modulate.
Coffee has become more than just a drug that most of the world needs to start its day. Starbucks is the world’s cocaine dealer. They know what we want and they are going to give it to us, at top dollar, re-packaged, repurposed, repositioned.
“I’ll try it,” I say almost afraid to challenge this maestro of counter eloquence.
As he writes down my order, I wonder when I fell onto the Island of Lost. Did my plane crash? Is Hurley really a millionaire?
When did coffee become a destination resort? Is it really so much more than hot water and beans?
As I hand the Starbucks man my credit card, I wonder when Starbucks became the fountain of youth, long sought after by Spanish Explorer Ponce De Leon.
I see an 80-year-old woman wearing a fur coat and more make up than Marcel Marceau.
I see a teenager with a pierced nose and a lap top sitting beside her.
There is 63 years of difference between these two creatures. Few products captivate an age divide so pronounced?
Starbucks is a non generational magnet that creates a desired aura for a grandmother and her grand kids. It is the common denominator between hipster and church deacon. Starbucks has become the place to close a business deal, the place to write the next great American screen-play, the place to meet on Match Dot Com.
I take a table at the end of the restaurant.
My back is to the window and the sun is filtering in baking me like an apple turnover.
My nostrils are filled with the explosive, pungent smells of freshly churned beans.
My ears listen to order after order of Starbucks speak amidst a grinder and espresso machine.
As we wait for our order, I muse how I can get a cup of coffee at Mapco for .99.
You know what, Mapco Coffee is pretty damn good.
And with the $3.01 saving, I can buy a gallon and a half of gas.
Is Starbucks SO MUCH better than Mapco?
It’s all about the branding.
Mapco screams bourgeois banality.
Starbucks is a fiefdom of Green opulence and Seattle reverence.
I look around the restaurant.
Every table is packed on a beautiful Saturday afternoon when people should be outside running a marathon or inhaling sunshine.
Instead they are here, surfing the internet, hammering out deals, dreaming about a perfect world where nobody litters and everyone recycles.
The line that reaches the door never ends. The drive through from hell is still a fatal collision of stop and go traffic.
Unbelievable marketing, staying power, all for a bean and some water.
“Double Chocolaty Chip Crème Frappuccino Blended Crème” the counter man shouts.
I grab my cup.
It’s beautiful.
It is artistic and sleek.
If it was a woman, she would be wearing heels and a sash that reads Ms. Coco Bean.
I punch the straw into the clear bubble dome top and watch as the plastic tube disappears into a manicured mix of whip cream and chocolate sprinkles.
I inhale the liquid and feel it enter my mouth.
It is icy milk and chocolate so sweet I want to ask it on a date.
“Would you have my baby?” is not out of the question for this Knight in shining armor of drinks.
The bits of chocolate and the whip cream punch my palette and make me forget about the $6 price tag.
All my brain can say is “WOW!”
That sip is the aurora borealis of splendor.
It is to my senses what color is to Monet.
Suddenly, I feel an ice pick in my eye.
There is a burst of pain so intense I grab my throat and squint like a cat being run over by a Hummer.
“Brain Freeze,” I say almost falling off my chair.
There is nothing I can do, but wait for it to pass.
It feels like an angry wolverine in need of a manicure ripping through the soft tissue of my brain.
The wolverine is angry, disenchanted, perhaps behind on child support. The judge is admonishing him to pay up or go to jail. The angry wolverine is agitated, digging its claws into the soft pulp of my skull, simmering with small animal anger.
My skull is so cold, it’s on fire.
If there was a fire alarm nearby, I would pull it.
I want to lay down on the floor and have someone massage my temples, but the pain is too numbing to move.
I close my eyes and wait for the burst of blue and white neurons to subside.
I rock back and forth.
It feels like a rail road spike being hammered into my eye.
Suddenly, as quickly as it came, it is gone.
I open my eyes.
“Wow. Cold. But good.”
I seal my lips around the straw and inhale another burst of creamy goodness into my mouth.
My taste buds are ringing church bells. The taste of a chocolate Michelangelo drips down my esophagus.
I feel the daggers of pain begin to emerge.
I am fearful.I back off, inhaling room temperature air, attempting to mitigate the Wolverine lingering nearby.
I scan the room again.
The girl with the little white dog is outside on a bench.
The dog is drinking from a Starbucks cup.
Is it water? Or is it designer Starbucks Dog Water priced to move at $6.
I laugh to myself.
I inhale another straw full of icy chocolatey goodness.
The wolverine growls.
I close my eyes again, poised to do battle with an ice pick to the eye.
As the blue and white neurons of pain fill my brain, I know that the world’s drug dealer is Starbucks.
A green company in the Pacific Northwest that has fooled us into thinking we must consume this product.
To not have it will negatively affect us.
To not have Starbucks will somehow make our lives subservient to good.
To Starbucks -The Wolverine of commercialism. I salute you.
Life’s Crazy™