passing the Buck.

i've tried and tried and tried, but i just do not like coffee. i remember when i was small, my mother told how she wasn't allowed to have coffee until she was a teenager, but even so, she made off to her grandmother's house for a nip of the forbidden fruit. that a drink was reserved only for grown-ups excited me. i couldn't wait to try it.

and then one day i did. i felt completely and utterly betrayed. it smelled rich, delicious and creamy, but it just tasted like ass. like something scraped off the bottom of someone's shoe. it will now be coming up on my sixth year as a coffee slinging whore, and my hatred of cofffee has only intensified. when your car, your clothes and your purse stink richly of the evil bean, you can't help it. hate coffee. always will.

sometimes i deliver that little zinger at work to some unsuspecting party, whether it be customer or fellow partner (partner: cheesy corporate word for employees at the Buck, much like coworker, associate, team member, etc.). "yeah. i don't drink coffee" which is either followed by an incredulous stare, an embarassed laugh, an oft-repeated and incredibly unfunny joke, or, most common of all, nothing. because why should anyone care? they have to get to work on time, after all.

still, i am rather amused by the fact that the drinks i make every day - day in, day out- i have never even tasted. i don't know what a caramel machiatto tastes like (nor do i care enough to spell it right), or a latte, or cappuccino, or a mocha. i managed to strenuously avoid all that training where we taste every damn drink the Buck has to offer. i couldn't, of course, get out of the little video/coffee tasting session that happens immediately after hiring. i managed to look surly and sullen and pronounced the ass-pressed coffee that i sampled as "shit". and i wonder why i never moved up in the company.

what brings on this personal vitriol for a company and product that feeds and clothes me? this site.

i started trolling the web earlier tonight in search of some blogs or websites along the lines of green apron monkey, i.e., a snarky but erudite enumeration of various ways St*rbucks is ridiculous. i had the idea that i might start a webring for blogs of disgruntled baristas. instead, i found St*rbucks Gossip, a site that is almost scary in the sheer volume of devotion and love it showers upon the Buck. i never thought i would read forum threads debating at length the merits of Chantico (an obnoxiously sweet chocolate drink that no one ever bought). the people on there seem to run the gamut - there are some baristas on the boards, but mostly it's people who love, love their local St*rbucks and go there with their kids and spouse to hang out. who the hell are these people?! oh, right. the assholes i had to kick out of the store last night.

i guess i'll never get it. i never even went to a St*rbucks until i was 20 years old (hard to believe i lived that long without Frappuccinos, but them's the breaks, kids). after that, even though i have always lived within close proximity to one, i almost never went in. only if another poor slub dragged me in against my will. occasionally while in new york city with time to kill, i would find one and sit and write, but i never bought anything. i always had the vague feeling that St*rbucks was dirty. i couldn't see the espresso ground into the tile grout, but i knew it was there.

i fully acknowledge that the Buck is, for many reasons, a good and worthy company. that i get better health insurance than my mother (who has been a teacher for 20+ years) for only $62 a month, working 20 hours a week, is proof enough of that fact. i recognize that the Buck's obnoxious and unbridled growth is the reason i have these benefits. i understand that this may make this whole rant hypocritical, but oh well.

i am still amazed that the Buck has become what it is. it has grown from a small, chill coffeehouse mentality that i at least was able to taste during my early years at Barnes and Noble's cafe to this gigantic seething machine, where baristas don't even know how to pull a shot by hand anymore (it's all done automatically - press a button), where the endless pushing of pastries, frappuccinos and syrups has just turned it into an endless factory of crappy, processed sugaryness that is still, somehow, masquerading as a little neighborhood place where, much like the fabled Cheers, "everyone knows your name". meanwhile, this morning, it was push people in, push people out, barely a hello before i grab their money or card and then send them on their way, caffeinated but not enriched by any sort of human contact.

in closing, i politely request that people just get over themselves. yes, i'm talking to you, mr. venti americano with 6 equals. the next time you get the urge to tear your St*rbucks barista a new asshole, take a deep breath, and think about this: children across the world are starving. children in THIS country are starving. people are dying in a fucked up war. the world is getting warmer. we're on the brink of an energy crisis. YOUR COFFEE IS NOT THAT IMPORTANT.

thank you.

don't turn your back on me.

so last Sunday at the Buck, i sat down for my lunch break and opened up the Sunday New York Times to this.

i nearly cried.

i swear to god, if Philadelphia becomes the next "borough" for hipsters and pretentious people to crash land upon, i might just stay in Houston. great. now that they've ruined the entire city of New York, they're going to move down the turnpike to Filthadelphia? i have a feeling the great people of my fair city will be all up in their asses in very short order.

New York and i have had a very strange and storied history. i can say for almost sure now that unless a job, school or significant other draws me there, you will never see me pulling up stakes to move to a rat hole in Corona (which, realistically, is all i could afford).

this is the thing. i love New York. i've loved New York since i first set foot in it when i was 13. i wanted to go to college there so badly, and probably should have. i love New York because there is so much of my history there. i was seduced by the rhythms, the sounds, the beautiful order and chaos of it. but the shine that stood so firmly in place when i was 19, 20, 21 has faded. the city has changed. or maybe i have changed.

this is the thing. i really hate New York. the older i get, the more it exhausts me, every time i go there. i have to pack, i have to drive to the train, i have to get on the train, i have to get to the surface, i have to find a cab. i arrive at my destination utterly exhausted. when i am in New York, i feel dwarfed by all these pretty people. i feel ancient, out of touch, a step behind. all the desperately hip kids in the East Village. the bleached monsters of the Upper East Side. the high class pseudo hippies pushing their jogging strollers on the Upper West Side. rich kids living off mommy and daddy's money near NYU. on and on and on. the people in the city are larger (and fiercer) than life.

you get the feeling that everyone is either at a beginning or an end. those that are fresh and new and haven't yet been hit over the head, and those that are worn, so worn down, and have given up and stayed, or given up and left. but everyone is straining, desperately. there is no oasis of calm in this city, there is no downtime to breathe, to think. and everyone, everyone, everyone is so jaded. it's all been done, we've seen it before, you don't impress us, next please. it sickens me

but Philadelphia, god, Philadelphia. i miss it like fucking crazy. here is a place that is run down, beat up, graffitied, spit on, and yet to me it is just utterly beautiful. life just begins again and again. here is a place where real people live, so many different kinds of real people. the kind of place that i can relax, where life is a normal pace, where i can rent an apartment for $430 (heat and hot water included) the year after i graduate from college and live and survive and still have money left over to go down the street to the Oak Lane Diner and have a cup of their excellent French Onion Soup for $2.95. where i can go to a dive bar and not worry about turning into a scenester hole, because it's fucking Feltonville, and no one cares about Feltonville.

i am worried, ultimately, that Philadelphia might become what New York is becoming, which is a playground for extravagantly wealthy people who are boring. the working class roots that the city was built upon are slowly disappearing. the citizenry of New York City is now divided into two camps: those who were born here, and those who came here. they are vastly different, and it is, in my mind, the latter group that is ruining it for everyone.

i recently reread "Here is New York", which is an excellent essay by E.B. White. it tells of the Manhattan of 1948, a place that is all but gone. his point in the essay was that the condition of the city is ever changing, and therein lay the key to its vitality and beauty. it has changed, is changing, and will continue to change. i just wish it would change in a way that would make me love it again.

can you smell what the bird is cookin'?

so, no kidding, earlier this week after Terrell Owens got kicked out of Eagles training camp, i was going to sit down and write him an open letter, along the lines of "you asshole, you had the world and the city in your palm, and you went and screwed it up in favor of some lame-ass grandstanding". but then someone else went and did it so much better than i could. and he's only 4 years old.

so, with the preseason only a week old, i can already feel the world of hurt coming on, the hurt that only the Philadelphia Eagles can bring, with endless losses, bad seasons and "so close i could've breathed on it" misses. i am so sore i am not in Philadelphia, pissed that i can't go to the Drake and waste hours and hours with my friends watching the game. it's not going to even be on tv much here in Houston, so i am forced to find some sort of sports bar to watch the game, a sports bar probably full of morons or, god forbid, Dallas Cowboys fans.

i never did comment much on the heartbreak of February last. to come that close, and especially that close to a team as smug and self-satisfied as the Patriots, was just heartbreak. the city was in mourning, and i'm surprised there weren't some sort of riots on Frankford Avenue or in South Philadelphia. like all the people in the bar sitting next to me, we were just numb. the silence after the loss was deafening, and everyone slowly and quietly filed out, leaving bar carnage behind them. i sat with my head in my arms for the longest time. women were crying. men were crying. it was a sad day.

but it seems that TO has his head dislodged from his ass, at least temporarily. we'll see if it all works out.

Donovan McNabb, i love you. you are the bomb, you are a real, honorable guy, and a consummate professional. you kick ass. i hope you kick everyone's this season. god. i'm tearing up.

i guess i didn't mention i love football?

today i look like a drunk redneck.

okay. ixnay on the arbucks-stay.

after an eight hour day on Wednesday, i'm sorry, but fuck that.

i feel like a cog in gigantic coffee-flavored machine. i always knew i was a cog, but at least working at Jenkintown St*rbucks i felt like maybe i wasn't. but i am a cog, a happy, chirpy green apron monkey cog. the people at my store are, for the most part, pretty chill, but there are a couple of people who are just WAY too into this job, and they're trying to drag me down with them. i will serve coffee, i will be nice to people, i will show up on time and be properly attired, but i refuse, i REFUSE to take coffee as a life and death matter.

in the words of my dear friend Chanell, "Girl, it is not that serious."

anyway, i started playing around with the Laguna Frost today, finally. it is like butter. the best porcelain i have ever laid my hands on. i also sat down late last night and drew three dozen little tiny bras, panties, and corsets in my sketchbook. it was oddly satisfying.

i've decided i'm keeping a very intensive sketchbook while i'm here in Houston, a sketchbook similar in nature to the ones i kept in Scotland two years ago and at Haystack last summer. i've found that the format that works best for me is a very straight, chronological journal-like format. if i skip pages and don't be consistent with my content, i tend to lost interest in the sketchbook and stop drawing in it. it seems like consistency is the best way for me to develop my ideas.

i never did get around to finishing my sketchbook from Haystack while i was there, it was merely a stack of half-finished folios sitting sadly in a box. so i sat down and spent most of the last week trying to bind it and case it in. i hadn't done it in so long that i had pretty much forgotten how to bind, and i sort of made it up as went. i think it turned out well. looking at the content of the sketchbook was very illuminating. the beginning of many ideas, discarding some along the way and letting others develop. looking between the sketches and the finished product is always useful, it's like a blueprint for a building.

i still can't believe i live in a place with palm trees.

alright. now i know why all the cool kids don't use Blogger. it's fucking annoying, and i think it's going to be on its way out. can anyone assist me in trying to wade through Moveable Type? i don't get it...

so, today was my first day at The Buck, Part Deux: Revenge of Houston. i was way more nervous than i thought i would be. when i went in last week to get my schedule, the kids there were...not rude, but indifferent. they pretty much ignored me, which was weird. at my store in Philly, if we met a new hire, there would be introductions all around and the offer of a free drink, and perhaps the chance of some preliminary dish, if the party in question was willing. but i digress. i was worried that everyone would be mean and aloof, but they seem to be, for the most part, pretty cool. there's just so many of them.

so, i was wrong about the store being open until 11. it's actually open until 12:15 in the am. and then it opens at 4:45 in the morning. utter madness.

there's also an aquarium in the store. an aquarium. with fish. surely i'm in the twilight zone?

i do not jive with the drive through. if i wanted to be a drive through monkey, i would've been working at McDonald's all this time. i'm not looking forward to it. but if one thing's consistent across this fine country of ours, it's St*rbucks clientele. the people i glimpsed through the drive through window were highly polished bleached monsters sitting in Audis and Lexuses, their cell phones firmly glued to their heads. some things will never change.

Amanda said to me last week, "Houston's a shopping town." Houston's also a place where there is 8.25% tax on everything, including clothing.

this one kid i was working with yesterday starting discussing the various Houston sites that i might be intereted in seeing. i think second on his list was The Galleria.

"it's really cool", he said.

i stopped. "it's a...mall, right?" i asked incredulously [a mall, incidentially, that actually has an entire part of town named after it. so one could concieveably say, "i live in Galleria"]

"well, yeah. but it's a really cool sight to see. it's huge. and there's a 24 hour St*rbucks there, too."

great. just what i need.

it seems that in Houston, shopping is an honest-to-goodness, honorable pasttime, like tennis or macrame. and all the places to pass this time are firmly and clearly divided into two camps: the chain stores, and the smaller, shabbier, independently run stores. the strip malls here are like a religion, lining every major thoroughfare with their clean white facades, mostly populated with sophisticated but generic looking stores that i've never heard of.

not the most exciting place for someone with no money.

i do not know what possesses me to do these things.

if this entry had a subtitle it would be, "nothing like accosting your former high school crush online to remind you just how lame you were in high school".

good thing i didn't have the presence of mind to actually save the logs of the conversation, because it brought back, in strange, frightening, crystal clear detail just how absolutely fucked up i was in high school. in just a few phrases or sentences of things he said, BOOM. that slight tone of pity (which i'm probably imagining), "glad to hear you're on the up and up" he said. as if i had a huge hole to dig my way out of. i remember how it was to be that small and miserable, that racked by anger and self-hatred. life and growth just grind to halt. it made me realize that perhaps i'm not as far away from that place as i thought.

so yeah, J. is a computer engineer working for the fucking Department of Defense in Baltimore. he has a real job and a girlfriend. he also mentioned a mutual friend of ours who is also working in Baltimore. it was right then that it struck me: we're all adults now. i have this fixed image of all the people i knew in high school, and they are perpetually in college. though in reality, after six years, even the slackers among us have long since graduated and gone onto jobs and marriage and kids and grown-up shit like that.

and even though i have this piece of paper that says i have a Bachelor's degree, even though i have achieved every single professional goal i've set out for myself, even though i have the social circle and friends and responsibilites of an adult, i still persist to think of myself as a kid. some part of my mind is still waiting for me to get a real job and a real life, even though intellectually i know that being an artist is all i'm good at, and it's all i'll ever be. that's why talking to J. has just fucking thrown me around the block. i guess i'm a grown-up now.

"i cured cancer in my spare time, too"

went out to dinner last night with housemate Mark. he drove me to this little 24 hour Mexican joint right down the street in his enormous Lincoln TownCar. i don't think i've actually ever been in a car that long. the front of it extended a good seven or eight feet from the windshield. Mark told me there's a foot of empty space under the hood after the engine and all the machinery ends. the interior is that strange maroon velour-like fabric. it smells like i remember my grandparents' car smelled.

i find myself strangely tongue-tied around him. actually, i should say brain-tied, because my tongue seems to be in working order, it just keeps spitting out all these generally dumb and uninteresting things. i'm going to chalk it up to severe lack of sleep.

Me: "So, have you ever spent any time up in the Northeast?"

Mark: "Yeah, i actually went to college up there."

Me: "Where did you go?"

Mark: "Harvard."

(!!!)

so, the food was good (and cheap), the conversation good. Mark is a really interesting person, with such a huge range of interests. it's an early impression, but from what i've seen so far, his aesthetic is frighteningly close to mine. almost as close as me and Jeanine's. i have to say that i don't think i've ever met anyone like him.

i also did laundry today at this dismal little place. they call them Washterias around here. after three years of having a washer/dryer in the basement, this is going to take some getting used to. i'm also going to have to start getting rolls of quarters from the bank, too.

today's weird Texas bug. i was walking into the craft center and felt a prick on my arm. i immediately brushed it off (actually, i should say i had a small seizure and squealed like a little girl) and onto the floor where it met an untimely end on the bottom of my shoe. it looked like a large ant with wings. ugh. ugh. UGH. and where it bit me? it actually drew blood. jesus christ.

on a similar subject, there are ants in my studio. they are going away tonight via a bright golden can of death. i also discovered a cricket in the corner (i thought it was a roach for a split second), which i carefully scooped up with cup and paper and deposited outside. i could use some good luck right now.

Lewis Black was right.

it's amazing how quickly television has left me. when i left Philadelphia, i was hopelessly addicted to a number of VH1 reality shows, all of which are too lame to identify on this page. i still watched MTV and TRL with the fervor of a 14 year old. i thought i would miss it terribly. but now, it's just kind of disappeared, gently sloughed off my brain, taking a couple cells with it. there is no television at the house, just a huge and wildly diverse library of video and dvds. between me and mark, i think we have everything from Star Trek to Malcolm X covered. the only tv i've watched is a fuzzy Dave Letterman, which comes on at 10:35 around here (damn central time).

so i am starting at the Buck next week, or so they say. this particular branch of your friendly coffee conglomerate is, i think, on steroids. it seems that the good people of Houston take their coffee FAR more seriously than in Philly. the store has a drive through, FOUR assistant managers, 27 baristas, and (get this) the morning shift starts at 4:15 am. at this point, assuming that the store closes at 11 pm (and i know it does, since i drove past it at exactly 10:27 pm last night during one of my noctural sojourns-about-town), what exactly is the point of closing at all? if you're going to be closed for a scant 5 or 6 hours, it just seems to make sense to just stay open and cut your losses. me, in my infinite wisdom, set my availbility to work for opening shifts only. it may suck, but i'll be damned if i'm ever going to close a store again.

and the final insult? this particular St*rbucks is directly across the street from another St*rbucks. i shit you not.

-bethany.

ps. happy 30th, you ass.

geek.

for some reason, i've had a ridiculously hard time concentrating on anything today. i think my brain just decided to short out. i've spent all afternoon trying to bind the sketchbook i made last year at Haystack, but i keep getting distracted by my computer, the book i'm reading, the chocolate bar i bought at CVS, the dead cockroaches stuck to the trap in the corner (delightful). it is now past 8 pm, and i actually just finished the sewn part only to realize that i left my PVA in Philadelphia (that's Poly Vinyl Adhesive for those of you not in the industry).

the cool thing i discovered today is that WHYY now streams through iTunes. before it was available only through W*ndows Media Player, and you can imagine how hesitant i was to infect my poor little iBook with Bill Gates' evilness. so now i sit here, in Houston, Texas, listening to WHYY. it's very weird. i feel like i'm really not that far away from Philadelphia. like i could just jump in the car and head over to Del Val and say hi. a feeling like that is understandable when you fly, but even after driving 25 hours to get here, it still doesn't feel real.

i'm still waiting on clay. a short summary on my clay saga: before i left Philadelphia, i sat down and actually figured out what the shipping on a couple hundred pounds of my clay would be going from Philly to Houston. the answer? almost as much as the clay itself. the clay i use does not have a distributor anywhere near Texas, so i am forced to find another porcelain that will do the trick. finally i settled on a porcelain made by Laguna called "Frost", which is supposed to be very white and translucent. i went to the local ceramic store, only to find that they were temporarily out of it. so i am stalled in the clay realm, at the moment. hence the long overdue binding of the sketchbooks mentioned above.

today's moment of Texas weirdness. the thunderstorms here are unlike anything i have ever experienced before. they come on suddenly, dump an ungodly amount of rain, and are gone just as quickly. i was walking across the parking lot of the Craft Center yesterday when a bolt of lightening arced across the sky, uncomfortably close. and then, a second or two later, i heard the thunder that accompanied it, only it wasn't a boom or clap, but a slow crackling, like a tree breaking. it was quite chilling.

today's abuse of the possessive. in the CVS parking lot: a small sign saying "expectant mom's". argh.

-bethany.

a sidenote: i still can't believe i decided to switch to a blog format. after journaling (and designing) completely by hand for years, i just realized i had no appetite for futzing in Photoshop endlessly and coding everything by hand in Taco (great little html editor for Mac). so now i log in to blogger and update in a window, like every gormless 17 year old posting bad poetry and pictures of their cat. i'm going to see how it all pans out, but so far, it hasn't been making my writing any more interesting.

things are profoundly weird right now.

my life has changed so radically in the last week i'm not sure i actually believe i'm here in Houston to stay. i'm still on vacation, and any day now my dad will be coming from the airport to get me, to take me back home to Philadelphia, where my life is. i half expect Al to be calling me up at 9 in the morning, asking, "why aren't you at work?"

i haven't worked for over a week now. this is an unnatural state for someone who has worked at least 50 hours a week for the last year and a half. i had my St*rbucks interview last Wednesday, and not only did the dimwit assistant manager forget that he even had an interview, he informed me that i couldn't start until week after next, because "the schedule was already made". fortunately, between my last paycheck, my security deposit from my apartment, and my stipend, i will probably be okay for at least a week or two.

so here i am, tooling around this strange city, trying to find good places to eat, good places to hang out, good places to see music. i've been to IKEA four times in the last week. FOUR TIMES. i think the lady at the cafeteria is starting to recognize me. today i sat and watched Oprah on the big screen and ate my crawfish pasta. i bought some new sheets and more shelves for my studio.

i can't find a good grocery store to save my life (kroger=scary. fiesta=scary. whole foods=too expensive. trader joe's=nonexistant.). i'm convinced there's no decent chinese food in this town. i think they're making up for it with the abundance of Thai restaurants.

on one good hand, my housemate Mark is really cool. and talented and smart, way smarter than me. yet very humble about it. i'm trying not to feel bad about myself, but he's only two years older than me and is almost done with his master's degree. he speaks French and Spanish, and is a musician (with a killer Rhodes in his bedroom). plus he cooks! he makes me feel like a slacker. all i did last week was stare at this computer screen, rearrange my studio and eat a pound of Twizzlers (granted, over 4 days, but still).